Readings

1. Jurassicpork says the terrorists have won, and he's not talking about al-Qaeda;
2. The Mills River Progressive points to an article from the blog No Corporate Rule; we're in hock and guess who holds the markers?
3. There's an oil spill in Michigan, and it smells toxic (via flip flopping joy);
4. Echidne reprints her essay on popularizing research through the media;
5. Brilliant at Breakfast has video of Rep. Anthony Weiner verbally eviscerating his opponents on the subject of health care for those working at the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and breathing toxic particles;
6. Prof Susurro on the peculiar relationship of volunteer labor in non-profit organizations.

Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog

Arthur Silber is rapidly becoming a Prophet.

Oh, And...

What's all this about needing to balance the budget and cut deficits again?

What's Going On

• Remember infrastructure?  It's still there, and it's still aging.  And the government claims that private enterprise does that job best, and private enterprise...isn't doing the job.
  
  Republic of T has the close-up view of infrastructure deterioration in Washington DC.  Some people are beginning to be angry, too:
  

  The other man responded with a familiar question,"Where would the get the money?"
  
  His fellow commuter exploded into an expletive laden tirade.
  
  "Where would they get the f*****g money?" he sputtered. "With all the things we spend money on in this country — with wars and tax cuts — we have the g*d*mn money. We have the f*****g money! Politicians just don’t want to spend it on anything we need. They don’t want to spend it on something that might do people some f*****g good!"
  
  His rant was met with the kind of uncomfortable silence reserved for someone who breaks with protocol and mentions the unmentionable — however true it pay be. In his case, he broke with the polite fiction that our problems are too complex for mere citizens to grasp, and that our elected officials and political leaders have our best interests in mind, and are doing everything they can to find solutions.

• Avedon Carol on elections and prestidigitation:
  

  It's time to stop quivering in our boots over the possibility that if we start fighting back for real we will elect someone slightly more right-wing than the current crop of right-wingers leading the Democratic Party. There is no substantive difference between Bush's policies, McCain's stated policies, and the Democratic leadership's actual policies, so you might as well step up and admit that, you know, just because you're on their side doesn't mean they're on your side.*

• The judge has blocked key bits of Arizona's Xenophobia statute.
• Driftglass speculates on what Steve Gilliard might have said about about Journolist via what he did say about journalists.  With bonus Mean Girls footage, the Mike Royko Chicago Tribune ad, and Al Pacino (Scent of a Woman with Swedish subtitles).
• Will Catalunya ban bullfighting?  Close vote upcoming.

The Should-Have-Been Opinion Columnist for the New York Times

In my opinion, of course.

Driftglass's comment is in response to a David Brooks Op-Ed column of such howling awfulness that I couldn't read it past the third paragraph (it's http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/opinion/27brooks.html?_r=1 if you must, but you will need disinfectant afterward).

Via Driftglass and Shakesville.

Again?

1. Moanday.
2. The Free Will thing.  Because the rebellious streak is probably hardwired.  
3. Driftglass drops heavy objects on Mr. Brooks of Press the Meat:
   

   See! See! The Right AND the Left do it! The Right AND the Left “don't know anything about policy". The Right AND the Left
   “don't care about government”.
   
   Not one statistic.
   Not one correlation.
   Not one fact.
   Not one blurry security camera video of what might have been the shadow cast by a fact.
   Not one artist's sketch of what some witnesses believe a fact might look like.
   Not one of fact's neighbors telling the evening news that "Fact was kind of a loner who kept pretty much to himself."
   
   Nothing.

4. Heterosexuals of the Rude Pundit is Rude about Andrew Breitbart.
   

   There's something almost admirable about so Machiavellian a liar. Almost. Breitbart is an awful wart of a man, a wannabe power player, a trash can-licking gossip monger whose hatred and disdain of anyone who dares to point out that the egress is just an exit is just another part of the long con to make him rich.

Yeah, I Said "Sauron." Deal.

Driftglass names the nature of the "right."

They live in terror that someone might see the sorry state of their mingy soul, which is why they band together for protection under the banner of an ideology which glorifies cruelty and heartlessness, and why they reserve their most furious hellfire for kindest of people.

What Bob Herbert said.

She explained how the wealthier classes have benefited from whites and blacks constantly being at each other’s throats, and how rampant racism has insidiously kept so many struggling whites from recognizing those many things they and their families have in common with economically struggling blacks, Hispanics and so on.

