Game of Thrones theory: Bran is the Night King and the Night King is a Targaryen

[Important note: I have not read the books, this is based on the HBO series and my patch of OCD.]

There's a theory floating around on Reddit that Bran Stark is the Night King.  Or inhabits the Night King.  Check out the Reddit link for more, but the basic theory is that once Bran starts warging back in time, affecting Hodor, then meeting his father at the Tower of Joy - where he finds out about Jon Snow's lineage - he starts going too far.

It even theorizes that Bran tries to alert Aerys Targaryen to the threat of the Night King and drives Aerys mad and he starts stockpiling wildfire and doing the burny-burny thing to people.

Further, as Bran's power grows, he decides that he can find a way to stop the Night King and the Army of the Dead from invading.  In doing so, Bran ignores the Three-Eyed Raven, who warns that if you go too far and stay too long, you can never come back.  Bran goes back to the last long night and that winter and ends up inhabiting and becoming Bran the Builder, the Stark who constructed the wall and built Winterfell.  But Bran doesn't stop the Night King, because, as the Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow edition) tells him, "the ink is dry".  Everything that will ever happen is always going to happen.  Time is a closed loop.

Ignoring advice, in another attempt, Bran goes back to the creation of the Night King to try to stop his creation by the Children of the Forest.  The theory goes that Bran wargs in to the man, tied to the tree, just before the Children shove a dragonglass dagger into his heart, creating the Night King 

In doing so, Bran Stark becomes one with the Night King.

The theory that Bran is the Night King works, mostly, but there are some flaws.  For starters, the Night King rides the reanimated dragon Viserion.  And we've been told that only Targaryen's can ride dragons.  

So am I suggesting that the Night King a Targaryen?  

Yup!  I'm doing exactly that.

Follow me: I like the "Bran is/inhabits the Night King idea".

But let's go farther.  Look at the guy, a First Man, who takes the dagger in the heart and becomes the Night King.  (The Children of the Forest create the Night King to protect them from both the Others - White Walkers in the very upper north - and from men).  What color is his hair?  Is it... blonde?  The scene is sepia-toned, but, it appears to be.  

Who has blonde hair?  That's right, Targaryens do.  

By the way, where is the ancestral home of the Targaryens?  Dragonstone.  Home of Dragonglass, the only thing, along with Valeryian steel, that can kill the Night King, but the thing that made him as well.  Neat symbolism.

Who walks through fire?  Targaryens.  Dany at Drogo's funeral pyre.  Dany when she kills the Dothraki leaders.  And the Night King, when he walks right through it, and in to the Three-Eyed Raven's tree cave.

There are a million theories, but tell me why this wouldn't work?  Old Nan vaguely tells Bran, as he is laying in bed, after getting shoved out of the window by Jamie, that she claims to know a version of the tale where the Night King was a brother to the King-in-the-North, who was named Bran.  Old Nan is suggesting that the Night King is actually a Stark.  Does Nan's reference to Bran mean Bran the Builder, maker of the wall and founder of Winterfell?  She's vague, and the timeline is unclear, but the Brandon Stark she mentions, even if he's not the Builder, is still a Stark.  Could the Night King be a brother to Brandon Stark by marriage?  

OR, could have been a brother-in-arms in the Night's Watch sense of "brother" to Bran Stark?  What if he is one of the first of the line that would eventually split from The First Men and the Starks into what would become House Targaryen as they moved south after the fracture of the First Men?  Was he was there at the very formation of what would become the Night's Watch, and was he captured by Leaf and The Children and turned into the Night King?  

Flash forward 8,000 years: could the Night King that our Bran Stark is warging to and (maybe) becoming a part of, the one that rides dragons like a Targaryen, actually BE a Targaryen?  Why not?  When The Night King touched Bran in his warg, something happened.

Now consider Jon Snow.  We now know that Jon is Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of his name.  He's also a Stark.  Dad was Danerys' brother, mom was Ned Stark's sister.  

So if Jon Snow is Targaryen/Stark, and the Night King is/was originally Stark/Targaryen, and Jon's adopted brother Bran is inhabiting the Night King, this could go a lot of places.

