Welcome to the Thursday edition of your open thread. I guess this is a repeat of Tuesday’s open thread (eh, A1?). Anyway, the floor is yours. Please use your platform for good and not evil.
Update on the AK-Sen race: Miller still leads Murkowski by 1700 votes with all precincts counted. There are 7,600 absentee ballots to count (not all in the Republican primary) so Murkowski still has a mathematically possible, though not probable, chance to win. We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to have the official results.
All I can say is I agree with Paul Krugman 100%: “Fire Alan Simpson.”
I’ve also had my eye on Alan Simpson, the supposedly grown-up Republican co-chair, who has been talking nonsense about Social Security from the get-go.
At this point, though, Obama is on the spot: he has to fire Simpson, or turn the whole thing into a combination of farce and tragedy — the farce being the nature of the co-chair, the tragedy being that Democrats are so afraid of Republicans that nothing, absolutely nothing, will get them sanctioned.
When you have a commission dedicated to the common good, and the co-chair dismisses Social Security as a “milk cow with 310 million tits,” you either have to get rid of him or admit that you’re completely, um, cowed by the right wing, that IOKIYAR rules completely.
And no, an apology won’t suffice. Simpson was completely in character here; it was perfectly consistent with everything else he’s said, and with his previous behavior. He has to go.
Simpson has already apologized to OWL but I think he owes the rest of us an apology. President Obama has accepted his apology and Simpson is staying. I just don’t see how this commission has any credibility anymore. Is anyone going to be surprised when they cut the deficit by stealing our social security and leaving the huge military budget and Bush-era tax cuts in place?
Can we stop photoshopping away women’s curves? Christina Hendricks loses a significant portion of her hips in a photoshop job by London Fog.
The probable GOP nominee from Alaska is very, very far right.
Among Miller’s views: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn’t pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it “may not even exist.” Among the more mainstream GOP positions he’s taken: Miller would cut welfare; eliminate health care for the poor by scrapping Medicaid; and the Anchorage Daily News reported that he has has called for sweeping cuts to Medicare and Social Security with a goal of phasing them out entirely in favor of total privatization.
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Democrats would say that Murkowski is a far cry from staunchly pro-choice (she has a 14% rating from NARAL), but that’s how she was portrayed during the campaign. Miller is backed by the Family Research Council and opposes abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, a view far to the right of the mainstream of the GOP. (Operatives have cited her lack of negative campaigning to respond to Miller’s charges as a reason for her surprising poor showing.)
I think he could get along great with Christine O’Donnell! The GOP has a lot of fringe candidates this year and I think the next 2 years will be characterized by complete and utter gridlock (enough to make you long for the days of President Snowe and President Nelson).