Search Results for: 10,000

Clinton	Rubio
64.7% probability of winning	35.3% probability of winning
Mean of 280 electoral votes	Mean of 258 electoral votes

Sen. Marco Rubio is one of three major G.O.P. candidates out of Florida (along with Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee). This should provide him with a general election advantage of providing a strong showing in this important swing state. The most recent Florida poll, taken in the second week of August, has Rubio leading Hillary Clinton by +12.

In fact, Rubio leads in the most recent polling in the other two classic swing states of Ohio (+2) and Pennsylvania (+7). It hasn’t always been that way. For the past year, Clinton has generally held solid leads in all three swing states, only to lose all three leads over the summer:

So how is it that Clinton can be behind in these three swing states and still lead? It’s because she leads in Wisconsin (+12), Virginia (+1), Texas (+1), Louisiana (+3) and Georgia (+3). Virginia is the only state with a recent poll. Of states with older polls, Wisconsin is at least plausible, but Texas, Louisiana and Georgia seem unlikely to swing blue in 2016.

Clearly, much more polling is needed to get a feel for where the race is at. Clinton has certainly lost ground over the summer, and this is probably a function of two things. First, voters are familiarizing themselves with, and getting used to the idea of voting for Marco Rubio. Second, Clinton has had a terrible summer from the perspective of national popularity. For most of the summer, what news we’ve heard about Clinton, has been largely negative.

The Clinton campaign has been disconnected from a general election audience, as her campaign focuses on another important aspect of the race. They have spent the summer quietly locking up superdelegates, almost guaranteeing her the Democratic nomination. The trade-off for a lousy summer is that the campaign will be freed up early to focus on the care and feeding of general election voters while the Republicans bludgeon their way through an unappealing primary.

Republicans have a very different nomination structure, they don’t have superdelegates, and the dynamics of their over-populated primary are entirely different, so that campaigns have spent the summer attempting to maximize positive news cycles (or, in the case of Donald Trump, positive or negative news cycles). This has allowed the top contenders to “catch-up” to Clinton and, given some more recent polling, possibly top her.

For the polling we have now, however, Clinton holds a thin lead. After 100,000 simulated elections, Clinton won 64,668 and Rubio won 35,332 times (including the 1,511 ties). Clinton received (on average) 280 to Rubio’s 258 electoral votes. In an election held now, Clinton would have a 64.7% probability of winning and Rubio would have a 35.3% probability of winning.

Here is the distribution of electoral votes [FAQ] from the simulations:
[Read more…]

Last week, a boat carrying migrants and refugees from North Africa sank in the Mediterranean. Of the 300,000 plus who’ve attempted the journey to Europe this year, about 2,500 have died. In Austria, children crammed into a van were rescued, while others weren’t so lucky. And after pictures of a young Kurdish child washed up on a Turkish beach appeared in newspapers around the world this week, the humanity behind this crisis seemed to jolt the world closer to the response required.

In Syria alone, the refugee crisis is enormous. But that’s still only a part of the overall influx of those desperate to find a safer home for themselves and their families. I really don’t have anything more to say about this other than that this is an enormous tragedy that the wealthy nations of the world helped to bring about, and one that it can and should fix. But I have very little confidence that they will.

More news from the past two weeks…
[Read more…]

Clinton	Walker
99.5% probability of winning	0.5% probability of winning
Mean of 317 electoral votes	Mean of 221 electoral votes

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) started out the election season with much buzz. But at this point, pollsters seem less interested in him, so there isn’t a lot of really current polling that pits him against a Democrat. There are only 83 state polls matching up Walker to Hillary Clinton (Jeb Bush has 212 such polls). Consequently, Walker at a bit of a disadvantage, since most of the polls were taken when Clinton was polling more strongly against all opponents.

No biggie…this is a shakedown for these analyses, so I’ll post it with the caveat that there just isn’t enough recent polling for this match-up. Perhaps pollsters will soon find reason to be more interested in the Governor.

After 100,000 simulated elections, Clinton wins 99,503 times and Walker wins 497 times (including the 103 ties). Clinton received (on average) 317 to Walker’s 221 electoral votes. In an election held now, Clinton would have a 99.5% probability of winning and Walker would have a 0.5% probability of winning.

