So Many Tabs, So Little Time...

Happy New Year, for those who celebrate it!

Oh, and visit the Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2011 at Vagabond Scholar.  It is well worth your time.  (I don't seem to have linked to any of those!)

Theme & Variations

Avedon Carol:

The only thing liberals have been asking the White House to do is to tell the truth about the greater efficiency and promise of liberal programs and quit lying about the necessity of making us all live like Chinese slave laborers. Tell the public the truth about real single-payer medical systems, and then they won't worry about having to pay more taxes for a single-payer system. Tell the public that Social Security is not broke and that there is no reason on earth to raise the retirement age. The public already supports SSI, as the Dem leadership knows, which is why they keep lying about it to make it less popular. The truth is that the White House is perfectly happy to use the bully pulpit to push right-wing memes they know are false in order to try to make the public less likely to put their heads on pikes for trying to wreck Social Security and Medicare.

Amanda Marcotte:

Right wing media has quite literally cast its audience as belligerent, picky children and Michelle Obama as Mom standing over them telling they they can't have any dessert if they don't eat their vegetables. One could argue the facts on this until the end of time---do they seriously believe the First Lady has such all-encompassing powers that Olive Garden would rather cater to her than make money?----but I'm more interested in the psychology of this. Why are so many conservatives eager to imagine themselves not just as children, but as annoying, picky children? You'd think a bunch of authoritarians would at least prefer the image of well-behaved children who politely eat what's served, but their hatred of the Obamas runs so deep that they are willing to cast themselves in the role of the pointlessly petulant child.
Of course, it probably runs deeper than that. The truth may be that they don't realize that they are casting themselves in that role, but are just naturally drawn to it, because they are petulant and childish.

H. L. Mencken:

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Knew I'd Forgotten Something...

Merry Christmas!  (to those who celebrate)

(Also Happy Birthday to Isaac Newton!)

Truth and Rudeness

"Emperor, you have no clothes."  (Paraphrased from the Rude Pundit.)

Musical Interlude

Via, in roundabout fashion, Shelleybear at Live Journal, Darlene Love on Letterman.

Because it's not Christmas until Darlene Love Sings.

And have a terrific Solstice!

Happy Hanukkah

to those who celebrate it!

(Meanwhile, my Brazilian readers have taken the week off.)

Oh, And...

1. Via skippy:  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is costing Wisconsin 18,000 jobs this year. (Actual report as a .pdf here.)  Y'know, when I was a kid, Republicans stood for prosperity...
2. Roz Kaveney actually knew Christopher Hitchens and has begun a series of poems memorializing him: here, here, and here.  (Via Avedon)
3. I got frustrated with the standard ordered lists and went and looked up the HTML tutorial, that's why.
4. Two items from Notes from the Lizard Lair:  When to use old language and slang in your stories; and On gender roles and (fictional) women in power.
5. For the halibut:  A slideshow of Seattle movie theaters, then and now.  (A lot of them are gone.)

Tin Pots

Jurassicpork examines the failure of the US to deal with the late Kim Jong-il.

Kim's 17 year-long reign as North Korea's dictator, a mantle reluctantly handed to him by his father after years of relentless campaigning for more power, also represented the ultimate failure of one of the last Communist states on earth. The belligerent and maddeningly stubborn Kim was so focused on harvesting every single scrap of fissionable nuclear material to create a pitiful arsenal of 6-8 nuclear warheads that he forgot how to feed his own people, depending on his enemies South Korea and the United States to do it for him.

Like Gadaffi and Bush, he was an international punchline, a man who benefited more from the cult of personality and nepotism than any other ruler of his time.

One Lump of Coal or Two?

Comrade Misfit predicts the fallout from the war that's now over.

Last Decade at Marienbad

Scott Horton asks six questions of Glenn Greenwald.

But there’s also a more positive side: the country’s vigorous embrace of the principle of equality before law enshrined it as aspiration. It became the guiding precept for how “progress” was understood, for how the union would be perfected.

And the most significant episodes of progress over the next two centuries—the emancipation of slaves, the ending of Jim Crow, the enfranchisement and liberation of women, vastly improved treatment for Native Americans and gay Americans—were animated by this ideal. That happened because “blind justice”—equality before law—was orthodoxy in American political culture. The principle was sacrosanct even when it was imperfectly applied.

The Ford pardon of Nixon changed that, radically and permanently.

There's more.

And I completely spaced the fact that Christopher Hitchens had been Harper's Washington Editor (I do read the rest of the magazine after I've done the puzzle, y'know.)

In Memoriam

Vaclav Havel, playwright, president, and fan of Frank Zappa.

“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred,” [h]e famously said. It became his revolutionary motto which he said he strove to live by.

(Yes, I do correct the New York Times when necessary.)

In Other News

Spocko expects that Fox News will practice what they preach (in internal memos, anyhow).

In Memoriam

Christopher Hitchens, who now knows for certain.

Clear-eyed appraisal by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville.

Ironic Phil Ochs Quote Here

Officially, the war in Iraq is over.  The investigation into the Haditha massacre produced secret transcripts and documents that were supposed to be destroyed because they revealed stuff like this:

The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.

Terrance, Republic of T, for the WIN

Conservatives can’t fix poverty, because conservatives don’t want to fix poverty. For the same reason that Republicans never even attempted health care reform when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. From a conservative perspective, poverty isn’t the real problem. Poor people are.

With examples.

Enough to Go Around

The headline on Anna van Z's post says it all:  Merry Christmas, You're Screwed!

Shorter Comrade Misfit:  Someone will misuse sweeping powers; better not to enact sweeping powers.

I May Have to Establish a Label

for "You Don't Want Me To Vote."

Because conservatives apparently don't like anyone not them voting.

Vivisection

Doghouse Riley (Bats Left, Throws Right -- which I need to look at more often during the off-season because it's not a baseball blog) flays a Ross Douthat column.  (Yes, it's easy -- I could probably do it, except reading Mr. Douthat causes a massive need for a copy editor, desire for a blue pencil, and speculation as to how he got out of high school history with a passing grade.  Ajita in the morning is not good for anyone.)

Yes, salty language.  Brief excerpt:

If this He's the Anti-Obama shit was real, how th' hell did it take the massive self-immolation of four front-runners--any of whom should have embarrassed you to the extent that you started writing your column under an assumed name--before you lit on the only guy still standing who isn't a Mormon?

Y'know, it's too late for George Eff Will, of course, and too late for Brooks. But Ross, you're thirty years old. You still have a chance to go through half your life without using shit for brains.

And then Mr. Romney seems to have exhumed a KKK slogan (via No More Mister Nice Blog, who got it from Steve Benen at Washington Monthly).  Also, Fox Nation, whoever they are, is upset about Christmas tree safety warnings that have been given since the '70s.

One for the Money, Two for the Show...

1. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast on the plight of the unemployed, and what our politician/representatives are doing about it.

   This tactic of pointing people's attention down the economic ladder to the boogeyman of choice while the people up the ladder take the last few bucks out of our back pockets has worked for thirty years, convincing Americans that THEY are somehow different, that poverty will NEVER affect THEM, because THEY aren't LIKE those OTHER PEOPLE.
   
   Except that in the Great Recession of the Oughts, yes, they are. The only question is how many of them know it, and how long it will be before they join them.

   Note first comment, which points up the overall attitude Jill is decrying exactly.
2. The Daily Howler on education, test scores, liberals, poor children, and Gingrich:

   Which of those people has ever told the public about those rising NAEP scores? Has Professor Dyson, for all his greatness, ever stooped to such a task? For all his thunder, do you think he knows? How about well-scripted Joan? Indeed, has any one of those fiery figures cared enough about “really poor children” to examine those gold standard data—the data our educational experts swear by, as long as the data can be used to tell us a gloomy tale?

