And More Again

Via Mills River Progressive, ThinkProgress's Progress Report covering the Koch brothers.

I need a bath.

Monday, Monday (Ba-daaa, ba-da-da-da)

• Dave Ettlin's Aunt Alice's birthday party.  (104!  Going strong!)
• Grass-roots organizing:  Walk for Choice in St. Louis, via Shark-fu.
• Noli Irritare Leones's collection of information about governments in Africa (link is to part II; part I is available at the tag).
• Echidne of the Snakes on the conservative War on Women.
• Southern Beale:

  Nor do I need to be lectured on morality by someone who seems to think the national budget should be balanced on the backs of middle class and low-income working people, while maintaining the wealthiest people in this country should be allowed to feast at the nation’s banquet table without paying a dime. Just three months ago he was shedding tears about the need to extend Bush-era tax cuts for America's millionaires; now he's telling us the nation is broke? Gee, I wonder how that happened.

• Driftglass (Mike Royko Chair [yes, it should probably be "Mike Royko Professor and Endowed Chair of Investigative Journalism at Northwestern," but that isn't really going to happen] at Unseen University) on the scam that is the No Labels movement.  
• I'm beginning to think the Left (as a political sensibility) went wrong around the time Lenin got off that train, but I am, again, discounting the religious fervor around Socialism/Communism.  In any case, and I'm not going to drag in footnotes, the history of "left" political movements parallels the history of Christianity rather closely.  You could look it up.

In Memoriam

Frank W. Buckles, last US veteran of World War I.  (Pecunium has a brief elegy on war.)

Items

• In memoriam:  Duke Snider, Brooklyn Dodgers centerfielder.
• The Continuing Resolution, and why it should not pass:

  Tell Democratic Leadership: Stand your ground against Republican extremism. Don't cave to Republican extremists and cut a backroom deal on the budget. It's not surprising that Democrats may already be caving without a fight. But it's totally unacceptable. If Democrats continue to cave to Republican extremists, it will only embolden the rightwing to launch even more radical attacks against progressives, because Republicans have learned, when they don't compromise, they win.

• The content of Scott Walker's character.

Police Join Protest!

Police join the protest!

(via The Sideshow, Obsidian Winge/Amygdala)

Still Not King...

• Statistics we ignore (via Brilliant at Breakfast, from The Opinionated Liberal, with sources).
• Conservative David Brooks tries to create a groundswell for Mitch Daniels (Indiana Republican Governor); Doghouse Riley throws counterwaves:

  The brief response here--I know you're probably exhausted already--is that 1) Indiana's budget is "balanced" only if we ignore the $2 billion it owes the Feds in loan repayment, plus interest and penalties (ignoring it is the same thing we're hoping the Feds do) and don't ask too many questions about what's been sloughed off on local governments; 2) slashing spending is an argument, not a miracle process he invented, and it's easy to do if both houses of your legislature are dominated by the tax-and-program-cutting extremists of your own party; 3) the program record doesn't bear scrutiny any better than the budget, and the arguments for his accomplishments depend, for one thing, on ignoring the billion-dollar FSSA Pooch Fuck, largest boondoggle in Indiana since the Michigan Road, perpetrated personally by Mitchell Elias Daniels and Cronies, and based on his Randian super-knowledge.

• Jurassicpork on the Wisconsin State Assembly and the governor.

Included is some language not geared for Disney movies.

Link Buffet

There's an idea or two that keeps popping up except when I'm at the keyboard (besides the one I intend to do about the fury-making report I saw a day or two ago, when I am less furious), so meanwhile, have a serving of various sausages:

1. Southern Beale remembers Solidarnoṡċ (Solidarity, the Polish trade union), which has sent the Wisconsin workers a message of support, which she reproduces, and adds:

   You know, conservatives have long tried to connect labor unions with communism. Yet it was a labor union which destroyed communism in a key Soviet Bloc country.

2. Echidne of the Snakes unravels another exercise of bad logic by a gender essentialist, who apparently has not noticed that men also want to marry; it's not all shotguns, sex, and closets, you know.
3. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast notes:
• Via tax.com, the truth about what's actually at stake with the pension plans in Wisconsin;
• That the idea of sending photographic or physical evidence of menstruation to check for evidence of fertilized eggs is not new.
4. Comrade Misfit of Just An Earth-Bound Misfit indicates that you are probably paying more in taxes than large, bailed-out corporations.

crossposted (late)

Two Things

1. Pithy observation.
2. This is a little past my 1300th post, but I'm marking it all the same.

Aaaand...Some Jon Carroll for Your Edification

Now various Republican governors in Tunisia and Egypt and ... my error: too damn many populist uprisings. Various Republican governors in Wisconsin and Michigan and Ohio are attempting to blame unions for the fiscal shortfalls their states are facing.