Another thing:

Have you seen the spiral symbol of the Night King, which is actually a derivation of the symbol of the Children of the Forest?  

It shows up again in the Season 8 premiere, on fire:

What else does that look like?

It looks like the sigil of House Targaryen.  

I don't know how this all ends.  Is there a showdown between two Targaryen/Starks in Jon/Aegon and Bran/Night King?  Does Arya have to step in, as she has a Valerian steel dagger - the one she used to kill Littlefinger?  Does Arya take a blade for Sansa using her face-swapping ability she learned in the House of Black and White?

I don't know.  But the Night King/Targaryen symbols are too close to not mean something in a show where every word means something.

A response to "How One Generation Was Single-Handedly Able To Kill The Music Industry"; or How the Record Labels Blew It and The Movie Industry Is About to Do The Same

In an article titled "How One Generation Was Single-Handedly Able To Kill The Music Industry", author Thomas Honeyman, writing for Elite Daily, blamed the decline of the music industry on a single generation. He's partly right. The emergence of new technology in both creation and distribution has fundamentally altered the market. But you have to go back up the river a bit to see where it started.

The most interesting line in the article is this:

"The old music industry clung desperately to sales to survive, but that model is long gone."

The problem isn't content, the problem isn't market. The problem isn't even piracy - that's a by-product.

People still want music; they're still consuming it, just not in a way that's economically viable for artists. The market is there.

The problem is DELIVERY. The industry wanted to cling to a model that was obviously becoming obsolete.

Last night was the 95th anniversary of the beginning of Prohibition, which showed us that if there's no legal way for the public to obtain what they want (alcohol) when and how they want it, in a way that makes sense to them, then they'll find a way to get it illegally.

That happened with music.

We make the mistake of lumping 'piracy' into one big pile. However, music and movies are somewhat different. Movies are consumable - you see it once and move on. Relatively few people will watch American Sniper 100 times in their lives. LOTS of people will listen to (insert song here) that many times.

Studios need to charge for movies on delivery because they're consumable. Like wine, you consume it once and although you might carry the memory of a particularly good one and describe the experience to friends, when it's gone it's gone.

That's not necessarily the case with music. We listen to favorite songs hundreds of times. I downloaded Gnarls Barkley's album with "Crazy" on it when it came out. I listened to it twice, then went to iTunes and bought the two tracks I liked and tossed the rest. Since then, my play count is well over 200. It's on a variety of playlists, from my personal ones to lists I have for parties at my house.

Music - good music anyway - doesn't need to be bought before one experiences it. If it's good, people will pay (in some form) for it.

It's why iTunes and others have a 'try before you buy' preview model - though I'll argue that it doesn't work as well as it should.

Spotify is proving that there is a market where people will pay for music. Now the compensation end is another story, but I'll argue that we're in the development stage. The music industry is at least 12 years behind. Spotify should have happened when Lars Ulrich was fighting Napster. At that point, the traditional model was getting it's last rights - but the industry clung to that floating corpse for another decade instead of recognizing and responding to the shift - which is the mark of any well-run business.

The music industry dropped the ball. They allowed a public that was used to paying for music to become used to not paying for it because to the labels, it wasn't about 'music', it was about moving plastic. They lost sight of the goal and clung to a delivery method that the public didn't want. They didn't want to reinvest in a new delivery infrastructure, so someone else did it for them and cut everyone else out.

Someone describe for me how that's fundamentally different than bootleggers stepping in to fill a market void? You can argue morality, but you're fighting a lost battle with that argument. Markets are at heart amoral. That's not necessarily good, and it;s not necessarily bad, It just is.

Now, we're (slowly) switching people to the idea that you can get music in a way you want, but it's going to take time for the pricing models to work out. In the same way that the Mafia (a 50-year by-product of Prohibition) didn't die in 1933 with the passage of the 21st, it's going to take a while for piracy to flush out as well. And it will never go away.

But we're in a seismic shift in the way we consume media. Cable TV as we know it died 2 weeks ago when ESPN announced that it was going to be streaming - you just didn't read the obit yet.

Live sports was the only reason that the traditional cable model survived, and with that going away, the model will shift relatively quickly.

