I discuss the Dodge ad.
Hi, I'm Ilya Gerner.
I think public policy is fascinating. I write about it here.
Among other professional and amateurish activities, I'm a daily contributor to Comedy Central's Indecision
We can be Twitter pals.
You can also reach me at ilyagerner [at] gmail [dot] com.
Political Language
Important Moments in Watching the Super Bowl With Parents
Me: One of the players on the Baltimore Ravens was accused of murder, but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him.
Dad: O.J.?
…
Mom: Oh, this is Density’s Child.
Me: Desti—
Mom: Densit— ah, Destiny’s Child. Her husband, Easy, got them to perform with her.
…
Dad, in moments before, during, and after a replay: Is this happening…now? Did this already happen? I thought this was live.
…
Dad: [mentions score that should be unlikely, given how points are awarded]
Me: No, there’s basically no way to score two-points except right after a touchdown.
Ravens awarded two points for a safety.
Dad: Who’s the expert now?
That thing where Pantsless Progressive celebrates your birthday with a blingee.
Time to Retire ‘Scabby the Rat’, Says Top AFL-CIO Official - Working In These Times
INFLATABLE UNION RATS FOREVER
Awful idea to get rid of these.
“I met Obama once, in D.C., the Correspondents’ Dinner.
I was the guest of Vanity Fair, guided through D.C. by the wife
Of Christopher Hitchens, when he was alive. We went to Hitch’s place,
He had books from floor to ceiling, and said he had read”
— James Franco’s inauguration “poem.” Those of you who didn’t like Richard Blanco’s performance should know that it could have been so much worse.
Well, now I’m aware one more reason as to why so many people think affirmative action is that thing where super-qualified white dudes are passed over for promotion by black people. They’re being lied to by their employers, via shitty web-based courses on anti-discrimination law.
I am not happy with you, employee-training software that I will not be using again.
The NRA blamed gun violence on video games. Including… their own?
Honestly, most horrifying part of the NRA presser was was Wayne LaPierre calling for an “active national database of the mentally ill.” Let’s please keep these people as far fucking away from our “national conversation” on mental health as possible.
“When John Boehner needs to add spending cuts to a deficit reduction bill to make his most conservative members happy, they don’t want to reindex Social Security benefits. They don’t want to monkey with the Medicare eligibility age. That’s not the stuff that gets them jazzed up. Taking food out of the mouths of hungry children, by contrast, is something they’re excited about. They’re eager to reduce regulation on banks and cut back on poor people’s health care. Cutting spending on the elderly is something they’ll maybe consider as part of a deal with Obama. Cutting spending on the poor is their idea of Christmas.”
— Matt Yglesias on Plan B Christmas Tree
“Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century. The fifty-eight senators who voted against Bork for confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1987 honored themselves, and the Constitution. In the subsequent quarter-century, Bork devoted himself to proving that his critics were right about him all along.”
Pete Souza/The White HousePresident Barack Obama pretends to be caught in Spider-Man’s web as he greets the son of a White House staffer in the Outer Oval Office, Oct. 26, 2012. See more photos here.
(via timemagazine)
The Daily Caller is seeing penises everywhere and frankly we're a little concerned about them.
(Source: ccindecision)
“…those who are more naturally given to see problems of law or culture as the reason for evil look at the horror of Newtown as something that can be prevented, if only we do this or that thing, pass this or that law. Something must be done, they say. But their somethings all have this in common: none of their proposals, on guns or mental health or any other factor, would have prevented this awful crime. In the real world, there is no law that can make the murderously insane sane, or remove all weapons from their grasp. The tweaks that have been attempted in the past in our nation and others have proven insufficient time and again. And no step which disarms the law-abiding will help.”
—
Ben Domenech, The Transom.
Who decided that the only gun control measures worth contemplating are the ones that would prevented an exact, carbon-copy replica of the Newtown shooting?
It’s true that the measures being discussed — a ban on high capacity magazines, stricter background checks, a closing of the gun show loophole — would probably not have stopped the Newtown massacre. But they may well prevent other shootings. For each proposal, we can ask: how likely is it reduce gun homicides overall? What are the costs? The implication for civil liberties? And then we should do something, because yes, something must be done, even if that something doesn’t target the exact circumstances of the Newtown tragedy.
Ezra Klein has similar thoughts.