Because "Morals" Encompass More Than Sex

Anthony McCarthy at Echidne of the Snakes on the lesson in morality taught by the example of Shirley Sherrod:

The first thing to learn from the sliming, abandonment and subsequent vindication and rising of Shirley Sherrod is that her example disproves one of the foundations of machismo and patriarchy. In every way she showed that she had more courage, more wisdom, more fortitude, higher ethics and a greater devotion to duty than any of the men who lied about her from the right or who joined in with them from the Obama administration. Being one of the rare individuals who have stood up to the FOX centered right wing lie machine, STOOD UP TO, NOT PRETENDED THEY DIDN'T EXIST, and to have won against them to the extent that the FOX liars turned tail and made believe they weren't the ones who ran with Breitbart's cut and paste lie, should teach Barack Obama more lessons about politics than he's learned in all his previous experience.

As usual, give it time to finish loading.  Then read the whole thing.

Wool-Covered Wolves

Wealthy candidates roll up their sleeves and feel your pain.

Sure.

Oh, And...

I somewhat dismissed the Shirley Sherrod story because it made no sense, and then the rest of the story came out yesterday and I linked to articles at my other blog, including the original (not the maliciously-edited) video of the speech given in 1986. So I'll just transfer that here and add Avedon Carol's commentary and Jurassicpork's long essay.  Someone had a paragraph I wanted to cite, but I accidentally closed the tab and now can't find it.

1. Driftglass for the overview of the perp:
   

   But for years now I have always, always, always presumed that somehow, some way the Conservative who is opining about the state of the nation is in some crucial way just fucking lying his ass off.
   
   Sadly, after all this time, it has proved to be a presumption that has rarely failed me.

2. Shark-fu's admonition to Secretary Vilsack.
3. Cynic guest-posting at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog at The Atlantic on reading the situation.
4. Mr. Coates himself.
5. Via Mr. Coates, the video. (It's 43 minutes. You have that long for the truth, yes?)
6. Professor Susurro has the floor:
   

   While I never expected President Obama to dawn a cape and save the universe, I leave that to Ms. Magazine, I did expect him to take a reasoned and effective approach to the many issues impacting N. Americans, including those that take on racial, sexual, or gender dimensions. His inability to do this even amongst his own employees and especially in the context of racialized cries of “reverse discrimination” that make this country even less safe for black people and even less likely to employ and retain black people in middle class positions, I cannot help but turn my eyes to him and say “Brotha, can you spare some change?”

7.  Update.
   

   Pretty much everyone else had egg on his face — from the conservative bloggers and pundits who first pushed the inaccurate story to Mr. Vilsack, who looked stricken as he told reporters he had offered Ms. Sherrod, until Monday the Agriculture Department’s rural development director in Georgia, a new job that would give her a “unique opportunity” to help the agency move past its checkered civil rights history. She told him she would think about it.

8. Another citing of Republic of T:
   

   But in the conservative worldview people don’t learn and the don’t change (or, at least, it doesn’t count unless people change by becoming conservatives). What Shirley Sherrod was during the experience she describes in the two minutes of her speech is all she is and all she will ever be. In fact, those two minutes are the sum total of her character and all that is needed to judge her. And nothing in that speech could have caused the people in the audience to change, or to rethink their own prejudice or bias? (After all, any real change would have made them conservatives like O’Reilly. Right?)

9. And Arthur Silber discusses a vector in the case.

Also, I'm thinking about setting up the Pond Scum Defense League, because comparing such conservatives to pond scum is insulting to pond scum.

Just Stuff

1. There's a Journey to God post that's been coming and going and slipping around the edges and not appearing when I'm at the laptop.  When it deigns to occur to me (when I can record it), I'll let you know.
2. What New Yorkers learn young (and outsiders mistake for rudeness).
3. Jay Bybee sings Edith Piaf. (via Scott Horton at Harper's.)

   The record is clear that Bybee, on departing the White House’s legal counsel’s office, told Alberto Gonzales that he wanted a federal judgeship. Gonzales responded to him that that would take some time, and meanwhile he had another appointment in mind—at the OLC, from which Gonzales was commissioning the torture memos. The facts suggest a clear-cut quid pro quo, under which Bybee got his judgeship in exchange for delivering the most outrageous legal memoranda ever uttered by the Justice Department—memoranda that in fact gave a green light to carefully orchestrated criminal conduct.

