Politics: The Arse of the Unpossible

by **CalvinBall** » Sat Sep 24, 2011 10:22:21

So Chris Christie might run.

by **jerseyhoya** » Sat Sep 24, 2011 12:09:07

I would love nothing more than for him to run. But he's not running.

by **Monkeyboy** » Sat Sep 24, 2011 16:38:57

on account of him getting NJ's credit rating downgraded?

just yankin' your chain

by **drsmooth** » Sun Sep 25, 2011 11:13:46

jerseyhoya wrote:
drsmooth wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:This should be the topic of a Slate piece (if it hasn't been already - and if the non profits focus more on death row cases, which I'm assuming, but don't know for sure), but I am going to hypothesize that the death penalty is counter intuitively a huge benefit to people who are innocent and on trial for first degree murder.

Non profits and other advocacy groups seem to work an awful lot harder to exonerate death row inmates than the average Joe Schmo in for life. For all of the concern over innocent people being executed, there is a serious lack of posthumously not guilty people being discovered given all of the people who have been let off death row so being sentenced to die doesn't seem like all that terrible of a thing in and of itself for an innocent person relatively, since you tend not to get executed. Meanwhile god knows how many people are rotting away innocently after being found guilty of murder but were not lucky enough to be sentenced to death.

If someone hasn't already written this paper, I want to be a coauthor.

Edit: Two further caveats - not the existence of the death penalty itself is insignificant to funding for innocence project type endeavors, and they would continue to help life in prison people even if the death penalty didn't exist (seems like a stretch)

And really not the case if someone who knows they're innocent but pleads guilty to life in prison to avoid the death penalty. Or pleads to a lesser offense to avoid the death penalty but would have refused to plead to a lesser offense if the maximum sentence was life without parole. That seems like it should be something that is pretty rare though.

And people suggest I'm the exemplar of circumlocution

I was spitballing. If the people of Slate read BSG, I expect to see an article by the beginning of next week.

looks like your letter to Ross Douthat struck paydirt

it's still a curious assertion, as if the numbers of people who have been advocating for prisoners like Davis are a monolithic tribe of celebrity-seeking dilettantes. That Douthat might make such an assumption isn't all that surprising, I suppose; after all, he only seems to express concern for such matters when it looks like some of these same people might turn their attention & energies to reducing the absurd level of imprisonment in the US.

Interestingly, in the last few days O'Donnell riffed on the same theme, urging those who gave so much attention to Davis's story to give the same attention and energy to the fight against capital punishment generally. Happily, I do not recall that he said things as absurd as this:

Ross Douthat in NYTimes wrote:Simply throwing up our hands and eliminating executions entirely, by contrast, could prove to be a form of moral evasion — a way to console ourselves with the knowledge that no innocents are ever executed, even as more pervasive abuses go unchecked.

Here's a tip, oh ever-vengeful, righteous, and chickenshit Ross; a good many, if not most, of those who advocate against the death penalty are not "simply throwing up their hands". At the very, very best, that is a galling presumption, and it's too easy to draw more cynical inferences from it.

by **jerseyhoya** » Sun Sep 25, 2011 11:35:10

How about that

by **drsmooth** » Sun Sep 25, 2011 11:43:52

jerseyhoya wrote:How about that

now if you could anticipate the financial activities of, say, Warren Buffet, or the Koch brothers, in the same fashion

knowing what Douthat will say next, plus a couple of bucks, will just about get you a grande pick of the day

by **pacino** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 19:56:05

wait, a gay soldier was booed by a republican audience for being gay? whatever happened to supporting the troops?

by **drsmooth** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 22:32:48

Chris Christie poops on snookie

and I'm afraid that is a mental image some of you may not shed for decades

by **jerseyhoya** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 22:39:17

Tom Kean (the elder) said Christie really is thinking about jumping in

I still put the odds at 5-10%, but this is at least a little more real than I thought

by **drsmooth** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 08:11:11

jerseyhoya wrote:Tom Kean (the elder) said Christie really is thinking about jumping in

I still put the odds at 5-10%, but this is at least a little more real than I thought

Scarborough's suggesting this AM that "if he doesn't run this time, there IS no next time"

that doesn't seem right to me

kind of funny, Mika Brezinski was wearing a dowdy gray somethingorother on the show, thru their interview with Huntsman, they come back from the break & she's in this fire engine red number unzipped to down between her charms

which works, because she IS like the chick in that seinfeld episode that's alternately hideous or hot depending on what light you see her in

by **thephan** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 08:15:10

Hey no US Government shut down (again)... until maybe next week. WTF people, you were sent to Washington to govern, if we wanted this type of "Government" we should have just elected street thugs, then let them literally fight it out.

The continual hostage crisis means that firms cannot hire, contracts cannot be award or they are suspended, Government managers and staff don't even feel that they can take meeting with the uncertainty and people are furloughed or terminated. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. The good news is that with each shutdown threat that runs up to the deadline, there is a lot of billing on the big contracts to tail down the work and a lot more when it restarts. Eventually there will be requests for money for cost over runs associated with the shutdown game as it is an unplanned expense created by the Government itself. Brilliant. I bet that if contracts need to account for this every year, with a thread of either not being paid or not planning for risk, that the contract cost across the board might escalate 20%. And small businesses? Well, this stuff sticks a fork in them.

We don't negotiate with terrorists? Well, then we would need to shut down a branch of Government because both sides are doing a pretty good job at terrorizing the population and crushing effective government.

by **jerseyhoya** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 12:22:20

by **CalvinBall** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 13:35:20

Reading is the poorest city in America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/re ... d=fb-share

by **jerseyhoya** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 14:27:53

And Fox shoots down the Christie speculation before I had a whole day of actually believing it could possibly maybe happen

by **Monkeyboy** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 15:38:38

It makes sense to wait as long as possible if you feel like the big boys will get behind you. It's cheaper and there's less time for the shine to come off and the dirt to become common knowledge.

by **pacino** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 16:14:55

I would be worried for Christie's health if he ran for president. Seriously.

As for Reading, I could've told you this. The amount of work I have on my plate at my job is INSANE, and way above what so many other people with the same exact job around the state have to do. I lived in Reading for about 1.5 years and I was part of the 59% NOT in poverty. Hell, a 41% poverty rate is still low, because what is considered impoverished is incredibly low. Now I moved 5 blocks over the the city line (saved $200 rent!) and the poverty level drops to an insane amount. Reading is one of the most segregated places in the country based on ethnicity and income.

by **TenuredVulture** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 16:16:10

jerseyhoya wrote:And Fox shoots down the Christie speculation before I had a whole day of actually believing it could possibly maybe happen

Buck up--there's a draft Huckabee movement afoot.

by **swishnicholson** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 16:28:07

jerseyhoya wrote:I would love nothing more than for him to run. But he's not running.

I don't really care if he run's or not, but his strategy to fuel speculation (and to nudge his approval rating above 50% among the people he governs) seems to be by making like a kinder gentler Christie, one who actually looks for ways to make state government better serve the needs of its people, rather than simply looking for grandstanding ways to pass the (literal) buck. So I'm all for him continuing to feed the rumor mill this way.

Does seem like a counter-intuitive way to gain the Republican Party's presidential nomination, though.

by **Phan In Phlorida** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 17:20:33

TenuredVulture wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:And Fox shoots down the Christie speculation before I had a whole day of actually believing it could possibly maybe happen

Buck up--there's a draft Huckabee movement afoot.

Maybe he'll do an ad like this candidate in Poland...

by **momadance** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 21:37:16

This Christie speech from The Reagan Library sure makes him sound like a candidate.

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