   Warning: He quotes a succession of people who use Dickens or Dickensian as an example. Nice that the pundits have caught up with me.

APB

Be on the lookout for propylene glycol.

Cruisin' for a Snoozin'

Apparently I didn't really want to sleep.  Tough.  Thing is that whenever I dozed off, sooner or later I found myself in the position of having somehow offended someone (the someone was different every time) who was very determined to Get Back At Me.  The nature of the offense was never clear, and I didn't know any of the people.

I've got lots of stuff to feel guilty about but I'm not sure which transgression the dream was addressing.

They're Out of Touch, They're Out of Time

Messieurs Gingrich and Romney, residing in Fantasyland, via Shark-fu.

Oh, all right:

But Newtonian form demanded that Newt double down on that “invented people” mess…which he did…and it is beyond telling that he’s still the candidate du jour after making a statement that, if he were President, would effectively toss massive amounts of gasoline on an already volatile situation.

Choosy moms choose Jiff…

….and likely Republican voters prefer zealots, homophobes, and hypocritical lying sacks of shit.

Mercy.

Anyhoo, then we have Romney’s $10,000 bet in response to some challenge about his stand on health care reform.

[...]

Every single candidate on that stage can make $10,000 bets…and none of them live on the average American salary. As much as the pundits want to talk about how out of touch Romney is, the real story is that all of these candidates are out of touch.

[...]

They don’t know…have never experienced…cannot empathize with having to decide between meds or food, heat or rent, transportation or lunch.

These people are so far removed from the masses that they didn’t even realize Romney stuck his foot in it until their aides told them.

And More Again

Video at Mills River Progressive:  It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

And Words are All I Have To Take Your Heart Away

Three women accept Nobel Peace Prize.

In Memoriam

Dr. Muriel Petioni, doctor and advocate.

It's Not Over Yet

Appeals court hears challenges to Prop. 8.

Judge N. Randy Smith said Cooper was essentially arguing that a judge in a divorce case would have to disclose difficulties in his own marriage. And Judge Stephen Reinhardt said Cooper's position might also disqualify married heterosexual judges from considering Prop. 8, since backers of the measure argued that same-sex unions would weaken traditional marriage.

Found!

For the last three years, I've bookmarked the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar, but this year I kept going to the old one (at boston.com) and searching for the current one and no luck.

And it turned out that the bloke who was responsible has moved to the Atlantic's website.  The perfidy!

The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar for 2011 (ten days are already up and awesome!)

Compare and Contrast

Republic of T on Herman Cain and Eddie Long:

Both Long and Cain were on the “down low,” while pretending to be upstanding. Yet they led others to look askance at someone like me. And for a long time, they got rewarded for it, and may yet be forgiven for it. Herman Cain will probably be rehabbed to Fox News. Long will return to his pulpit or find another one somewhere else.

Current largely warranted assumption is that those making a Major Deal of how anti-gay or pro-"family values" they are have sex scandals waiting to go public. The more vocal the politician, the more likely that seems to be.

Doubleheader

Southern Beale:

1. administers a thumping (Andy Cobb video) and 
2. shines a bright light on some cockroaches.

   Meanwhile, in that time GE has:
   
   • Closed its Virginia lamp plant and moved it to China ….
   
   • Moved its x-ray division from Wisconsin to China …
   
   • Cut 600 jobs from its Lynn, MA aircraft engine plant …and demanded $25 million in tax credits from the State of Massachusetts to keep from cutting any more. (Extortion, much?)

In Memoriam

•  Howard Tate, singer
• Dobie Gray, singer/songwriter
• And it's John Lennon's yahrzeit.

Statistical Clout of Gingrich

Nate Silver explains it.

ETA:  And you might want to see what's going on with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in case you thought Republicans were in favor of the consumer.

Random News Artifacts

1. Once in a while people have mentioned Zappadan, but I never managed to run across anything else.
   
   (I know perfectly well who Frank Zappa was; I was introduced to his music by the same person who took me to the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center back in 1967 (hi, Susan!) and further indoctrinated by WFMU in the early '70s.  "Hungry freaks, daddy!"  So there.)
   
   Via driftglass, the Mock, Paper, Scissors celebration of Zappadan, as far back as they go.  (Others go back further.)
2. Pearl Harbor, unsaintly behavior, and Mahler.
3. Derek Boogaard was what is called an "enforcer" in hockey and was apparently subjected to a lot of blows to the head.  The New York Times did a feature story on Mr. Boogaard and his injuries and the state of his brain.  And drugs.
4. Mumia Abu-Jamal will not be put to death.  

Signpost

So the pastor of my sister's church gave the sermon, message being that faithfulness to God brings God to your side as your defender.

That's one I haven't tried

Point of Reference

When, not if, the next less-than-intelligent Saudi apologist starts wibbling about women driving, read them this post from Dr. Grumpy.

One (of the three paragraphs):

Were you a perfectly straight heterosexual until you learned to drive, and then, upon getting your license, immediately developed an uncontrollable attraction for your own sex and switched to the other team?

Prepare to Panic

Nothing like announcing one will not be posting much to bring postable links out of the woodwork. ;-)

Mills River Progressive highlights the "sneaky insertion" of indefinite detention into a Defense Appropriations Bill and the failure to remove that feature.  The ACLU has further information. If you know history, you know why this is Very Bad Stuff.  If you don't, you need to go read up Right Now on all those regimes America Is Not Like, because guess what?  America is poised to become Just Like Them.  Pardon my caps.

Also, a bit of humor, because it's true.

Things that Don't Compute

1. Echidne of the Snakes on campaigning v. governing:

   The point I wanted to make in this context is this: A politician's ability to get elected may have little or no correlation with that politician's ability to do the actual job well.
   
   Telegenic applicants do well. Applicants who look like someone you'd like to get drunk with do well. Applicants who speak well do well. Applicants who understand the mass psychology of politics do well. None of those test the applicants' ability to govern.  

2. Southern Beale points at more "You don't want me to vote" in Tennessee.
3. Two from Republic of T:
• On the GOP tax "plan:"

  That’s why the $30 million a year the government spends in welfare for those who earn $1 million or more a year never gets mentioned. It’s why the tax expenditures for the wealthy — which cost more than what we spend on defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and all the other non-defense discretionary programs is never addressed, and is thus sacrosanct while all the other programs above are targeted for cuts.
  
  It all boils down to the Randian notion that the one percent contribute the most to the real wealth of society, while the other 99 contributes nothing and merely “leeches” off the mythically “self-made” one percent. But they’re the ones who’ve been getting a free ride for the last decade or so, at great cost to the other 99 percent of us. The one percent is largely made up of Wall Streeters, hedge fund mangers and other financial sector types — who arguably create nothing of social value, but have instead destroyed more wealth than they’ve created, and caused more misery in a quest to suck even more out of the rest of us.

• On dysfunctional family dynamics and Newt Gingrich:

  But Newt says, “Don’t talk about it.”
  
  After all, that’s the first rule of dysfunctional politics. The problem with the first rule of dysfunctional politics is identical to the problem with the first rule of dysfunctional families: It guarantees that everything stays dysfunctional, because problems that don’t get talked about don’t get solved.
  
  When it comes to conservatives like Gingrich, however, that seems to be the whole point.

Both articles are link-rich.

