I realize that I’m a wide-eyed idealist, naive to the realities of doing business in this day and age, but I still can’t wrap my head around a paragraph like this:

Proposition 2 would require that starting in 2015, calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be provided space to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely. Proponents say it would prevent animal cruelty; opponents say it would unnecessarily harm farmers and consumers by raising domestic prices and exposing consumers to cheaper, ostensibly more dangerous eggs from other countries.

Now, we’re not talking about giving every calf, chicken, and pig be given an acre of grassy meadow to run free, and a string quartet to score the scene. We’re not even talking about letting them see the sun. Nor are we talking about making this happen tomorrow, or a year from now. And this is light years away from mandating that industrial meat operations handle their wastes the way we require cities to do it.

We’re just talking about making their cages, the place they will likely spend their whole lives, big enough for them to be able to extend their limbs and turn around. That’s all. I mean, Christ, if you were going to establish a base-level, lowest common denominator standard for not being completely inhumane, that might be a good place to start.

But there’s so much in this paragraph that’s wrong.

Proponents say it would prevent animal cruelty… No, I don’t think it will. It goes a short way towards mitigating intense, widespread suffering, but that’s a ways off from actually preventing cruelty.

…opponents say it would unnecessarily harm farmers and consumers… When you’re managing a massive, highly efficient industrial factory system of growing meat, you’re no longer a “farmer” in any traditional sense of the word, so please discontinue attempts to play on my sympathies by putting a wheat chewing actor in overalls in front of me. Also, peddle that “concern for the consumer” bullshit to someone who’s buying it, this is all about your profit margins.

It’s just stunning to me that this is even a close contest.

Years ago, I used to play poker with friends every so often. This was well before the current Texas Hold’em craze, so we’d play Draw, Stud, Black Mariah, Low-Hole Chicago, Screw Your Neighbor, what have you. Everyone would buy in for $20, chips would ebb from one side of the table, flow the other way, mass in one pile then split into several, as chips are wont to do.

After an hour or two, we’d end up playing either Guts or Ace-Two-Three for the rest of the night. Both games involved playing for the pot, such that one winner takes the pot, one or more losers match it, and it could grow pretty fast. Inevitably, someone would go in (often with a great hand but not always) and lose a pot that would bust ‘em. If they didn’t have the cash to cover, the table had no choice but to let them write an IOU, otherwise the people that had lost real money wouldn’t have a chance to win it back. So, if the busted player didn’t win their IOU back, someone else would own their paper.

Now here’s the thing about IOU’s on our table. If you had to write one out, well, that was that, you were in the hole and we were okay with that. If you held someone’s IOU, you could sell it to someone else at the table for chips, and the bidding depended on whether or not people thought you were good for it. There were some fairly hilarious scenes where someone watched indignantly as their IOU’s were bought and sold for fifty cents or a quarter on the dollar. In some cases, someone might throw down with “I’ve got twenty Woody-bucks for whoever gets me a beer from the fridge.” Woody’s credit rating was less than stellar.

But under no circumstance was it okay to put someone else’s IOU into a pot in lieu of money. The pot would take your IOU if you were busted, but not until your last chip, dollar, and penny was gone, because everyone else was putting real money on the table. The rare attempts to pull such a stunt resulted in shouting and ridicule, with the offender sheepishly replacing the note with chips or cash.

So here we are, with several “too big too fail” companies, bloated with mountains of IOU’s, trying to force we-the-people to buy them with real money that we get from our I-get-up-every-goddam-day-and-go-to-work-for-a-living wages, at what they say is a fair price. For my family of four, they want us to put up somewhere between eight and fifteen thousand dollars to buy these IOU’s at full face value. And we’re going to have to do this because they took these fucking IOU’s from anyone and everyone, over and over again, and were calling them “chips” the whole fucking time.

These Diamond Jim motherfuckers, these blow-thirty-grand-on-coke-and-strippers Wall Street scum, want my real wages in exchange for their shitty IOU’s. The wages I earn by going to work five days out of seven, fifty weeks out of every fifty-two. The wages from which taxes are taken to keep our roads in repair, to fund my children’s education, to give some relief to folks in a jam and a boost to folks who need a hand getting on their feet. The wages that they all said couldn’t support the tax revenue that might give us single-payer health care, subsidize college tuitions, or build up a respectable transit infrastructure.

Well fuck that. Any bill that comes out of Congress seeking to rescue these dishonest, avaricious sociopathic sons of fucking bitches without getting an equity stake, and without giving me my pound of flesh, is unacceptable. Otherwise, I say we let the whole fucking thing collapse.

I like Bernie Sanders take on it. Too big to fail? Too big to exist.

Let’s say that a New York State Senator, driving through NYC in his black Mercedes, nearly crushed a cyclist. How do you imagine he might respond? Would you imagine he’d roll his window down and say, “get your hands off my car, you fucking asshole”? How would you feel about that?

