March 27 Open Thread: Surf’s Up
A blue wave in November is pretty much a given at this point, but will it be big enough for Democrats to retake the House? A new report says it will take the biggest electoral wave in 40 years to overcome the gerrymanders the Republicans enacted in many of the 30 states they control.
The Republicans also have a secret weapon they hope will goose the turnout in red districts: They’re running against Hillary Clinton again. Ads already are running highlighting her comments about “backward-looking” voters in red states.
Economist Thomas Piketty, whose work on economic inequality caused a big stir a couple of years ago, is out with a new paper demonstrating what many of us have seen: Both American political parties now represent the elite, albeit different branches — Democrats have the educated elites, Republicans the rich ones — leaving the poor and working class without much representation. His upshot: the Sanders agenda is the path back to power for Democrats.
As RE Vanella pointed out in a comment elsewhere, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens penned an op-ed for the New York Times calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment.
Turns out that a good guy with a gun did not stop the bad guy with a gun at that Maryland high school shooting last week. The bad guy with a gun shot himself when the school resource officer fired at him. Another gun-nut myth bites the dust.
Trump and his cronies really are one-trick ponies, and that trick — using the courts to bleed opponents dry —is backfiring spectacularly with the various call girls Michael Cohen has tried to intimidate into silence.
Once elected, I pretty much figured that the flood gates would open up. So I’m actually surprised that Trump’s wall of legal threats and intimidation has worked for this long.
Justice Stevens’s recent comments sound about as helpful as Hillary’s.
“Both American political parties now represent the elite, albeit different branches..”.
Heck of a job, Bill Clinton!!
The water is still cold
@puck: How so?
I LOVE Steven’s comments. Rightbook is hilarious today.
The important theme of Stevens’ Op-Ed is it dispels the conservative myths that somehow what they think of today as the foundations of America are really decisions made in the last few decades.
Individual’s right to gun ownership, like having “In God We Trust” on currency and having NFL team on the field for the National Anthem, is a new idea.
This is extremely inconvenient and makes all the right people mess their pants.
Agreed, pants messing a plenty today on FB, and even a lesson or two on the history of the 2nd amendment (that might have been me…) that was met with all the lunacy you might expect. On a lighter note am bummed as I was hoping from the title a surf music revival was taking place .
That would go under SOTD.
Shout out to Carper in today’s NYT editorial : 0 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/congress-trump-omnibus.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region