Scandalmania! is a big bust.

Keep right on screaming Benghazi, Republicans.

Obama’s job-approval ratings are pretty much where they have been for the past few months, before the controversies over Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Associated Press began dominating the news two weeks ago. The May 17-18 CNN/ORC poll pegs Obama’s job approval at 53 percent, up 2 points from early April. The Gallup Organization’s polling for the week of May 6-12 showed that 49 percent approve and 44 percent disapprove of the president. For the following week, May 13-19, the numbers were precisely the same. The three-night average ratings for May 20-22 were 50 approve, 44 disapprove. Obama’s numbers have been within the same range for months. His job-approval rating, according to the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, released May 21, is still hovering around the same place, at 51 percent.  

More troubling for the GOP should be the CNN poll in which only 35 percent of respondents said they view the Republican Party favorably and an incredible 59 percent said they view the party unfavorably. In CNN polling, dating back to 1992, neither party has had an unfavorable rating higher than 59 percent (the GOP hit 59 percent one other time). Democrats are hardly riding high—recording 52 percent favorable/43 percent unfavorable ratings—but they’re doing a heck of a lot better than Republicans in the public’s eyes.

Glibertarianism strikes again.

I'd love to see some serious environmental writer do a post on what good things might come from global warming. Surely there must be some.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 21, 2013

Pwned.

I know that term has been stale for over a decade, but it really applies to this.

Blue Texan is now Blue New Yorker.

Blog went quiet again -- apologies -- because we moved. Or actually, I moved, and the family is coming up in a bit. So, as you might expect, it's been pretty crazy. Trying to figure out how to incorporate blogging into my new routine, and whether or not I'll continue writing under a pseudonym, since it no longer applies. Stay tuned.

Also, I have to say, the news cycle is just impossible to follow these days with the Benghazi! and IRS! craziness. And I think Tomasky is exactly right -- there's a good chance the GOP will fire up the impeachment machine again. Hell, I thought they'd do it over the debt ceiling.

Printed guns.

What freaks me out about the 3D-printed gun -- aside from the obvious people-amassing-arsenals-without-restrictions aspect -- is that the film In the Line of Fire saw this coming over two decades ago.

The invisible hand gives El Rushbo the finger.

Man, the free market's a bitch, ain't it?

Way of life.

Yes, as Pierce notes, some of them are better than others.

If your "way of life" involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, "learning to use and respect a gun" means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it's sitting in the corner of the parlor like it's a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about that part, too.) It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much.