It is true that we're in a terrible fix and that we all must make sacrifices to get us out, slowly, oh so slowly. But, as you'll recall, it was not a labor union that tried to sell you a subprime mortgage back in the day. It was not a labor union that thought credit default swaps were just a wonderful investment instrument. It was not the labor unions that had to be bailed out because they were "too big to fail." If only.

Edification--that's turning yourself into a building, isn't it? ;-)

Bells, Sirens, and the Really Loud Steamwhistle

Kevin Drum lays it out in clear English.  Mostly.  Avedon Carol pointed me at this article, so I'm going to quote a different bit of it:

New rules put in place in 1968 led by almost geometric progression to the nomination of George McGovern in 1972, and despite McGovern's sterling pro-labor credentials, the AFL-CIO refused to endorse him. Not only were labor bosses enraged that the hippies had thwarted the nomination of labor favorite Hubert Humphrey, but amnesty, acid, and abortion were simply too much for them. Besides, Richard Nixon had been sweet-talking them for four years, and though relations had recently become strained, he seemed not entirely unsympathetic to the labor cause. How bad could it be if he won reelection?

Plenty bad, it turned out—though not because of anything Nixon himself did. The real harm was the eventual disaffection of the Democratic Party from the labor cause.

[...]

Progressive change in the United States has always come in short, intense spurts: The Progressive Era lasted barely a decade at the national level, the New Deal saw virtually all of its legislative activity enacted within the space of six years between 1933 and 1938, and the frenzy of federal action associated with the '60s nearly all unfolded between 1964 and 1970. There have been exceptions, of course: The FDA was created in 1906, the GI Bill was passed in 1944, and the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. And the courts have followed a schedule all their own. Still, one striking fact remains: Liberal reform is not a continuous movement powered by mere enthusiasm. Reform eras last only a short time and require extraordinarily intense levels of cultural and political energy to get started. And they require two other things to get started: a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.

As the Thing might say, "It's clobbering time!" and either we clobber (metaphorically speaking) or we get clobbered (literally).

We Need Better Satirists

Rep. Issa issues subpoenas.

Annals of Stupid

Via Comrade Misfit:  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been encouraging sales of guns to smugglers.  It just bit them.

Potpourri for 500

• I keep wanting to phrase this as "Guess who wrote an orchestral ballet score?" So I guess I'll go along with that.
• Pictures of free-standing mansions in Harlem. I'm pretty sure I've passed near there; it looks vaguely familiar.
• Wisconsin as inspiration.
• Why we shouldn't mock certain "conservatives" for their physical characteristics (aside from being, y'know, as childish as they are). Shark-fu holds the seminar:

  Or better yet, giving him the silence he fears…and letting his words hang in the air like a stankified fart in a humid room.

• Damn, I may have to crosspost.
• Republic of T's take on Wisconsin.

  When abstract budget cuts translate into fewer teachers, police officers, health workers, firefighters, etc. in our communities, we begin to realize that such cuts hurt rather heal.
  
  The very necessities that make the existence of a middle class possible, that support are threatened. They will not be replaced, if conservatives are successful in eliminating them. They will not be affordable if privatized. The reason that there are public services supported by public workers is that there are things we believe need doing and should be done even if they’re not profitable. Where there is not enough of a profit margin for private industry to see a benefit, and too great a need for charitable entities to meet entirely, it becomes a question of the public interest, requiring a public solution.
  
  We are faced with a conservative movement that not only doesn’t believe in a public good but sees it at the biggest of our problems.

• Via Daisy's Dead Air: Mike Huckabee believes he could have won South Carolina primary. Dear Mr. Huckabee? Isn't this antique bridge a marvel of architecture and engineering? And as New York City is in some fiscal hot water at the moment, this bridge is available at a bargain price of only a few million dollars!
• Via Echidne of the Snakes, a Townhall writer (full bag of salt) recommends the Catholic school model.
• Jurassicpork reviews Wisconsin and Indiana.
• ETA:  Southern Beale:

  This is, as has been noted elsewhere, the industrialist’s wet dream. It took them a while, but finally they have a chance to turn the clock back ... not to the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was over 90% GOD NO we can’t have that, but back to 1900. The era of the Robber Barons and industrialists. The “gilded age” when folks like Andrew Carnegie and John Pierpont Morgan ruled. And also the era of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and no minimum wage and child labor. You know, the good ol’ days.

Mostly crossposted.

Gristly Burrs

• Apparently someone prank-phoned Governor Walker yesterday. Apparently he does respond to his master's voice...

  I'm struck by three things: Walker has a tremendous ego and is incredibly arrogant. This is not a humble man.
  