Still Alive

There are obits still to be posted and rants to write, but it's December, and we have to recalibrate the brain (and fluff-dry it when that's done) and develop new schtick.

Posting will be sporadic until morale improves.

Shark-fu Rings the Bell

On one aspect of conservative hypocrisy:

[Cain's attorney, Lin] Wood added...

"No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life."

Cough.

Um, Lin...jumping up into private citizen’s bedroom-based business is a plank in the GOP platform.

And where she speaks for me:

But most of all I’m tired of hypocritical bullshit spewing politicians preaching the gospel of jumping all up into private citizens’ sexual bitness and then whining and keening when the masses and/or the press jump all up in their sexual bitness.

Thank you, Shark-fu.

Abrogated Economic Laws

Or the paradox of the farm laborer.  As Arte Johnson might say, "Verrrrrrrrrrrry interesting."

Saving Not Requiring Spending

Why "saving" seems to be a dirty word.

Not that it will help the larger economy.  But how about teaching the next generation a bit of frugality?

In Memoriam

Susan Palermo, musician.

Somewhere on one of my old computers I have archived the silly conversations we used to have.

[Also posted to rocknroll_n_blues_queens on dreamwidth. Her band was Cheap Perfume.]

In Memoriam

• Shelagh Delaney, playwright and screenwriter.
• Anne McCaffrey, writer.  (I was not much of a Pern fan, but I did like the first book when I read it thirty years ago.  The second one, not so much. That may have been the one I didn't finish.)

More Evidence in the Case

Where the money went.  We've been robbed, in short.  The BBC article linked to covers businesses in the UK, but the same things have been going on in the US for a long time.  And Jill points out a flaw of the public stock ownership model.

Observations of Others

1. Why the claims of protecting children are lies.
2. Mr. *ugh* Gingrich.  Also, status of Occupy Columbia and a video of The Who.
3. An illustration of the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about the rich.
4. Arrests at a tuition protest at a CUNY campus.
5. You ever notice that people who insist that other people can and should live frugally do not in fact live frugally and resist mightily the suggestion that they should practice what they preach already?

Get Me My Psychic Flamethrower

• Almost two weeks ago, I linked to a former food executive writing about the food industry (4th item).  I missed the declaration of pizza as a vegetable (actually, the tomato sauce on pizza, which in the very poorest schools is in fact ketchup, which leads to a Ronald Reagan rant, which you've already heard), but Southern Beale didn't and in fact went on to spell out the way processed food is, frankly, toxic.  You know, poisonous.  Bad for your health.  Particularly if that's all you eat.  Her cite cites the ex-exec mentioned.  His most recent post is on how the food industry markets to kids.

  What do you think? Do you trust BIG Food companies with our children’s health? And why do food companies’ rights to market unhealthy products to our children trump our right to raise healthy kids who aren’t exposed to junk food marketing? It seems like profits are prioritized over our kids, doesn’t it?

  Warning for obesity faith statements, which could have been dropped out of the articles without lessening the impact or losing the point.
  
• Gendered difference in survivors of child sexual abuse may depend on messages about boys and girls.  Question posed by Echidne of the Snakes.
• Physics of a container of non dairy creamer, as reported by Dr. Grumpy.

Save the Tiger Internet!

The Stop Online Piracy Act, [pdf] using a bazooka to kill a mosquito.  Daisy has cogent arguments against.  Making Light also urges contacting Senators and Representatives.

Rally Towels for the Spirit

• I'm a Fighting Liberal, by Steve Gilliard.

  For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.

• A list of 25 liberals in American history (yes, it includes Richard Nixon, and yes, several of these people had feet, ankles, and legs of clay).  Nicked from skippy the bush kangaroo.

  Conservatism has never been successful in this country. It has only led to some of the darkest periods in American history. The Civil War, the Great Depression, and now this last decade are all due to rampant conservatism. The cause of the situation today can be traced all the way back to a day in January 1981, when a man named Ronald Reagan took office and began a slow and systematic purge of liberal policies and programs that built this nation. For the last thirty years, the infrastructure and foundation of America has been taken apart brick by brick. And now, conservatives are poised to use a wrecking ball to bring the remainder of the house down. America needs a strong liberal President once again to rebuild what the conservatives have torn down to suit their own personal and monetary interests. Being liberal is an American tradition. Liberals have always looked forward. They are men and women of vision who seek to make the government work for everyone. Liberals give a voice to those who previously had none. They give people hope and dare to dream of things that could be. And it’s time to return to that tradition before all is lost.

Too Depressing Today

Seriously.

• Child abuse, via Ramona's Voices.
• Possible race angle at Penn State abuse case, via Are Women Human?  These two links via Brilliant at Breakfast.
• Daisy's Dead Air notes who has been rousted and arrested in the Occupy demonstrations, and who has not.  Also:  the news blackout in South Carolina regarding Bob Jones University's current shame (frontispiece of the founder's racist crap is an old disgrace).
• How to talk about Social Security, from the Daily Howler.  Apparently we're doing it wrong.
• In case you don't check for ETAs:  Doghouse Riley disassembles the arguments in that New York Times article about taxing the middle class more.
• Dropping out of capitalism won't work, from the New Statesman.  Pertinent quote:

  There is almost no way to exist in this society without being contaminated by capitalism, unless you spend your whole life lying down in the dark, in a recycled rattan coffin, being drip-fed organic vegan mulch by a succession of fairly paid assistants, and if you do, I'm sure you'll feel great about yourself, but people will still make fun of you, and you won't be a step closer to changing the world.

• New Spider-Man, with spoilers.  From the Hathor Legacy.
• State of Occupy Oakland.

What's With These Guys?

• Lesser Whiskey Tango Foxtrot example:  Utah mayor admits to sockpuppetry.   (Comrade Misfit has the links;  I'm just trying to collect my jaw from the floor.)
• A book about the assassination of President Lincoln written by a known wingnut is so full of Wrong (to quote my source, Apparently the book is so filled with errors, inaccuracies and lack of documentation that historians are pointing their fingers and laughing.) that it won't be sold at Ford's Theater's museum bookstore.  Southern Beale has the information.  And Jurassicpork brings the snark.
• I mean, I'm sorry reality doesn't favor the conservative narrative, but there is a reason history is an academic discipline.

Say What?

A game of Spot the Propaganda.  Because, you know, some people are shameless.

ETA:  Doghouse Riley analyzes and explains what is wrong with that article in detail.  (I'm still sputtering.)

Veterans Day

What's being done to honor our veterans.

ETA:  And that's not all.

A Drawing

Two frogs in a tree.

Following Up

On the three unexplained deaths at Guantánamo.

Video Video

I bookmarked Friends of Keith months ago because once in a while, so I understand, Mr. Olbermann gets off a good one, but until today I had no reason to open it.  (Actually, I had no reason today, either, but it was that or another round of Bejeweled.)

Apparently Crosby & Nash (Stills is doing a solo tour) were at Occupy Wall Street yesterday and had nine minutes with Mr. Olbermann on Countdown discussing the movement and their impressions.  It's an untranscribed video, and I'm not even going to try embedding it here.

They're After Your Children, Part #1,073,741,824

No,not them.  The state of Tennessee, by forcing arbitrary standards on teachers and principals.

Once again, Tennessee is a national posterchild for being unable to, in effect, tie its shoelaces. The Republicans want government off everyone’s back except, you know, when they don’t. Then they’re all up in everyone’s business, like school principals, whom they don’t trust to know their teachers and their schools.

...

