In Memoriam

Joanna Russ.

Last Week Was Good Friday, Therefore...

• No, I don't know why there was a spike in German readers.  Probably an accident.
• It has occurred to me (at 3 am, for what that's worth) that a lot of conservative legislators must have had a bad time in school, and they want to share the experience.  I'm only surprised that none of them have yet proposed bringing back the little red (one-room) schoolhouse, the schoolmarm, and the hornbook.
• My team is flirting so hard with a .500 winning percentage that they should perhaps get a room...
• Echidne of the Snakes on Mr. Frothy-Mix-of-Lube-and-Fecal-Matter and his falsehoods about American health care v. socialized medicine:

  That is what angers me about all that death-panels crap. You don't have to have an explicit death panel if the price of care is set high enough. You don't have to have an explicit death panel if insurers decide whether your expensive cancer surgery will be covered. You don't have to have explicit death panels if states decide to solve their budget problems by no longer covering the care of the most expensive medical cases. But the outcome will be the same.

Brother Can You Spare a Job?

Comrade Misfit on unemployment figures and reality.

But nobody paid much attention. Just like they didn't pay attention to what would happen when millions of tons of soot were pushed out of smokestacks, or what would happen when tetraethyl lead was added to gasoline or when industrial chemicals and raw sewage were dumped into rivers and lakes. We've had example after example of people throwing shit into the air and water and believing in the "big sky/water, little pollution" theory.

We'll also exterminate more and more plant and animal species, but few people will care. When the last one of any particular species is gone, the predictable hand-wringing will begin.

We never learn, do we?

No. No, we don't. Not even with Horrible Examples.

Furthermore, Tennessee is trying to repeal the law that permitted teachers unions.  Via Southern Beale, who said:

Well, why don’t we replace all contracts with a “handbook,” then? I mean really, if it’s such a brilliant idea for our kids, why not? Let’s have a handbook instead of state contracts, and then when someone doesn’t finish repaving that highway on time, we can say, “oooh you’re in violation of our handbook and we’re gonna ... um ... hmm ... never mind!” I mean really, that’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Is an employee handbook even legally binding?

Here’s the thing. Teachers’ working conditions are our kids’ learning conditions. Shouldn’t the people who are in that classroom every day be the best judge of what those learning conditions need to be?

And here’s another thing: why in the world would anyone want to be a teacher in Tennessee under conditions like this? Wouldn’t you want to teach somewhere else, where you’re not treated like school board chatt[el]?

But that would disturb that pristine childlike innocent ignorance that apparently is valued highly.

And ginmar on the logistics [ETA:  Original is here; ginmar excerpted most of it.] of "giving birth to Barack Obama in Kenya" in 1961.

After Ann delivered the baby, under conditions she never would have in the States, they headed back to Honolulu - one week of constant travel with a newborn, a diaper case, and luggage. Then they had to get Barack Jr. into the country, without a passport. A family passport, perhaps? Sorry, you need a family to get one. The mother was photographed with her child or children, and it was not issued in anticipation. Ann would have to be photographed holding Barack Jr. to be issued one. Perhaps she got him into the States some other way?

 And brief backgrounds of the proponents of this idiocy.  In case you wonder why I am as contemptuous and disdainful as I am.  I wish satire could do the 21st century justice.

In Memoriam

• Phoebe Snow, singer/songwriter.
• Poly Styrene, singer.
• Violet Cowden, World War II pilot.
• Marie-France Pisier, actress.
• Alan Champion, sign language interpreter for theater.

Two Things

1. Anthony McCarthy reposts his essay on Lies and Free Speech at Echidne of the Snakes.

   I’m sure that, as in the discussion of violent porn, this question will elicit an immediate response with the most extreme of hypothetical scenarios presented. It’s often the classic questions. What about lying to the Nazis about where the Jewish children are hidden? That kind of thing. And, of course, when those situations are real, they are all important. Of course, any moral person with a functioning brain would lie to the Nazis. But pretending that moral imperative to lie as an exculpatory factor in the official lies that gush like oil from the insanely drilled hole in the Gulf, is willfully and stunningly dishonest. The two situations are made definitively different by the illegitimacy of the Nazis’ genocide and their demented despotism. Naziism can, in no way, be equated with the aspirations and the goals of egalitarian democracy. To deny that difference is to lie, to assert those two situations are equivalent is a colossal lie. The imperative to lie is founded in the choices of Nazis. The requirement to tell the truth an essential prerequisite for democracy to be possible.

