Last Call For Too Much Advice

It seems like everyone wants to tell President Obama how he can really hurt Vlad Putin this week, from Sen. Marco Rubio to Slate's Fred Kaplan to Russian dissident Alexey Navalny to Sen. John McCain to Rush Limbaugh.

Guys, I'm pretty sure President Obama can handle this, thanks.

Besides, would you take "objective" advice from any of these folks on pretty much anything, considering all five think we should be sending troops to Eastern European NATO countries like Poland to ratchet up the tension?

Rand Paul Lectures Us Again

Because Rand Paul really, really can't help himself with this "If you people were only smart enough to listen to me" garbage, this time as he goes to UC Berkeley to tell black folks that Democrats are the real racists, again.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, says President Obama should be particularly wary of domestic spying, given the government’s history of eavesdropping on civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The first African-American president ought to be a little more conscious of the fact of what has happened with the abuses of domestic spying,” Mr. Paul said, previewing remarks he planned to deliver to a group of students and faculty members Wednesday afternoon at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Martin Luther King was spied upon, civil rights leaders were spied upon, Muhammad Ali was spied upon, antiwar protesters were spied upon,” he said. “The possibility for abuse in this is incredible. So I don’t care if there’s never been any evidence of abuse with the N.S.A., they should not be collecting the data.”

To recap, it takes a lot of balls to be a white guy who would have voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and believes business owners have the right to discriminate against customers based solely on race, creed, religion and/or sexual orientation to be speaking to the first black POTUS this way.  And now he is suddenly worried about black people and doesn't understand why we haven't turned against Obama over the NSA?  No.

His trip to the university here is the latest piece of a carefully constructed plan by Mr. Paul and his political operation to try to broaden his appeal beyond the Republican Party. Mr. Paul has had tough words for his party and its leaders lately, saying they risk shutting themselves out of power for years to come if they do not start convincing young people, blacks, Hispanics and others who have abandoned Republicans that the party can and will change.

He picked Berkeley as an ideal place to test out his message on a group of new potential supporters, he said, because the issue of domestic spying has deeply upset many liberals and turned many of the president’s loyal constituents on the left against him.

His message of course being "You people are stupid to not vote for me even though I'm clearly trying to manipulate you and split the left, leaving Republicans in charge of everything so we can abolish nearly all of the social and civil rights advances made in the last 80 years."

And we're not buying it, especially whenever President Obama does acknowledge race in America, he's immediately portrayed by Republicans as divisive.  Race doesn't matter unless it's a situation where Rand Paul thinks it should matter? 

Take your privilege and shove it, man.

And The Crap Came Back

Ohio Republicans aren't giving up on effectively criminalizing abortions, as this marks the third year out of four they've introduced their ridiculous "heartbeat" bill.

Ohio state Sen. Kris Jordan (R-Ostrander) introduced a bill Thursday that would ban abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

SB 297 allows abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected only to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman. It contains no exceptions for rape or incest, and would make performing an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected a fifth-degree felony. The bill also would create a joint legislative committee to promote adoption, and allow a woman who has had an abortion to file a civil suit against the physician for the “wrongful death of her unborn child.”

So not only would it become a felony to perform a medical abortion after just the first six weeks (before many women know they are even pregnant) but women could then apparently retroactively sue abortion providers right out of business, so it's not like any providers would be left anyway.

Another heartbeat ban passed the state house in 2011 but failed to pass the senate, and it has not received hearings or a vote since being reintroduced in the house in 2013. The recent senate reintroduction came the day before a federal court permanently struck down another extreme abortion ban in Arkansas, which would have banned the procedure after 12 weeks and defined viability as beginning with a fetal heartbeat. Attorneys who sued to block that law successfully argued that it unconstitutionally restricted abortion before a fetus is viable.

Which is great, but Ohio's existing abortion laws are very close to turning Cincinnati into the largest metro area in the US without any abortion providers whatsoever.

As more abortion clinics close in Ohio, few hospitals are willing to perform the procedure under any circumstance.

In 2012, fewer than 1 percent of the 25,000 abortions performed in Ohio occurred at a hospital.