4. Yesterday, for reasons of assignment (no, not assignation; assignment), I had a not-bad lunch at a hotel sports bar.  It is apparently legally mandated that every wall in a sports bar have several telescreens TV monitors, and therefore I usually arrange myself so that I see as little of the shenanigans as possible.  The two stories getting play yesterday noonish were:
   • Lindsay Lohan apparently being hauled off to jail after a car chase out of The Blues Brothers (not really, but that was the effect); and
   • Shirley Sherrod, who had saved somebody's farm, being hounded out of her job. (This article by Ken Silverstein.) (The case is being reviewed.)
   Now I'm wondering what's happening that these stories have obscured.  Maybe this.  Ya think?
5. Terrance at Republic of T has hit the wall.  Now, I admit I post links to him because I enjoy his analyses and share a lot of his political beliefs.  Also, he has posted more than once on the value of good teachers, and I am a sucker for those stories appreciate that I did as well as I did schoolwise because I read a lot and mostly had teachers who encouraged this shy kid with a book attached to my nose.  (No, I'm not a teacher.)  And I think we need good teachers more than we need Sarah Palin.  But, y'know, those who post long-form or with research and all that (and I'm not, really, one of those; I sometimes run off at the fingers, that's all) are doing the intellectual work of centering the community of what for convenience gets called "the left" (essay in waiting, mostly to be shredded by political science people for being too simplistic); and after a while the work gets too hard and the rewards too small and there's not enough time, outrage, or words and life wants a cut.  Some of my favorite bloggers have cut back or are mostly posting links or have quit altogether.  Naming no names.  I'm not going to suggest dropping comments on the guy, but if you see something you like there?  Give him the credit.  Really.  (That goes for everyone.  I try to remember to do that myself; it's why there are all those vias messing up the page.)
6. You are, No. 6.
7. Dave on figuring out what to write about "nothing."
8. Walking out of Auschwitz.

How Did I Miss This?

Argentina legalizes same-sex marriage.

Shouldn't the wingers be blaming this for the not-at-the-moment oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico?

Oh, wait...

Coincidence

I had a dream involving gravel roads (I am just old enough to remember a couple of these in upstate New York) overnight.  Just part of the high price of asphalt in that world (it wasn't Earth).

Apparently I was not alone.

Or, as I keep saying, I didn't like the twelfth century the first time.

I Trust No One Is Interested in Zsa Zsa Gabor's Having Broken Her Hip?

Sara Robinson (at Campaign for America's Future) dissects conspiracy theory:

Americans believe in conspiracy theories for the same reason we're so quick to accept the right wing's faux science and reconstructed history: we simply don't teach most of our kids the basic skills of critical thinking any more.
This is where 25 years of teaching to the test has brought us. We don't know who to trust, or when, or why. We can't evaluate the claims of history or science, or even get a basic timeline straight. We can't sort out what's plausible and likely from what's implausible and unlikely. We can't assess the relative credibility of various experts, or figure out what agendas they're serving when they make their claims. We'd rather take Rush Limbaugh's explanation as gospel than spend .062 seconds on a Google search that would give us some alternative data to work with, because then we'd be forced to evaluate that data on our own.
And then we wonder why in the hell so many of us hold such implausibly baroque beliefs; but can't seem to locate the simple truth at high noon with both hands.

I once had to explain to someone that, no, AIDS was not a gay conspiracy.  I don't think he believed me.

Frankly, I would be suspicious if talk-show hosts stated that the sun rose to the east in the morning, but that's because I don't expect they have any acquaintance with truth.

Department of I've Had Better Hallucinations with Antihistamines

Jill brings up the national question:  Why don't the Democrats point out exactly how bad Republican control of Congress would be?  (Quotes are from Robert Creamer at Huffington Post.)

Another plot The Onion would reject as more improbable than what they usually print (via pecunium).

In Memoriam

Vonetta McGee, actress.

"Clap for Tinkerbell Tax Cuts!"

There was stuff on the economy that I wanted to post, but I've forgotten where it is.  Oh well.

Meanwhile, Republic of T writes on Mitch McConnell and conservative/Republican tax-cut dogma.

McConnell and his fellow conservatives may believe that the Bush tax cuts cost us nothing. But there are some beliefs that do not deserve the kind of walking-on-eggshells deference we tend to afford matters of personal faith.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the kid of person who goes out of his way to demolish, say, a kid’s belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. However, a grown man who holds beliefs that belong in the same category Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and leprechauns — especially one who seeks to base policy on such beliefs — deserves neither deference nor kid-glove treatment.

