In fact, a big part of *why* the Democrats have moved to the right, is that we *lack* any meaningful or systematic enforcement in the primary system for “what constitutes a Democrat.” Over the course of 12 years from 1980 to 1992, we virtually abandoned New Deal/Great Society principles, got onboard with the notion that “mostly deregulated markets” were a good thing, and managed to elect a Democratic president in 1992 that a previous generation would have recognized as an Eisenhower Republican.

The rightward drift of Democrats was driven by many elements, including rising prosperity as their own programs actually worked to lessen inequality and thus turn the working class into an investor class. But it’s also aided and abetted strongly by our lack of party-scale enforcement mechanisms for what “Democrats believe.” The GOP has this in spades. At all levels. Pledges. Scoring systems. Campaign funding tied to pledges and scores. Unless I’m missing something, and I’m active in Democratic politics, we lack any of this.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing — I personally don’t like the idea of rejecting an incumbent who’s otherwise doing a good job because they had to make an unpopular decision. But it does create a strong selection pressure, whereby the right just drifts right, and what we formerly called the “left” follows.

And I also disagree pretty strongly that “neither party leader” feels they can negotiate here. The Democrats have all but given away the store here. We’ve given on nearly every single point. The only point left that we’ve failed to capitulate on is having another debt ceiling fight before the 2012 election — but it’s only Saturday, there’s still time for Obama to “drop trou” on that one, too. I disagree completely that the Democrats haven’t been negotiating here. It’s the Republicans that have failed to negotiate in good faith.

You had me until the end. I agree that Boehner has a tiger by the tail, but I don’t think that’s a particularly novel insight. Nor is it news that Boehner is not a very good strategist or negotiator, but this applies to both parties. The art of the deal evaporated in 1987 during the Bork hearings. What’s left is simply to witness the end game of an extremist and rather righteous tilt in politics that has been accelerating ever since. Hard liners in both parties have never regarded compromise as anything but weakness, and Boehner and Cantor (the latter being the smart one in that couple) are as much beset by this mindset as Pelosi and Schumer among the Democrats. The perverse game theory of party primaries has increasingly favored the more extreme elements in both parties, as much the Progressive wing of the Democrats as the Tea Party. The tipping point was probably last year’s defenestration of Bob Bennett by the Utah Republicans. Everyone was put on notice, and thus we have a situation in which neither party leader feels they can afford to negotiate. I thought cooler heads would prevail, and it is still possible that Reid has held his cards long enough to box a handful of moderate Republican senators into voting for his bill on August 1 or 2, thus forcing Boehner and a few moderate Republican representatives to vote for it that day or else. What happened in Minnesota last month made me realize that nothing is given, however, and regardless of whether Washington can even do a band-aid agreement, everyone has already committed political sepuku this time around. There are no heroes, least of all Boehner, who is most likely to be remembered as ineffectual, because the public has already turned against everyone. How Washington votes seems beside the point. Everyone is vulnerable, from Obama to the first-year Tea Baggers. Unfortunately, the way the primary system functions, the next congress is likely be even more dysfunctional.

- Jay Taylor (Lara’s husband).

Interesting thoughts on google’s approach in their 3rd attempt at a social network. It will be interesting to see if this one sticks. If google’s attempt is actually successful in better mimicking in real life relationships, it would seem to have a good chance of really gathering lots of users. Facebook has so many users now and the network effect is very strong. Any competitor is likely going to find it hard to get over that effect unless some type of federated sharing between the largest networks becomes prevalent. When reading your post I was reminded of an article I read recently in IEEE spectrum about facebook and the idea of relationship decay. Thought you might enjoy as well.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-many-friends-can-you-really-have

Take care,
Andrew

And I agree, as you get dilution, the Haigh recipe becomes much more balanced. In fact, when I make it this way I tend to: (a) slightly dial back curacao to 1 1/4 or 1.5 oz, and (b) add cold filtered water right up front. This makes it pretty much the end product you describe post-melt from the beginning, and it’s good. Oh, and using the drier Cointreau helps if you’re going to use large amounts as in the Haigh recipe.

I do tend to like the more cognac-dominant version I posted, but it’s arguable whether it’s terribly faithful to the idea of a “curacao” punch given how far back I pull the namesake ingredient, I guess. But oddly, even with large amounts of cognac and rum compared to curacao the overall flavor is still orange.