State law prohibits public hospitals from performing abortions or entering into transfer agreements for care after one is performed. Even most private hospitals have bans on elective abortions or strict guidelines for when the procedure can be performed.

Some hospitals allow for abortions deemed to be medically necessary. Increasingly, though, that means only in the most dire circumstances, as when the life of an expectant mother is threatened.

Few hospitals in Southwest Ohio will perform an abortion due to a genetic anomaly of a fetus, said Dr. Roslyn Kade, medical director at Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio.

“The hospitals used to induce all of those patients. That is something that has changed very recently,” she said. “Even if the pregnancy is not viable, these women have to go to (full) term or get referred, because they likely won’t terminate the pregnancy in the hospital now.”

Cincinnati could be without any abortion providers by the end of this year.  That's shocking.  The GOP only wants to speed that up.

Last Call For Lost Wages

Over at Nate's House O' Numbers, econ writer Ben Casselman crunches the data on who exactly earns minimum wage.  Republicans contend that it's mostly teenagers and college kids living at home earning under $10.10 an hour (the level Democrats in Congress want to raise the minimum wage to), Democrats argue the majority of these low-wage workers are single-income people supporting a household.

Not surprisingly, it turns out the Democrats are right.

According to the survey, in 2013 more than 25 million people earned less than $10.10 an hour, which amounts to an annual salary of roughly $21,000. That’s nearly eight times the number of Americans who work for the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less. Low-wage workers tend to be older than their minimum-wage counterparts: Nearly 60 percent, or 15 million Americans, of this group is 25 years old or older compared to about half of minimum-wage workers.

So these aren't teenagers, and Republicans are ignorant.  Shocking, I know.

What we really want to know, however, isn’t how old these workers are — it’s how many of them are trying to support themselves and their families on these wages. To estimate that number, we first need to define what we mean by “supporting themselves.” We’ll start by eliminating both teenagers and retirees from our count, limiting ourselves to people between the ages of 20 and 64. A substantial — and increasing — number of young adults are living with their parents, so we’ll also exclude anyone under 30 whose parent is in the same household. A trickier question is how to handle multiple-earner households; we’ll include anyone who is unmarried, whose spouse is absent or doesn’t work, or whose spouse is also a low-wage worker.

Which all seems like a pretty good set of criteria.

Based on that definition, there were 13 million Americans, out of the 25 million low-wage earners, who were trying to support themselves on less than $10.10 per hour in 2013. Some 4.5 million of them were also raising children.

More than half of people earning under $10.10 an hour are trying to live on that wage.




In other words, when Bush became President and took a giant crap on the economy, the percentage of people trying to live on the equivalent of $10.10 an hour or less in 2013 dollars went from 37% in 2001 to 51% in 2009.  It's still about 52% today.

That's what his "compassionate conservatism" and wasting trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan did.

The Real Assault On Press Freedoms

Reminder from the Courier-Journal editorial board: this is how Mitch McConnell and Republicans deal with journalists.

It must be terrifying to be a public official and be confronted by reporters who want to ask tough questions that you would rather avoid.

But Kentucky's senior Sen. Mitch McConnell, who as Senate minority leader is one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington, has found a novel solution.

Police protection.

Staff for Mr. McConnell — who is seeking a sixth U.S. Senate term — had a Louisville Metro Police officer bar a reporter with LEO Weekly, an alternative magazine in Louisville, from a campaign press conference Monday.

When Joe Sonka, LEO news editor, attempted to enter the room at Louisville's Hilton Garden Inn with other reporters gathered for a news conference, an LMPD officer blocked his access, according to Courier-Journal political writer Joseph Gerth.

No one with the campaign offered any plausible answers why.

You can complain about the Obama administration avoiding questions all you want to.  But remember, it's Republicans who are using the power of their office to detain the press and even threatening them with physical harm.  This is how Republicans deal with those who oppose them in the end, fascist police tactics and violence. 

The GOP is the real threat to free press in this country.

Meanwhile, In New Jersey...