  Two: he realizes this is not about Wisconsin, this is about crushing organized labor nationally. He knows what killing collective bargaining in Wisconsin means. This was the plan. This was never about Wisconsin.
  
  And three: Walker's obviously seeking David Koch's approval, which speaks volumes about Koch's role in all of this. Walker might as well be saying, "I did good, didn't I, huh huh, didn't I?" He reminds me of my dog when we're playing fetch, the way she's just so eager for approval when she drops the ball at my feet.
  [...]
  And here's my question: Who the hell is David Koch's "guy on the ground" in Madison? Hello? Hello news media, the fact that Koch Industries has "a guy on the ground" should sorta tell you everything you need to know about the Tea Party!
  [Emphasis in original]

  Southern Beale is Mighty.
• Via Shakesville and Just An Earth-Bound Misfit, the case of the now-former deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.
• At flip flopping joy, upset at the verdict in the trial of the killer of Brisenia Flores, but not for the reasons you'd think.  (I haven't been writing about that because Hulk smash! it just makes me furious beyond words.)
• And Shark-fu (Angry Black Bitch) makes the case that cities and women have the right to make their own decisions.

What I Tell You Three Times...

Via Brilliant at Breakfast: The Hunting of the Snark, for all your pundit-ridicule needs (currently being derided:  Megan McArdle).

Now Batting for Tralfamadore, Number 76--Canada

But I think my favorite part of [the Townhall article] is that he describes a system where everyone gets what they need and no one is ruined forever just because they get sick, and just assumes you’ll be horrified at the idea. Which is kind of amusing, like writing, “Boston is a land where people just walk by old ladies laying in the street in need of help, and instead of kicking them, they pick them up and get them help,” and expecting your audience to clutch their pearls and vow never to set foot in that dystopia Boston. But I thought it would be fun to play his game with social services that Americans are more familiar and fond of, just to drive home how weird he’s being.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon.  (To paraphrase her last paragraph:  Yes, I know she's said and done some dumb things, but this is reasonable enough.)

Morning Readings

1. Weird dream, involving:
• Scenes from The King's Speech, which I have not yet seen;
• Saruman walking through walls and windows.
2. Via Comrade Misfit, further shenanigans in that budget that the Governor of Wisconsin is hiding.  One of the comments there pointed to an article at George Lakoff's blog, "What Conservatives Really Want," which in part addresses the failures of Democrats:

   Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks — talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. “Benefits” are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.
   
   Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like “entitlements” instead of “earnings” and speak of government as providing “services” instead of “necessities.”

   ETA: Ahem. Confirmation.
   
3. Happy birthday/blogiversary to Shark-fu!
4. Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast (with the help of the New York Times) excoriates (you wish!) the Governor of New Jersey.

   The question is what this state will look like by the time he gets done with it, and people realize that the reason for a good chunk of his spending cuts is that he has continued the noble tradition started by that OTHER Christie, Christine Todd Whitman, of stiffing the state pension fund for other purposes. In Whitman's case it was for income tax cuts, from which the pension fund has never recovered, and in Christie's case it's for cooking the books.

5. Another con man mulcting the national security agencies of unspecified amounts of money...

Tell That One Goodbye! Southern Beale!

Bet you didn't know your tax dollars subsidize NASCAR, did you?

This post is about looking at one thing, and seeing it as a window on the Republican soul. Money for NASCAR, but not to retrain workers for green jobs. Money for NASCAR but not prenatal care for poor pregnant women. $50 million for NASCAR but not to improve graduation rates at our schools.
[...]
And here we have a perfect example of what is meant when people say budgets are moral documents. This is, indeed, a clear window onto the Republican soul. These are their priorities. This money isn't coming back when we're flush again: it's gone for good. This is the Republican Agenda, in black and white: cut aid to poor women and children, cut education and healthcare, cut consumer protections. Keep our fanboy projects and our wars and giveaways to outrageously wealthy corporations.

Budgets are moral documents. This one says it all.

Now, as it happens, I did see that somebody named Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500 yesterday, and that might help to get more recruits for the wars and stuff.  As I recall, however, every corporation with a logo sponsors NASCAR, and don't Republicans have some kind of dogma about stuff being better handled by the private sector?

SB also reminds us that the unions are not at fault for the present economy.  Far from it:

In short, capitalism has failed a large segment of the American population, and conservatives have successfully laid the blame on unions. How they did that is a neat trick, but I think corporate interests in the guise of the GOP have been selling anti-union Kool Aid for decades, so it's no surprise some of it started to stick. These days we've got “right to work” states and anti-minimum wage movements and the current spate of anti-collective bargaining initiatives in places like Wisconsin and Tennessee, and yet the glorious free hand of the market still hasn't righted things. Indeed, it's made things worse.

