An interesting development in the Social Security wars. Look for Democrats to propose combining the separate disability and retirement funds so that they can be managed as one fund. That would take away the need to “reallocate” between the funds, which requires congressional approval and therefore gives Social Security foes a chance to make trouble periodically. No chance of this yet-to-be-unveiled Democratic bill passing the current GOP Congress, but as an effort to change the terms of the debate, it’s worth noting.
Amanda Marcotte: “Should Black Widow bag four out of six Avengers, the world that comes to mind is not ‘slut.’ but hero. Perhaps superhero.”
As we noted the night before last, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had till midnight yesterday (Israel time) to form a coalition or (an extremely improbable event) give up the chance to be the country’s next Prime Minister. And now he’s done that just an hour or so before the deadline, adding the far-right Jewish Home party of Naftali Bennett (a one-time protege turned quasi-nemesis) to his new government. It was always a given that Bennett’s party would join. But things changed on Monday when Avigdor Lieberman (another protege turned quasi-nemesis) abruptly announced that he would not join the next government and would instead take his now greatly diminished Yisrael Beiteinu party into the opposition.
That dramatically changed the situation.
Will Kramer says there’s a tiny sliver of Congress that actually isn’t as bad as you think.
I don’t agree with all of this piece. But I agree with a lot of it and it made me think, which makes it a very good piece in my mind. An interesting side note is that I think the author started reading TPM and emailing me when he was maybe in middle school, which I’m both very proud of and also slightly unsettled by. But the piece is what matters here and it’s about the contrast between how we talk about race here in the US (tip-toeing and talking around it) and how they do in South Africa. Give it a look. I think you’ll be glad you did.
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I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better illustration of the Guffmanite nonesense we discussed yesterday than this. Geert Wilders, the flamboyantly coifed far-right Dutch parliamentarian who is Geller’s partner in crime, has announced that we need more Prophet Mohammad cartoons to combat the failed attack in Garland. This really is the inexorable collision of two rival clowncarts throwing up cultural and physical shrapnel to innocents around them, two sides that can’t exist without each other and by any reasonable standard shouldn’t exist at all. Perhaps we should take another approach: everybody go back to whatever they were doing before the Mohammad cartoon fad started, fund robust counter-terrorism operations to protect us from extremist lunatics and just call it a day.
By all means, if you were a professional Mohammad cartoonist before this started, stay strong, keep drawing and do not be intimidated by these violent extremists.
Otherwise, perhaps just get a life and move on.
Jeb tells supporters he relies on W. for advice on how to deal with the Middle East.