Within 10 years, TV will be a la carte. The Sony hacking fiasco also showed the beginnings of a change in movie experience. It is possible to release content directly (though Sony ham-fisted it) to people in their homes and make money. Soon there will be a day when you can see Hunger Games 9 in your home the same day it's in theaters.

Why will it happen? Because it's what the public wants. How do I know? Because they're already getting it. Google "American Sniper torrent" and see what you get. Try "Selma". "Inherent Vice".

We can wring our hands about piracy all we want, but as with Prohibition, it's our collective fault for thinking we can completely control humans and markets.

Change takes time, and we're in the middle of a great change.

Quote from a Gingrich spokesman

Hoirrible, venomous Christian thanks God for His vengence on athiest Japanese

This is a horrible person.

A truly, truly horrible person. She's literally orgasmic over what "God did to Japan".

Personally, I can't wait until Thor kills her under a semi on the way to hospice for her end-stage ovarian cancer.

Strangely enough, breaks for the wealthy and corporations eat up as much taxes as programs that the GOP wants to cut

Center for American Progress

House leaders are unfortunately restricting their proposed budget cuts for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 to nonsecurity discretionary spending in an attempt to tame a $1.3 trillion deficit. This approach is especially shortsighted since the Federal Treasury loses twice as much revenue due to tax breaks than Congress appropriates on all nonsecurity discretionary spending.

The chart below compares the 10 safety-net programs slated for deep cuts with the cost of the tax breaks that should also be considered for reduction or elimination to bring the budget into balance. The column on the left is a list of safety-net programs that have already been targets of the House leadership’s budget ax. The column on the right is the cost to specified tax breaks (see bottom of page for sources).

Huh. Does that just seem amazing? Remember this when the GOP comes crawling for the middle class vote, trumpeting their commitment to early-childhood education, better teacher training, the unemployed ("putting America back to work") and alternatives to ObamaCare.

Poll finds people who want fiscal responsibility actually want more spending

So I've been harping for a year that this whole "fiscal responsibility" movement is largely a sham. Not that we don't need it, but it's been my feeling that the Obama-hating right just uses this as a meme to tie Obama to the stereotype of a tax-and-spend liberal.

They might scream for fiscal responsibility at the town halls, but what they really mean is 'screw the poor and the blacks and the Mexicans'. I've wanted to see what happens when and if deep cuts happen. Do you think angry grandpa is going to be happy when his Medicare gets slashed? Do you think angry roughneck is going to like the gigantic 8-foot pothole in front of his driveway that doesn't get fixed for 3 years? Do you think mama grizzly wannabe is going to be happy when her child's Head Start funding is cut?

Hell no.

And that's why this whole thing is a crock of shit. The Tea Party likes slashing programs in theory, as long as the theory is that it's minorities and liberals getting hit. The reality is that cuts as deep as they want are going to wreck many of the programs they depend on.

There's a new Pew Poll out. As Greg Sergeant writes in the Washington Post:

The poll finds that in general, more Americans think deficit reduction is a more important priority (49 percent) than spending to help the economy recover (46 percent). But check out what happens when Americans are asked what they think about spending on specific programs:



More favor an increase in spending than a decrease on 15 of 18 issues tested in the poll. Now, these numbers aren't all that clear-cut. But the overall conclusion is clear: Once you start to talk specifics, the public's aversion to government spending rapidly evaporates.

This is why the Tea Party can't be taken seriously. It's populated by people with an agenda. an agenda that can be boiled down to "Gimme mine and screw the rest of you."

The Tax Foundation did a study in 2007 (that they're seeking to update) that shows Federal Spending per dollar of federal taxes. Basically, do you get back more or less than you give. Here's the chart for 2005, and next to it is a map I put together based on the Tax Foundation data:
You can't overly generalize. But it's not hard to see where the biggest tax hogs are. Anyone care to overly a Tea Party activity map on this?

The Republican effort to redefine rape a "priority" with Boehner

This is not a funny issue and woe be to any candidate at the national level who think this will help them. This is a disgusting effort by the GOP to redefine rape in hopes of gaining legal inroads to overturn abortion. The new language would say that rape is only really rape if it involves force.

