In Memoriam

• Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, neurologist (Nobel Prize co-winner)
• Jane Holmes Dixon, bishop
• Fontella Bass, singer
• Richard Adams, early same-sex marriage legal case
• Charles Durning, actor
• General Norman Schwarzkopf, which I mention only because someone brought up living American generals a few weeks ago without mentioning Stormin' Norman, and I thought that was...odd.

How Soon They Forget

1. There are only 3 World War II veterans left in Congress.  (Lifted from skippy.)
2. Workers' rights:

   Since the Reagan years, improvements in worker productivity have not translated into corresponding improvements in worker compensation. Profits often increase at the expense of workers as companies export jobs to take advantage of cheaper domestic or foreign labor. When workers lose the rights won through struggles culminating in the New Deal and afterwards, they are faced with increasing attempts by management to reduce benefits and wages. Taking away bargaining rights and effective union representation is inherent in the nature of Right to Work legislation. The only right workers are given in Right to Work laws is the right to work for less pay and/or benefits. This is borne out in employment statistics for states that enforce such laws and states that don’t have them.

   (Also lifted from skippy, though not the intended link.)
3. Stan Lee is 90!  (And you can catch all his Hitchcockian cameos!)
4. Something you may not have known about the late Jack Klugman.
5. Yes, I do have obituaries to post.  Later.

The Long Con

Southern Beale has figured out the Republican Party:

This isn’t a new revelation by any means — Rick Perlstein pretty much laid it out in The Long Con: Mail Order Conservatism — but I always assumed the con referred to a few leeches sucking off the system. There will always be some Glenn Beck types playing the rubes in Missouri and Tennessee, selling their snake oil and taking advantage of the gullible in flyover states. But I didn’t realize the whole fruit was rotten. I didn’t realize, until now, that the con is the point of the Republican Party. The Republican Party and all of its ancillary operations are simply mechanisms for making money. Again: end, full stop.

When everyone and everything is for sale, scamsters will thrive because there's nothing of value outside of mere money, but if Moliére and Jonson did not convince modern people of the pitfalls of money-worship, surely I can't.

And a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and those who just like the idea.

In Memoriam

Jack Klugman, actor.

Brass Tacks Spent Ammo Idolatry

Some folks who I like will take exception to this.  That is their right.  Some folks who I could care less about will also take exception to this.  Too bad.

Yesterday a horrific thing happened.

I'm not going to argue about the shooter's mental health.  I'm not going to speculate on his family life.  I'm not interested in his motive, although I hope it can be reconstructed from his writings and whatever he tweeted.  If he tweeted.

The arguments for gun control and its opposite have also been made.  Many times.  As a science fiction person, I'd like guns to be sentient and telepathic, and if they detect that their wielders are about to shoot another human being, they should fire prematurely and incapacitate that shooter's precious body parts.  That would probably take warfare back to hack-and-slash, but, BIG SECRET HERE we don't need war.

I'd just like a bit of honesty here.

Some people (I do not agree with them) claim that the United States is a Christian nation.  That is, that we [fsvo "we"] worship Jesus Christ as the Son of God.  I think Christian-Americans give the Anointed One a lot of lip service, and with some (usually the loudest and most vociferous) it stops there.

Some people hold the gun sacrosanct.  No, I'm not kidding.

Now, a gun is a tool.  Granted, it is a tool with very few applications, but a tool it is.  It is not a holy relic.  It is not the Hand of God.  It can only deal death and wounds.

If the lives of schoolchildren are worth less than the right to bear arms, please say so.  Come clean.  If this nation as a nation worships the Gun, let's end the hypocrisy.  "One nation, under the Gun, indivisible."

(If hunting really were a sport, shouldn't deer be armed as well?)

If firearms are the true objects of veneration, perhaps we can have less cant about how Christian we are while people starve in the streets and stuff.

[ETA:  No More Mister Nice Blog saying somewhat similar things.]

Reminder

Jon Carroll:

It should be remembered that unions are more than just organizations promoting the concerns of their mem[ber]s. They have also been powerful agents of social change. When the civil rights movement was getting started in the South, it was the unions that marched in solidarity with Dr. Martin Luther King. It was labor unions that promoted the idea of universal health care.
So a move against labor unions is, in essence, a move against the 20th century.

Santayana Strikes Again

Driftglass (the Mike Royko Memorial Emeritus Chair of the Department of Journalism at Unseen University) on vast conspiracies:

Which is why, even though artifacts like the Mann & Ornstein critique remain virtually unknown or unacknowledged or simply denied by the wider world, we on the Left pass them around like Zappa bootlegs. We are the ones who refuse to forget what was actually said and done during the Age of Clinton. Who refused to forget Valerie Plame. Who refuse to forget a report named Jeff Gannon, who was not a reporter and was not named Jeff Gannon. Who refuse to forget Lee Atwater. Who refuse to forget how we were mocked and derided for suggesting that criminal wars and reckless tax cuts would lead to crippling deficits. We refuse to forget these historical facts and hundreds of other because, even though it isn't much, like the Irish monks who painstakingly copied and maintained the documentary record of Western Civilization during its dark age, we will not let the truth gutter out and die without a fight.  [Links in original.]

Lest we forget. As it were.  Also, fundraising time over there.

Cindy Lou Who, Me?

Driftglass has kicked off his postponed fundraiser with a Dr. Seuss parody, and that's giving enough away.

Why the Drug War Won't Be Won

Lewis Lapham essay, reprinted at AlterNet.  Orotund but true:

So again with the war that America has been waging for the last 100 years against the use of drugs deemed to be illegal. The war cannot be won, but in the meantime, at a cost of $20 billion a year, it facilitates the transformation of what was once a freedom-loving republic into a freedom-fearing national security state.