The result is resentment and jealousy directed at those people who have what I don’t have. Instead of directing their anger where it belongs -- the wealthy and powerful who enjoy the lowest taxes in the Western world who have pulled the ladders up to keep out the riff-raff -- conservatives are resentful of the people with the crappy jobs who were able to secure some very modest concessions over years of negotiating -- and renegotiating, and renegotiating. The history of unions is nothing if not a history of reneged deals.

If it were up to the Koch brothers, you wouldn't have weekends.  (You think I'm kidding.  I'm not.)

Shark-fu gets to the point:

Do not fall for the bullshit that it's a sure thing that the Senate will kill it – if the last year has taught us anything it is that nothing is certain, we must be voracious in our defense of family planning services, and those who claim to be fiscally conservative wouldn’t know good public policy if is jumped up and kicked them in the ass.

Last week the House demonstrated that they are unfit to govern in the best interest of the people…that they are willing to pass bad legislation to pander to the most wretched among their base rather than stand up for programs that work, serve the people, and save tax payers money.

I'll repeat myself here:  "'Penny-wise, pound-foolish' is not equivalent to 'fiscally responsible'."

Pizza recommendation!

Oh, and a human skull was found in an underwater cave off the Yucatán Peninsula.

When the Sleeper Wakes!

Mills River Progressive's plan of action.  Because we all need to speak up.  And sooner or later, the opium/meth/heroin/crack wears off.

On Wisconsin!

1. I'm on an email list that includes people who live in or are concerned with Madison, Wisconsin; they have provided a number of links about the situation there.  I am posting the last four links so far received.
   • Odd support.
   • Brief news release from the City of Madison.
   • Why zunguzungu loves Madison.
   • Another move in the game.
2. Oh, no, not publishing!  (Yes, it is a screed and a rant, but there's truth to it.)
3. And from the same source:  Justice?

   And when this band of criminals flees public service for greener pastures, literary agents and publishing executives will flock to them and we’ll be treated to faux tell-alls and heavily-edited, ghostwritten “memoirs” archly standing up for its own record and concluding with, “Hey, I tried, I failed, I’m out. Why are you crying to me about this?”
   
   They will get $100,000 a pop on the rubber chicken circuit while America descends even further into a nation of shopkeepers and temp agency serfs while the next power structure sweeps their own unique war crimes under the rug in the Oval Office.

4. Avedon quoted this guy Mark Steel, but the link was upgemessed, and since it is apparently one of my tasks (Sisyphean though it would be if real) to supply correct links, I found the piece.  So I'm quoting a different paragraph.

   Like all great thinkers Blair's a fickle sort. There are some tyrants he couldn't abide, such as Milosevic and Saddam, but others he adores, like Gaddafi, Mubarak and that one in Uzbekistan who boils people alive. Still, I suppose dictators are like cheeses, some you like and some you don't, it's a matter of taste. It might seem Blair's statement was what you'd expect, but it marks a shift in his thinking. Even the Israelis didn't pour out such unqualified support for Mubarak. It was just Blair. So he's not even following the chief warmongering line any more, he's out on his own, thinking he still has influence but ignored even by his old mates from the war on terror.

5. Thinkpiece at flip flopping joy on the term "Women of Color," with video.
6. I'm having garlic challah.
7. ETA: Bob Herbert on the people affected by some budget cuts.

   When these kinds of programs are zeroed out, the impact is profound. Jobs are eliminated and vital services are no longer available. Poverty and its associated costs to governments increase. In terms of budgets, it’s the definition of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. ABCD, for example, has been very effective in preventing evictions, working diligently with landlords, tenants and others to keep individuals and families from becoming homeless. When such efforts are successful, they not only keep individuals and families in their homes, they keep taxpayers from having to foot the very expensive bill of housing individuals and families in shelters.

Everything for Everybody

(That used to be an ad at the Village Voice, subtitled "That is what we do."  It was a store; I went there once, and it had the most amazing variety of stuff.)

1. KPFA apparently throws annual Grateful Dead fundraising marathons; this year's is today.
2. The War on Women's Georgia front.
3. How to peel (and grate) ginger:  the video.  (Seattle Post-Intelligencer lives on the Web.)
4. 25 minute video on medevac operations in Afghanistan.  (Just An Earth-Bound Misfit, via al-Jazeera.)
5. Steroidal strawberries in February are rather tart.  This has to be rediscovered annually...
6. Senator Bernie Sanders' Newsletter.
7. An article on hoarding from AARP.
8. One in Madison, WI, walks like an Egyptian.
9. Bill Cosby thinks a Muslim Cosby Show could work.  

Wait, where's the baseball?

Drifty Throws Down the Gauntlet

Driftglass does not think much of conservatives (understatement).

To reiterate, I am not interested in anything any Republican or Conservative has to say about debt or deficits or "shared" sacrifice.

