Youthful Idealists Need Not Apply

[The knight] had gone but a few paces into the wood, when he saw a mare tied to an oak, and tied to another, and stripped from the waist upwards, a youth of about fifteen years of age, from whom the cries came. Nor were they without cause, for a lusty farmer was flogging him with a belt and following up every blow with scoldings and commands, repeating, "Your mouth shut and your eyes open!" while the youth made answer, "I won't do it again, master mine; by God's passion I won't do it again...

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote 

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. 

Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

The Washington Post reports that New Hampshire Republicans have prepared legislation limiting the voting rights of college students on the grounds that students are "foolish" and "just vote their feelings," causing them to inevitably vote liberal. This, apparently, must be suppressed for the good of the state and the country. Another Republican cites "youthful idealism" as justification, complaining that young people  are inexplicably "...focused on remaking the world, with themselves in charge, of course, rather than with the mundane humdrum of local government."


Citizen K. sometimes can't resist shooting fish in a barrel and this is one of those times. One might forgiven for thinking that the the phrases "foolish," "just vote their feelings," and "focused on remaking the world, with themselves in charge" might, say, apply to the teabaggers behind all of this foolishness. One might also be forgiven that were the shoe on the other foot, conservatives would be screaming bloody murder and accusing liberals of eviscerating the Constitution.


Which brings me to another point: Once again, Republicanists mount a frontal assault on the document they profess to revere as much as the Bible. The Twenty-sixth Amendment is as clear on the matter of voting age as the Fourteenth is on citizenship birthright. It doesn't say, as New Hampshire Republicans would apparently prefer, that the voting rights of citizens eighteen are older "shall not be abridged unless they are college students." The meaning and intent is quite clear, and it's not "keep your mouth shut and your eyes wide open."


Voter suppression to prevent youthful idealism? God knows that we wouldn't want too much youthful idealism. That will kill a country, every time.

Tomato, Tomahto

From this story about baby boomer fears that Medicare won't be there for them:

Initially, 63 percent of boomers in the poll dismissed the idea of raising the eligibility age to keep Medicare afloat financially. But when the survey forced them to choose between raising the age or cutting benefits, 59 percent said raise the age and keep the benefits.

Am I missing something? Suppose that I live to be 75 and that starting at 65 my Medicare benefit averages $500 per year for a total payout of $5000. If the eligibility age is raised to 70, the payout drops to $2500. How is that not cutting benefits?

The choice offered here is not between cutting benefits or raising eligibility age, it's between cutting benefits and cutting benefits. Medicare is in increasingly desperate need of reform, but raising the age of eligibility in a time of high unemployment and to an age higher than many people can work under any circumstances leaves people desperately hoping that they don't get sick between the ages of 65-69.

Here's a thought: Everybody buys health insurance under the auspices of a single program, with premiums determined by income and community rating, and basic coverage sold on a nonprofit basis. Remove a drag on wages and salaries by eliminating the employer tax exemption (not to mention the subsidy paid by the self-insured and uninsured), and get the government out of the insurance business while retaining its regulatory role.



What the heck:

Heaven and Hell

John Boehner's America

"They are snuffing out the America I grew up in."

-House Minority Leader John Boehner on Obama and Democrats

The Man Who Would Be King was born in 1949 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Earl Henry and Mary Anne  Hall Boehner. Little John grew up in a time dominated by the presidencies of three liberals and a retired war hero whom today's conservatives would call a RINO. During John's eighteen halcyon years, the New Deal coalition controlled and at times dominated Congress. But John may not have this mind when he reminisced: He may be thinking about his home state, run by the Taft machine named after the isolationist who opposed the Nuremberg Trials. (After all, Taft reasoned, suppose that America started a world war and massacred 6,000,000 people. Would you really want us to be held accountable?)

Evil things were afoot in John's America: Earl Henry and Mary Anne (if she were allowed to have an opinion) no doubt looked askance at President Truman's decision to desegregate the Armed Forces. Nonetheless, America was on the brink of an unprecedented run of prosperity, despite a top tax rate of 82.1% the year of his birth and a tax rate of 91 or 92% throughout the Eisenhower Administration. Still and all, it must have seemed like a great time to bring a child into the world, what with unemployment at 3.8%, even though union membership did peak and even though the tax policy did encourage wealthy business owners to reinvest in their business rather than exercising their God-given rights to live it up like 21st Century investment bankers.

When John reflects about the good old days, one wonders whether he recalls the segregated south, Emmitt Till's torture-murder (in 1955, when young John was a happy lad of 6 with his first tanning bed still years in his future), and the white South's courageous stance of civil disobedience against anti-lynching legislation. Of course, the Supreme Court desegregated schools in 1954, another step toward socialism that must caused a concerned Earl Henry and Mary Anne (if she were allowed to have an opinion) to hold their little first-grader tight with worry.

From 1950-54, the junior senator from neighboring Wisconsin overcame profound alcoholism to wage an uncompromising battle against Communists in the federal government. No doubt visions of protecting the little John Boehners of America inspired Joseph McCarthy to destroy one life after another (all in good fun, of course).