Novelist to Spy

About Dennis Wheatley, why Ian Fleming's spy is famous, and really bad intelligence services.

Fraud Fraud

• Over at The Brad Blog, a little electoral mythbusting going on:
  

  Quite simply put, if people are going to argue that Barack Obama's four million vote popular vote margin and his decisive 332-206 electoral vote margin were achieved because of fraud, they are going to have to do better than to continue to promote fake reports of exaggerated turnout and real reports of Romney's colossal failure to secure the votes of urban African-American voters. They are going to need compelling evidence, of which to date, there is none.

  Article by Keith Darling-Brekhus. Using, y'know, research and evidence.
• Via skippy and MoveOn.org:  Graphic of union benefits, most of which people take for granted, or why we should support strong unions.
• Vagabond Scholar on the fiscal speed bump negotiations:

  Not that any of this is new, but this latest political battle shows once again that:
  1. Republicans do not care about good policy or responsible governance.
  2. Republicans do not care about public opinion. (Numerous polls show that the public supports raising taxes on the rich.)
  3. Republicans do not care about election results (unless they win).
  4. Republicans do not believe in fair dealing and good faith.
  5. The media will not report political disputes accurately if doing so means criticizing one party significantly more.

• Republic of T and the season to be jolly.  (Blame Emperor Constantine.  You might as well.)

By the way,

Is it selective reading on my part, or have conservatives been sounding like very small children lately?  They seem to gloat if they "win," and whine when they don't get their way.  (There are other examples; it's an embarrassment of riches.)

The Dough-Re-Mi

• Gold and its properties, from Naked Capitalism.  I actually remembered some of this...
• The possibility that the Republicans are trying to wreck the economy, from the Guardian (before the election, which renders some of the points moot and some...suspicious) via skippy.
• I can get a secure fax solution for my medical practice (yes, the What?? was strong when I got a good look at it; spam just gets weirder and weirder).

Gaffer Twist

Lance Mannion (via Avedon's Sideshow, where I discovered that a blog on her blogroll that I click maybe twice a year is now a Japanese porn site) on Social Security:

But the larger plan was to put a program in place to be built on and expanded so that---and here was the crazy idea---nobody would have to work until they dropped or else face a cold and hungry and penurious old age.

The idea was that none of us should have to ask permission from the likes of Lloyd Blankfein to live past the age when we can push a mop or swing a shovel or load a truck, sew a stitch, drive a rivet, sweat pipe, bag groceries, flip burgers, gut fish, make beds, haul trash, dig coal, pick lettuce, or clean other people’s houses and raise their kids.

The idea was that it wasn’t the natural order of things that most people should break their backs, break their hearts, and have their spirits broken working all their lives to make a few people rich.

The idea was that there ought to be more to life than toil and sorrow and that at some point everybody should be able to lay down their tools and enjoy a few years of rest in comfort and security before they die.

(Leaving aside that it was also carefully designed to exclude domestic workers originally.)

That's why we need to ensure that no cuts are made.  The odds are that you will get old and Wall Street is a crapshoot.  Really, the 19th and early 20th centuries were not good places to live.

Serious Business

• Via Hullaballoo, Jobs and Growth, Not Austerity.  (A large clutch of economists approve this message.)
• Christmas, materialism, and the Amish:  Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast waxes thoughtful.
• Long interview with Julian Assange (Democracy Now via AlterNet).
• Follow-up on fast food workers' strike.  (Hullaballoo.)

What?

From Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog:  Pundit With Issues.

Changes

African American community becoming more accepting of gay people.  With personal testimony.  By Terrance of Republic of T.

"No, No, No, No, He's Outside, Looking In"

• Eighteenth century skeleton in a twenty-first century world.  
• Nineteenth century economic and social ideals in a twenty-first century world, or why I wouldn't let Ron Paul take out my garbage, much less represent me in Congress.
• Fast-food workers on strike.

  Fast food workers in New York City earn just below $9.00 an hour on average, and rarely receive health care, paid sick days or other benefits that make it possible to live in an expensive urban center like New York City. These workers are also often given only 20 or 30 hours of work a week, which keeps their annual income far below the poverty line. According to organizers on the campaign, many workers have to resort to collecting public assistance, eating at their restaurants to save money and sometimes even living in homeless shelters--necessities that not only make their lives incredibly challenging but also put intense strain on the city’s social safety net.

  Mind you, this writer forgot Wisconsin's troubles earlier this year.  But that's a quibble.

I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band

Yes, I'm on something of a Moody Blues kick.  How could you tell?

Obsidian Wings is running an interesting symposium on wages, labor, MBAs, profit, and what has gone wrong with business since the '80s, beginning with an essay by Doctor Science and running through the comment section (only one attempt at standard conservative victim-blaming), viewpoints, history, etc.  A chunk of business woes seems to be bad management and being rewarded for bad management, for example the Hostess bankruptcy:

But what’s the big risk for Hostess if it doesn’t offer bonuses that average about $100,000 per person? That they’ll quit and the company will go broke? That business will suffer? That the Hostess image could be tarnished?

Hostess is already bankrupt. All that’s happening is a sell-off and winding up. It has no image other than as a once-profitable enterprise with universally-recognized brands that was driven into bankruptcy through a combination of lousy management and bitter unions. While managers may blame workers for driving the ultimate stake through its heart, it would be more than a little disingenuous to suppose management actions had nothing whatever to do with the decline. Unions, dumb as they can be, don’t kill healthy companies for fun.

While requesting permission for the bonuses, Hostess’s lawyers also reported that it can’t pay retiree benefits, and quit contributing to the pension plan more than a year ago.

(Kelly McParland at National Post.com; emphasis in original.  Via skippy.)