So with Bridgegate still simmering as the scandal expands to more of New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie's staff...

Gov. Chris Christie’s chief political strategist was included in discussions about the George Washington Bridge lane closure controversy, according to newly released emails.

Mike DuHaime, who has previously escaped scrutiny as members of Christie’s administration have been hit with subpoenas, was forwarded on a December email from a campaign worker asking how to respond to a media inquiry.

...and the investigations continuing while the calls for real reform mount...

The better answer is to appoint a top prosecutor with sufficient independence and integrity. Much like the state’s top judges, the attorney general serves a fixed term and can’t be fired by the governor for political purposes. He or she is expected to operate without fear of reprisals, and the Legislature has the power to block any questionable nominee.

Christie’s current pick, Kevin O’Dowd, is his former chief of staff, and can’t serve until his role in Bridgegate is definitively answered. It was his deputy who sent the note, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” And does his role as a Christie confidante make him less likely to be an independent officer of the law? That should also be on the agenda for his confirmation hearing.

In the meantime, Christie’s acting attorney general should assign a few staffers to the Bridgegate investigation, to focus on violations of state law. We need to rebuild the capacity of this office. Christie should have chosen a truly independent prosecutor for the job, instead of hiring Hoffman, a political ally. We saw the same problem on the state ethics commission, where he installed a loyalist as director.

Until the governor does that, the state’s top law enforcement office will also be discredited as just another puppet of this administration.

 ...Christie needs another scandal right now like he needs another hole in his head.

Meet his new friend Hole In The Head, who has just moved in, crashed on the couch, and is eating all the leftover Chinese food in the fridge.

But once he was elected, Governor Christie moved to award big pension management contracts to the Wall Street donors who have helped boost his political fortunes. In his second year in office, Christie’s administration proposed giving Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Associates, a contract to manage $200 million in state public pension funds. Elliott Associates won the contract in 2012. Singer again demonstrated his political loyalty to Christie in December 2013, shortly after Christie became chair of the RGA, a coveted post for GOP presidential aspirants. This time, Singer gave the group $1.25 million, making him the largest contributor that year and significantly enlarging the RGA’s war chest under Christie.

Another hedge fund manager with close political ties to Christie, Daniel Loeb, has also won big contracts to manage state retiree money under the governor, The Nation has found.

More payola nonsense.  Christie awarded huge NJ state pension fund contracts to his biggest Wall Street donors?  Isn't that the reason Gov. Jon Corzine lost to Christie in a landslide?

Of course I've been saying Christie is a corrupt Republican (but I repeat myself) for years now.

Funny how I was right all along.

Last Call For Lost Plans

If you're wondering what the Republican plan for fixing America's health care system is after they magically repeal Obamacare, don't worry!  They still don't have one, but that's not actually stopping them.

Senior House Republicans — struggling to find consensus for health care legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act — are planning to test ideas in April at town-hall-style meetings that could provide a path toward a long-promised alternative to President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

The “House ObamaCare Accountability Project” is still months away from producing actual legislation. With Democrats opposed, Republican leaders will have a hard time finding enough votes for any plan, and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio remains cool to guaranteeing a vote.

But a road map is developing.

“It’s important to show the American people that there is a better approach to improving health care for Americans than Obamacare,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip. “Unlike the president and congressional Democrats, we have been listening to the American people, and what Americans want is affordability, greater flexibility and access to care, which we are focused on achieving.”

"We just have no idea how to actually achieve that,"  McCarthy forgot to add.  And let's note that an accountability project doesn't seem to involve repealing Obamacare at all...

With every passing week, the Affordable Care Act is changing the political terrain, Republican leadership aides concede. The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Monday that enrollment in private health plans through the health care exchanges had passed the five million mark, with two weeks to go before the first sign-up period ends.

That may be below the goal of seven million set initially by the administration in internal documents, but the final number will not be far below that, and it does not count millions more enrolled through an expansion of Medicaid.

