Suburban Guerrilla

We’Ve TakEn THe BloGGeR. CliCK ThE PAypAl buTToN NoW oR Go bAck tO ReADing tHE waSHinGtoN poSt WiTHoUt coMmenTary.

diD yOu reAlLy ThInK yoU’d Get aWaY WitHouT PaYinG?

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They say biblical patriarchy is better for the family!

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The wonderfully energetic, very smart and funny Darcy Burner is tonight’s guest on Virtually Speaking with Jay Ackroyd.

THURSDAY, Oct 21, 8PM EST �

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtually%20Speaking/164/111/25

Simulcast on BlogTalkRadio – http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2010/10/22/virtually-speaking-with-jay-ackroyd-darcy-burner
Subscribe via iTunes – http://bit.ly/8Szklp

@ 6pm slt – Darcy Burner: Rabble rousing practical progressive. As Executive Director of ProgressiveCongress.org and the Progressive Congress Action Fund, she is responsible for strategy and management of both organizations.

Darcy has been featured on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, the Ed Show, C-SPAN, ABC, NPR, Pacifica Radio, and a host of local programs, and featured in Roll Call, Politico, The Hill, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Huffington Post, DailyKos.com, The Nation, Mother Jones, and as a keynote speaker at Netroots Nation alongside Bill Clinton and Howard Dean. She is a regular front page contributor to OpenLeft.com discussing matters pertaining to Congress, and writes occasionally for DailyKos, Crooks & Liars, and Huffington Post .

She’s a board member of Campaign for a Livable World’s PeacePAC, the SNAP PAC Advisory Board, the Progressive Ideas Network Advisory Board, and the Netroots Arts and Education Initiative (the 501c(3) portion of Netroots Nation). In her spare time, she runs the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.

http://action.progressivecongress.org/

http://boldprogressives.org/

http://twitter.com/darcygburner

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The press is underreporting.

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Shorter Pat Meehan: Bryan Lentz is using our own tactics against us! In fact, Pat’s campaign manager Charlie Sexton was once fingered for illegally convincing a Republican to run as a Democrat to split a vote — the feds even had him offering the payoff on wiretap. But of course, it was a Republican administration and the case was dropped.

The only thing you need to know about Pat Meehan the “reformer” is that he comes from one of the dirtiest political counties in the state — yet never thought to indict a soul from there while he was U.S. Attorney. Oh, and he was also one of the U.S. attorneys about whom Karl Rove never, ever complained.

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Robert Frank:

ECONOMISTS who say we should relegate questions about inequality to philosophers often advocate policies, like tax cuts for the wealthy, that increase inequality substantially. That greater inequality causes real harm is beyond doubt.

But are there offsetting benefits?

There is no persuasive evidence that greater inequality bolsters economic growth or enhances anyone’s well-being. Yes, the rich can now buy bigger mansions and host more expensive parties. But this appears to have made them no happier. And in our winner-take-all economy, one effect of the growing inequality has been to lure our most talented graduates to the largely unproductive chase for financial bonanzas on Wall Street.

In short, the economist’s cost-benefit approach — itself long an important arrow in the moral philosopher’s quiver — has much to say about the effects of rising inequality. We need not reach agreement on all philosophical principles of fairness to recognize that it has imposed considerable harm across the income scale without generating significant offsetting benefits.

No one dares to argue that rising inequality is required in the name of fairness. So maybe we should just agree that it’s a bad thing — and try to do something about it.

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Is it a good idea in general to elect people who have taken numerous shots to the head on a regular basis? And of course, Runyan picked the Dred Scott decision because it’s an anti-abortion dog whistle:

Jon Runyan, a former pro football player and now the Republican nominee against freshman Rep. John Adler (D-NJ), has added his voice to the recent constitutional jurisprudence of GOP candidates — listing the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court decision as a recent case that he disagreed with.

As the Asbury Park Press reports, from a debate last night:

“Jon, it’s a different branch of government, but can you give me an example from the last 10 or 15 years of a Supreme Court decision in which you strongly disagree?” Adler asked.

“That I strongly disagree with?” Runyan asked, pausing for a moment to consider the question. “Dred Scott.”

There was some laughter in the audience.

Adler then asked the question again, pointing out that he asked for decisions in the previous 10-15 years. Runyan was reportedly unable to give an answer.

Because he doesn’t know how to think. He only knows how to repeat wingnut talking points — and there are, indeed, far too many wingnut voters in South Jersey.

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That would be Mrs. Phil Gramm he’s talking about:

As George H. Painter was preparing to retire recently as one of two administrative law judges presiding over investor complaints at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he issued an extraordinary request:

In a notice recently released by the CFTC, Painter said Judge Bruce Levine, his longtime colleague, had a secret agreement with a former Republican chairwoman of the agency to stand in the way of investors filing complaints with the agency.

“On Judge Levine’s first week on the job, nearly twenty years ago, he came into my office and stated that he had promised Wendy Gramm, then Chairwoman of the Commission, that we would never rule in a complainant’s favor,” Painter wrote. “A review of his rulings will confirm that he fulfilled his vow,” Painter wrote.
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A friend and I were just talking yesterday about candy corn – how really awful it is, how hard it is to stop eating it.

As I suspected, it turns out it’s made with high-fructose corn syrup, which accounts for the horribly addictive qualities of the stuff. Every time I eat it, I think to myself, “Why am I eating this? It makes me feel terrible!”

And yet, I keep eating it. Sugar heroin!

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Maybe we could learn a few things.

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I still believe her:

In her Senate testimony, Hill said that Thomas would make sexual comments to her at work, including references to scenes in hard-core pornographic films. Thomas angrily denied the allegations, memorably saying they amounted to a “high-tech lynching.”

But Lillian McEwen, a former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer who said she dated Clarence Thomas from 1979 through the mid-1980s, told The Washington Post in an interview that Hill’s long-ago description of Thomas’s behavior resonated with her.

“The Clarence I know was certainly capable not only of doing the things that Anita Hill said he did, but it would be totally consistent with the way he lived his personal life then,” said McEwen, who is writing her own memoir but has never before publicly discussed her relationship with Clarence Thomas.

McEwen also told the Post she was not surprised that Virginia Thomas would leave Hill a message, even after all these years.
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