2. Why I, personally, am contemptuous of "birthers."

Cthulhu in Their Souls

Daisy has turned me on to Renegade Evolution, and I'm getting caught up, more or less.  (I disagree with Ren on the Confederate flag, but there's always something.)  Ren linked to a posting at ginmar, who in turn had a post on a town taken over by the state of Michigan (financial martial law), Benton Harbor.  I have a vague rememberance of knowing someone with a Benton Harbor address long ago.

I could have sworn I posted something about the war in Iraq being about the oil, but I haven't been able to find it.  (Link via Southern Beale.)

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

And then it goes into detail. There are a lot of people who should have had incredibly elongated noses in 2003...

Bridges, Sleeping Under, Forbidden for Rich and Poor Alike

Southern Beale on the horror of poor people selling newspapers in a wealthy county.

In Memoriam

The former mayor of Baltimore, William Donald Schaefer, has died.  Dave Ettlin remembers two encounters with him.

For Those Who Celebrate

Happy Passover!

(Well, in a few minutes, but Be Prepared!)

The Bells, Bells, Bells

Avedon Carol:

Of course, there is a convenient set of lies trotted out by the Oligarchy to try to make you forget all this stuff, such as the fantasy that raising taxes on the rich somehow reduces jobs, or at least failing to cut taxes means there won't be new jobs created. The answer to this one is too simple: Well, we did, in fact, cut your taxes, and, amazingly, you didn't create any jobs! In fact, lots and lots of people are losing their jobs, those who are still working are working for less with fewer benefits, and the only people who have much money are people who contribute bugger-all to the economy, the culture, the community, or the country. What they are really doing with their extra money is performing the function of parasites, sucking the blood out of the economy and damaging the health of the body. Real innovation in America sank like a stone when these guys had to stop paying big taxes - and jobs began to dwindle, and paychecks started to fray as they kept stretching to cover more things that used to be better and cost less. (Yes, Virginia, there really was a Good Old Days before utilities and other natural government functions were privatized.) [Emphasis added.]

Shorter and pithier:

Everybody knows, including the Democratic leadership, that Americans do not want their "vision" of a harder, nastier life, and the Democratic leadership's answer to that is that we don't know what's good for us because we are too stupid and ignorant to understand the virtue of being more miserable so that rich people can be richer.

To paraphrase probably George Carlin, conservatives do remember the '60s, and what they remember is that that "hippie" stuff almost caught on.

Over at Booman Tribune, there's a squib of a piece on how one of the NY Times' pet conservative columnists (Fluffy) is trying to inject race into the conversation about social spending:

What Douthat seems to be saying is that if we don't slash entitlement spending now then a horde of young brown and beige people are going to riot against white retired people in the 2030's. This seems like an excessively contrived and remote way of injecting fear into the debate. Am I wrong? Am I missing something?

The columnist is trying to insert race into an argument (and an argument that assumes that there will be no "brown and beige" retirees, which, hello?) because his arguments are bogus (and his figures suspect).  To mix metaphors, that bogeyman won't fly.

Southern Beale on politicians and Coué wishful thinking:

So where are all the fucking jobs and economic growth that’s supposed to shower down upon us like manna from heaven? And how come no one ever challenges the righties on their steadfast belief in tax cuts as economic stimulus? Every time a Bob Schaeffer or Tweety or George Stuffinenvelopes interviews a GOPer about this, we get the same old line about tax cuts stimulating the economy and no one ever says, “well, it hasn’t yet!” I just don’t get it. It’s become almost ingrained in the national psyche that right wing voodoo economics works, when in fact it’s a fairy tale.

You want to know why a big swath of America votes against its own self-interest? It’s something every snake oil salesman, self-help guru and fad diet author knows: tell people what they want to hear and they’ll buy it every damn time. It doesn’t even have to work, as long as the people really, really want it to work. People want to think "the secret" to winning the lottery is to repeat some prosperity affirmation over and over. People want to think they can lose weight eating bacon and eggs and eschewing the toast and fruit. And people want to think the key to kickstarting the economy is to not pay taxes or invest in the country at all, but instead take all the goodies and let some invisible, magical force make everything alright, somehow.

It is just my own flawed nature that can't move all these bottles of snake oil.  Phooey.  (Not, of course, snake goddess oil.  Not the same thing at all.)

Coda from Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast:

I hope you enjoyed America. Because you don't have it anymore.