Clinton tends to win in the classic swing states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan as well as Nevada and New Mexico. But the most remarkable thing about these results is how poorly Walker does in his home state of Wisconsin. Here’s the polling picture:

[Read more…]

Clinton	Bush
56.0% probability of winning	44.0% probability of winning
Mean of 273 electoral votes	Mean of 265 electoral votes

Poll analyses are back! Yes…after about four years of rest, I’ve decided to get back into the poll analysis business. If you are unfamiliar with my analyses, take a look at the FAQ. This is a shakedown run with a new HA template, so feel free to mention quirks or problems in the comment thread.

I’ve started with a match-up between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. I know, I know, it should be a match-up against Donald Trump instead of Bush. The problem is, there are a total of 20 state head-to-head polls available that match-up Hillary and Donald. For Clinton–Bush match-ups at the state level, there are 212 polls. Apparently, pollsters haven’t quite gotten serious about Trump. I expect that most state head-to-head polls will start including him, however.

For the same reason—lack of state head-to-head polling—I cannot really provide analyses for Sanders, O’Malley, Webb, Biden, Warren, Warner, Cuomo, Schweitzer, or any other Democrat (for now). I will, however, do Republicans other than Jeb Bush, because the polling exists.

After 100,000 simulated elections, Hillary Clinton wins 56,003 times and Bush wins 43,997 times (including the 2,369 ties, which go to the Republican for 2016). Clinton received (on average) 273 to Bush’s 265 electoral votes. In an election held now, Clinton would be expected to win with a 56.0% probability and Bush with a 44.0% probability. That is a close result…damn near a tie.

I remind you that these analyses are driven by state head-to-head polls, not national polls. The state-wide polls are aggregated in a way that emulates the electoral college.

A peek at the long term trend is given after the jump….
[Read more…]

I am not a Seahawks fan. I will never be a Seahawks fan. At best, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Seahawks; at worst, I root against them, if only to return the schadenfreude some local friends and family members have enjoyed in rubbing the Seahawks’ recent success in my face.

One score and seven years since leaving my native Philadelphia, I remain a loyal Eagles fan. And any Seahawks fan who questions the depth of my unswerving loyalty doesn’t really deserve the designation “fan” at all. (Note: this is different from all you Packers fans and Cowboys fans who have no geographic or familial connection to your teams. You’re just assholes.)

Which brings me to my annual preseason rant: Why won’t the NFL let me pay to watch my team?

Yes, DirecTV offers a streaming only version of its NFL Sunday Ticket, but I’m not sure to whom—every zip code I plug in doesn’t qualify. And even if I did qualify, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay $400 (plus tax, I presume) for 10 or so Eagles games (some are available broadcast, others I’ll miss due to other commitments), let alone the minimum $1,000 or so a year it would cost to fully subscribe to DirectTV and Sunday Ticket.

I don’t want to purchase every out-of-market game. I just want the out-of-market games of one team. My team. The Philadelphia Eagles. So why won’t the NFL let me stream my games legally?

Charge me a reasonable price for a high-quality stream of just one team—say, $200 a season, or maybe $15 a game—and I’ll happily pay it. But if the NFL continues to put its head in the sand and pretend expatriate fans like me don’t have other options, don’t blame us if we look to the black market.

Last weekend at Hempfest, the Sanders campaign had a booth passing out buttons and flyers. Hempfest is probably the only place you’ll ever see an anti-tax protestor in a Bernie t-shirt next to other campaign volunteers.

#SeattleHempfest this anti-tax protestor in a Bernie Sanders t-shirt is right next to the Bernie booth pic.twitter.com/pOBbqSbBny

— Lee Rosenberg (@Lee_Rosenberg) August 15, 2015

I stopped by for a bit and chatted with an older volunteer. When it comes to the long battle to reform drug laws, Sanders is better than many politicians, but still not that close to where I think he could and probably should be. As I left, they handed me a homemade printed flyer and I shoved it in my pocket. When I got home, I noticed that the flyer listing out his campaign’s positions had a line saying simply “All Lives Matter”.

