Asean Johnson for President

He's nine years old. Did I mention that he's NINE YEARS OLD??????

This video is the greatest thing I've ever seen. He's so goddam right about everything.

He's NINE YEARS OLD.

Tumblr or not to Tumblr?

I had been considering switching this blog to a tumblr once the semester ended, but now I'm a bit nervous because Yahoo is taking it over and I can't think of something they don't suck at.

My main thoughts on switching were:

• Blogger's CMS kind of sucks, screws up paragraph breaks all the time
• Tumblr seemed to have a cleaner interface and look, and their CMS seemed to allow both the same level of text based posts plus greater support for images.
• You can make tumblrs group blogs with comments, but sharing their posts is also much easier than it is on blogger.

Any experiences with tumblr/thoughts?

Train of Thought Lounge: Foo Fighters

Such a weird video:

SCANDAL!

Atrios nails it here. There is something so absurd about our media's sudden joy at a scandal, rather than, you know, the real life scandals that have been right in front of them for the past 4 years.

Lots real scandals out there, just not ones our Villagers care much about. Wrongful foreclosures, massive long term unemployment, bankster fraud.

Edited talking points. That's the one that got them.

Killing american citizens without trial, and so on. The editors of Politico wrote a huge article about this in one of the least self aware things I've ever seen, basically ever:

The town is turning on President Obama — and this is very bad news for this White House.

Republicans have waited five years for the moment to put the screws to Obama — and they have one-third of all congressional committees on the case now. Establishment Democrats, never big fans of this president to begin with, are starting to speak out. And reporters are tripping over themselves to condemn lies, bullying and shadiness in the Obama administration.

Buy-in from all three D.C. stakeholders is an essential ingredient for a good old-fashioned Washington pile-on — so get ready for bad stories and public scolding to pile up.

Hey guys... IT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB TO TRIP OVER YOURSELF TO CONDEM LIES AND SHADINESS ALL THE GODDAMN TIME, NOT JUST WHEN "THE TIDE HAS TURNED" OR SOME BULLSHIT. Holy fuck these people. Also in typical fashion they put "lies" in the same category as "bullying the press" which is natural considering the self absorbed flowers they are. It's truely unbelievable.

We've had +8% unemployment for 5 years and the administration created a predatory lending program to deal with the foreclosure crisis. BUT THIS IS A TIPPING POINT, AND NOW THE PRESS WILL CARE.

Chart of the Day

From Chris Hayes' twitter. "how the prison industrial complex disenfranchises black men in one chart":

And Sometimes You Just Throw Up Your Hands...

I know I shouldn't be shocked, but good lord:

A whopping 41 percent of Republicans polled think the Obama administration’s handling of Benghazi is the greatest scandal in U.S. history. “One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history,” PPP adds, “is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is. 10% think it’s in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.”

There really are no words.

The DOJ is Spying on Reporters

This is pretty bad. ACLU:

NEW YORK – The Department of Justice secretly obtained two months' worth of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, according to an AP story.

The following statement can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office:

"The media's purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance. The Attorney General must explain the Justice Department's actions to the public so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again."

I'd say this is a good development because it might lead to some push back on this type of craziness, but I agree with Alex Pareene that I just can't see Republicans pushing back on government spying in any meaningful way, even if this is a legitimate scandal for the Obama Administration.