Today, news hit that a Georgia state lawmaker introduced a bill changing the state legal codes to refer to a rape victim as a "rape accuser".

Apart from the absolutely vile nature of this effort, how, exactly, does this pertain to the "jobs, jobs, jobs" commitment from the GOP when they took the House? This isn't about jobs, it's about cynically reigniting the culture wars and re-litigating any laws that they don't like.

Mother Jones

the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure.

Jon Stewart, predictably, had a field day with this.

Tea Party network straightens out Bachmann's rebuttal; confirms teleprompter usage

HuffPost TeaPartyHD, the television and internet network behind now-infamous video of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) delivering her own rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, endeavored to straighten out the conservative congresswoman on Friday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Bachmann made headlines for her response to Obama and not just for the controversy it stirred within the Republican party. In one version of the video, the Tea Party darling doesn't appear to be looking into the camera. Instead of addressing her audience, she seems to be looking off to the side.

Per the Star Tribune:

The reason, it appears, is that Bachmann delivered her speech to TeaPartyHD's camera, which had the teleprompter she used. But most of the world -- well, nation -- saw the footage shot by network cameras that were allowed to video the speech.

TELEPROMTER??!!!!!

SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!




Really, don't we all see how silly this is? Can't we see how unserious they are?

GOP's jobs agenda is less about jobs, more about agenda

Examples of things the new Republican House is concentrating on that are not job-related:

Redefining rape and incest in order to re-ignite the anti-aborition culture war

Race-baiting on immigration - more culture war

Rewriting the Climate Act

Cutting the VA budget

Making incorrect constitutional statements, this time alleging that the Constitution eradicated slavery)

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!

Jon Stewart's epic back-and-forth takedown on Fox's Nazi hypocrisy

HuffPost

Last week, Stewart had some strong words for Rep. Steve Cohen, who likened the Republican party's views on government-owned health care to Nazi lies. To his surprise, Stewart's comments were echoed all over Fox News, with everyone -- including Karl Rove -- saying Cohen should be ashamed of himself.

"If that guy is telling you you should feel shame, that's like Charlie Sheen showing up at your intervention to tell you to take it down a notch."

Although the majority of Fox News pundits spoke out against Nazi name-calling, it was Megyn Kelly who took it to a hypocritical level by saying that kind of rhetoric doesn't exist on Fox News.

As he does best, Stewart produced an impressive slew of clips showing Fox News pundits using Nazi comparisons, including Bill O'Reilly's mind-boggling claim that there's "no difference" between what Hitler did and what HuffPost does.

But he didn't stop there. Watch the rest of the clip to see Jon Stewart find more than just unfair Nazi comparisons on Fox News, but an instance of such name-calling within the same 24 hours of Megyn Kelly's comment, a Fox News pundit making the same Joseph Goebbels comparison as Steve Cohen, Fox News President Roger Ailes calling someone Hitler, and another Nazi remark on Megyn Kelly's own show.

"Well, Ms. Kelly," Stewart said. "Don't you look ridiculous now?"

HuffPostAfter Stewart called out Steve Cohen's use of a Goebbels reference to describe GOP behavior, Megyn Kelly of Fox News said there is no Nazi rhetoric used on Fox News. But Stewart proved with a slew of clips that Fox was being hypocritical.

In one of those clips, Bill O'Reilly made a mind-boggling comparison between HuffPost and Hitler. Seeing it on "The Daily Show" didn't sit well with the Fox News host, who said on his next show that the clip was edited in a way took it out of context. Stewart responded:

Why you used the Nazi reference doesn't really matter in this. The segment is for Megyn Kelly to take offense to, not you. It's not all about you, Bill!"

Watch the rest of the clip to hear Stewart's impeccable speeding analogy that should really put the entire Nazi name-calling debate to bed.

What global warming? It's cold out.

"You know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by human behavior, if it is caused by human behavior then we can’t do anything about it, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it, then that something is too expensive, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it that is not too expensive, then that something is not what Democrats are proposing. And Al Gore is fat, he flies too much, look at his electricity bill, and sometimes when he goes somewhere it snows there, which is very ironic."