This wasn’t official campaign literature, just a small flyer a volunteer made, but it was pretty tone deaf considering what happened about a mile or two from there the weekend before. Saying that ‘All Lives Matter’ in a political sense right now isn’t just some vanilla statement, it’s a response to the millions of African Americans fighting for a level of respect from the police and the criminal justice system that’s afforded to others. Responding with All Lives Matter is an attempt to brush over the fairly substantial gap that exists in how various forms of the government interact with black communities.

Our politics are defined by our fears. The Black Lives Matter movement is a response to the very legitimate fear among African Americans that they’ll become victims of the police or the court system. Many white Sanders supporters recognize that as a legitimate fear, but for most, it’s not the political issue that drives them. Most Sanders supporters are driven by their own fears over an economic system that favors the wealthy and often fails to provide basic economic protections for everyone else. And it’s the latter fear that’s been drawing large crowds to see Bernie, while Black Lives Matter rallies continue to be met with riot gear and spotty media attention.

I have to admit that my first impression after two activists stole the microphone from Bernie Sanders at Westlake was that it was obnoxious. I understand the powerlessness those activists feel when they see more abstract economic issues dominating the political conversation on the left, while the issues that many in their communities face are far more dire and direct. But the reality is, who the fuck cares what I think. It has no bearing on my attitude towards Black Lives Matter. I’ve long been beating this drum. I’m not really the target audience here. I’m not even sure Bernie was the audience that day. The audience was the cross-section of America who doesn’t personally experience the insecurity and fears that black America experiences and who doesn’t really think about it much.

For many of those who’d stood out on a hot Saturday afternoon to see Bernie talk about social security, the disruption of the event was an annoyance. The hope of the activists is that the crowd will weigh their own annoyance against the injustices faced in the black community and come away with some perspective. Does this work? Maybe. But it seems a lot more likely to work at a Bernie Sanders rally than a Donald Trump one.

I’ve been calling this strategy inconvenienceism. I hope someone can think up a better word for it, but that’s the best I’ve come up with. From blocking highways to disrupting public events, this strategy relies on an optimistic take on human nature, that most people have the ability to put aside their own discomfort to think harder about someone else’s. The name is an attempt to draw a contrast between it and terrorism, a strategy that comes from the same pit of powerlessness, but clearly doesn’t work to endear people to your cause.

Does inconveniencism work? It got the Sanders campaign to add a pretty solid racial justice page to their issue list. They hired black activist Symone Sanders and encouraged people to chant “We Stand Together” if there’s another disruption. So it certainly had an impact on the campaign. But does this really translate to better policies down the road? Or will it harden pockets of antagonism within the campaign inner circle and make the hard work of reform even harder?

When I was talking to the volunteer at Bernie’s Hempfest booth, I was tempted to ask him if he ever worried about pot activists disrupting one of his rallies. It was a funny contrast to me. Bernie’s official position isn’t much different from Hillary Clinton’s or even Rand Paul’s. He believes that states should be able to legalize, but hasn’t come out and said that they should. If a group of pot activists grabbed the microphone at one of his events and demanded clear support for legalizing pot across America, how would that play out?

I can’t think of a single instance where drug law reformers of any kind have used inconvenienceism as a tactic in the way that Black Lives Matter has. But maybe that’s why drug law reform has been such a slow process. Perhaps it would’ve sped things up and gotten us to this point sooner. Or maybe it would’ve played into negative stereotypes and hardened opposition. I have no idea. And I don’t think anyone else really does either. It’s a phenomenon that seems extremely difficult to study with any kind of scientific certainty.

My best guess is that it’s mostly a sideshow and has little effect on achieving real reforms. When Hillary Clinton met with Black Lives Matter activists last week, she seemed to echo that belief:

“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts,” Clinton said. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we could do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential.”

What was understandably frustrating for Black Lives Matter activists is to hear this from someone who has long supported policies that created the crisis in our black communities in the first place, and still seems reluctant to engage in any self-reflection over it. But it highlights the fundamental challenge for this movement and others like it. It’s extremely difficult to get the powerful to fight for the powerless, or even to see the world through their eyes. I think many whites feel that Bernie Sanders can be an exception to that rule. But I don’t think many non-whites do. And I think how that dynamic goes forward will end up deciding the Democratic nomination.