Rising Chorus

Mills River Progressive brings attention to the possible destruction of the Russian seed bank.

Quote of the Week:

A culture so stupid that it's willing to destroy its own living environment, food supply, air, and water for the sake of profit for a handful of billionaires is too stupid to survive.

Is Sitting Toxic?

Er, maybe.

Excuse me, I have to get up and fidget for a bit.

Department of What Took You So Long??

New York Times has discovered that the banksters have gotten off scot free.

But several years after the financial crisis, which was caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.

I restrain myself from echoing Comrade Misfit.

Quote of the Day

Anyone talking about debt and deficits who is not talking foremost about jobs and health-care costs is either grossly misinformed or lying to you. Period.

There'll Be No More Aaaaaaaaa-aah-aah!

• Scott Horton in Harper's:

  In 2004, a group of prominent alumni of the Justice Department’s once-prestigious Office of Legal Counsel, shaken by disclosure of the torture memoranda and other evidence of unethical conduct within the office, signed a statement of principles to guide the Justice Department’s opinion writers. “When providing legal advice to guide contemplated executive branch action, OLC should provide an accurate and honest appraisal of applicable law, even if that advice will constrain the administration’s pursuit of desired policies,” they wrote. “The advocacy model of lawyering, in which lawyers craft merely plausible legal arguments to support their clients’ desired actions, inadequately promotes the President’ s constitutional obligation to ensure the legality of executive action.” Have the new tenants at Justice lived up to these principles? Not so much.

  and further elaborates on this at Foreign Policy:

  Apparently Obama's lawyers told him he could do it, and he liked their advice: "Prior congressional approval was not constitutionally required to use military force in the limited operations under consideration." We know this from the opinion drafted by U.S. Justice Department lawyers on April 1, which was publicly released on April 7, on the legality of military operations in Libya following the U.N. Security Council's go-ahead. The document presents few surprises and looks remarkably like a pair of memoranda -- cited in the new opinion -- that former Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger, then head of President Bill Clinton's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), wrote to authorize the use of military force in Haiti and Bosnia. As such it is typical of the Obama Justice Department: It avoids referring back to the opinions written during the executive-power-expanding heyday of President George W. Bush's first term, while arriving at markedly similar conclusions.

• Driftglass on the American reluctance to face the realities of the Civil War (begun 150 years ago), with extensive quotes and a note on the evanescence of words:

  But there have been other struggles whose importance endures long past the death of the king and the last veteran's widow -- battles over the essential meaning of things: what it is to be human, to be free, to be a citizen, to be a Jew, to be a woman, to be a slave, to be an Irishman, to be the Other.

• Also on the Civil War, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who's been studying it in depth lately:

  I am telling you now--check out the books they own. It is your civic duty as an American to educate yourself about the country you claim to love. This is the revolution that birthed us. And at this late date, it's shockingly evident that many of us don't really know what happened. Our media isn't even sure what happened. Scholars who are the very face of black studies in this country give license to this ignorance.

Mr. Coates also pointed to a nifty article by another editor at the Atlantic on what Donald Trump's expensive investigators will find and how much it costs (sans mai-tai).  Really, racism makes one stupid, if one isn't already.

So,

I had two (2! 2 for the price of 1!) nightmares; most of the first is gone except for the last bit, which was me and another woman escaping from a serial killer in a conveniently open elevator.  The second involved me at a boring job (I know, what else is new?) in an office layout I have never encountered, going out to lunch except I kept getting interrupted, getting on the local train uptown, getting a quick lunch, and then...not being able to find the entrance to the downtown side through something like a maze and being late.  The horror.

And of course my body was in full fight-or-flight mode.  I'm surprised I made it to church.

Two items getting crossposted:

• NY Times report:  Is sugar toxic?  

  Sugar scares me too, obviously. I’d like to eat it in moderation. I’d certainly like my two sons to be able to eat it in moderation, to not overconsume it, but I don’t actually know what that means, and I’ve been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade.

• Charlie Crist apologizes (on video) to David Byrne for unlicensed use of song (from Mediaite via skippy the bush kangaroo).

  Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist has recorded a no-nonsense video apologizing to Talking Head’s front man David Byrne for the unlicensed use of the song “Road To Nowhere” during his Senate run of last year.

Air-Raid Siren

• Southern Beale:  Walgreen's Is The Answer to All Your Healthcare Needs.