It's Bastille Day!

Time to dig up "La Marseillaise" and rewatch Julie et Julia with French subtitles!

Boosting Signal

From Mills River Progressive, the pictures the US government at the behest of BP doesn't want you to see.  And have made illegal to (get close enough to) photograph.  (Where are all those folks with Paparazzi500 telephoto lenses who believe in guerilla photography?  Oh, right, no celebrities involved.  Sorry.)

Because the government is merely enforcing the will of BP, by means of arrest and imprisonment of those who would tell and show the truth.

Just look at the actions; don't listen to the empty prattle, endlessly echoed by a bought-and-paid-for mainstream media. Look at the actions of the government, and let yourself see the reality of what this country has morphed into. HINT: It ain't a democracy.

More pictures here (Washington's blog).

The photos are upsetting and angering.

Head Tilted Back, Back of Hand to Forehead

Driftglass looks at a senior editor of Newsweek's inability to inform the people what's happening in their country.  With side order of sound effect.

The Other Christians

Southern Beale reinforces and furthers a point I made last year in the middle of this mess.

It’s because for all its political muscle, the right is culturally insignificant. The culture wars are over, and the right lost. That is increasingly obvious to everyone, including, in fact, the religious right.

And this seems to connect to the religious left vs right issue. The religious right battled its cultural insignificance by providing its own alternative to the established culture: Christian music, movies, books and the like, sold at Christian bookstore chains. They have responded to the culture at large by removing themselves from it, at the same time it tried to exert more political muscle. This strikes me as odd and might explain why the right's political wins are hollow ones, why their political leaders like America's Vuvuzela Sarah Palin leave most of us scratching our heads. The religious right, like the political right, is worried about power. The political left is about power too, but the religious left is not. Victories for the religious left are not necessarily political ones, and therein lies the difference.

Also, she gives examples and links.

(I am not going to smirk too much at "America's Vuvuzela," but it's a struggle.)

In Memoriam

Tuli Kupferberg.

The Blues Did Not Originate with Eric Clapton.

Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival was hot, sunny, and fun.  I am sad to report, however, that the permutations of the Electric Slide/Bus Stop have exceeded RAM.

Drugs, Lies, and Petroleum

Photo at link is Not Safe For Work unless work is Good Vibrations, Adult Video News, or a strip joint.  Got that?  It also has nothing to do with the story.

The story is that apparently Costa Rica has asked for serious military force to combat drug trafficking, and that this may be a cover for seizing some oil.

Some parts of this are not documented.

Throwing Strikes

Avedon Carol has the good stuff today:

It's funny, I've known all my life that high income inequality leads to macroeconomic crisis, and Krugman himself is still working it out. But surely it's obvious that if you squeeze the rest of the population, the lazy rich people who think that financial "innovation" is the only kind that's interesting are not going to be the people who invest in creating an environment where real innovation can flourish. The truth is that since economic "conservatives" have taken over running our economy, there hasn't been any real innovation at all. And that stands to reason, since this environment is one in which the ordinary people who do things for themselves and do the real work - and are therefore the most likely to be inspired to real innovation - are simply not in a position to put their ideas into practice, to bring them forward. The very rich do not like real innovation because it destabilizes their order, it makes change possible - change that could weaken their position, or make the behavior of the masses less predictable. They like us to be predictable. But now, here we are, in a situation where we have allowed a few people to amass most of our nation's wealth and refuse to spread it around where it can do some good, and, well, bad things happen to unequal people. But of course, the remedy, we are told, is to apply leeches to stem the blood loss, and if you haven't stopped losing blood, bleed you some more. [Links in original.]

Also via Avedon, Sara Robinson on the word "global" and why conservatives fear it:

And that's a fear that grabs them like nothing else, which is why this anti-internationalism has hung on so persistently for 90 years already. One of the core personality traits common to all right-wing authoritarians is a very low tolerance for ambiguity of any kind. The best bulwark against ambiguity is black-and-white rules and clear boundaries that define what is and what ain't. This is why they're such sticklers for strict gender roles, for example; and why they get so uptight about people who cross racial lines or whose right to be here isn't a bright-line issue. Any time things fall outside of their narrowly- assigned boxes, it forces them into a state of not knowing that can create measurable, physical fear reactions. (The full download on ambiguity as a central motivator of conservatives is a post for another time.)