Not now.

Not tomorrow.

Not ever again.

And least of all the fatuous, deceit-encrusted cluckings of America's Leading Conservative Public Intellectual.

That's the conclusion.  He also posts a long excerpt from Common Dreams which deserves attention.

The War on Women (Thank you, Arthur Silber)

Shark-fu hoists the flag:

Anti-choice members took to the floor with lies and inaccurate information about Planned Parenthood in an attempt to justify legislation that would defund the healthcare provider’s Title X funding. 

Pro-choice champions took to the floor and kept it real – defunding Planned Parenthood would prevent the delivery of life saving cancer screenings, STI and HIV/AIDS testing, and contraception and counseling services.

Trying to defund Planned Parenthood benefits no one, helps no one, and serves no one.

Actually doing it would have a devastating impact on communities across America.

And if you have ever been helped in any way by Planned Parenthood (and that includes your mother or father having been helped); if you have ever availed yourself of their services (see 2nd paragraph above for the list) or helped a loved one to do so, you need to make it clear to those attempting to deny Planned Parenthood funding that you STAND WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD.  (You plug in a phone number and an address, and they contact your rep and patch back to you.  Secure website.)

(Crossposted.  Also, I want to be clear that I got the Planned Parenthood secure website from Shark-fu and am signal-boosting.)

The Elephant, You Should Excuse the Expression, In the Room

Of course it's actually worse than that: the Timesmen can't avoid adopting the Right's Inhuman Resources Program as fact: Medicare and Medicaid bust the budget, but the 55% (conservative, but not "conservative" estimate) of the Federal budget which goes to military operations is as invisible as we pretend a Stealth bomber is.

Y'know, at every goddam turn there's another excuse for our incontinent militarization, for continuing to spend at WWII levels, whether the threat is the Soviets being sorta close to us in megatonnage (see Missile Gap, The) or some guy lighting his underwear on fire in Canada. We're the fucking Windows™ of hard power: we insist on never actually obsoleting the junk we sold the Rubes two generations ago, like they might remember, so we're continually defending the Fulda Gap, preparing to storm Quemoy and Matsu, weaponizing Space, touching up Mutually Assured Destruction, preparing to best the Kaiser at Jutland, and shopping for video-game weapons systems, all at once, and all with no sense of fitting anything together. And meanwhile, in case no one happened to notice, getting bogged down for decades inside countries which didn't even have armies when we invaded.

Doghouse Riley, of course.  Bats Left/Throws Right.  Not a baseball blog.  Speaking of which, Mike's Mets seems to be on hiatus...

Republican Job-Killing Budget Cuts

Republic of T calls John Boehner out on the proposed Federal budget cuts.

I found I was excerpting the whole thing, so instead have a representative paragraph:

Boehner’s off-the-cuff remarks. reminded me of a long debate that I once had with a libertarian conservative, who insisted that the government couldn’t create jobs. As it went on, our discourse revealed that his arguments were based on the assumption that jobs created by government can’t really be jobs, because government jobs — and jobs created or subsidized by government — are not "real jobs," and "real jobs" are only created in the private sector. If it’s not done for profit, it’s not a "real job," and probably doesn’t need doing and shouldn’t be done in the first place.

(It's really a shame I don't know proper Google-bombing protocols.)

Remember, privatizing government services and then penalizing one for not being able to afford them is the desired outcome.

Well. There It Is

With video.

As US secretary of state, Colin Powell gathered his notes in front of the United Nations security council, the man watching — Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the west's intelligence services as "Curveball" — had more than an inkling of what was to come. He was, after all, Powell's main source, a man his German handlers had feted as a new "Deep throat" — an agent so pivotal that he could bring down a government.

As Curveball watched Powell make the US case to invade Iraq, he was hiding an admission that he has not made until now: that nearly every word he had told his interrogators from Germany's secret service, the BND, was a lie.

Everything he had said about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme was a flight of fantasy - one that, he now claims was aimed at ousting the Iraqi dictator. Janabi, a chemical engineering graduate who had worked in the Iraqi industry, says he looked on in shock as Powell's presentation revealed that the Bush administration's hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed the lot. Something else left him even more amazed; until that point he had not met a US official, let alone been interviewed by one.

Hook. Line. Sinker. Pole.  Boat.  Fisher.

You Say That As If It's a Bad Thing

In the (Missouri) Republican drive to bring back the world of Charles Dickens, this stands out.

JC – “Well, I recently watched Oliver Twist on television. I’ve got to tell you, Satan – child labor was some of your best work! It kept the wretched little fuckers off the street, increased available labor, and made discussions of public school education ridiculous. Why pay to educate children when we should be putting them to work, right? I love it!”

Satan – “Stop…you’re making me blush and that’s not easy for a crimson-faced demon lord to do!”