Additionally, education seems to be unnecessary for many jobs (although it's not really the education; it's the hiring filter).

Hmmmmm.  The impression one might get is that corporate America only wants to hire young healthy kids fresh out of college/university with advanced degrees for $10/hour.

It's one of the reasons strong unions are needed.  Another has to do with how labor gets organized in the US; Jane McAlevey talks about that and other matters in an interview with Sarah Jaffe at AlterNet.  (I managed to mislay the URL; thankfully, Avedon linked to it today.)

And incidentally?  Florida Republicans come clean; they don't want you to vote.

...And Fill His Mouth With Garlic

Apparently Mr. Norquist is not worried.

Terrance (Republic of T) on the "fiscal cliff," Norquistism, and risk:

The stakes are different for Democrats, because the stakes are different for Democrats’ constituent groups. It’s unlikely that wealthy Americans are will go hungry or go without medical care if their taxes increase. But it’s very likely that many elderly, disabled, low-income, and middle- and working-class Americans will face such choices if Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are subject to deep cuts. These groups have traditionally supported Democrats, because the party could be counted on to defend these programs. That will change if they’re convinced that they can’t count on Democrats — or anyone else — to defend programs that are important to them[.]

In Memoriam

Marvin Miller, Major League Baseball Players Association.

All His Sins Remembered

Back in 2008 or some distant past, either I or Avedon discovered Bruce Bartlett and mentioned him to the other because he seemed to make sense for a conservative and then there was this election and we kind of forgot about him.

(People of the "left" do not think about people of the "right" nearly as much as people on the "right" seem to think.)

This is where he's been.

I’ve paid a heavy price, both personal and financial, for my evolution from comfortably within the Republican Party and conservative movement to a less than comfortable position somewhere on the center-left. Honest to God, I am not a liberal or a Democrat. But these days, they are the only people who will listen to me. When Republicans and conservatives once again start asking my opinion, I will know they are on the road to recovery.

I got that link from Driftglass, who lets Messrs. Bartlett and Sullivan have it with both barrels.

Honestly, what can you say about someone who has salvaged his own career as a Fearless, Truth-Waving Conservative by frantically bootlegging virtually the entire Liberal critique of Conservatism while at the same time maintaining his media credentials by joining the media embargo on acknowledging that Liberals even exist?

AlterNet's Alex Kane summarizes for those who don't want to read the actual article.

And Melissa McEwan at Shakesville suggests that absolving the man of prior opinions may be premature.

No More Mister Nice Blog has some good links, too, although not to Mr. Bartlett.

Viewing With Alarm, Part n

• The Murder Program, presented by Arthur Silber.
• "Push to step up domestic use of drones."

  The drone makers have sought congressional help to speed their entry into a domestic market valued in the billions. The 60-member House of Representatives' "drone caucus" - officially, the House Unmanned Systems Caucus - has helped push that agenda. And over the past four years, caucus members have drawn nearly $8 million in drone-related campaign contributions, an investigation by Hearst Newspapers and the Center for Responsive Politics shows.

No point in lighting the beacons; it's raining too hard.

I Didn't Like the 19th Century the First Time, Either

"Christian" poultry supplier (in horrific conditions for the workers) donating turkeys to a Missouri Air Force base:

According to a 2008 Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety hearing, "House of Raeford has repeatedly been cited by State and Federal occupational safety and health agencies: 130 serious safety violations since 2000, among the most of any U.S. poultry company." And it appears that the violations continue, as with this one from June 2011 where OSHA found that House of Raeford "did not furnish to each of his employees conditions of employment and a place of employment free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees, in that employees were exposed to extended exposure to anhydrous ammonia due to improperly maintained/fitted doors where the broken doors allowed emergency ventilation of the atmosphere in the engine rooms to be reduced."

Read the rest, please.

Nibbling Away at the Privacy You Don't Have

Monitoring for lower rates, the surveillance state buy-in.

Hey, You're Welcome

A thank-you note from Meteor Blades at Daily Kos to the opponents of voter suppression, from those who did the research and publicized and educated, to those who stood on line for hours waiting to register, waiting to vote.

(Via private email list.)

Note to incipient fascists:  Do not mess with old women.  They know about older and fouler things than you.

Let the River Run

A little something about copyright and its purpose.  (Mercury Rising.)

There has been a certain pressure to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian fighting.  Folks, this blog snarks about politics.  The Middle East is not a snarkable situation.  Sorry.

In Memoriam

Larry Hagman, actor.  Announcement via Driftglass, who provides a video clip from Fail-Safe.

The Rest of the Cake

• That's Billie Holiday on the old MacBook.  Mmmmmmm, Billie Holiday...
• Lincoln, buddies with railroad magnates (which isn't in the movie).
• Fewer men are into casual sex than is generally believed.
• Nudism, the movement.
• College admissions and the stacked deck.
• Republic of T on a group encouraging clerks to avoid issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples.

  I’ll keep this simple.
  
  First, once you decide its against your religion to carry out the duties of your position, it’s time to find a new job. Voters in these states have spoken, and marriage equality is the law. If you have a religious objection to serving certain people in the course of doing your job, you don’t belong in that job. Period.

  Further, that group has its own brewing scandal.  The only variation here is that the attorney is female.  Otherwise, Hypocrisy 101.
• Pat Robertson (yawwwwnnnnn) starting up the creaking machinery for the war on Christmas.  Really, Pat, just hang tinsel from yourself.

Last Few Drops of Milk

I hope.