Three Strikes

Middle aged.  Unemployed.  Job hunting.

Congresspeople get pensions--but we won't if we don't get on the stick.

(Blame Brilliant at Breakfast for the links.)

Knowing Nothing

Longish piece by Echidne of the Snakes on American anti-intellectualism.

And that shows you the marvelous sleight-of-hand that has taken place! Knowledge has become not something that you have to work to acquire but something which is about emotions, about social rankings, about making yourself better than other people! Perversely, knowledge has become something which props hierarchies! And the solution to this dilemma is not to open up the gates of learning for all but to deny the value of learning altogether. Or, perhaps, to ridicule the ignorant ones because that props up another type of hierarchy?

In Other News

1. Via Skippy, the other old abandoned oil wells on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
2. Via Mills River Progressive, the Pentagon's army of flacks.  Er, public relations people.
   

   What else could we have done with that money? Help some families keep their homes? Help consumers with some of their debt? Fund a green energy program, in which folks get a rebate or tax breaks for installing renewable energy components? Help struggling schools and communities, many of which are in dire straits economically? You name it, this huge amount of money could have been better spent on almost anything.

3. Speaking of flackery, Ta-Nehisi Coates on why waterboarding is no longer called torture.
   

   Some years ago, I heard a linguist jokingly assert that the difference between languages and dialects, was that languages had armies. I am not convinced that this holds in every case. Nevertheless his point was that the labels we affix to things have a direct relationship to power. Throughout the 20th century, unpleasant regimes have made use of waterboarding. But they lacked the power of proximity, and thus could not cleanse their acts with the white words of "enhanced interrogation." If you're really going to the dark side, make sure to bring your flack.

   See also Scott Horton's angrier article at Harper's.
   

92

92.

(Dad.  Miss you.)

Annals of Stupid

Giving Tennessee a bad name, not that that's hard lately (which is the point Southern Beale is making).

And that fabric is calling me.

And Happy Fourth to You, Too

America the Poisoned.  From Esquire, via Mills River Progressive.

bfp puts Kathleen Parker in her place.  (The article being examined.)

toni morrison was making a very specific critique of how violence and structural power can be used against a person—no matter what position of power that person has managed to achieve. to constantly attack, discredit, put on the defensive, and delegitimize.

parker is looking at a poor performance, increasing disenchantment from a voting public, and saying—like, look! it’s like, cuz he likes teamwork! and women like teamwork! he’s totes like a woman!

It goes on.

Parker’s article is either a cheap trick exploiting the critical work a black woman did much better—or Parker is so incapable of seeing past her own privilege she doesn’t even realize how ridiculous her arguments are.

or maybe it’s a bit of both.

but…in the end. i know toni morrison. i was friends with toni morrison back in university. (not really). and Kathleen Parker—you are no Toni Morrison.

This is the woman who should be writing columns in the Washington Post.  (In an alternate universe, she, Avedon Carol, and Digby have the pundit slots at Meet the Press.  Karnythia has a NY Times Op-Ed column.  Daisy Deadhead is the editor of Harper's, and Driftglass writes for the Chicago Tribune, using the Royko desk for mojo.  And Arthur Silber would have several books out, instead of publishers wasting trees on Glenn Beck.)

Mr. Bruckheimer, To The Blue Courtesy Phone, Please

• Ireland and catastrophic success and our future, via Republic of T.

  Catastrophic success isn’t necessarily concerned with executing a planned destruction of a system. It can refer to the successful exploitation of a crisis or catastrophic event — engineered or otherwise — to achieve a particular end. The destruction may be engineered, but it may just as easily be the result other actions or conditions, and even natural disasters.
  
  Catastrophic success is, in a sense, what happens when the total failure of a system in which total and irrecoverable loss occurs, is the desired goal. That pretty clearly defines what’s happening in Ireland right now — the total collapse of an economic system, in which many Irish citizens are experiencing total and irrecoverable loss. That pretty clearly defines where we’re headed if our political leaders don’t act to reverse current trends.

• Was that a walrus? or contingency planning in the Gulf of Mexico, via Mills River Progressive.

  What's worse is that there actually IS a government agency that was tasked with reviewing and approving these response strategy plans - and none of these people saw fit to ixnay BP's pathetic facsimile of an emergency response plan.