In the news for the past two weeks…
[Read more…]

It isn’t very surprising. Today the Washington State Supreme Court issued a unanimous order finding that the Washington legislature has failed in it duty to fund basic education. The Court has ordered them to pay $100,000 a day as sanctions:

Despite repeated opportunities to comply with the court’s order to provide an implementation plan, the State has not shown how it will achieve full funding of all elements of basic education by 2018.

The only catch is that “the fines will be held in an account to help pay for basic education until the contempt order is lifted.” So, really, this is a pretty toothless order that will cause some hand-wringing along with another special session. Essentially, the Supreme Court has issued a third “shot across the bow.”

It’s too bad because it gives the legislature additional opportunity to fail. (And we all know WHY they are failing.)

The Court should just end this: find individual legislators in contempt of court and give them a date, like October 1, to show up to serve a jail sentence that would continue through January 10th (the day before the start of the new session). Unless, of course, they come up with a solid plan before October 1.

Last week Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant* and I got into a conversation about rent control via email, and she provided such a clear and straightforward explanation of her position, that I asked if I could just repost it here to HA. Instead, she got back to me with the following slightly expanded, better formatted, and presumably copy edited version of her initial off-the-cuff response.

Critics have attempted to dismiss Sawant’s affordable housing advocacy as narrow, divisive, and unrealistic—at best a distraction from the real work at hand. But as you will read from the thoughtful response below, that is a gross mischaracterization. Sawant calls for a “comprehensive” approach. She supports using bonding capacity to build publicly owned housing. She supports most of the HALA recommendations, but would go further by including a “robust linkage fee.” Still, I specifically asked about rent control, and that is the focus of her response.

To me, the most compelling policy and political argument Sawant makes is the way she compares rent control to the minimum wage: they are both minimum standards necessary to protect against the natural imbalance of of power between landlord and tenant, or employer and employee. Rent control is not about repealing the market; it’s about reining in its excesses. And according to Sawant, the alleged construction-destroying impacts of rent control are just as unsubstantiated as the alleged job-killing impacts of the minimum wage.

Makes sense. But you can read for yourself:

Which Way for Affordable Housing in Seattle?

Seattle is booming with job growth and a major influx of working people. Yes, we need increased housing supply. Yes, we need zoning changes to build more housing, and to enable a denser and more walkable and accessible city. But why is there such a severe shortage of affordable housing in Seattle? And what is the solution to the problem?

Is It Just about Supply and Demand?
We are told that we need only rely on the so-called “free market.” We are told it is simply about supply and demand. Let developers build, let the supply of market-rate units increase. And at some point, magically, prices will come down and create housing affordability.

Not one of the proponents of this trickle-down theory can give a plausible idea, or even so much as a rough estimate, of how many units would have to be built for that point of affordability to be reached. We are asked to go on faith.

Amanda Burden, the director of New York City’s Department of Planning, a couple of years ago acknowledged that she had truly believed that NYC could build its way out of an affordable housing shortage. She said the city “built tremendous amount of housing” with that hope, “and the price of housing didn’t go down at all.”

Why Are We Losing Existing Affordable Units?
Supply and demand do explain why Seattle rents are going up. How much your rent increases, however, is determined by the relative balance of forces between tenants and the real estate lobby. Much the same way that wages and benefits in the workplace are a reflection of how much power workers have, including whether or not they have a union, to allow them to negotiate better working conditions.

In the absence of substantial tenant protections, rents tend to not only increase in a high-demand market, but to skyrocket. Why? Because developers and landlords can get away with it.

This opportunity to jack up rents means that tenants residing in market-available affordable units experience massive rent increases, which implies economic eviction. After the tenants are driven out, the previously affordable units are renovated, sometimes even minimally, and then rented for twice or three times the original rents.

What Policies Would Make Housing Affordable?
To actually create new affordable housing, we need a comprehensive policy program. I support most of the recommendations of the HALA committee, although they don’t go far enough. We need a robust linkage fee on big developers to generate a billion dollars to build affordable housing. We must also leverage the City’s bonding capacity to build thousands of units of City-owned affordable housing.