• From lionization to not-even-a-bag-of-chips, the arc of Mr. Petraeus' reputation, by Mikey Weinstein at AlterNet.  
• David Simon (also at AlterNet) decries the American journalists' preoccupation with sex.  (Also, he independently seems to have discovered what I think of as the Michael Jackson rule:  Unless you're going to have sex in real life with someone famous, that person's orientation and sex life are only points of information, not exciting gossip.)

Jeremiad

Terrance at Republic of T explains to conservatives/Republicans, mostly using very small words simple language, why "minorities" won't vote for them.  With instances.  It is a spanking, and they won't read it, unfortunately, because they're chicken since Terrance's analysis is spot-on.

The reason that African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Women, gays, young people and a whole lot of white people didn’t vote for your party is simple. You spent much of the last four years insulting these groups with your rhetoric, and adding injury to insult with your policies. The biggest surprise after your shock at losing the election is your anger at all of these groups for not voting Republican. Your expectation that any of these groups would vote your way, and apparent belief that you’d given them any reason to do so, is beyond mystifying.

And then the Republicans get detailed like a '75 Chevy.

Future Reference

"An American Feminist Literary Canon." Links to several feminist/womanist essays in one place (Echidne of the Snakes).

"Just a Wanderer on the Face of This Earth"

From nbcnews.com, via Rising Hegemon, via Avedon's Sideshow:  The Benghazi hearing.

Why yes, that is "Legend of a Mind" playing in the background.

Ackerman went on to say that Republicans had "the audacity to come here" when the administration requested, for worldwide security, "$440 million more than you guys wanted to provide. And the answer is that you damn didn't provide it! You REDUCED what the administration asked for to protect these people. Ask not who the guilty party is, it's you! It is us. It is this committee, and the things that we insist that we need have to cost money."

In New York, the word we use is "chutzpah."

Chicken McNuggets

• The Rude One found an adult Republican.
• Paul Krugman at truthout on privatization mania, via nagasvoice at Dreamwidth.
• Amazing article (with video) on Dock Ellis, who should be better known for different things.

Truth and Collywobbles

• Harper's has made this article available to non-subscribers:  "How to Rig an Election."

  Since the American Revolution, election fraud has been attempted by every major political party, with frequent intraparty allegations, such as the claim of Ron Paul delegates that the rules were rigged against them at this year’s Republican National Convention. To say that Democrats haven’t committed their fair share of what were once quaintly called “shenanigans” would be disingenuous. Huey Long was a Democrat, as was virtually every candidate ever floated by Tammany Hall, not to mention Lyndon Johnson—whose election to the U.S. Senate in 1948, according to Robert Caro’s Means of Ascent, relied on flagrant vote tampering. Still, the main beneficiary of recent trends in election stealing seems to be the American right.
  
  This is no accident. As the twenty-first century unfolds, American politics continues to veer precipitously to the right, even as the demographic base for such a shift—older white conservative males—keeps shrinking. The engine of this seismic movement is a strategic alliance of corporate interests promoted by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire and orchestrated by Karl Rove and the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council. And meanwhile, the American right has in recent years been empowered by a slew of upset victories that range from unexpected to implausible, and that have frequently been accompanied by technical failures and anomalies, which are swept under the rug as rapidly as possible.

• You have no privacy.  None.

  But "privacy"? You don't have any. You haven't had any for a long, long time. And this latest story? Fodder for conversation, and outraged posts and articles of course, for a week or two, perhaps three. Then everybody will forget about it. There will be another BIG STORY to talk about, another BIG CONTROVERSY. It's a circus, with flashing lights and lots of colors. Oh, the beautiful colors!

• Harry Shearer (yes, that Harry Shearer, on leave from the comedy gig) on what New Jersey (that whole area, actually) can learn from New Orleans.
• The Petraeus business as Shakespearean.  See also Glenn Greenwald's take on the press coverage.  ETA:  Greenwald on the Surveillance State, via albatross in a comment at Making Light, reinforcing the second point above.  

But Wait! There's More!

Rich Abdill at Wonkette (remember Wonkette?  It's still out there) has what would have been the Spy magazine take on the Petraeus affair if that magazine still existed.

The .gif is a hoot, but there was this:

We also knew that Petraeus and Broadwell then broke up, ending the first ever documented case of someone in the military community being unfaithful to their spouse. Then, Petraeus sent her “thousands” of emails, because he, apparently, is quite a dork, and somehow not at all busy running the Central Intelligence Agency.

Isn't it time for a Kardashian to have a "wardrobe malfunction" or something?

ETA:  Via giandujakiss on Dreamwidth, who actually sees Wonkette.

EFTA:  The best headline ever!  If there's a tag for this, that will be it.  Also, a brief tutorial about the security aspects.

2001

There are, apparently, more questions in the Petraeus affair.  Because there has to be a conspiracy in there somewhere.  (There may well be--there are certainly unexplained coincidences and a shenanigan or two--but what I'm seeing is "We haven't milked this dry yet!")

ETA:  Double-backflip-secret plan (Borowitz.  Not the conspiracy you're looking for).

EFTA:  No More Mister Nice Blog sniffs at the original investigation and the inaction of a Republican.

Apparently this mess does have legs.  Hairy legs.  Also, somebody will talk.  They can't help it.  I can't help wondering what's being concealed by all this smoke and mirrors.  Are the budget talks going that badly?

"And Lying, She Knew, Was a Sin..."

So, morality.

(I'm more of an ethics person--ethics largely overlap morals, but there are some differences.  For example, a case can be made [although don't look at me; I won't make it] that it is moral to marry someone you do not love.  It is not, however, ethical.  Morality is mostly associated with religion, though it need not be; people who insist that you must be religious to have morals are [to paraphrase somebody or other] trying to sell you something.)