DougJ from Balloon Juice on an excellent new article in The Economist about global warming

via Cesca

Glenn Beck clip from early 1990's found

Discuss.

This is why it's sometimes difficult to take Huff Post seriously

Huffington Post has to stop with the BLARING HEADLINES designed to get PEOPLE OUTRAGED over what really is MUNDANE STUFF. Because if they KEEP DOING THAT, eventually it will be like the Boy Who Cried Wolf - you won't be TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

This story involves the CEO of Citi getting a 175 MILLION PERCENT RAISE. Which is awful until you realize he worked for a dollar last year and is now making $1.75 million, which isn't really too bad given CEO salaries lately.

But HuffPost has to SCREAM THE HEADLINES about absolutely everything. And so when they really unearth something, NO ONE WILL PAY ATTENTION.

You're not Fox News. Everything doesn't need to be accompanied by giant fireworks, 140 point font and Carmina Burana.

Darrell Issa: car thief? arsonist? gun nut? fraudulent felon?

The New Yorker has printed a devastating story on Darrell Issa accusing him, among other things, of being an arsonist, a car thief, of running several fraudulent schemes involving cars, of pulling guns on people at his business, of possessing ungodly amounts and types of weapons in his car, and of questionable business dealings.

The California Republican is also now Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government. This means he has unlimited subpoena power and has already made clear his intentions to investigate the living hell out of the current administration. Gettin' it on, Clinton-style.

Note that the man who is going to bring down the Kenyan socialist has a list of crimes attributed to him longer than his own arm. Read the whole article - it's worth your while - but I've summarized some of the juicer parts below.

At 2:35 A.M. on September 7, 1982, the phone rang in Issa’s house. The Quantum and Steal Stopper office and factory was on fire. Issa got dressed and drove the seven miles from his house, in Oakwood Village, to his workplace, in Maple Heights. He arrived by 3 A.M., to find blue flames shooting from holes in the roof. Four fire engines, a helicopter, and forty-three firefighters from three departments responded to the alarm. When the firemen entered the building, they encountered black smoke so thick they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces. The fire took three hours to bring under control.

A lieutenant in the Maple Heights Fire Department noted in his incident report that the “cause of this fire appears to be electrical.” The fire had started at a workbench where light bulbs for bug zappers were tested. Almost everything of value was gone. Fortunately for Issa, he had recently increased his fire insurance.

Issa was soon suspected of doing something worse: burning down the factory. The initial notion that an electrical socket had caused the fire was challenged. The science of determining whether a fire was caused by arson can be flawed. But a fire-analysis report commissioned by the St. Paul insurance company, and dated October 19, 1982, a month after the incident, concluded that the fire was “incendiary.” The report cited “suspicious burn patterns,” such as “two separate major areas of origin,” and it said, “No accidental source of heating power was located at either of these two major areas of origin.” The manner in which stacks of cardboard boxes burned was inconsistent with an accidental fire.

Joey Adkins, the former owner of Steal Stopper, provided the main evidence against Issa. On the afternoon of September 20, 1982, in a lengthy recorded interview with an insurance investigator, he described a series of suspicious actions by Issa before the fire. Adkins, who still worked for Steal Stopper, said that Issa removed the company’s Apple II computer from the building, including “all hardware, all software, all the instruction books,” and also “the discs for accounts payable, accounts receivable, customer list, everything.” According to Adkins, Issa also transferred a copy of every design used by Steal Stopper from a filing cabinet to a fireproof box. He also said that Issa put in the box some important silk screens used in the production of circuit boards. Insurance officials noted that, less than three weeks before the fire, Issa had increased his insurance from a hundred thousand dollars to four hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars. “Quite frankly,” Adkins told the investigator, “I feel the man set the fire.”

A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”

On March 15, 1972, three months after Issa allegedly stole Jay Bergey’s car and one month after he left the Army for the first time, Ohio police arrested Issa and his older brother, William, and charged them with stealing a red Maserati from a Cleveland showroom. The judge eventually dismissed the case.