The reality is that Republicans lost this battle in 2010, plain and simple.  They will make gains in 2014 because of it, but those gains will be tempered by the fact they don't have anyone in 2016.  They know they've lost.  They're trying to figure out how to take 100% of the credit for "fixing" Obamacare problems that have largely been created by Republicans themselves in red states refusing to participate.  Once that all gets ironed out and states like Texas and Florida buy in out of necessity, the game ends.  The fact that Republicans are still trying to come up with a "road map" four years after Democrats passed legislation tells you exactly how dedicated Republicans are to do anything about health care.  That would require actual governance, which is something they are intellectually incapable of.

They're desperately trying to figure out a way to prevent Obamacare from becoming the law of the land, but they have no real plans for fixing anything, and they know it.

They're far too late.

Sanction You Very Much, Comrade

The US and EU slapped sanctions on Russian officials and Putin aides on Monday, and Russia's response is to ban US senators and members of Congress.  Josh Rogin:

U.S. senators, congressmen and top Obama administration officials are sure to be on Vladimir Putin’s sanctions list; a response to the Obama Administration’s announcement on Monday that 7 Russian officials and 4 Ukrainian officials would be barred from holding assets or traveling to the United States.

Putin is expected to release his retaliation list as early as Tuesday and while the final list is still being crafted, it will include top Obama administration officials and high profile U.S. senators, in an effort to roughly mirror the U.S. sanctions against Russian officials and lawmakers, according to diplomatic sources. At the top of the list in Congress is Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who recentlyco-authored a resolution criticizing Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

Durbin’s inclusion on Putin’s list would mirror Obama’s naming of Valentina Matvienko, the head of the upper chamber of the Russian Duma. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are not expected to be on the Russian sanctions list.

The response from US senators from both parties is exactly what you would expect.

Durbin told The Daily Beast in a statement Monday: "My Lithuanian-born mother would be proud her son made Vladimir Putin’s American enemies list."

Sen. John McCain, who traveled to Kiev last weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders, told The Daily Beast that he expects to be on the list and is happy about it.

“You think I’m not going to be on it?” McCain said. “I would be honored to be on that list.”

With so many gigantic egos involved, of course this is going to degenerate into comedy.  Too bad it's deadly serious for the Crimea region, Ukraine, and Europe.

As things stand today, Putin has announced that Russia will now formally annex the Crimea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, defying Ukrainian protests and Western sanctions, told parliament on Tuesday that Russia will move forward with procedures to annex Ukraine's Crimean region.

Putin signed an order "to approve the draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on adopting the Republic of Crimea into the Russian Federation". The order indicated the president would sign the treaty with Crimea's Russian-installed leader, who is in Moscow to request incorporation into Russia, but it gave no date.

Possession is still nine-tenths of international law, apparently.

Welcome Back, Mr. Silver

The new FiveThirtyEight has launched this week, now with ESPN (let's remember they started out modeling baseball stats), and Prognosticator Supreme Nate Silver explains his site's take on what he calls "data journalism" and what it means for the media landscape.  He starts out confessing that his modeling for the 2012 elections was in fact overrated because other folks came to very similar conclusions about Obama vs Romney, and for one other reason:

The other reason I say our election forecasts were overrated is because they didn’t represent the totality, or even the most important part, of our journalism at FiveThirtyEight. We also covered topics ranging from the increasing acceptance of gay marriage to the election of the new pope, along with subjects in sports, science, lifestyle and economics. Relatively little of this coverage entailed making predictions. Instead, it usually involved more preliminary steps in the data journalism process: collecting data, organizing data, exploring data for meaningful relationships, and so forth. Data journalists have the potential to add value in each of these ways, just as other types of journalists can add value by gathering evidence and writing stories.

The breadth of our coverage will be much clearer at this new version of FiveThirtyEight, which is launching Monday under the auspices of ESPN. We’ve expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports.

So here's where we are in 2014:  fact-driven journalism is shiny and new, as opposed to endless punditry, opining, spin, and agenda-driven lying.  I can't think of a better person to fill this "niche" than Nate Silver.  Here's wishing him luck.

It's a pretty high bar, and judgement is so far reserved.

StupidiNews!