But it will take years to build the thousands of affordable housing units that Seattle desperately needs. In the meanwhile, policies that stabilize rent increases are essential in order to prevent price gouging. The citywide wave of economic evictions and displacement will not be stemmed without rent regulation.

Why Rent Control and What Does it Mean?
Price gouging is not inevitable. It happens in the absence of any real protections for tenants in the form of regulation on rent increases, just like worker exploitation happens in the absence of a minimum wage. That’s where rent control comes in.

By rent control, we mean linking rent increases to inflation. Landlords could still make profits and finance maintenance, but the massive rent hikes and economic evictions that we are seeing in Seattle would be prohibited.

Contrary to the myth that rent control slows construction and hurts housing supply, the two largest building booms in New York City history occurred in periods of strict rent control, first in the 1920s and again from 1947-1965. Demonizing rent control is inconsistent with what the numbers tell us.

But Republicans Control Olympia, So We can’t Win Rent Control Anyway, So Why Even Discuss It?
Rent controls are most needed in areas with runaway prices, which is typically localized metropolitan regions such as cities or counties. So the real estate lobby has always fought rent control by pouring money into the campaigns of conservative state-level politicians running from rural districts, where constituents are not demanding rent stabilization. Nothing unique about Washington State there.

And the only way metropolitan areas have won rent control despite all the real estate lobby money is by building a mass movement in their cities and counties and pushing back against the state. This is exactly what I have proposed as a political strategy here in Seattle. As a first step, Councilmember Licata and I have introduced a resolution to demand that Olympia repeal the ban on all rent regulations. I urge you to sign the petition in support of this resolution.

Rent Control is One of Many Tenant Protections Seattle Needs
We need rent control, but in the meantime we also need to urgently enact other laws to protect tenants. Developer loopholes need to be closed so relocation assistance can be expanded to tenants experiencing economic evictions. Tenants need more than 60-day notice in case of large rent increases (greater than 10 or 20%). Tenants with expiring leases need just-cause eviction protections.

Additionally, late fees and move-in costs for renters need to be capped. Penalties for deposit theft need to be increased. And we need a law that will require interest accrued on deposits to be returned to tenants.

To make all this possible, the City must fully fund the enforcement of tenant rights in the same way that we are setting out to enforce labor laws with the new Office of Labor Standards.

I would view the full spectrum of tenant protections (including regulating rents) with a lens similar to workplace rights. Laws such as minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination, occupational safety, and the right to unionize haven’t killed jobs or prevented companies from making profits.

These laws protect workers and provide for a better quality of life for working people. Even the proponents of the free market theory are themselves beneficiaries of the gains of labor struggles. The gains from successful housing affordability policies will be no different. The victory on the $15 minimum wage shows what workers can win when they organize and fight back. We need to build a similarly powerful organized movement for housing justice. Let us begin.

* Duh-uh, I’m a Kshama Sawant supporter. Only an idiot would need this disclaimer, but, well, you know….

What with Seattle Mayor Ed Murray dramatically backtracking from HALA recommendations that would have allowed denser housing in many single-family zoned neighborhoods, I thought I should take a moment to elaborate on a point I made in my recent affordable housing post regarding the impossibility of making single-family detached housing affordable. “We all need to give up this fantasy that every middle class family can own a bungalow and a yard,” I insisted. And the table above helps explain why.

That’s the past 15 years of tax assessment records for my own bungalow and yard, copied and pasted from the King County Department of Assessments website. And assuming the total appraised value in the righthand column comes anywhere close to tracking the actual resale value, I’ve earned a surprisingly modest return on my “investment” over the past decade and a half: an average of only 4.29 percent a year, just twice the rate of inflation (Consumer Price Index) over the same period of time.

Thanks, Great Recession!

But that righthand column only tells half the story. The truth is, adjusted for inflation, the house itself has actually decreased in value over the past 15 years. Which makes sense. Depreciation. My house is old. It’s the value of my land that has figuratively gone through the roof.

According to King County, the land value of my 6,800 sq ft lot increased by almost 10 percent a year, from $54,000 in 2000 to $224,000 in 2014. That’s a fourfold increase—threefold even after adjusting for inflation. And unless our population growth projections are totally wrong, there’s no reason to expect Seattle land values not to continue to grow faster than the local economy as a whole.