Did 14-year old John weep with grief when the Ku Klux Klan murdered four little girls in a Birmingham, Alabama, church? Did he cry with joy when Martin Luther King expressed faith that the American dream was open to all Americans? Did he express solidarity as feminists campaigned for the rights deprived his mother? As for lesbians and gays, well, Catholic Cincinnati was no doubt heavily closeted, so Earl Henry and Mary Anne didn't have to worry about Johnny falling victim to the Homosexual Agenda.

Of course, factories and cars polluted American skies and waters with impunity, and exterminators merrily sprayed DDT in neighborhoods across the country. (Did Little John trail happily in the wake of DDT trucks? This might explain his orange skin.) Mammograms did not come into wide use until the mid-60s, so Mary Anne's risk of untreatable breast cancer was much greater back then. The first colonoscopy didn't come along until 1969, so everyone had to worry more about colon cancer; discovery of the link between PSA count and prostate cancer was far in the future, no doubt causing Earl Henry to have many sleepless nights.

But maybe none of this has anything to do with why John frets that Democrats have turned America into the set of a political snuff film. Maybe what he really means is that the America for which he yearns so nostalgically was an America with white men on top and where women and minorities knew their place: In other words, an America run by Earl Henry Boehner for Earl Henry Boehner and for bequeathing to John Boehner. An America undespoiled by John Lewis and Patty Murray and Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor and Keith Ellison and Barney Frank and Raul Grijalva. An America where the new boss was always and forever the same as the old boss...

Washington state doesn't necessarily like the idea of sending the oil-response vessels that protect its waters to the Gulf of Mexico...

Surprise surprise surprise: Yet another Republican canard aimed at exploiting a tragedy to score ideological points...

The World's Biggest Skimmer is ready. But don't get your hopes up...

The Seven Stages of Conservative "Grief" Over the Murder of Dr. Tiller

1. We deplore this terrible taking of a human life and trust that the left will not exploit it for political purposes.
2. We deplore the taking of all human life, even that of an abortionist. And just watch: The left will exploit this for political purposes.
3. "Evidence" suggest that Tiller performed unsafe and illegal abortions. The Kansas jury that acquitted him of just that was the tool of a liberal governor and a liberal judge.
4. Tiller was a baby killer who specialized in late term abortions and who committed tens of thousands of them. (Insert torture porn description of a late term abortion here.)
5. The elimination of Tiller the Killer was justifiable homicide, but we played no role is creating the climate for it. All we did was speak the truth.
6. Who?
7. Obama is a socialist. And the most pro-abortionist president ever. That makes it his fault.

Ellen Goodman writes that the killer did not act alone:

I don't blame everyone who checks a pro-life box on the pollster's chart. I know that ambivalence is the emotion often cast onto the sidelines of this debate. But it is well past time for the anti-abortion movement to denounce those who are in the profession of inflaming passions: Those who call Obama the "most pro-abortion president ever." Those who ratchet up the rhetoric on a Supreme Court nominee. Those who cull doctors from their honored profession by labeling them "abortionists."

That anti-choice groups have created a dangerous environment for doctors who perform a legal medical procedure seems self-evident. You don't see pro-choice groups picketing doctors who don't perform abortions, threatening them and publishing their home addresses, or murdering them. The rationalization by the right-wing blogosphere of Dr. Tiller's assassination is repugnant. The left doesn't need to politicize this tragedy: The right is doing that without our help...

Wayback Machine: The Who Sell Out (Deluxe Edition), The Who. When The Who released Sell Out in 1967, it arrived during the Summer of Love as a contrarian tribute to what Dave Marsh called in his excellent essay about the album the romance of the transistor radio and to the kids who learned about new music from listening to them. Replete with commercials and public service announcements, Sell Out boomed thunderous anthems like "I Can See For Miles" on the heels of novelty songs like "Tatoo" before leading into such pop wonders as "I Can't Reach You" and lovely ballads like "Sunrise." The album captured the experience perfectly. While the term "concept album" carries connotations of pompous grandiosity, Sell Out is a concept that works from beginning to end.

My first transistor radio was about 4" x 4". I regularly removed the back of it and studied the innards. It was my link to popular music, and it had one monaural speaker that I often eschewed in favor of the single earbud that came with the radio. When I listened that way, I could turn up the radio as loudly as I wanted to. That's what music was to me in those days: Loud and monaural.

Now, Geffen Records has released a 2CD Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out with all kinds of bonus tracks and -- best of all -- the vaunted mono recording of the album. The mono version is the Criterion Collection of CDs: When the sound floods out of my speakers like a great flood from a bursting dam, it's like I'm hearing the album for the first time. I suppose a sound engineer could dissemble the stereo version and rebuild it from scratch with improved results, but I don't think he or she could ever capture the romance the way that the mono version does. If you are a fan of The Who, you already know that your collection is incomplete without the Deluxe Edition of Sell Out. If you're not, well, there are worse places to start. Incredibly highly recommended...

Robert Frost's Banjo reviews Stew Called New Orleans, the excellent new CD by Paul Sanchez and John Boutte. RFB's review includes a video of their beautiful interpretation of Paul Simon's timeless "American Tune"...

Friday's Choice. Greatness: The Who perform "I Can See For Miles":