Well, Colin Beavin, blogger and Transportation Alternatives board member, is a much nicer and more level-headed person than I am, and a role model for those of us trying to be good. He took the opportunity to pen an open letter to New York State Senator Jeff Klein, and to invite him to discuss transportation policy and traffic congestion with TA’s Executive Director.

Should I find myself in such a situation, I hope I have the presence of mind to realize what a great opportunity it is to discuss these issues with someone in a position to do something about it, instead of, um, some other way. Keeping perspective like that when you’ve just come uncomfortably close to not getting to see your daughter grow up is impressive. Good show, Colin!

If you’d like to contact Senator Klein to encourage him to take advantage of this opportunity, you can email him at jdklein@senate.state.ny.us, or give his office a call at 718-822-2049. As tempting as it is to tell Senator Klein to “get your car off our bikes, you fucking asshole,” it probably won’t get anything done worth doing, so if you’re gonna call or email, support Colin’s idea that they meet to discuss. That’s my official recommendation anyway.

When Senator John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, Cindy McCain’s first thought was… well, no one’s sure what the whole first thought was, but it ended with, “…and if he thinks he’s going on the campaign trail alone with that little hussy…” Cindy knows how he do.

But millions of people, myself included, had another thought: “Huh? WTF? Who?” And that’s fair, because many Americans can’t name the governor of their own state, so knowing who rules Alaska at any given time is a stretch. But we’re learning more and more with each passing day, as the press gets around to the vetting McCain’s campaign was too busy to undertake. I thought that I’d be a good citizen, and a good neighbor, by providing you, gentle reader, with an introduction to the Moosinating Hockey Mom (and soon to be Gramma!) from far, far away.

You’re welcome!

(h/t John Cole)

Heh.

…the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico’s Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. “I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Nagourney recently recalled. “I really flipped out.”

Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. “I’ve never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others,” Nagourney tells me. “I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I’m a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I’m a political opponent.”

No! That’s so unfair! Why would they treat you like an opponent?

Last year, when Hillary Clinton campaigned as a front-runner, Obama provided access to the press corps and won over the media. One night, during a campaign stop in Iowa, he met reporters for off-the-record drinks. He cooperated for magazine profiles and appeared on the cover of GQ. And Clinton’s relationship with the press wasn’t half as easy. “The difference is the Clinton people were hostile for no reason,” a reporter who has covered both Democrats tells me.

I can think of a reason! My hand’s raised! Pick me! Pick me!

It’s because you, the press corps, spent 8 years savaging the Clintons by playing stenographer to the ratfuckingest Republicans to come along since Nixon, continued to do so during Hillary Clinton’s senate career, and then outdid yourselves during her run at the Democratic nomination! You said things like:

…the reason she’s a US Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front runner, is that her husband messed around.

And:

I have often said, when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs

And let’s not forget:

But doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?

Those are just a few gems off the top of a 16-year stack of vicious, bullshit coverage. Look, I wasn’t a Clinton supporter in the primaries per se, in fact for much of the primaries I was prohibited from publicly expressing a preference. I thought she’d be a right fine candidate, I thought the same thing about Obama. But there’s really no denying that going all the way back to 1992, there’s been plenty of reasons for the Clintons to treat you assholes like… assholes. It amazes me constantly, given the celebrity-journalism quality of political and campaign coverage, that they’re able to treat you as well as they do.

So, given the fact that this ain’t Obama’s first rodeo, and that he’s evidently really, really good at this, he’s going to work you fuckers to his advantage, and work to keep you from fucking him the way you’ve been fucking Democrats since Gingrich, Delay and Rove have had their hands up your puppet asses. It’s not new, LBJ was a master at this, and it’s not personal, any more than it is when you play video clips of Rev. Wright saying, “God Damn America!” several thousand times in a couple of weeks.

Hope this clears things up, and you’re welcome!

(h/t Atrios)

Here he comes, here comes Bob Novak
He is Satan on wheels!

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning.

He is Satan and he’s gonna be
Runnin’ over someone!

The pedestrian, a 66-year-old man who was not further identified by authorities, was treated at George Washington University Hospital for minor injuries, according to D.C. Fire and EMS.

He’s disappointed that he hasn’t killed you yet
He’s busy revvin’ up his powerful CORVETTE!

“I didn’t know I hit him. … I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing.”

And when the odds are against him and there’s
Righteous cyclists…

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. “This car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.

He said he chased Novak half a block down K Street, finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block it and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blaring, until commuters behind Novak backed up so he could pull over.

Bono said that throughout, Novak “keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.”

You bet your life Bob Novak
Won’t go to jail

I saw on television earlier this morning that for breaking traffic laws and seriously injuring a man through conduct that could easily have killed him, Novak is going to get . . . a $50 fine.

Go Bob Novak!
Go Bob Novak!
Go Bob Novak GOOOOOOOOOOOO!