Well, there are probably weeks that don't start with the Euromess, but not too many of them. And on top of that, quite a bit of bad news in the US economy.
The DOMA decision this week sure seems another significant step along the road to marriage equality.
What else? Not too much, I don't think. There were primaries in Texas, and a couple of those may matter in the sense that every individual Senator (and to a lesser extent Member of the House) matters, but no big partisan stories.
What am I missing? What do you think mattered this week?
Saturday, June 2, 2012
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I'd suggest the revelation of Obama's deals with PhRMA, as a means of gaining their cooperation in passing PPACA, is an important story. Mind you, there is easily as much back-room dealing among both the Democrats and Republicans, and I don't see this as a partisan issue at all. This story helps shed additional light on the fact that the political process is controlled by private corporations.
ReplyDeleteThis is more of an add-on to your mention of the bad economic news out of the US and Europe, but I'd include the numbers showing a slowdown in China, India and other Asian economies. Increasingly this is looking like a world-wide slump...
ReplyDelete"The official said he found it alarming that, when the top five banks’ assets and total exposures to derivatives activities were added up, they showed a leverage of one to 45 times."
ReplyDeleteOur banking system is not becoming more robust. Obama is too busy signing shiny, new, incomprehensible bread-and-circuses legislation and playing with Hellfire missiles to fix the real problems. And our federal gov is so bloated and powerful that no one has the energy to track its movement. Who believes that bank bailouts are a thing of the past?
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/06/morgan-stanley-bonds-trade-at-junk.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MishsGlobalEconomicTrendAnalysis+%28Mish%27s+Global+Economic+Trend+Analysis%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
http://volokh.com/2012/05/31/asian-americans-affirmative-action-and-fisher-v-texas/
ReplyDeleteNew push by Asians to end affirmative action because it's racist and it screws with them. We all know who affirmative action is designed to harm, so it's too bad for tho POC coalition that Asians are wealthier and better educated than whites.
There is no inherent reason why affirmative action would necessarily favor whites over Asians (I know of no such program that calls whites an underrepresented mminority, even in a field like engineering). If such a program does so, that's not an inevitable consequence of "reverse" discrimination, it's plain old discrimination. A fact missed by people on both sides of the debate.
DeleteAnonymous 5:52
Delete"(I know of no such program that calls whites an underrepresented mminority, even in a field like engineering)."
Affirmative action and disparate impact are not about minority/majority, which is why majority women are "protected" under the relevant laws and Uniform Guidelines.
"If such a program does so, that's not an inevitable consequence of "reverse" discrimination, it's plain old discrimination."
Are you saying that if Asians (who are "over represented" in academe) are forced to get higher scores than whites for the same slots that it's discrimination? But that if a white person whose grandparents all came from Europe is forced to get a higher score than than a white person with three grandparents from Europe (and one white grandparent from Cuba) that that is NOT discrimination?
"I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."
ReplyDeleteObama thinks it's funny to joke about drone strikes on the Jonas Brothers after he gets his daily Hellfire fix and to joke about auditing people who cross him as Tea Party groups are attacked by the IRS.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260113149028331.html
If you ever find yourself in a room where everyone is clapping for Opapa, make sure that someone else stops clapping first.
You need therapy. Many, many, many years of therapy.
DeleteI remember my disgust on hearing Bush joke about how his life would be easier if he were a dictator (liberals agreed with me) and he was "joking" about something that wasn't even on the table.
DeleteBut I don't expect partisan Dems to be able to think straight where Opapa is concerned. So just think how "funny" it would be if your local police chief joked about sending a SWAT team to shoot you if you didn't give him free donuts. Funny, right?!
Anonymous (6:00 PM) - If you don't have Obama Derangement Syndrome yet, then you're not paying attention.
DeleteHmmm, we'll have to wait and see if this mattered...
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. Department of Justice says at least some materials sealed as part of the court case against seven men involved in the 1972 Watergate burglary should be released.
The agency responded Friday to a request by a Texas history professor who is seeking access to materials he believes could help answer lingering questions about the burglary that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/long-sealed-watergate-documents-may-be-released
"From mid-1987 until the Great Recession, the employment-to-population ratio of 25-54-year-olds usually ranged from 78.5% to 80%. It never fell below 78.2% even during the 1990-1991 and 2001 slumps.
ReplyDelete"But now, nearly three years after the recession ended in June 2009, that ratio stands at just 75.7%."
Probably the best indicator of the state of employment shows that we've barely risen from the nadir of '09.
http://news.investors.com/article/613346/201206011853/working-age-employment-rates-near-historic-lows.htm
Do court cases count? In the world of software, Oracle v. Google was a very big deal.
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/06/oracles_apis_ar.htm
What Mattered This Week rules -- there are no rules! Construe it however you want! I suppose it should have something to do with politics and government broadly defined (although I'm not going to argue if it's baseball or something like that), but a court case surely fits into politics and government broadly defined.
Delete