According to court records, on December 28, 1979, William Issa arrived at Smythe European Motors, in San Jose, and offered to sell Darrell’s car, a red 1976 Mercedes sedan. William was carrying an Ohio driver’s license with his brother’s name on it and the dealer gave William a check for sixteen thousand dollars, which he immediately cashed. Soon afterward, Darrell reported the car stolen from the Monterey airport. He later told the police that he had left the title in the trunk.

Issa’s early business career was equally tumultuous. He started his car-alarm empire by acquiring the Steal Stopper brand in what was essentially a hostile takeover. A man named Joey B. Adkins owned the company, and Issa loaned him sixty thousand dollars. When Adkins was late on a payment, Issa went to court and foreclosed on the loan. Two days later, Adkins told me, Issa called and said that he wanted Adkins to come visit him at his new office. He gave Adkins the address of Steal Stopper. “I just took your company,” Adkins recalled him saying.

Once in control, Issa allegedly used an unusual method to fire Jack Frantz, an employee. Frantz told the Los Angeles Times that Issa came into his office, placed a box on the table, and opened it to reveal a gun. Issa told the paper, “Shots were never fired. If I asked Jack to leave, then I think I had every right to ask Jack to leave. . . . I don’t recall [having a gun]. I really don’t. I don’t think I ever pulled a gun on anyone in my life.”

He doesn't think he did. He can't be sure, but he doesn't think he did.

Really?

Nice job America.

Fox News, Arizona, shootings and victimhood

Jon Stewart checks in, making sure that the victim of the Arizona shootings is recovering nicely. That would be Sarah Palin.


He also checks in with the new bipartisan demeanor at Fox, where they talk about how weird the memorial was. Yay for softer tones.

TSA scanners, terrorism and John Wayne's genitals

One of my favorite columnists is Chris Kelly from The Scranton Times. Chris is smart, funny, irreverent and he and I often seem to share the same common-sense liberal world-view. So I was shocked when he ran a piece on the TSA scanners that basically said "just deal with it".

So I began to write a comment on the site. It grew longer. And longer. And I thought that it belonged here. So read Chris' piece, and then continue on....

The question isn't 'how effective are the scanners?'. The question is 'how effective are the scanners given the time, money and human cost of the scanners?'. Meaning, millions of people have been inconvenienced, embarrassed, delayed and harassed by the scanners, but what have they prevented? How many attempts have been stopped because of this civil-liberties-devouring monster we call the TSA? And more importantly, is it worth the cost?

Like it or not, the threat of terrorism is something we're going to have to live with. The goal of terrorism isn't death, it's fear. And it's the change in our lives that the fear brings. That being the metric, the terrorists have already won. We're a nation living in fear and willing to surrender our basic rights to politicians often-impotent claims to 'make us safe'. Remember what Benjamin Franklin - one of the all-time badasses of history - had to say "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither".

We've come a long way from the Founders. They had the huevos to go toe-to-toe with the greatest military and sea power the world had ever known. We're willing to debase ourselves in the hopes of cutting the already millions-to-one chance of a terrorist striking. Is that rugged Americana? Is that what John Wayne would do when confronted with danger? Ask youself... WWTDD? What would The Duke do? I sincerely doubt that it would involve showing his genitals. Unless it's to Angie Dickinson later in the picture.

The media helps to flog this cultural acceptance that "you're gonna die if you don't let Uncle Sam rub your wee-wee or hoo-hoo". This blind acceptance of TSA procedures - let me see you naked or you have to let me get to third base - sounds like Humbert Humbert, not a governmental agency. Future people will laugh at us, at how simple and stupid we've become, living in constant fear of incredibly long odds. Why don't hand out noise-makers to passengers and have them all blow them at take-off to ward off any geese that might bring down the plane? It's happened.

In reality, the odds of dying at the hands of a terrorist are long. As tragic and terrible as 9/11 was, more people died of preventable cancer that day - and every day since - then died in the attacks.

I can say this as a semi-regular air traveler. I'd rather take the chance that figurative lightning will strike rather than debase myself to someone else's ideological goals. Which brings me to those polls. Are those polls of frequent air travelers or is it a generic poll that gets less frequent travelers and more scared moms, holding junior tight to her bosom, who haven't been on a plane ever? I'm guessing its the later.