(No, not real quotes.  Just well-imagined. Here's the bill summary:

SB 222 – This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

Thanks to Shark-fu and the AFL-CiO blog.

Pitchers and catchers start reporting today!

(And not a minute too soon.  Brain currently feta cheese.  I am keeping an eye on Egypt, but other than GO, EGYPTIANS!!! I have nothing to say.  Wait, they have different cheese.)

O for Oblivious

I'm not normally a noticer of things;  if a parade of pink elephants with angels sitting on their backs passed by, I might notice that there'd been a lot of pink lately.

But this is the New York Times article on Mubarak's exit, and even I, who take things at more-or-less face value, noticed two things almost immediately:

1. Mubarak is nowhere directly quoted; and
2. "The military" seems to be speaking with one voice.

See what I mean here:

The streets of Cairo exploded in shouts of “God is Great” moments after Mr. Mubarak’s vice president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, announced during evening prayers that Mr. Mubarak had passed all authority to a council of military leaders.

“Taking into consideration the difficult circumstances the country is going through, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the post of president of the republic and has tasked the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to manage the state’s affairs,” Mr. Suleiman, grave and ashen, said in a brief televised statement.

[...]

Shortly before the announcement of Mr. Mubarak’s departure, the military issued a communiqué pledging to carry out a variety of constitutional reforms in a statement remarkable for its commanding tone. The military’s statement alluded to the delegation of power to Mr. Suleiman and it suggested that the military would supervise implementation of the reforms.

The military did not indicate whether it intended to take the kinds of fundamental steps toward democracy that protesters have been demanding. This was the second direct statement from the military in two days, and it largely stuck to the main constitutional and electoral reforms that Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Suleiman had promised to implement. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Suleiman would retain a role, under the military council, in running the country.

Now I think they mean "The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces" and are just being synecdochic, but the impression I'm getting is coup.

Yesterday's Scandale du Jour

Shakesville has a poker-faced account of the resignation of Representative Christopher Lee of upstate New York, and jurassicpork at Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread (also at Brilliant at Breakfast and Welcome Back to Pottersville) delivers a Letterman-style "Top 10 Funniest Things..." on the Congressman who failed to follow the proper Republican template for sex scandals.  One of the comments at Shakesville referred to further comedy comment at Live Journal's ontd_political, so I spent an hour or so that I'll never get back wading through the comments (200+).  Early on, someone made the obvious connection.  OK.  (Myself, I latched onto Count Dooku, as someone apprenticed to a Sith Lord, but not up on the whole game.  But that's me.)

In the department of I know nobody admits to looking at pornography, even accidentally, but honestly, you guys!, although jurassicpork hints at it:  cell phone pictures of shirtless men are usually found on the gay side of the Great Porn Kingdoms.  Unless he was emulating the Old Spice Guy?  (ETA:  Tweet via skippy.)

Also?  (Yes, another Princess Bride quotation.  Deal.)  "Classy"?  I do not think it means what you think it means.

His lie about his age to one side (he was already lying about so much):  If one is going to do something one doesn't want everyone to know about, since one's already falsifying many of the details, use a different name.  I know politicians are weak on imagination (it's why they go into politics instead of, oh, music), but really!   There are lots of 18th and 19th century officeholders whose names could be dusted off for use as identity in a scandal.  And it would be educational.  Especially for the junior congresspeople.

Malefactors of Great Wealth and No Ethics

Or maybe "All Gaul," because there will be three parts:

• Daisy Deadhead of Daisy's Dead Air has inaugurated a weekly "Haley Watch" on the shenanigans, when they happen, of the Governor of South Carolina, beginning with the sizable pay raises of her staff.
• Whistleblower in UBS case sits in jail, allegedly for not yielding up all possible information.

  Birkenfeld says that only a massive cover-up can explain why he is in prison after delivering such valuable information to authorities. And, he charges that the federal government is trying to protect the wealthy and powerful Americans who have millions of dollars hidden from the tax system in secret Swiss accounts like the ones he used to manage.

  (via CNBC)
• Avedon Carol at The Sideshow on the Deep Game being played (and without scorecards, even):

  I've touched on this before, but I don't think people really get how tricky the game really is. If you listen to a lot of the things Limbaugh and Rush and even Palin say, they always carry enough of a grain of truth with them to make them compelling to their audience even while they also carry enough crazy to make it easy for everyone from Katarina to Dancin' Dave to even Bill Kristol point at them and say they are going overboard.
  