This is something Republicans just don’t get. It’s all stick with these clowns, never any carrot. They think if they’re the biggest dicks in the room they can force a good performance out of people. At least, that’s kind of how I took Kevin Huffman’s remarks. He’s saying teachers aren’t used to be evaluated, they’ve had it easy all these years. Give it a year, they’ll get used to it, the whining will stop! Meanwhile, you have people who are doing one of the hardest, most under-appreciated jobs there is and instead of listening to the people in the field — the “generals on the ground,” if you will — they’re all like, pfft. What do they know? We’re going to impose these arbitrary rules on you, make the band director get evaluated based on math scores or whatever.

From Southern Beale.

A Month Late

Post from Sara Robinson about reclaiming the American Dream, paraphrasing and quoting communicators Drew Westen and Celinda Lake.

Mr. Westen:

Make stories visceral and personal. For example, rather than getting wonky talking about revenues versus entitlements, talk about "raising taxes versus kicking granny out of the nursing home." (And stop using the word "entitlements," which implies that people are getting something they don't deserve.) Likewise: when we talk about Medicaid, we should point out that it's insurance -- something you've paid into for years. When the time comes to file a claim, nobody had better deny it. Social Security, likewise, is insurance that we pay for through our taxes.

Ms. Lake:

She also offered some language that should be avoided. Talk about "the less fortunate" should be brought back and grounded in specifics (like "throwing Granny out of the nursing home"). Talk about "the right to clean air and water" instead of abstractions like "the environment." Avoid policy minutia; keep it personal and specific, and tell stories about real people. Don't talk about the past, or project too far in the future -- people are terrified about what's happening to them right now, and are worried about how they're going to even get to the future.

and, you know, that stuff might work.

Saturday Afternoon

• Southern Beale on feeding birds, unemployment, and dishonest analogies:

  Funnily enough, I happened to watch this video on the same day that I had gone down to my local retailer and picked up about 50 pounds of bird seed for my own feeders. So as I’m filling my feeders and hearing my avian friends chirp excitedly in the trees I thought to myself: you know what? I’ve been feeding birds in my backyard for years and I’ve just never had these problems. I don’t have bird nests in inappropriate places, nor is my patio covered in bird poop. And none of my birds have ever dive-bombed us when the feeders are low. Funnily enough, I just have never had this man’s experience with the local wildlife. I wonder why. Maybe, just maybe, this tortured analogy was pulled out of somewhere other than reality.

• Humor:  via Just An Earth-bound Misfit, I, Occupy Docking Bay 94.
• Doghouse Riley on some talking heads and fracking.

  I don't know any more about shale oil than Brooks does; I'm just honest, and poor, enough to know that when someone calls Effects "side-effects" you might look for a financial interest, and not be surprised to find one. We can't expect to solve, or even salve, real problems while virtual jabberers promote the opposite, and their fellows recommend splitting the difference.

• You're less likely to have an appetite after reading this blog; it's about food, written by a former executive of a large food corporation.  Via The Sideshow, via Suburban Guerilla.
• Also, Those Masks, also via the Sideshow.
• Oh, and Andy Rooney died.  As did Bob Forsch, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Well, I Can't Find a Direct Link

But Spocko's Brain features an essay by Sara Robinson on what to do about people who don't share the goals of the Occupy movement.

It is not wrong for you to set boundaries this way. You will get shit for this. “But…but…it looks a whole lot like a Maoist purge unit!” No. There is nothing totalitarian about asking people who join your revolution to act in ways that support the goals of that revolution. And the Constitution guarantees your right of free association — which includes the right to exclude people who aren’t on the bus, and who are wasting the group’s limited time and energy rather than maximizing it. After all: you’re not sending these people to re-education camps, or doing anything else that damages them. You’re just getting them out of the park, and out of your hair. You’re eliminating distractions, which in turn effectively amplifies the voices and efforts of everyone else around you. And, in the process, you’re also modeling a new kind of justice that sanctions people’s behavior without sanctioning their being — while also carving out safe space in which the true potential of Occupy can flourish.

Creeeeeeeeepy

Or:  Stalinism didn't die with Stalin.  With side of rape silencing.  Daisy has the story.

In Memoriam

Matty Alou, outfielder, youngest of the Alou brothers.

Tweets from Occupy Oakland

Yesterday's strike and march in tweets.

Justice as a Bad Word

Economic justice, that is.

For the record, you cannot have capitalism in the absence of economic justice, because eventually it decays to crony capitalism (a.k.a. “fascism”) and oligarchy — the dictatorship of the many by the few who control all wealth, who literally have power of life or death over individuals.

From A World of Progress, via Republic of T.

Ongoing

Livestream of Occupy Columbia (South Carolina) (Daisy had the link.)

Data

The Oakland general strike upcoming on Wednesday will be for one day. I have no idea what the unions will be doing. (I am thinking of the bus drivers, who recently had a sick-out.) I also don't think there has been enough preparation, but I'm a fuddy-duddy.

Addendum

Via a commenter at Making Light, an account of a reluctant person at Occupy Oakland.

Saturday Afternoon

Acid incense and balloons...

General strike called for Oakland on Wednesday, November 2.  (I can't seem to type.)  I haven't decided if that means no blogging.

Why We Occupy, or the CEO of Qantas getting a 71% raise while locking out unionized employees concerned about safety, working conditions, and their own pay.  Via Skippy.

Southern Beale visits OccupyNashville and highlights the words of a local pastor.  She also gets to admonish the governor:

Gov. Haslam has truly shown his ignorance with the ridiculous “curfew” he imposed on Legislative Plaza to quash Occupy Nashville. When even the former spokesperson for the Tennessee Republican Party says your actions are unconstitutional, you know you’ve stepped in, eh Governor?

Another 1%er standing with the 99%ers.

And gay retirement communities are in trouble.

Congratulations

to the St. Louis Cardinals!

Other Voices, Other Rooms

• Many people are doing excellent work reporting on Occupy Oakland, so I'll link to the latest at Oakland North and SFBay Guardian and just mention Occupy Nashville, where old Freedom Riders draw parallels.  (Via Southern Beale, who draws other parallels.  Oh, Tennessee.)
• Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast on Game 6 of this year's World Series, and baseball generally.

  No sport played professionally in America bears the literary and poetic burden of baseball. You'll never see soft-focus movies about football, Brian's Song notwithstanding. The Natural wasn't a movie about Michael Jordan. No one will ever make a tennis movie called Court of Dreams. The right-wing may conjure up images of the 1950s in its longing for a return to the past, but their image is a false one. It doesn't take into account the desperate isolution of women in suburbia, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the drab and predictable lives of the men in the gray flannel suits. It's baseball that carries the mythology of America. Ken Burns created twelve hours of soft-focus reverence about the Greater Meanings of Baseball.

  It was a nailbiter, and I can't wait for tonight.
• The article is titled "A look at the dark side of 'Facebook revolution'," but it also discusses social media in general.
• Republic of T on writing vs. blogging.  (Why yes, that's why I keep threatening to write while posting lots of links.  But I choose the links.  If I'm doing this right, the links build a mosaic in your mind so you can--oh.  Right.  I forgot.  Sorry.  Well, I'll post the Game 7 score when I get it, and then it's hockey season, and that widget's up already.  Besides, psychohistory (in the Isaac Asimov sense) is happening a mile down the road and I'm not ready.)
• In memoriam:
• Virginia Knauer, Office of Consumer Affairs
• Elizabeth Winship, "Ask Beth"
• Florence Parry Heide, children's stories in prose and poetry
• Liviu Ciulei, best known here as a stage and theater director.

"You Don't Want Me to Vote."