Ideally, morals should be used as a guideline to living a life that harms no one and respects your neighbors as people with their own lives trying to do the same.  The enforcement mechanism of morality is shame, with occasional removal from society for serious infractions.  This works reasonably well in small communities in which the members, children to ancient ones, know the other members.

Largely because there's not much privacy.

The problem comes in with the human desire/need to be superior in some way to other people.  Theodore Sturgeon devoted some paragraphs in Venus Plus X to how that worked in regard to sexism.  (Which means that Mr. Sturgeon's unconscious sexism becomes painfully evident by the time one finishes the book.)  In the area of morality, one gets serious moral actors, who appear to be living highly moral lives, following the dictates of the moral system, and expecting you to do the same and tsk-tsk-ing when you fail.  There are people who believe that all others need to be pressed into one moral Jello mold, whether or not other people possess the same sense of right and wrong.  There are people who insist on rigid adherence to a set of moral beliefs that they themselves ignore.

Yes, gentlemen-who've-been-caught-with-prostitutes-and/or-boys, I'm talking about you there.  Yes, "pro-life until your daughter needs an abortion," I mean you.  Yes, "small government and fiscal responsibility" chickenhawks who lied us into a wholly unnecessary war (lying and bearing false witness?  Immoral), I'm giving you epic side-eye.  It came to the point about two scandals ago that I assume that "conservatives" who harp on "morality" are a scandal waiting to happen.

The politically conservative Religious Right which isn't in the US would be the Jello mold people; they focus their moral spotlight on abortion and sexuality.  They got a big surprise on election day:

That claim — that framing of these issues as right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, biblical vs. unbiblical, moral vs. immoral — was asserted and accepted for most of the religious right’s 30-year run.

But not any more. That claim is still being asserted, but it is no longer being accepted.

Part of what happened on Tuesday was that millions of people rejected that claim on moral grounds. This was not just a political or pragmatic disagreement that preserved their essential claim of godly morality. It was a powerful counter-claim — the claim that the religious right is advocating immoral, unjust and cruelly unfair policies on both of its hallmark issues. Knee-jerk opposition to legal abortion and to gay rights weren’t just rejected as bad policy, but as bad morals — as being on the wrong side of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, biblical vs. unbiblical, moral vs. immoral.

OK, how about marital infidelity? CIA head David Petraeus resigned suddenly, and it turned out he'd had an affair.  With his biographer.  And it was discovered by accident.  Oooh, moral panic!

Nope.

He's already resigned, rather than spending time denying the whole thing.  His boss expressed disappointment.  It's less the adultery than the security problem--the CIA always feared that gay agents could be blackmailed (that shame thing), and here's the chief engaging blah blah blah. No legs.  If it's remembered six months from now, I will be astonished.  (10@10, during the airing of 10 songs from 1997, slipped in what sounded like a conversation in a bad romcom, and only at the very end did I twig to who those women were and who was under discussion, because I have largely spaced the timing and the details of that scandal, although I have to wonder how my former employer [who was a staunch Republican and very shocked] took the news that the head caller-for-impeachment was, at the time, doing the very same thing.  I suppose it depends on which side one butters one's politician.)  As for the other party in the affair, Mr. Somerby at The Daily Howler compares her behavior to the press corps' fawning on (some of) the political candidates in 1999, minus the sex.  Which, ew (the fawning.  Not the sex).

Arthur Silber, who has been calling out the evils of people in power for years, has a long essay on the prime and uncalled-out sin of murder (what?  You thought morals were only about sexual improprieties?  That's what they want you to think!) of the First Nations/Native American peoples and enslavement (what?  Slavery has been accepted in the past, but it's never been moral.  And don't even try to slide libertarian or BDSM arguments at me.  Not having.  Period) of indigenous people/Africans.

Although systematic, deliberate murder on a vast scale -- murder of an ungraspable number of innocent victims -- is woven into the very fabric of America, we have managed to convince ourselves that it was "necessary" and "justified," that we represent "civilization" and have no choice but to eradicate those "barbarian," "subhuman" forces that threaten us. We have managed to avoid the fact that, with comparatively very rare exceptions, no threat has ever existed until we intentionally provoked it. We learned these strategies of avoidance and self-deception from the beginning; today, they are central to our national mythology, a mythology that is false in every significant respect. This system of lies now operates with staggering effectiveness, blanketing the country and most of its population in a fog of unreality.

I don't believe in American Exceptionalism, except when I do ('50s-'60s childhood and a touch of High Ideals will do that), and over time I have come to understand that we are a country, like any other, with a history and a civic religion (not to be confused with spiritual religion), which other countries also possess (different ones, to be sure), and humans behaving like humans.  That is, both well and badly.

I don't think Americans should quit trying to be moral.  I think we should recognize, however, that a lot of "moral actors" are acting in bad faith, and that people who whine about morality do not have your best interests at heart.  (Also, we need to dump the "I'm squicked"="That's immoral" take on sex.  But that's just my opinion.)  It's time for adult conversation about morality.

(I heard that.)

PS:  This is the 2,000th post.  Yay!

Historic Accomplishments

This isn't 1968. The hippies are punching back.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, ladies and gentlemen.

Infinite Forgettery

So let me get this part out of the way:  I don't read Daily Kos.

(Yeah, you say, but what else is new?  You do Blogroll Amnesty Day.  You deliberately link to not-so-well-known writers who happen to write rings around most of the New York Times overpaid opinion floggers.  Why would you bother with the Great Orange Satan?  And is that Fleetwood Mac in the background?)

Well, I didn't read it even back in the day.  That is just the sort of dork I am.  I respect it as a blog, but it's huge and generates its own gravity.  And I'm not sure any good writer has come from there since the late Steve Gilliard.

