Justice as a Bad Word

Economic justice, that is.

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

From A World of Progress, via Republic of T.

Ongoing

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

Data

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

Addendum

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

Saturday Afternoon

Acid incense and balloons...

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

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

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

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

Another 1%er standing with the 99%ers.

And gay retirement communities are in trouble.

Congratulations

to the St. Louis Cardinals!

Other Voices, Other Rooms

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

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

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

"You Don't Want Me to Vote."

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

From Southern Beale, with links.

Shady Marketing and that Social Media Stuff

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

Levity

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

OccupyMarines Represent!

Support for Occupy Wall Street:

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

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

Website is here.

(Link via twistedchick.)

Sometimes I Check in at Hullaballoo

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

A Gentle Reminder

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

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

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

Answering that pesky cui bono (who benefits) question.

I got two boxes of cookies.  Time to go.

Why Yes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do Si Do Your Partner

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

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

It's a Trap

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

Not Done Yet?

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

Of Note

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

"One D or two in Barsad?"

Comrade Misfit:

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

Not humming "La Marseillaise." Not at all.

Master Class

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

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

[...]

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

Heh.  Really, read the whole thing.

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

Stew

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

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

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

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

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

Also

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

[ETA:  10/10!]

On This Day in Different Years

John Lennon and Camille Saint-Saens.

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

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

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

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

And then he gets nasty.

And for the win:  Shark-fu:

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

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

Note

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

I liked the poem.

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

In Memoriam

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

Beyond Stupidity into Evil

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

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

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

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

See, this woman took her right to vote seriously.

Southern Beale speaks for me:

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

Two words: Fuck you.

Romney as Schultz

(Warning:  obscure '60s TV reference)

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

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

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

"I see nothing!"

Analogies are Not the Point of Sports

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

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

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

A Rebuttal and Rebuke to the New York Times

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

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

Followed by the grievances, which are many.

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

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

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

Bears Repeating

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

Vulcan Musing

On "bubbles."