  Two people who have never, ever used Planned Parenthood’s services telling people who need Planned Parenthood’s services that they don’t really need Planned Parenthood’s services.
  [...]
  These are the death panels that already exist in our broken healthcare system. Everyone keeps telling us American healthcare is the best in all the world, except if you can't access it, it might as well not even exist. I mean how can these idiots not get that? It doesn't matter if our healthcare is the best or second best or even 37th, if your system excludes millions of people it's a failure. End of discussion. And if your politics refuses to recognize that then it, too, is a failure.

• Brilliant at Breakfast:  Setting the stage for generational warfare.

  Cantor is 48. No wonder he takes so much money from the securities, real estate, and insurance industries. He's lining his own pockets for when he's successful in dismantling Social Security. Oh, and by the way, HE gets a government pension and taxpayer-funded health insurance FOR THE RESET OF HIS LIFE after he leaves office.

Conservatism is failure. It is regression. It is self-starvation to cure a hangnail.

Klaxon

Anna van Z at Mills River Progressive:  Are you as disgusted as I am?

Instead of making banksters pay, instead of insisting that huge corporations pay some taxes, YOUR REPRESENTATIVES HAVE DECIDED THAT YOU ARE GOING TO END UP WITH NOTHING. No break on your student loans for you! No help with your mortgage for you! No bailouts for you! No big tax rebates for you! No Pell grants for you or your kids! And the utter mess of so-called "healthcare reform" touted by the Dems, features as its centerpiece MAKING YOU BUY PLANS from corporate health insurance providers! With no rate caps! This is their great fucking plan! Are you kidding me?

And now they want to take your Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. "Because we're broke".

I don't know what it takes for most of y'all out there to wake the hell up and DO something - even if it's just calling these asswipe congressional reps every damn day - but I suggest we get it in gear NOW. Because by the time 2012 rolls around, things are going to be way, WAY grimmer for 98.5% of us. And you know I'm right. It's time to take a stand, folks. Now is the time.

Turn off the reality TV shows and Fox and --

Oh, right. Americans and History; total strangers. Well. History is about to bitchslap us about, and short of a revolution we will have to take it.  You ready for a revolution?

As Shark-fu would say, *cue crickets*.

On the Domestic Taliban

Comrade Misfit:

The Christian Taliban's indifference to life goes far beyond that, of course. If they truly cared about the lives of others, you might assume that they would be all in favor of making health care affordable to all. You might assume that they would be in favor of early education programs, such as Head Start. You might assume that they would want to make education as rich and as vibrant an experience for children as possible.

You might assume all that. You would be wrong to do so.

If the Christian Taliban cared about the unborn, you might assume that they would push to make prenatal care available to all mothers. You might assume that they would work to establish programs for prenatal nutrition. You might assume that they would lobby for courses for new mothers on how to care for their children.

You might assume all that. You would be wrong to do so.

The fight over abortion has nothing to do with the babies being aborted, although that is how it has been sold to the sheeple who comprise the grunts of the Christian Taliban. It has everything to do with sin, more specifically, the punishment of sin. The Christian Taliban regards having sexual intercourse for any reason other than baby-making to be a major sin. (For that matter, the Christian Taliban regards having fun as a sin.) If a woman has sex for fun and ends up getting pregnant, than as far as the Christian Taliban is concerned, both the ensuing pregnancy and the years of caring for the child to follow are the Lord's punishment for her immorality.

There's more, and it's all good.

Warning:  this might be considered Christian-bashing.  While I don't think it's coincidental that some who identify as Christians support this sort of thing, I have to suspect that the Taliban Puritanical (someone, somewhere is wrong on the Internet having fun definition) side is ascendant, complete with misogyny.  Because, as we all know, it takes two for reproduction (usually), and one of the parties (that would be that Rev. Dimmesdale guy) can walk away.  I don't hear anything about condoms.  I don't hear anything about voluntary celibacy.  I don't hear anything about vasectomies.

What's next, banning epidurals during birth?

In Memoriam

Sidney Lumet, director.
Edward Bigelow, dancer.

I Have Too Many Tabs Open

And I've forgotten what the articles were supposed to illustrate.  Or support.  Or verify.  Whatever.

1. Skeevy-looking observation outpost business in Virginia.
2. Shark-fu calls out Missouri's GOP State Senators for the weasels they are:

   So the mess that’s happening in Jefferson City is this – a gaggle of GOP State Senators, who are trying to save face after their own colleagues turned against them for this ridiculous and damaging filibuster, are holding unemployment benefits in bondage so they can emancipate working Missourians from the tyranny of federal stimulus money and the oppression of the unemployed being able to put food on the table.