I don't read Eschaton, either, unless I get pointed at something specific (although there was the time somebody pointed me at the "Total Eclipse of the Heart Literal Version," which caused Deth by Laphter--and which was several pages away two days later).

All that to explain that delux_vivens at Dreamwidth linked to this essay by HamdenRice -- at Daily Kos.

...[T]here were dueling diaries over the weekend about Dr. King's legacy, and there is a diary up now (not on the rec list but on the recent list) entitled, "Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream Not Yet Realized." I'm sure the diarist means well as did the others. But what most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind. [Emphasis in original.]

Now. I have to say that this article grabbed me by the throat, largely because of the situations he later describes (and the fact that many of those conservatives/libertarians out there would like very much to return to this state of affairs), but mostly because --

Well, a lot of the struggle has been ... forgotten.

Yes.  Good Old American Historical Amnesia.  The struggle is dusty footage and old folks now.  A candidate for anything other than dog-catcher who can say "Oh, I would repeal that," and remain unpelted by rotten tomatoes exists.

Of course only the feelgood parts remain.

NB:  I am going to post this, a year later (originally written in September, 2011), but I still think it needs research and work.  The "feelgood parts remaining" is a human thing.  We are not angels, and we're actually closer to the animals than we'd like to think.  The "Drafts" folder is now largely cleared out.

Hi!

Just a quick shout-out to my Indonesian audience.  Nice to see you!

(See, that's why I don't "play" to a "demographic.")

It's Official

No, I didn't stay up biting my nails.  I don't do that anymore.

The New York Times has the story.

President Obama won handily.  (And what brings the blub is that people waited on lines for hours in order to vote.  Hours.  Four years ago, I said that if you could do that for a movie, you could do that to vote.  And we have.  Not that there were no shenanigans, you understand.)  The rape-apologists (I was thinking of a different epithet, but let that go) were spanked defeated.

Other news:  same-sex marriage approved by voters in Maine and Maryland; marijuana legalized for recreational use in Colorado and Washington.

There were some changes in the House of Representatives, but it's still majority Republican.  So we'll see.

But I will sleep better tonight.

Gooooooooooooood Morning, Vietnaaaaam

Round-up of Republican Satanic panic voter suppression stories, courtesy of Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast.  (And why am I not surprised that the "True the Vote" people are crooks?  And that's just one of the links.)

ETA:  Reports from Mercury Rising, Southern Beale, and Vagabond Scholar. Further updates as warranted.

Oh, and I've already voted.

Republicans?  That's a lollipop.  You do know what to do with a lollipop, right?

The Tea Leaves

I don't expect Tea Party stalwarts to get the joke.

• Jesse Curtis makes some predictions.
• Pamela Merritt reflects on voter education ... and wolves.
• AlterNet:  Republicans trying to introduce the specter of rigged electronic voting machines.  Er...anyone remember who owns those machines?  And which way Republican Satanic panic voter fraud has been running?
• ETA:  Speaking of voter fraud--Echidne of the Snakes on the threats to democracy from both sides.
• Some quotes on the election, from Anna van Z.
• Something Obama should be promoting.
• Ohio voting problems.
• "God bless the people who stand on lines for simple justice..."  (Florida early voting.)
• No More Mister Nice Blog:  An inappropriate simile from Peggy Noonan quoting Walker Percy.
• Some pseudo-Seuss for your entertainment.
• Why stolen elections matter.  ("Stollen" elections come down to which filling you prefer.)

  Which candidate gets your vote is not our concern here. As Americans, we agree on one thing: all citizens must have their right to a ballot and to have it counted. In the long run, our one best hope for a sustainable future is the power of an fully enfranchised people.

Extra credit For future reference:  Article in AlterNet about understanding the South.  (It reads like special pleading to me, but I could just be twitchy today.)

ETA:  Why activism is ineffective (because I just saw it.  There's a lot of stuff at AlterNet, and I don't always jump on intriguing titles).

Wee Bit o' Snark

Bribery in Ohio.

Stuff

Mercury Rising special.

• Reality says GOP is lying.
• Reasons to vote NO on voter restrictions.
• Another voter fraud case not involving anyone Republican Satanic panic Voter ID would prevent from voting.

Of A Saturday Morning Before 9 AM (!)

• Vagabond Scholar (Batocchio) on the "civility vs. honesty" cage match.  And why honesty must win, or we're all in trouble.  (Via skippy.)
  

  In today's political landscape, clutching one's pearls and bemoaning the lack of "bipartisanship" is like praying for less arson while voting to defund firefighters. Or praying for less crime while voting to defund cops and after-school programs. Or praying for better education while firing teachers to balance the budget and attacking the teachers that remain as lazy, incompetent, overpaid slackers. (Oh, wait, the last one especially is actually happening. Funny, that.) The biggest problem in American politics is not a lack of "bipartisanship" – it's the preponderance of bullshit. It's that low-information and middle-information voters, and the entire corporate media empire that caters to them, cannot and will not call out extremism and irresponsibility.[Emphasis added.]

• I linked to this on the other side, but Daisy's also put it up: The Whedon "endorsement" of Zomney.
• Business Week's reaction to Sandy.  Via Southern Beale.
• Roger Ebert on his occasional forays into political writing and some reactions to that.
• Jesse Curtis endorses Obama with reservations.
  

  Now here's where the movie I've been watching is even more different: I voted for John McCain in 2008. And as Obama's presidency began I had a favorable view of the Republican Party. These past four years have been my political education, as I graduated college and started to follow the news closely. I was shocked by what I saw, especially last summer. I had not imagined that a political party could be as reckless and unpatriotic as the Republicans in congress have been these past four years. While I acknowledge a significant evolution in my views, it is important to note the extent to which I retain many of my traditional beliefs but have been revolted by the extremism of the Republican Party. And that has made me appreciate President Obama's calm, pragmatic governance all the more. I detest radicalism, and that fact points pretty clearly to voting for Obama on Tuesday.