More shenanigans in Tennessee--yes, they've brought back the poll tax!

From Southern Beale, with links.

Shady Marketing and that Social Media Stuff

• A marketing scam one might want to keep cognizance of, just in case.
• People leaving Facebook and recurring issues with privacy.

Levity

Terrance at Republic of T has a slideshow of cartoons you might appreciate.

OccupyMarines Represent!

Support for Occupy Wall Street:

We were asked today by a Naysayer to explain what OccupyMARINES are doing for OWS. We replied with a more accurate question to ask is what OccupyMARINES are not doing. OccupyMARINES are not sitting on our asses watching the 1% rip out the heart of America.

As the radio bursts into "Don't Stop Believing."

Website is here.

(Link via twistedchick.)

Sometimes I Check in at Hullaballoo

And today, I hit the top 10 Fab Four flicks.

A Gentle Reminder

From Spocko's Brain:  Some filters for reports of protestor-vs-cop at the Occupy sites.

Here’s the thing folks, the Media, the authorities and the corporations, REALLY want violence from protesters against cops or Wall Street executives.

• The media want the violence because it makes for conflict, which brings eyeballs, sells newspapers and it is easy to write about — especially when they don’t have to find out who a specific rock thrower is.
• The authorities want protester violence as an excuse to shut down the protests and clean up the streets.
• The corporations want protester violence because it can be contained and doesn’t really cost them much money. A few million spent at Risk Control Strategies and they are good to go.

Answering that pesky cui bono (who benefits) question.

I got two boxes of cookies.  Time to go.

Why Yes,

that is an "I support the Occupy Movement" banner in the upper left corner.

And if you click on it, you get instructions for one of your very own.

I got mine from The Sideshow (hi, Avedon!), who got it from Monkeyfister.

1. Driftglass sends up the Republican debate so the rest of us don't have to. Just an appetite-whetting sample:
   

   Newt is killing Santorum...with his mind
   
   Santorum: We cannot negotiate with terrorists. Support, create and fund them...yes, but not negotiate.
   
   Mittens: Foreign aid two elements -- fear, surprise and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Three! Three elements!

2. Chuck Berry is 85 today; hail, hail, rock 'n' roll.  The local jazz station played "In the Wee, Wee Hours" and something I'd never heard before but was still pure Chuck Berry.
3. Apparently Rick Perry's pastor is -- I think the technical term is "a piece of work." Video linked is at Brilliant at Breakfast, but is actually from Alternet.org.
4. In memoriam:  Dr. Anita Caspary, who with 300 other nuns left her order.
5. World Series starts tomorrow!

Do Si Do Your Partner

Avedon at The Sideshow keeps hammering away at legislators, plutocrats, and false populists (the "53%") with lots of links.

One of the links is to A Tiny Revolution, which has a segment from Life of Brian up.

It's a Trap

Or:  Why Herman Cain does not get why African Americans are for the most part repelled by the Republican Party.  Republic of T is on the case.

Not Done Yet?

Mr. David Brooks as the prime object of rotisserie.  Although he is dry and hard to digest.

Of Note

1. Occupy Spartanburg.  (from Daisy's Dead Air)
2. The Moneyballness or not of the playoffs.
3. Occupy Oakland.

"One D or two in Barsad?"

Comrade Misfit:

This is what the plutocrats have yet to understand: People are becoming fed up. People are realizing that the game is rigged. The Federal government stepped in to bail out the banks, who have, in turn, done nothing other than turn the screws down tighter on Americans. The banks have done little to remedy their fuckery during the mortgage mess, other than trying to back-date and forge documents.

Not humming "La Marseillaise." Not at all.

Master Class

Via Shakesville, the columnist E. J. Dionne with utmost respect calls out George Will for dishonest hackery.

Well. On the one hand, this is a tour de force. My colleague has brought out his full rhetorical arsenal to beat back a statement that he grants upfront is so obviously true that it cannot be gainsaid. Will knows danger when he sees it.

[...]

In light of my respect for Will, it seems only appropriate that I close by offering words of admiration — for him, and for Elizabeth Warren. Will doesn’t waste time challenging arguments that don’t matter and he doesn’t erect straw men unless he absolutely has to. That Warren has so inspired Will, our premier conservative polemicist now that William F. Buckley Jr. has passed to his eternal reward, is an enormous tribute to her. And remember: On the core point about the social contract, George Will and Elizabeth Warren are in full, if awkward, agreement.

Heh.  Really, read the whole thing.

[ETA:  Bob Somersby of the Daily Howler thinks Mr. Dionne is being too nice.]

Stew

• Flavia Dzodan at Tiger Beatdown is furious about ["mainstream"] feminism's intersectionality failures.

  But FEMINISM, I MUST WARN YOU: MY FLAME THROWER IS LOADED AND YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME. My cats would be delighted to pee on you.[Emphasis in original.]

• Shark-fu notes what happens when a Standing Committee on Children and Families focuses on the unborn.  To the exclusion, apparently, of the born...
• Mills River Progressive alerting to important trade legislation votes coming up this week.

  Well, this is something we ALL can do. We can all call, write, email, and fax. It only takes us a few minutes, and together our efforts can add up to a tidal wave of "HELL NO!" Call your (alleged) Representative early this week and ask him/her - Are you voting for the USA or South Korea, Columbia, and Panama?

• Why certain conservative commentators are stupid, from Brilliant at Breakfast.

Also

There are signs up for a local Occupy$city, either tomorrow or Tuesday!

[ETA:  10/10!]

On This Day in Different Years

John Lennon and Camille Saint-Saens.

Southern Beale (who got "Best Liberal" in Nashville Scene's "Best of Nashville" issue, yaaaaay) spins a fantasy and views the fact that a Kentucky senator fails to check Snopes.com before blathering in public with alarm, as well one should.

Terrance of Republic of T on empathy and the conservative horror of it:

However, when I put it in the context of popular and growing movements like Occupy Wall Street and We are the 99 Percent, and even the movements in Wisconsin and Ohio, I was not surprised to see Brooks holding forth on the shortcomings of empathy. The success of these progressive movements constitute a powerful challenge to conservatives.
[...]
Empathy makes casting moral judgments upon others more complicated and more difficult, because seeing something of our reality in them gives them a context — a “story” like our own, which frames their choices and actions with complexities that bleed over into our stories and those of others.

For conservatives like Brooks, empathy in government becomes even more troublesome, because it subverts morality by shielding people from the consequences of their sins.  [Emphasis in original.]

And then he gets nasty.

And for the win:  Shark-fu:

I’m weary of the never ending circle of over the top insult followed by defensiveness followed by frustration with folk for being offended by offensive shit followed by apologies for “if anyone was insulted” that contain dismissive language about “intent” followed by calls for dialogue that assume people of color possess unlimited quantities of understanding and forgiveness.

Oddly enough, I had weird dream-fu involving an ex and I having a regular normal conversation while waiting for a bus.  Although the bus never showed and eventually we tried to chase it down...

Note

The Fake Steve Jobs blog is being left up as an archive.

I liked the poem.

ETA:  One hears that WBC (no, not World Bowling Championship!  The inbred Topeka hate gang) is going to picket Steve Jobs' funeral.  Maybe someone can read this to them.  (Usual disclaimer:  the parts about Christianity being a myth are not the parts I am endorsing here.)

In Memoriam

Steve Jobs.  If that's gone, this one.

Beyond Stupidity into Evil

From Southern Beale, the case of a registered voter who can't get state-sanctioned photo ID and will therefore be disenfranchised.

