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.])

Elimination

So September is here and I've been to some ball games, which reminds me:  Some teams are already mathematically eliminated from contention.

Namely:  National League:  Washington, Florida, Chicago, Houston.  American League:  Baltimore.  ETA:  And Kansas City, Minnesota, and Seattle.

In tangentially related news, Billy, a singularly dedicated S. F. Giants fan, has disappeared.

Labor Day 2011

You got the day off today and you're not a Federal or State employee (or in retail)?

Thank unions. (via skippy)

I mean, you don't want to be a hypocrite, do you? Like bashing unions on your union fought lunch break? Which means if you practice what you preach, you don't get a lunch break.

Corporations use to work employees 80+ hours a week, offer no breaks, hire children, offer horrid, unsanitary work conditions, paid literally next to nothing, and even murder. Not murder with a pen like they do today, but actual murder. They basically did whatever they wanted.

This is what they were like before unions. Don't take my word for it, look it up. [...] If we rid the world of unions tomorrow, who is to say that they won't go right back to the way they were merely 70 years ago? The GOP governor of Maine signed a bill to repeal child labor laws this year, maybe they are going back to their roots whether we have unions or not.

So conservatives, please practice what you preach and give up all these rights and leave the umbrella of these laws for they were brought to you by unions...

Followed by a list of practices fought for by unions. I might argue with a couple.


[crossposted]

ETA:  Brilliant at Breakfast has two posts on the subject:  one with music videos commemorating those who create value; one extensively quoting E. J. Dionne.

In Memoriam

Betty Skelton, "fastest woman on Earth."  Also passed the same tests as the Mercury 7.

Via Just An Earth-Bound Misfit, I.

"Can You Find Me Soft Asylum?"

Slactivist on dominionists:

Moses’ law also required two separate streams of tithing — one for the tabernacle or temple and one for the poor. This was not voluntary, but a mandatory and explicit redistribution of wealth. (Moses was way more of a statist than Sider ever dreamed of being.) In addition, there were a host of laws governing gleaning, harvesting and picking crops that forbade landowners from maximizing their harvests. Some of the grain, fruits and vegetables were required to be left in the field or on the vine so that they could be picked by the needy.

And on top of all that, the books of Moses are also filled with repeated blanket injunctions commanding everyone to be “open-handed” and to give freely and generously to the poor, to widows, orphans and strangers.

By highlighting all of that, Sider inadvertently shone a spotlight on the glaring hypocrisy of the theonomist’s self-serving selectivity when it came to Mosaic law. He didn’t mention them and his long discussion of Mosaic law was not in any way intended to have anything to do with them, but it happened, as a side-effect, to expose them as a bunch of dishonest, self-entitled buffoons and they did not enjoy that exposure.

And at skippy, DBK poses a question and gets some answers.  You can play, too.

There. Are. No. Words.

As more-or-less promised:  via Just An Earth-Bound Misfit I, links to Guardian articles on renditions and torture:

1. Inner workings of finance and logistics of rendition;
2. "How US firms profited from torture flights" with euphemisms; and
3. How much the planes cost (in monetary terms).

We really have turned into the Roman Empire, haven't we?  Shouldn't Caligula be in the wings?

So,

I'll link to the stuff in the Guardian about rendition and torture in the morning;  right now, via the Mills River Progressive, is OpEd News on the WTFness of law enforcement in these times.  And on the sidebar was this unfortunately named piece by Dr. Albert Ellis.

My head hurts now.