Is terrorism a threat? Yes. Is it a real threat? Yes. Is it worth changing your life over? Is it worth giving up some of the things that make us Americans over? I'll answer very strongly: NO!

Holding the GOP accountable, part 4: economic sabotage

Steve Benen via Matt Yglesias

(Benen)

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?

You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any kind of stimulus investments. You'd also want to cut spending and take money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You'd no doubt want to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency Fund) so you could kill it.

You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to lower the unemployment rate. You'd also no doubt want to create massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States into default.

You might want to cover your tracks a bit, and say you have an economic plan that would help -- a tax policy that's already been tried -- but you'd do so knowing that such a plan has already proven not to work.

Does any of this sound familiar?

(Yglesias)

..I know that tangible improvements in the economy are key to Obama's re-election chances. And senior administration officials know that its key. So is it so unreasonable to think that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner may also know that it's key? That rank and file Republicans know that it's key? McConnell has clarified that his key goal in the Senate is to cause Barack Obama to lose in 2012 which if McConnell understands the situation correctly means doing everything in his power to reduce economic growth. Boehner has distanced himself from this theory, but many members of his caucus may agree with McConnell.

Which is just to say that specifically the White House needs to be prepared not just for rough political tactics from the opposition (what else is new?) but for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage.

(Benen)

Maybe now would be a good time to pause and ask a straightforward question: are Americans O.K. with this?

For months in 2009, conservatives debated amongst themselves about whether it's acceptable to actively root against President Obama as he dealt with a variety of pressing emergencies. Led by Rush Limbaugh and others, the right generally seemed to agree that there was nothing wrong with rooting against our leaders' success, even in a time of crisis.

But we're talking about a significantly different dynamic now. This general approach has shifted from hoping conditions don't improve to taking steps to ensure conditions don't improve. We've gone from Republicans rooting for failure to Republicans trying to guarantee failure.

If that's the case, though, then it's time for a very public, albeit uncomfortable, conversation. If a major, powerful political party is making a conscious decision about sabotage, the political world should probably take the time to consider whether this is acceptable, whether it meets the bare minimum standards for patriotism, and whether it's a healthy development in our system of government.

This is truly scary. It's something that many of us have been suggesting for over a year, and yet the nation is more focused on the possibility Dancing With The Stars is being tainted by Palin voters.

This is a major charge of not just negligence but outright sabotage, and the most amazing part is that neither the GOP itself or it's high-powered noise machine has seen fit to address it.

Is America still so racist that they're tacitly OK with this? Why does the media ignore this?

Holding the GOP accountable, part 3: health care edition

Ezra Klein

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) introduced the “Empowering States to Innovate Act.” The legislation would allow states to develop their own health-care reform proposals that would preempt the federal government’s effort. If a state can think of a plan that covers as many people, with as comprehensive insurance, at as low a cost, without adding to the deficit, the state can get the money the federal government would’ve given it for health-care reform but be freed from the individual mandate, the exchanges, the insurance requirements, the subsidy scheme and pretty much everything else in the bill.

In general, giving the states a freer hand is an approach associated with conservatives. On Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) sent a letter to the Republican Governors Association advocating exactly that. “The most effective path to sustainable health care reform runs through the states, not Washington,” he wrote. If it’s really the case that the states can do health reform better, Wyden and Brown are giving them a chance to prove it.

One state that wants to prove it is Sanders’s Vermont. “As a single-payer advocate,” he says, “I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passes an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost effective way. So I wanted to make sure that states have that option.” Vermont’s governor-elect, Peter Shumlin, is on the same page. “Vermont needs a single-payer system,” he said during the campaign.

Single-payer, of course, is even more objectionable to conservatives than the existing health-care law. But that’s the beauty of this option: It allows the liberal states to go their way, the conservative states to go their way, and then lets the country judge the results.

This is excellent. It's a put-up or shut-up plan. No more rhetoric, no more theory, put your ideas into action and let the nation judge what works. If Vermont's single-payer system proves to be the least-costly with the best benefits, it will be adopted by the other states. If a consumer-based system like Tennessee wants proves to be more workable, it will win adoption by other states.