• A California man was arrested near the Canadian border on terrorism-related charges as the DOJ accused him of planning to travel to Syria to join Al Qaeda.
• The largest private collection of Beatle John Lennon's poetry and prose will be auctioned off by Sotheby's in June.
• As part of $100 million in cost savings, Sony Pictures will be laying off employees globally in its digital marketing division.
• Harvard scientists have discovered gravitational ripples that serve as direct evidence to support the Big Bang theory.
• For a brief period on Saturday, Google DNS server requests were routed to networks in Venezuela, although hacking attempts are not suspected at this point.

Last Call To Back Off, Vlad

President Obama made it clear speaking from the White House this morning that further actions from Russia on taking over Crimea and eastern Ukraine would be met with increasing sanctions.

The United States and European Union announced sanctions including asset freezes and travel bans on officials from Russia and Ukraine after Crimea applied to join Russia on Monday following a controversial weekend referendum.

"We'll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world," President Barack Obama said. "The international community will continue to stand together to oppose any violations of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and continued Russia military intervention in Ukraine will only deepen Russia's diplomatic isolation and exact a greater toll on the Russia economy."

The sanctions came after Crimea's Moscow-backed leaders declared an overwhelming 96.7% vote in favor of leaving Ukraine and being annexed by Russia in a vote that Western powers said was illegal. Turnout was 83%.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's parliament has authorized the call-up of some 40,000 military reservists.  Things could get very ugly in Crimea and fast should it devolve into a situation with shooting.  Russian military forces have been moving into Crimea for the last week.  We'll see where this goes and how Russia responds.

The House That Ruth Built

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine's law school, takes to the LA Times to argue that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg needs to retire now in order to get a liberal justice appointed in her place on the Supreme Court.  It's a noble argument and it makes sense:

There likely will be many calls, publicly and privately, for Justice Ginsburg to resign before President Obama leaves the White House to prevent the risk of a Republican being able to appoint her successor. But simply leaving before the next election isn't enough. If Ginsburg waits until 2016 to announce her retirement, there is a real chance that Republicans would delay the confirmation process to block an outgoing president from being able to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. In fact, the process for confirming nominees for judicial vacancies usually largely shuts down the summer before a presidential election.

Moreover, there is a distinct possibility that Democrats will not keep the Senate in the November 2014 elections. The current Senate has 53 Democrats, two independents who vote with the Democrats and 45 Republicans. But in the November 2014 elections, Republicans have a far greater likelihood of gaining seats in the Senate than the Democrats. One recent study identified nine seats held by Democrats that could be won by Republicans, but only two seats occupied by Republicans that might be taken by Democrats.

But I'm with Steve M on this: If Justice Ginsburg retired tomorrow, the Republicans can and would block her successor for the next three years.  There's no possible way at this point that President Obama would be allowed to appoint anyone to the Court short of a second (and more militant) Scalia, and Democrats would revolt.

It's not happening.  The only way a Democrat gets to appoint another justice is if we get 60 in the Senate.  That may be a prospect somewhere in Hillary's term in 2020 or something.  Justice Ginsburg is just going to have to hold on until then,

Abby Huntsman Is As Useless As Her Father

I'm not sure how Abby Huntsman ended up on MSNBC's The Cycle...scratch that.  I know exactly how she did, spouting her dad's same No Labels nonsense for the Millennials. LA Times econ reporter Michael Hiltzik has her pegged.

Abby Huntsman is really, really upset about Social Security. We know this because the television presenter, a daughter of former GOP Presidential contender Jon Huntsman, went on an extended rant about it Thursday on MSNBC's "The Cycle." The show is aimed at a younger audience of news consumers and Huntsman, 27, is one of the four youthful co-hosts.

She thinks Social Security is going bankrupt, leaving her and her generation with nothing. "This is infuriating," she said, bouncing up and down in her chair like a petulant toddler, "because none of our elected officials seem to care enough to do anything about it."

Unfortunately, almost everything she said about Social Security in the name of making it "sustainable" for her generation was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Huntsman wants to tell it like it is, but she fails due to lack of information. And if her generation believes what she said, it's going to be in deep trouble.