Why? Because the supply of land in Seattle is finite. We can build more housing, but we can’t build more land. In fact, as the HALA recommendations acknowledged, to address our housing needs we really need to reduce the amount of land in Seattle restricted to 5,000-plus sq ft lot single-family detached houses. The mayor’s decision to reject these recommendations may or may not be good politics, but it’s certainly bad policy. Though either way, homeowners like me ultimately win.

If we do nothing to loosen density restrictions, then the value of my land continues to increase as demand for bungalows with yards increasingly outstrips supply. If we rezone my lot to accommodate greater density, then the value of my land probably increases even more, as it could then hold two or more $255,000 homes where it now holds just one. But either way, my land value goes up.

Of course, economics is a lot more complex than that. “Supply and demand” isn’t a law, per se; it’s more like economic shorthand. But while there are many factors that could alter demand, the supply of in-city land can never increase.

“Early growth skeptics would have found it hard to imagine the era of the $1 million bungalow,” Lesser Seattle booster Knute Berger recently bemoaned on Crosscut. But I don’t know why—it was inevitable. For you can build as many duplexes, triplexes, apartments, and condos as you want, and the iconic Seattle bungalow would still remain in short supply.

I dwell on this point to emphasize that when we talk about affordable housing, we’re not really talking about making houses more affordable—at least not those of the single-family detached variety. We’re mostly not even talking about affordable homeownership, what with renters bearing the brunt of the affordability crisis. And yet the pundits and policymakers driving this debate—as well as the reliably voting constituents most politicians tend to answer to—are disproportionately single-family detached homeowners like me.

Which I think tends to color the debate with a glaring lack of perspective.

Look, I love both my bungalow and my yard. And I’m very happy to have been born early enough to be able to afford it on less than a six-figure income. But unless she strikes it rich, I know full well that the only way my daughter is going to own a house like the one she grew up in is if I die in it. So if I really care about keeping Seattle affordable for my daughter’s generation then I know we’re going to have to radically change our expectations about what housing will look like for Seattle’s future middle class.

Seattle needs to grow denser and taller. And if we want to adequately address affordability, we need to grow denser and taller throughout the city. That doesn’t mean eliminating zoning. And it doesn’t mean eliminating single-family zoned neighborhoods entirely. But it does mean making smarter use of the limited land we have as we grow into a city that lacks the space to house the majority of residents in single-family detached homes. All options should be on the table.

So fight to preserve these neighborhoods if you want (politics is an adversarial process, after all), but understand that you are ultimately fighting to preserve these neighborhoods for the relatively well off. And please don’t pretend that there is anything we can do to keep the iconic Seattle bungalow affordable.

[Cross-posted to Civic Skunkworks.]

Mental Floss: What did the original colonists sound like?

Maddow: RNC distributes confusing fake primary ballot:
https://youtu.be/Lsivj5-w8CQ

The Ever Expanding 2016 Clown Parade:

• GOPers on same sex marriage
• Jon on the Clown Brigade’s response to the Pope’s Climate Encyclical
• Michael Brooks: Lindsey Graham stumbles answering question about Confederate flag
• Matt Binder: Mike Huckabee glosses over the racism…and claims the real tragedy is the shooting happened in a church
• Jindal announces what a shitty job he is doing
• Sam Seder: Republicans attack Trump
• Young Turks: Trump has something to smile about.
• Sam Seder: The one way Donald Trump is already screwing the G.O.P.
• Jon takes a ride on the Trump crazy train
• Sam Seder: Did The Donald hire actors to attend his 2016 presidential announcement

Jon Stewart is soooooo SICK.

Forgotten Assholes of History: The Christian Killing Emperor.

Burning Flag:

• Jonathan Mann: Burn that flag
• PsychoSuperMom: The Confederate flag may be over, but racism is not
• Mark Fiore: .
• Young Turks: What exactly are Confederate flag-lovers defending?
• Thom: Why don’t we call racists unpatriotic?
• Lindsey Graham explains the confederate flag.
• Jon offers The South a new flag
• Maddow: Southern states seek removal of Confederate symbols
• Young Turks: Conservative pundits think removing the Confederate flag will destroy the South
• Sam Seder: What taking down the Confederate flag means
• HuffPost Live“Yes, you’re a racist and a traitor”
• Thom: Right wing extremism and terrorism
• Young Turks: It’s the slavery, stupid!