This is democracy in action and should be acceptable to conservatives as it puts health care in the hands of the states, the market and the people.

I've grown tired of the dishonest arguments coming out of the right and I'm very much in favor of proving to them that progressive ideas work. Let them do the same. In the same way that I'm in favor of letting Rick Perry try to secede and see how that works out, I'm also in favor of letting the states be the laboratories of democracy.

Holding the GOP accountable, part 2: automotive industry edition

Think Progress notes: This morning, a rejuvenated General Motors made its initial public offering of stock, hoping to raise $23.1 billion. As a result of the offering, which is the largest in the nation’s history, the federal government’s ownership in the auto company was halved “and billions of dollars in bailout money was returned to the federal government.”

With that in mind, let's go back to Think Progress who has collected quotes from leading members of the GOP from the spring and summer of 2009 about the actions to save GM:

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): “Does anyone really believe that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington can successfully steer a multi-national corporation to economic viability?”

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): “It’s basically going to be a government-owned, government-run company. …It’s the road toward socialism.”

RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “No matter how much the President spins GM’s bankruptcy as good for the economy, it is nothing more than another government grab of a private company and another handout to the union cronies who helped bankroll his presidential campaign.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC): “Now the government has forced taxpayers to buy these failing companies without any plausible plan for profitability. Does anyone think the same government that plans to double the national debt in five years will turn GM around in the same time?”

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): “Unfortunately, this is just another sad chapter in President Obama’s eager campaign to interject his administration in the private sector’s business dealings.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX): The auto company rescues “have been the leading edge of the Obama administration’s war on capitalism.”

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ): When government gets involved in a company, “the disaster that follows is predictable.”

Even today, despite evidence to the contrary, wingnut secessionist Texas governor Rick Perry doubled down on the stupid and claimed the bailout of GM was a failure. Even today, despite evidence to the contrary, wingnut secessionist Texas governor Rick Perry doubled down on the stupid and claimed the bailout of GM was a failure. There's your incredibly prescient Republican leadership. Congratulations America.

Holding the GOP accountable, part 1: Nuclear treaty edition

Steve Benen

EUROPEAN ALLIES BACK OBAMA ON NEW START.... Officials hoping to see the Senate ratify the pending arms control treaty with Russia, New START, considered retiring Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio the kind of Republican who might be amenable to good-faith outreach. Getting to 67 is proving to be far more difficult than it should, but if eight Senate Republicans are to be found, Voinovich seemed like the kind of member who might be reasonable.

It was terribly disappointing, then, to see Voinovich speak on the Senate floor on Wednesday, insisting that the treaty might imperil "captive nations" in Eastern Europe. The Ohio Republican added that he would need assurances that our "allies throughout Europe" would benefit from the policy.

I have no idea if Voinovich was being sincere, or if he's looking for an excuse to oppose a worthwhile policy, but if Voinovich meant what he said, I have good news.

Nations on the front lines of the old Cold War divide made clear here Saturday that they want the Senate to ratify the new U.S.-Russia nuclear treaty, and said that Republican concerns about their well-being were misplaced.

In an unannounced group appearance at the end of an administration background briefing on Afghanistan, six European foreign ministers took the stage with a message for Congress.

"Don't stop START before it's started," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nickolay Mladenov said.

Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen emphasized not only his support, but his conservative bona fides. "I'm also the chairman of the Conservative Party of Denmark," Espersen said. "Nobody can ever accuse me of being soft on security." He then enthusiastically endorsed the treaty, to "at least make the Republican Party [aware] of how important this is."

Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi added, "We advocate ratification of START. It is in the interest of my nation, of Europe and most importantly for the trans-Atlantic alliance." He then added his ideological stamp of approval: "We're all conservatives."

Leaders from Poland, Bulgaria, and Norway also threw their support behind ratification.

And if all of those countries is a little too far west in Europe to impress Republicans, also note that leaders in Latvia and Lithunia are also anxious to see Republicans do the right thing on New START.

So, Sen. Voinovich, what do you say? If you were worried about European reactions, and Europe's on board, can we count on your "yes" vote?