And yes, this looks like an edge case.  But:

This woman was able to vote under Jim Crow, but not under the Tennessee Republican legislature. Let that one sink in for a minute.

Oh, and she has a photo ID! Just not one that meets the standards of the State of Tennessee because as I noted earlier, some forms of ID are more equal than others. She has a voter registration card. She has a Social Security card. She has all of her papers except the one thing the Tennessee Republican Party demands she have to exercise her right to vote:

See, this woman took her right to vote seriously.

Southern Beale speaks for me:

Shame on Tennessee’s Republican legislature for this blatant abuse of power. Shame on every one of you, crooks and liars to a man and to a woman. You people who can’t get elected unless you erect barriers to the democratic process and deny people their rights? You folks who claim you are “small government” conservatives but use government to erect a wall between senior citizens and the voting booth?

Two words: Fuck you.

Romney as Schultz

(Warning:  obscure '60s TV reference)

Terrance of Republic of T on the temporizing of Mr. Romney on the audience at that debate:

It’s possible that Romney left the stage for a bathroom break, or suffered some kind of temporary insanity at that precise moment. It’s possible he was rendered blind and deaf by a sudden stroke at that precise moment, only to recover fully about 30 seconds later. It’s possible that aliens abducted Romney from the state at that precise moment, beamed him up while simultaneously replacing him with an amazingly lifelike decoy, probed him, and beamed him back down (retrieving the doppelganger) without any of the other candidates, the moderators or the studio audience noticing the difference.

Any of these might explain how Romney could have been there at the debate and still not know when or why people booed.

"I see nothing!"

Analogies are Not the Point of Sports

• Former football player Fran Tarkenton Gets It Wrong.  Echidne of the Snakes gets the instant replay.

  ...Tarkenton uses the one case where most economists agree that productivity measurement is pretty objective and applies it to one of the cases where productivity measurement is difficult because it is intertwined with what the students do, what they are like to begin with and how the general resources are.
  
  You give a good teacher a very poorly prepared class with lots of problems, you give that same teacher very few resources and then you try to measure the output of that student. See how objective you can get. Alternatively, set up a system like the present one where teachers are rewarded by how well their students pass a particular (and perhaps simplistic) test. Watch the incentives to cheat, watch the demoralizing effect all this has, and watch teachers burn out.

• OpEdNews' Paul Craig Roberts on the end of America (via Mills River Progressive), and yes, Arthur Silber called it.
• Interview with a protester, via Southern Beale.  "You've many a contact/Among the lumberjacks/to get you facts when someone attacks your imagination".

A Rebuttal and Rebuke to the New York Times

NYC General Assembly's declaration of the Occupation of New York City, via Daisy's Dead Air, who got it from Occupy Together.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

Followed by the grievances, which are many.

The main website for this effort is Occupy Together, which lists info for the various protests ordered by region in the right hand sidebar.

(I read the NYTimes blogpost, which might as well have been written in 1968, and not only do I want to sing "Ballad of a Thin Man" [off-key] at Mr. C, I want to say that this concern with clothing and mission statements is very...fogyish.  [Although buried deeply in the piece is some concern for workers.]  Jill at B@B makes some of the same points, but she is making them from the perspective of someone who has been in the fight.  Also, yesterdayI saw the local encampment!)

In other news, while my opinion of Ross Douthat could ride the back of a gnat without altering its aerodynamics, it would appear that we agree on one thing.  (Not about the baseball gods.  About the inadvisability of an extra wild card round.  Just so we're clear.)

Bears Repeating

Dr. Grumpy herds yaks describes the wonderfulness of non-government health insurance (yes, it is two years old, but as he says, only one company has improved).

Vulcan Musing

On "bubbles."

That Boat's in Trouble

Rare sighting of Fafnir at Fafblog!

"The boat's also on fire," says me.
"Perfect," says Giblets. "The water from the sinking and the fire from the burning will cancel each other out, leaving us standing on dry land."
"I feel like there's something wrong with that but I can't put my finger on it," says me. "Because my finger would burn or drown."

"You Thought the Leaden Winter Would Bring You Down Forever"

1. It's getting dark around 7 pm.
2. Announcement of Daisy's radio show, and some possible topics.  (Yes, I know that some readers live in Brazil and Belize.  Try the live stream at local equivalent of 9:00 am Eastern US time, which would be ~11 am in Eastern Brazil and ~8 am in Belize.  For southern Pacific readers:  Indonesia is spread across three time zones on the next day, so trial and error may be involved.)
3. I've been remiss in boosting Occupy Wall Street, largely because I got out of political street actions in the late '70s, but they seem to be galvanizing people in the way not seen since the previous century.  The Transit Workers Union (Business Insider, via Shakesville) is now siding with the protest.  (Stuff double-underscored turns into ads on mouseover, so watch out.)  Still with less coverage than the sock-puppety Tea Party, though.
4. Tainted ground beef almost got to school lunches (it was mostly recalled).  (via Skippy.)  And Listeria-bearing cantaloupes are still out there.  Perhaps checking this website should be a weekly thing...
5. Military chaplains may perform same-sex unions.
6. Famous sports collapses.  (The Braves came in second; some several of the swoons are football.)
7. It's getting dark around 7 pm!

L'shana tova!

L'shana tova!

(5772.)

Jokers!

Why one doesn't make predictions in baseball.

Bonus statistical matter from Nate Silver (who says not a word about the equally spectacular collapse of Atlanta, probably because smaller market the Braves are not the powerhouse they were in the '90s and folks are relieved not to have to hear Braves' fans doing the Tomahawk Chop).

Job Creation 101

...[S]top sending the jobs overseas. Duh. That would be the logical course of action, if the U.S. Congress actually worked on behalf of the citizenry. Obviously they don't, and therefore none of them will propose the only lasting solutions to our massive unemployment. End our destructive trade policies, restore fair trade policies and practices, invest in new sustainable industries on the domestic front (other than weapons), and sweet pygmy Jeebus STOP REWARDING CORPORATIONS THAT SEND JOBS OVERSEAS!

[...]

So the politicos from both sides of our one political party hawk their "job creation" strategies, but these are simply marketing gimmicks for the msm to parrot and the drones to latch on to. If *our* representatives really wanted to create full employment, they would have done so long ago. They know damn well that it's their own policies and their own oversight failures that have created the current economy.

Anna van Z of Mills River Progressive, ladies and gentlemen.

"You Don't Want Me to Vote."

Southern Beale on Tennessee's voter ID restrictions.

Tennessee has a special problem on its hands because it doesn’t require senior citizens over age 60 to get a photo on their drivers’ licenses, thereby making it easier for them to renew online. So now we have a whole bunch of pissed off senior citizens suddenly faced with getting picture ID’s, courtesy of the Republican state legislature.

Just part of the continuing efforts to disenfranchise voters.

Stuff

I have to go downtown to pick up some paperwork for a drug test for a temp job (I thought you'd laugh), so have some links.

• Scott Horton on prosecutorial stake in conviction rates.
• Via Republic of T:
• Possible drug overdose inhibitor and irrational responses;
• Occupy Wall Street as functional democracy;
• And what's with the scorn for this protest/demonstration?
• Because unsafe pipelines should be addressed by the market.

Bridges, Sleeping Under, Forbidden for Rich and Poor Alike

• People who do have a union that fights for them.
• Via Mills River Progressive:  Joshua Holland at Alternet on six ways the rich are waging class war.  