Let's get one thing straight:  Nobody in my generation (the youngest Gen Xers) and younger believes we'll ever see a dime of Social Security.  I still have a minimum of 35 years of work ahead of me.  For those in their early 30's, it's 40, and those in their 20's it's 45 or 50.  I understand the appeal of "after the Boomers drain the system, odds are really good there won't be a lot left for us."

But that's simply not true.

The most dire projections of the program's future say that "doing nothing about it"--no benefit cuts, no tax increases--will leave the program still able to pay 75%-80% of scheduled benefits. Not "nothing at all." And that 75% to 80% would still be much more per month 75 years from now than retirees get today.

By the way, it's also untrue that President Obama's budget plan makes "no mention of entitlement reform. None," as Huntsman claims. His budget proposes a very damaging cutback in Social Security disability, as we documented here, as well as changes to Medicare payment formulas to save money.

Huntsman has stitched her spiel together out of scraps and tatters of misinformation, of a sort we've heard from the older generation for years. They're no more accurate coming out the mouths of a "millennial." But it's tragic to see that what she's learned from her elders is how to mislead her public.

Which is exactly the platform her dad ran on in 2012.  She's just as useless.

StupidiNews, St. Patrick's Day Edition!

• Brewery giant Guinness is the latest beer sponsor to pull out of today's NYC's St. Patrick's Day parade due to LGBTQ groups not being allowed to openly march.
• Crimean officials say that with a near 75% turnout, a whopping 95% of Crimean voters have approved secession from Ukraine to join Russia.
• French billionaire Vincent Bollore is putting his money where his mouth is on green transportation, starting an electric car sharing service in London.
• Toyota management has locked out unionized workers in Bengaluru, India over wage disputes and threats to plant management.
• European Union lawmakers have come to an agreement that smartphone manufacturers will have to come up with a universal mobile charger standard by 2016.

Last Call For Going It Alone

Steve M on the hand-wringing in the Village Media about Millennials not trusting institutions:

Under Obama, millennials can't get jobs and can't pay off student loans, and their parents have been struggling financially for years -- but millennials didn't exactly see their elders thrive even during the supposedly better days of the Bush presidency, when the only way a non-rich person could get an extra sliver of the pie was by tapping into what turned out to be hyperinflated home equity. America's military might was more or less useless under Bush, and it's not much use under Obama. Churches, then and now, were overpoliticized and scandal-plagued. D.C. has been reduced to permanent dysfunction by a cabal of nihilists -- we know they're Republicans, though most millennials probably assume, because they're constantly told this, that "both sides do it."

Maybe millennials think institutions suck because institutions suck.

Guy has a point.  Hell, Chris Hayes wrote an entire book about said point.

Ross Douthat however just thinks we're leaving the door open to fascism because, hey, the Internet.

You don’t have to see a fascist or Communist revival on the horizon (I certainly don’t) to see this argument’s potential relevance for our apparently individualistic future. You only have to look at the place where millennials — and indeed, most of us — are clearly seeking new forms of community today.

That place is the online realm, which offers a fascinating variation on Nisbet’s theme. Like modernity writ large, it promises emancipation and offers new forms of community that transcend the particular and local. But it requires a price, in terms of privacy surrendered, that past tyrannies could have only dreamed of exacting from their subjects.

This surrender could prove to be benign. But it’s still noteworthy that today’s vaguely totalitarian arguments don’t usually come from political demagogues. They come from enthusiasts for the online Panopticon, the uploaded world where everyone will be transparent to everyone else.

That kind of future is far from inevitable. But as Nisbet would argue, and as the rising generation of Americans may yet need to learn, it probably cannot be successfully resisted by individualism alone.

To recap, the Glibertarian is worried that without enough religion and/or government regulation in our lives(!), we'll all become victims of digital totalitarianism because when given the freedom to operate away from the failed institutions that bind us, human nature isn't all about the online utopia, but Orwellian control.  It's almost like we need a certain amount of baseline societal norms in order to operate without becoming alpha male dickweeds.  Call them "rules of the road" even.

Mull on that point for a second.