• Let's talk about income inequality and watch conservative punditti squirm.
  

  And his demand, that people who discuss inequality go after root causes and tie those to specific outcomes, is a deliberate effort to muddy debate. Cowen can’t pretend not to know that inequality is the result of numerous causes, including tax, education and employment policies, and social safety nets. And it’s not hard to notice how he makes a not very subtle appeal to prejudice, with his evocation of angry poor urban people (those brown and black underclass types!) as problems in and of themselves.

  Naked Capitalism. Because it's about the money.

"Move 'em On, Head 'em Up"

As sung by Frankie Laine, who also sang the theme for Blazing Saddles.

• I have the itch that NaNoWriMo supposedly scratches. It just won't stay in one place long enough to scratch it to satisfaction.  Also, I trumped up some background that now just sits there going "You can't make me assimilate, ha-ha!"  Also, murdering the obnoxious cousin is too easy.
• Charles II at Mercury Rising with a different reason for the Electoral College.
• Apparently, Republicans are trying to delegitimatize Nate Silver (of 538).
• The voter suppression anecdote being used to prove the need for voter suppression--excuse me, tightening the laws against in-person voter fraud--appears to come from another country, and besides, the wench is dead.  Sunlight disperses vampires, does it not?
• It wasn't only Puritans:  the Founding Fathers' discouragement of pleasures.  (AlterNet excerpt from A Renegade History of the United States.)
• Via AlterNet, Stephen Colbert's video rant about Sandy-the-storm.
• What a "Biblically-governed" nation might look like:

  Only within the last 50 or 60 years, now that they've finally accepted they have no realistic hope of changing it, has the religious right flip-flopped and started claiming that the Constitution meant to establish a Christian nation all along. This staggeringly dishonest, wholesale rewriting of history has become their stock in trade, to the point of having full-time propagandists who obscure historical fact and promote the Christian-nation myth. These falsehoods filter into the political mainstream, until we have absurdities like Rick Perry claiming that the United States, a secular and democratic republic, was based on the legal code of an ancient theocratic monarchy. We, as liberals and progressives, should know better than to accept this falsehood. We have every reason to speak out and uphold America's proud history as a secular republic founded on reason and governed by the democratic will.

  AlterNet, including attempts over the years to claim Christian-nation status.
• The Protestant Work Ethic as a Menace 2 Society.
• Echidne of the Snakes on misogynists and their assumptions:  Part I.  Part II.  Part III.  It is probably best to have a hot shower standing by for this, not because of Echidne's deconstructions, but for the sludge she has to go through to do them.
• Jesse Curtis wades through Dinesh D'Souza's impenetrable piece of propaganda so you don't have to.
• And twistedchick gives Mr. Romney both barrels.

A Brief Reminder

For East Coast, Gulf Coast, West Coast people, people who live where it floods, blizzards, has earthquakes, or is facing the zombie apocalypse:  The states should do the emergency management.  (The campaign has of course walked that back--it's in the article, which points out the flaw in this particular statement.)

Mr. Brown (of Hurricane Katrina infamy fame) thinks Mr. Obama responded to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy too quickly.  There might have been political reasons for quick action.  I seem to recall that the federal reaction to Katrina was somewhat glacial, but I'm sure Wikepedia will correct my misapprehension.

Stuff the "Christian" right wing (non-hockey)(oh, right, there's a hockey lock-out on) fears.

No matter how this election turns out, the endgame has already begun: America is becoming more multicultural, more gay-friendly and more feminist every day. But as every hunter knows, a wounded or cornered quarry is the most dangerous. Even as the white, patriarchal, Christian hegemony declines, its backlash politics become more vicious.

Stay Safe, Everybody

STAY SAFE.  THAT MEANS YOU.

World! Series! Sweep!

Giants!

(Which means I can now wear the 2010 t-shirt and won't jinx 'em.)

A Little Parallel

Mike Lofgren's article, "How Democracies Die," in Truthout.

Because you know what is said about the inability to learn from history.

One suggestion and a two-part alert:  "How to Organize Around Elections" from Lawyers, Guns & Money and "Is the Media Walking Us into Another War?" at Harper's.

Hayek-ing Up That Hairball

Uses the word "swindle," too.

To give a comparative sense for the historic scale of the swindle, it is worth noting that the entire inflation-adjusted cost of World War II was $3.6 trillion.(11)

How did this happen?

In the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set out to reconfigure and liberate Western capitalism by shrinking government's role in the economy based on the neoliberal concept that markets are "self-regulating" and would produce unprecedented societal wealth if deregulated. Using the ideas of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek of the famed Austrian School as macro-economic underpinning, Reagan and Thatcher sought to limit or eliminate government regulation that might inhibit the actions and movement of capital.

From the start of this Reagan-Thatcher revolution, the "trickle down" theory of wealth was accompanied by promises of a smaller, less intrusive state, except for a strong military. Fast forward through 30-plus years of nearly uninterrupted neoliberal policymaking - Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were deregulating neoliberal champions - and not only do we have the most expensive, heavily militarized, war-prone, increasingly inequitable and intrusive state in US (and British) history, it is also the most indebted.

Neoliberalism is failing on its own terms, yet it continues to define US politics due to its appeal among a sizable and particularly fervent segment of the electorate.

Original article at Truthout; link is to AlterNet via skippy.

That "self-regulating markets" stuff is libertarian fantasy, by the way.  Sooner rather than later, every market has to be regulated.  Human beings are neither angels nor particularly self-interested long term.