  ... [L]iving in an individualistic, capitalist society carries inherent risk. You can do everything right – study hard, work diligently, keep your nose clean – but if you fall victim to a random workplace accident, you can nevertheless end up being disabled in the blink of an eye and find yourself in need of public assistance. You can end up bankrupt under a pile of healthcare bills or you could lose your job if you're forced to take care of an ailing parent. Children – innocents who aren't even old enough to work for themselves – are among the largest groups receiving various forms of public assistance.

• Shakesville reminds us that it's Banned Book Week.  (And I should read And Tango Makes Three -- it sounds insanely cute.)

Conversation

"Five Minutes with Philip Pullman."  (Video, apparently without transcript.)

Returning to Our Topic

1. Skylanda at Echidne of the Snakes writes about the Gardasil vaccine from the medical standpoint:

   In one of the stunning ironies of the great GOP race of 2011, mental retardation can actually be prevented with the HPV vaccines. (If you’re looking for other ironies in the vaccine debate, you’ll note that an autism-like cognitive disorder is one of the harms of congenital rubella that the MMR vaccine was designed to prevent. That’s always a fun one to bring up with the Jenny McCarthy-ite crowd.) Because a portion of pre-term babies die, there’s a certain pro-life tang in here too: remove all the sex-panic hypocrisy – as well as the known phenomenon of anti-abortion-ites caring about babies right up until the moment they are born – and what you have here is the world’s first pro-life vaccine.

2. More racism, deeper hole.  (Apologies to Mr. Nicoll, whose journal title I twisted there.) (From Southern Beale.)
3. Why isn't this man doing hard time?

The Shape-Up

AL East Div Champs:  Yankees
AL Central Div Champs:  Tigers
AL West Div Champs:  Rangers

NL East Div Champs:  Phillies
NL Central Div Champs:  Brewers
NL West Div Champs:  Diamondbacks

Wild Cards look like Boston and Atlanta, respectively, but there's still a week to go.

In other baseball news:

1. Moneyball got mostly good reviews, and
2. MLB has asked the bankruptcy court judge to authorize a sale of the Dodgers.

Terrance (Republic of T) addresses the conservative "support" of the troops:

The right, as a matter of policy, has never been all that supportive of the troops.

Not unless "supporting" the troops includes:

• sending them under false pretenses to invade an occupy a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no links to Al Quaida, only to let Osama bin Laden slip away;
• sending them into combat in insufficient numbers, with inadequate ammunition, no body armor or armored vehicles;
• going to war with
• losing track of weapons being shipped to Afghanistan, and failing to keep accurate records on some 222,000 weapons entering the country (and this from the world’s biggest arms supplier) — making them vulnerable to being stolen and possibly used against American service members;;
• wasting billions on private contractors to do what what soldiers used to do — while either failing to provide oversight, or outsourcing it — for work that was never finished or so shoddily done that soldiers risked their lives just by taking a shower or drinking the water;
• engaging in a "stop-loss" policy, holding troops beyond the end of their enlistments;
• imposing a policy of repeat deployments and extended tours of duty, leading to stressed-out forces and suicidal soldiers, and a record number of suicides;
• opposing an expansion of veterans’ benefits, including extended unemployment insurance and domestic programs;
• leaving service members, some 40,000 of whom were diagnosed with PTSD by 2007, with insurance that skimped on mental health care;
• stressing our military to the breaking point through a policy of overall neglect;
• covering up and failing to honor their sacrifices;
• and then laughing about it (seriously);

This doesn’t even include taking veterans’ benefits hostage to score political points or cutting veteran’s benefits to pay off the deficit, even as thousands of veterans are homeless, struggling to find jobs, or coping with traumatic brain injury and other devastating war wounds.

Booing a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq? Talk about adding insult to injury.

I could tie this to the low rate of current Republicans/Tea Partiers who've served in the military, but that horse isn't breathing.

Attrition Continues

Tampa Bay goes home in October (yes, that means the Yankees clinched in the AL Eastern Division), although Boston, also eliminated, currently leads the AL Wild Card (Atlanta leads the NL Wild Card).

In non-baseball news, today is Bruce Springsteen's birthday.  Prosit!

High Justice

Somebody probably on Wednesday [ETA:  Found it!] mentioned that anti-death penalty people tend to stop at the moral argument, i.e., it's morally wrong to kill, whoever does it.

So.  It is unequally applied, and it's not really a deterrent.  As well as being morally wrong.  And if there is any chance that the prisoner is innocent, it is judicial murder, and everyone involved should wake every day for the rest of their lives with the stink of innocent blood in their nostrils and the stain of innocent blood on their hands for all to see.

(Sorry.  My revenge fantasies can get ugly.)

Troy Davis was executed last night.

Writings on the case:

• Daisy Deadhead
• Anna van Z
• Sady Doyle
• Terrance
• jurassicpork
• Shark-fu

(There was also an execution in Texas, which is still morally wrong.  Apparently the death penalty was not a deterrent in this case either.  There was less of an outcry because the inmate was in fact guilty.)

Epilogue

(Thank you, Quinn Martin Productions)

Following-up to the mention in this post, Billy Chamberlain has turned up in Los Angeles.

More Sausage

• DADT is repealed; video of someone telling his father he's gay.  (It's about 7 minutes long, and though I turned on captioning, it reads like a different video altogether doesn't seem to be helpful.)  Via stoneself on Dreamwidth.
• "I cannot tell you how much I feel that the politicians who are voicing these concerns should be horsewhipped."  Actually, horsewhipping would be too kind...  Comrade Misfit for the win.
• Also from Comrade Misfit:  someone eating high on the hog, semi-seriously.
• From Republic of T, a meditation on the death penalty and Governor Perry:

  The same evidence might have saved Cameron Todd Willingham from execution, but it never saw the light of day in his case. That was due, in large part, to the efforts of governor Rick Perry.

• Lamar Alexander steps down.
• Oh, there's class warfare, all right.  via Mills River Progressive.
• It'll be a couple of days before the next batch of non-contenders.

This Has Been

International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

So speak German.

(They won 8.9% of the vote in Berlin.)

Catching Up

Philadelphia has clinched the NL Eastern Division; Atlanta is leading the Wild Card race.

Addendum

Dr. Grumpy posts a statement from Dr. O. Marion Burton of the American Academy of Pediatrics on the HPV vaccine's safety, because apparently some politician was mendacious about it.

Potpourri for 600

Um, yeah.  Folks are being productive today.

1. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast on what happens if the Tea Party gets its way, with highlights of this piece by Ian Millhiser at Center for American Progress.
2. Ren (Renegade Evolution) on (dare I say it?) Class.  Because it exists, it matters, and it underpins a lot of what's wrong with the country.

   Bullshit. Turn on your television, or radio, or go to a movie, or read a book, or look at a newspaper, or hell, think of every joke about West Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, Georgia, Nebraska, Wyoming or Montana you have ever heard. If you actually want me to cite specific examples, I can and will do so…I am a bit of a stickler for that. And as the New American Nightmare, a Hick who not only likes guns, but has college degrees, I will say this: Everywhere I look -when people are writing about power, or politics, or gender, or feminism, or the sex industry, or just about any other fucking subject on the face of the earth they almost always leave class out of it, and they avoid talking about classism and its affects on white people like a rat with a broken leg would avoid a starving rattlesnake. No one discusses this shit in depth. No one wants to be “that guy”. It is the great white elephant in the room.

    Also because we all need tools to deal with class besides Marx, who is of a different century and whose followers tend to use Marxian class analysis like a hammer.  (Obligatory disclaimer:  I am not a Marxian.)
3. Some "Weird Al" at Whatever.
4. Oakland honors Glenn Burke.  (Ballplayer, gay, out to his teammates, tragic end.)
5. The essay is still simmering.
6. Seattle clothing sense.