  People are hurting and our economy is tanking and the White House keeps telling us how things are fine even though all the rest of us can see that they are not. And though they blame it all on Obama as if Bush and the GOP leadership had nothing to do with it, the fact is that Obama and the Dems spent two years in charge and absolutely refusing to do what Americans wanted them to do. And what Americans want them to do is get out of stupid wars (not just change the names from "combat troops" to something else), give them a better health care system (not just pass something called a health care bill), protect Social Security benefits (not just the existence of some program that still retains the name "Social Security"), and, yes, tax the rich a lot more than they tax people who actually have to work for a living. What Americans certainly didn't want them to do was protect cut-throat loan sharks who are stealing their money and their homes, and protect anti-American transnational corporations who are stealing their time and money and exporting their jobs.

Lisa Golden Hits One Out of the Park

What you never see in the mainstream media.

People without health insurance walking us through their experience with the American health care system.
Workers discussing business policies.
Family farmers talking about farming and food.

There's more.  And she asks "What would you like from our media?

Law, Fantasy, Baseball, and Warning Sirens with Flashing Lights

1. Pitchers and catchers report starting February 14.  Whew!
2. Metsgrrl on driving past the location of Ebbets Field.
3. She also has the guide to slogging through the complaint about the enmeshment of the Wilpons (owners of the NY Mets) with Bernie Madoff (boo, hissssss).  It's unfortunate that both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Louis Auchincloss are dead; this would be their meat.  
4. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast cuts the Gordian knot of Republican pro-life posturing while being opposed to the welfare of, how should I say this, women.

Six Questions

Scott Horton asks Cherif Bassiouni, author of  The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration: Is Anyone Responsible? 

Because we haven't forgotten.

Clue-by-Four of Truth

• "Conservatives" won't face consequence of their "budget cuts."  Republic of T paints the picture:

  Paul’s challenge underscores the dishonesty of his budget, as well as those proposed by other conservatives. Paul and other conservatives wear their proposed budget as badges of honor, but they lack the courage to state clearly the human impact of their budget cuts, and the candor to confess the unreality of their proposals.
  
  [...]
  
  But the snapshot of consequences in Kentucky underscores a point driven home at the end of the Lexington Herald editorial.
  

  Paul pines for a land built on libertarian theory. But the country of his ideals is a place that few Americans would want to leave their children.

  It’s a place that few Americans want to live in, or want their children to live in, today.

  [Emphasis and link in original.]
  
• Driftglass again demonstrates his qualifications for the Mike Royko Memorial Chair at whatever school of journalism has one and in the process reminds all that Mr. Brooks of the NY Times needs to revisit the difference between journalism and public relations.

  First, however beloved and renowned Rahm Emanuel might have been in Mr. Brooks' D.C. social and political circles, back in Chicago he is still regarded as a carpet bagger. He has no natural constituency here, and when he went away to join the DLC Elite, he left behind no appreciable mark, or legacy, or footprints in the sands of Garfield Park Conservatory that he could in any way plausibly use to claim clear title to the status of a Favorite Son finally returning to the bosom of his home town.
  
  He pulled no swords from stones here, and no Watery Tarts of Lake Michigan threw him any Excaliburs.
  
  Instead what Mr. Emanuel has going for him is an assload of money, direct, hard-wired connections to every million-watt insider/power-broker in the Democratic Party and, most importantly, a tacit but unmissable nod from the Daley Machine. A formidable and very-probably unbeatable political armory to which he can now add Mr. Brooks' free, full-page political advertisement masquerading as a New York Times Op-Ed.

  (If you click through, you get a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  You won't get that from conservative Republican columnists, even if they understood it.)
  

Another Modest Proposal

from Southern Beale, who comes out swinging on reproductive choice (that would be birth control):

Look fellas, I’m sorry you lack the plumbing that would enable you to get pregnant, gestate and give birth and all that. I’ve long suspected your inability to create life in the same way we ladies do has been a source of equal amounts fascination and disgust on your parts for thousands of years. Grow the fuck up already.

You know, I can’t imagine what it’s like to have my reproductive organs flying around loose in the breeze where any predator, fungus or hunting accident could come along and snip it all off, making me evolutionarily irrelevant. That’s a hard burden to bear, a not-so-subtle reminder of how biologically dispensable you guys really are. There are always more males out there willing to spread their seed; it’s the female of the species who carries the burden of the species’ survival. We’re the ones who not only bear the young but care for them as well.

Latest Scare

(Actually a week old, but we're not the vanguard around here.  The vanguard is over there, either buying or being bought by AOL.  It is of no moment.  We're going to put on some cutting-edge Chuck Berry, who still cannot be defined out of rock 'n' roll.  So there.)

(Also, when I first saw the story, I'm afraid that not only did I not take it seriously, my first reaction was "What is that guy smoking?")

Republic of T, who has been posting up a storm despite the fact that according to my blogroll, he hasn't posted in three weeks--my lying eyes, of course--has put up the second of the series on drugs, prohibition, and the failure of US drug policy as seen in the panic over "bath salts."