3. Flavia Dzodan at Tiger Beatdown talks about rapist culture and quotes bell hooks.
4. I have been thinking lately (OK for a while) about forgiveness, and what one can forgive (as conservatives have trouble with the part of the gospels that counsel caring for the poor, I'm having trouble with the bit about loving one's enemies and forgiving those who do one ill), and this essay rang a bell.  (The line about keeping the tsar far away from us is of course from Fiddler on the Roof.)
5. Brilliant at Breakfast posts a video of Senator Bernie Sanders talking about the budget.
6. Another fakefeminist, via Shakesville.  
7. Southern Beale:
1. Projecting the Maine labor mural;
2. State of Wisconsin.
8. Call to action at Mills River Progressive.  Literally.  Unless you want all wildlife to consist of various species of rat.  Like much of Congress.

In Two Parts

• I don't know who this guy is but I'm in love, via Mills River Progressive. [ETA:  Avedon has clued me in; Mike Papantonio's a host, with Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and Sam Seder, at Ring of Fire Radio.com.]
• Thought for today:  We voted for Barack Obama, but we seem to have gotten Alan Keyes.

Bearing Study

Via a comment at Whatever, the Amish America website for information on all things Amish.  Example:  Amish phone use.

The fact that the Amish choose to regulate how the phone is used shows continuing concern over potential ill effects, were it to be fully accepted. At the same time the Amish take a practical approach in using the telephone in limited ways, as they do with most forms of technology.

In Memoriam

Manning Marable, scholar (his biography of Malcolm X is scheduled to be published today.)

John McMillan has a memorial article at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog at the Atlantic.

Must-Read

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

The radio station played the obligatory "In the Name of Love," and Terrance of Republic of T. posted an eloquent piece referring to the life and work of Dr. King with side excursions on the symbolism of mountains and rivers, pulling it together with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The events in Wisconsin, and the movement that has grown out of them are an encouraging sign that Americans are still journeying towards the “promised land” King envisioned. How many more mountains we must climb or rivers we must cross before we get there, he didn’t say. But he believed we would get there.

Perhaps we will if, every step of the way, we practice the dangerous unselfishness King spoke of, and thus transform “What will happen to me?” to “What will happen to them?” into “What will happen to us? — and remember that we are one.

Arthur Silber Resorts to Satire

A respirational fantasy.

Oh, and I Almost Forgot... People See This In Florida, Right?

UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS! UTERUS!  


Also, Ovaries, Fallopian Tubes, Cervix, Vagina, Vulva, Labia.  Just to be complete.

[Edited for symmetricality.]

Equal Time:  Testicles.

I Read This Story in F & SF Many Years Ago...

Southern Beale:

WTF does that even mean? It sounds like business school clap-trap to me. It seems Jay Steele is hell bent on turning our city’s youth into fodder for the jaws of commerce, and I guess we’re supposed to cheer along and marvel at what a great start in life our youth are getting, what great business skills they’re learning and how they will be wonderful worker bees for the corporatocracy. Is that it? Forgive me if I’m wrong here, but was there a problem of some kind I’m unaware of? Were businesses not choosing to locate in Nashville because our kids are dumb?

Look, I get that we need to educate our kids so they can go to college and get jobs; I get that we need to start them off in life on the right foot. I even applaud the idea of offering classes that educate kids for high-demand fields. But for crying out loud this Chamber of Commerce crap has got to stop. Y’all can just wait in line before you get your greedy paws on ‘em, okay? Let them be kids for a little while.

This is dehumanization, plain and simple. It’s telling our kids their value is only in their earning power.

[...]

And to Jay Steele, look: I know this is a radical idea for some of you young whippersnappers raised in a post-Reagan age, but I don’t happen to think that capitalism is the cure for every problem.

[...]

Slouka’s point was that an emphasis on math and science education at the expense of the humanities is a great way to create worker bees to feed the machinery of capitalism, and also a great way to starve the nation of critical thinking skills and knowledge which breeds dissent. It also devalues art, music, literature and the entire cultural spectrum of things which make life worth living.

It’s hard not to see capitalism’s creep into our schools, and watch as teachers are being devalued at every step, and then read about efforts to roll back child labor laws around the country and not wonder if there’s a connection.