And, Via Skippy

At Source Watch (a wiki), a list of state legislators (current and occasionally former) with ties to ALEC, who should be voted out at earliest convenience ( Oh, no, more zombies! ).  Not so many in my current and former state, but there's going to be a lot of work to do in other places.

Potpourri for 500

1. In memoriam:
1. Charles Percy, former Illinois Senator.
2. Eleanor Mondale, reporter, political campaigner, and radio host.
2. Detroit has clinched AL Central Division; Cleveland and Chicago didn't make it.  The Dodgers are also eliminated.  The Wild Card races are getting warm.
3. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wall Street oil price speculation.  (I get the newsletter.  You can, too.)

   The same Dodd-Frank bill that required commodity regulators to limit speculators included my amendment calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve from Dec. 1, 2007, to July 21, 2010, the period of the financial crisis. What we learned was that the Fed provided $16 trillion in secret, low-interest loans to every major American financial institution and to other central banks, large corporations and wealthy individuals. The audit provision was vigorously opposed by the Federal Reserve chairman. It was right, however, that the veil of secrecy at the Fed was lifted and the American people learned about its actions.
   
   Now it is appropriate to lift the veil of secrecy in the oil futures market. The American people have a right to know how much excessive speculation has driven up oil prices and which Wall Street firms are doing it.

4. Dolphins murdering porpoises?
5. Via seattlepi.com, woman sues JetBlue after incident with creepy supervisor.
6. And goodness, that moon is bright!

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

Also, my uncle.

Bad Exchange

I thought I'd posted a link to Echidne of the Snakes about governments and their uses, but evidently not.  Anyway, Amanda Marcotte (yes, I know; stopped clock, OK?) on how aspects of her (highly privileged) life are affected by "government regulation, funding and organizing":

If people who are just generally "against" government can't see how their day to day life is affected by---usually for the better---the existence of government, I don't know that rational arguments pointing it out are going to make much difference. They clearly live in a fantasy world. Rationality has no influence on them. 

Seriously, just grab a notebook and put in a hashmark for every time you do something that you couldn't do if it weren't for government regulation, funding, and organizing. You'll find you fill a page up before lunch with hashmarks. I've been up for an hour now, and I've made coffee(1,2,3), eaten breakfast (4,5), had a glass of water (6), used the toilet (7,8), checked stuff on my iPhone (9, 10, 11, 12, 13), gotten online through my computer (14, 15, 16, 17, 18) , and read some stuff (19). I played with my cats (20, 21, 22). Oh yeah, this whole time I was wearing pajamas (23) and using electricity (24). I haven't even left the house or finished my coffee so I can brush my teeth. Leaving the house will multiply those hashmarks exponentially.

The footnotes are in the article, in case (not in the footnotes, but:  I don't see libertarians or "small government" types giving up coffee, clean water, computers or electricity, but I'd bet they'd ration them).

Whoooooops!

Essay requires research.  Later.

But It Happens Every Year!

Medium Lobster on the next universe over.  (Three paragraphs and a footnote, that's not too many.)

The Positive Spin

Colorado, Cincinnati, and Toronto do not have to worry about post-season baseball this year.

Apparently, the Tea Party Showed Its True Face

The Republic of T. on the GOP/Tea Party "debate."

Given a choice, most Americans don’t want to live under the the tea party’s model for health care. Not that it matters to conservatives, who want to take away the benefits of health care reform but have no plans to replace it with anything else.

Of course, an even better answer to Wolf would have been that a public option could have made the question moot.

Instead the answer we heard, not from the stage but from the audience was clear and simple: Some people should just die.

Which answers one final question. Who won the CNN/tea party GOP debate? Easy. Death.

Moral, my Aunt Fanny.

Southern Beale has a video clip and some anger.  I am not going to comment on mob mentality because -- cheap shot -- there were probably more than 50 people there, but they would have been right at home at gladiatorial combat, bearbaiting, and the Crucifixion.

I think it's time to lose myself in music videos for a while.

Pinochle with the "Race Card"

I dropped back over at Big Corporation, where I saw:

Basically, when they say or do something racist, they feel it is wrong for us to hold this against them and call them out on it. If we do, it's because we can't argue the facts and issues. They attempt to marginalize us as a group who cries racism at our political opponents as a motor reflex.

They spin it as hard as they can to make you appear like the crazy one for saying the R word. You're just another one of those pinko hippies who hates grown-ups and America. You'll understand when you get older.

[...]

I'm not saying that all republicans are racist. This is a moronic notion and I know for a fact that not all republicans are racist like I know all muslims aren't terrorists.

What I'm saying is that racism exists on the right and drives their social agenda.

With examples, some of which I hadn't seen before.  But of course, if you go back in history and study the writings of those on the "right," there has always been a strain of racism/xenophobia.  It's a human thing; in fact, it's an ape thing.  (You can look up primate behaviorists on the subject or you can look up various science fiction stories.  Mox nix.)

"Poor Lost Circus Performers"

Oakland joins the clutch of the mathematically eliminated, as do the New York Mets, Pittsburgh, and San Diego.

Nota Bene

The Internet was out most of the day

Yes, that is a first-world problem.

Nevertheless, I was twitchy and more solitaire got played than was good for me...

It All Eventually Hangs Together

• The inimitable Driftglass reviews the Republican debate via Lennon/McCartney.
• Dave Ettlin talks about jobs, outsourcing, and serious compromise.  And cable.
• Susie Bright's job program.  (I'd vote for her in a minute on this platform.  This site talks about sex a lot and is probably blocked at workplaces, but that's why you go home, right?) 

(Ooops!  Well, it needed to be said twice.  Go Susie!)

The Midnight Hour

• Susie Bright's jobs speech.
• The Daily Howler at a new location, calling out or pointing and laughing at, Thomas L. Friedman.

Annals of the Crumbling

Jim Cooper, Blue Dog Democrat and institutional memory, and why he thinks Congress is That Way.

“This is not a collegial body anymore,” he said. “It is more like gang behavior. Members walk into the chamber full of hatred. They believe the worst lies about the other side. Two senators stopped by my office just a few hours ago. Why? They had a plot to nail somebody on the other side. That’s what Congress has come to.”

Yeah, I'm On a Regular Tear. Deal.

• Mills River Progressive excerpted an Andy Borowitz piece about Rick Perry's proposal to repeal the 20th century that you might want to read.  [/deadpan]
• Via skippy, the five reasons one should not elect Ron Paul President, complete with a comment (in two parts) from a libertarian and Prof. Hutchinson's refutation.
• Two from Comrade Misfit:  "Republicans Get the Vapors (with bonus Jon Stewart video)" because eliminationist rhetoric is supposed to be reserved to the "right" (and voting people out is only eliminationist if being out of office = death); and "Tombstone Courage," in case you missed the story of the Republican operative who has turned.  Scroll down 1 page length. 
• Some interesting musings on the cognitive neuroscience involved in tendencies to liberalism and conservatism:  "Your Brain on Politics."  Not definitive.
• Via Scott Horton at Harper's:  The evolution of the C.I.A. from intelligence gathering and analysis to counter-terrorism army.  It's a multipage report, and scarier than Stephen King (I expect I'm the last to know).
• Remember Congressional junkets?  Nikki Haley goes retro!  
• (Hmmmmm...if losing an election meant death to the loser, does that mean that Newt Gingrich and Rudolph Giuliani are...zombies?  [All together now:  It would explain so much.])