Kimmel: This week in unnecessary censorship.

Farron Cousins: CIA engaged in human medical experimentation.

A SCOTUS Rainbow:

• Young Turks: Dissenting justices cling to ancient hate in opposing gay marriage
• Obama on SCOTUS marriage equality ruling
• Young Turks: Gay marriage is now legal in the U.S.
• White House: Marriage equality
• Young Turks: Candidates fight gay marriage with hate, fear & sky god nonsense

A new kind of climate movement.

Obama honors the life of Reverend Clementa Pinckney.

Mental Floss: 27 weird world records.

Oops…I Did it Again:

• Flashback: Bristol tells teens to “Pause before you play”.
• Young Turks: Abstinence-only advocate Bristol Palin is pregnant again.
• TheLipTV: Bristol Palin is pregnant again.

Congressional hits and misses of the week.

Sam Seder: SCOTUS upholds the real meaning of the Fair Housing Act.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Immundly Ugly!

SCOTUSCare?!?

• Obama on SCOTUS ruling on health care
• Sam Seder: SCOTUS upholds ObamaCare, Scalia throws a tantrum
• Young Turks: Conservatives pout about ObamaCare ruling
• Jonathan Mann: Scalia’s Dissent (to music):

• Sam Seder: Right wingers react to the SCOTUS Obamacare ruling

White House: West Wing Week.

David Pakman: How FAUX News uses black people to say racist things.

Minute Physics: How to detect a secret nuclear test.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Didn’t have time for longer commentary this week, just a note about the scope of these roundups. When I initially started this, I didn’t intend to follow incidents involving government interventions over parenting. This tends to be a difficult area with respect to things like vaccines and extreme religious beliefs. In some of those cases, I fully support government intervention if there’s a clear public health justification. And in some cases, I can be convinced that a person’s religious beliefs cross the line into the abuse of a child.

But the recent incidents involving arrests over merely allowing young kids to play or walk alone go way beyond the line of what should be acceptable for the state. I plan to track incidents like these as well, as I think they warrant importance and belong in the same category as the other things I write about and link to here.

News from the past two weeks:
[Read more…]

– Congrats to all future married gay couples! (video loaded automatically for me)

– Even though I mostly agree with this fact-check about the rainbow flag crosswalks, how about just a little joy and whimsey is good enough?

– Even though it’s obviously based on bullshit, I suppose I support the GOP call for Roberts’ ouster, as long as Obama is still president.

– I’m looking forward to the First Hill Streetcar whenever it eventually gets going.

– Bristol Palin’s politics are awful, but her pregnancy really isn’t my business.

To the TV and radio hosts, the columnists, the leaders of White churches, to the parents of White people: You really have to take the lead in teaching our community not to murder Black people. There is a sickness in the White community where we excuse police, where we excuse people who saw an unarmed Black kid with Skittles, where we excuse anyone who says they’re scared of Black people killing them. While each time it’s horrendous, last night, we saw as the toxic racism of our culture that hardly bothers to condemn the murder of Black people came to a head in a Black church in South Carolina.

Yes, sure, there is more to deal with than looking for every excuse after a Black man or woman gets killed by the police or by someone with a gun. Yes, we need to deal more specifically with the toxic aftereffects of slavery, and of Jim Crow, and of redlining. And we need to end the pay gap between Black and White people. We can deal with the school to prison pipeline. We can take Black people seriously when they talk about their own lives. We can cut the micro-aggression bullshit. But we can at least start with condemning it when Black people are killed in this country. We can at least not look for excuses.

All of that has to start with White people. A white person bought Dylann Storm Roof a gun in the first damn place. White people are the ones whose paranoid fantasies give space for this sort of thing. We’re the ones who make excuse after excuse after goddamn excuse.

We’re the ones who after the fact say selling loosies should have been a death sentence. We’re the ones who say being put in the back of a police van should be a death sentence. White people, and especially those with a platform need to confront the deadly racism in our community. As long as we keep making excuses, there will be more.