I get that Schumer is not talking about banning bath salts so much as drugs-masquerading-as-bath-salts. And I understand the danger after reading the horror stories of people who took this stuff and either died of it or because of the hallucinations and behaviors that ensue after using it. There seems almost to be a subculture of people who know it’s not just a bath salt, and the directions on the packaging are basically a “win[k] and nod” towards the intended “off label” use.

In the Dock

Apparently today is the day we are supposed to get nostalgic and schmoopy about the centenary of the 40th President of these United States.

Er, no.

From the McClatchy website, the case for a more pragmatic, less ideological Reagan:

Nothing ended up infuriating the right more than Reagan’s fear of the prospect of nuclear war. To the outrage of conservatives such as commentator George Will, he tried to cut a deal in 1987 with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, that would have abolished nuclear weapons. He went on to sign the sweeping START I arms-control treaty with the Kremlin, slashing the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles. So much for Reagan the ideologue.

From Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread, i.e., Jurassicpork, a full-blown indictment:

Under Reagan, the deficit tripled, national defense spending increased, he got a massive wave of tax breaks designed primarily to benefit his wealthy campaign contributors, public education took a rogering, he tried unsuccessfully to take food and milk out of our childrens' mouths at the same time he was giving tax breaks to corporations, more soldiers than ever died for his foreign policy adventurism, he was a coward and cut and ran when terrorists killed 241 of our Marines in Beirut, he cut back room deals with the contras under the fictional guise of combating the Commies, funneled money to them through arms sales to Iran and before he was even elected, sent envoys to talk to Iranian officials and illegally meddling with the hostage crisis under Carter (the all-but-discredited October Surprise which is making a comeback).

And there are lots of links just in that paragraph, let alone the rest of the essay.

That's not even getting into his "team," who share responsibility for some of the ill effects.

Hmmmm.  Maybe I should go hang out at a museum or something.  Since there's some football game going.

B.A.D. Bad Leroy Brown

For Blogroll Amnesty Day, I traditionally pull up stuff of interest from other people's blogrolls, but as Blogger and Safari are not at the moment playing nice with each other, I'd just better grab what I can.

• Just an Earth-Bound Misfit.  Because it's never what I expect.
• Ephemeral New York.
• Southern Beale.
• Some of my blogroll is AWOL.  Sometime this month I'm going to have to reorganize the lists.  Lisa posts at Black Magpie Theory, for example, which has good stuff, but I never see it unless she's posted there.  I also have to move her back to blog 'n' roll, because she's not infrequent.  Cooking for Bad Motherfuckers is dormant.  I need to add people.

*sigh*

Also

Senator Sanders' newsletter points to two stories:  one on Pentagon fraud (shocked whispers:  "No!"), which appears at Time's swampland blog, and one on defending Social Security.

Must reading.

The Egress

Scott Horton of Harper's has an article in Foreign Policy about the constraints on dictators-in-exile and how this might affect Hosni Mubarak's, um, departure.

Oh, And...

Echidne explains why, economically, the individual mandate is necessary in Health Care Reform.

My view is that the HCR went wrong when it insisted on sticking with the insurance model, even if the political reasons for that can be understood. Once it did that, however, most everything else that happened was a logical consequence of that initial decision, including the individual mandate.

Alternatives to that model exist all over the place. Indeed, almost all other industrialized countries have something different. But that "something different" is seen as communism here. So we are stuck.

I really need to do some research, and on something other than rock bands. ;-)

Advocacy

Tiger Beatdown has a guide to Twitter advocacy against H.R. 3 (short version:  considerably narrows the definition of rape and forbids insurance from covering abortions).

I stole this graphic from Shakesville.

Two Things

1. Digby (Hullabaloo) on Reagan's legacy:

   Most people actually like government programs that benefit them and are usually hostile only to those they think benefit the "undeserving." But there is no doubt in my mind that Reagan and his progeny have made anti-government sentiment in general a baseline value among a large number of Americans, which has led to an ongoing, incremental degradation of the relationship of people to their government. People may not want their government services cut in the abstract, but with every vote for a Republican or Democrat who rails against taxes, they make it that much more difficult to deliver them.

2. Jill (Brilliant at Breakfast) on what democracy looks like and why Americans don't look like that:

   The teabaggers are dancing to the tune of their corporate masters. The left is still cats resisting being herded. And the party that's supposed to be a counterbalance to the likes of John Boehner being the guest of honor at insurance company dinners and passing out checks on the House floor is telling us to suck it up and stick with the status quo.
   
   We ought to be taking a really good, close look at Egypt. Because what's going on there is what happens when people get their act together and realize that it is their own government that's working against them.

The events in Egypt so far have alarmed pundits and heads of state.

Good.