An Actual Moral Stance

Arthur Silber on the media and state-sanctioned murder:

It's quite funny, in an entirely horrific way. The State has so perfected its media domination -- and the media have so willingly neutered themselves -- that explicit censorship has been rendered irrelevant and completely unnecessary. That's very useful from the State's perspective: the State can guarantee that coverage will be exactly what it wants, while preserving the mirage of an active, free-ranging press, dedicated to ferreting out the truth. My goodness, whatever would we do without a free press? That's exactly what we're finding out.

[...] I must emphasize -- and here, I must stop to note that I am forever emphasizing the actual nature of the subject of these articles, for it is precisely the bloody truth of the subject that these articles are constantly submerging, disguising, and burying in misdirection. And bloody is the goddamned operative word.

The bloody fucking subject of these articles -- and the bloody fucking task to which Brennan devotes his goddamned miserable life -- is the murder of innocent human beings. To the extent Brennan and his fellow monsters rely on information at all, they rely on "intelligence" gathered across numerous agencies. But, and here I shock the children and doubtless many adults as well, "intelligence" is almost always wrong. [...]

And given the numerous, repeated errors of intelligence that have occurred just in the last decade, Brennan and his wretched associates know that to the extent they rely on intelligence, they are most likely relying on information that is wrong. So Brennan regularly, routinely, systematically orders the death of human beings on the basis of information that he knows is most likely to be wrong.

He orders the murders anyway. And the government carries them out. Thus, the government regularly, routinely, systematically orders the death of innocent human beings.

(Also, if you can spare some, he needs donations.)

(As it happens, people who were seriously pro-life [that is, in favor of life after birth regardless of race, creed, color, previous economic status, or sports affiliation] would be screaming in the streets, writing their representatives, and generally fulminating.  And yet among those who claim to be pro-life [that is, life until birth, after which malign indifference envelops] there seems to be silence.

(Utter silence.

(*crickets*

(All together now:  Wonder why that is?)

(Crickets on loan from Shark-fu aka Pamela Merritt)

PSA

Via my network page, Feministing featured Bilerico's Trans* Voting Guide, a graphic detailing the hoops that transgender voters may encounter out there on November 6.  In case you need to know, of course.

Date of Election Day bolded because there have been "accidents" lately.  (Think Progress via skippy.)  The general annual Election Day in the United States is always
always
always
ALWAYS
the first Tuesday of November.  (Primaries and special elections are different stories.)  Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.  And may be trying to suppress your vote.

(Back in 2008 I posted info on overseas absentee ballots, which I forgot about this year until this week. If you have one anyway, mailing it sooner rather than later would be good.  We're talking two weeks from yesterday.)

Also,

What strong, focussed labor unions can do.  This is why conservatives and fascists hate and fear unions.

From Last Year

A letter from George McGovern to Barack Obama.

Going to the Polling Place, and We're Going to Get Voting.

Election Day is two weeks from tomorrow.  Presumably you know by now for whom and what you're voting or else you're trying to make a virtue of indecisiveness (there was a radio commercial in the '80s featuring a character who could not decide on her name--no, I couldn't tell you what was being sold-- to the point where the announcer declared "Miss Joachim!"  Exasperating to hear over and over...), and either way, you know what your state demands as identification.  That last is particularly important if there is any chance you might be disenfranchised.

You should know that Mr. Romney and family may be trying to buy (via corporate smoke, mirrors, and money) the election by purchasing voting machines in selected states.  (Via Welcome Back to Pottersville--Jurassicpork is particularly scathing:

We can plainly see a massive, nationwide concerted effort to steal votes from the president in a multitude of ways. Tagg Romney and family buying up dysfunctional, easily-hacked voting machines in five, perhaps six states. At least 25 racist and restrictive Voter ID laws being enacted in 19 states. SAC and the electoral fraud scandal in Florida, which led to the "firing" of SAC's Nathan Sproul, another infamous right wing operative tied to yet unprosecuted over electoral fraud. An operative in Virginia, one hired by Sproul, who was recently arrested for throwing in a Dumpster Democratic registration forms. Purge lists ordered by Florida Governor Rick Scott targeting minorities. Republican operatives training challengers to intimidate minority voters and to spread disinformation. The list stretches longer than the rap sheet that most Republicans ought to have on public record.

Your delicate and shell-like ears may find themselves closing on some of JP's language.)

But why concentrate on the ownership of voting machines when there is all that Republican Satanic panic voter fraud out there?

Well, because voter fraud is an imaginary problem.  A chimera.  Ginned up.  Specifically:

[Catherine] Engelbrecht has received especially valuable counsel from one member of the group: Hans von Spakovsky. A Republican lawyer who served in the Bush Administration, he is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. “Hans is very, very helpful,” Engelbrecht said. “He’s one of the senior advisers on our advisory council.” Von Spakovsky, who frequently appears on Fox News, is the co-author, with the columnist John Fund, of the recent book “Who’s Counting?,” which argues that America is facing an electoral-security crisis. “Election fraud, whether it’s phony voter registrations, illegal absentee ballots, vote-buying, shady recounts, or old-fashioned ballot-box stuffing, can be found in every part of the United States,” they write. The book connects these modern threats with sordid episodes from the American past: crooked inner-city machines, corrupt black bosses in the Deep South. Von Spakovsky and Fund conclude that electoral fraud is a “spreading” danger, and declare that True the Vote serves “an obvious need.”

Er, "corrupt black bosses in the Deep South"?  Have I missed something?  Vote-buying has been on the wane even in Chicago for a long time now.  The only people I see trying to stuff ballot-boxes...are Republicans.

I'm a little more worried about ballot-counting fraud at this point.  (Southern Beale gets sarcastic.  And should do it more often.)  As Avedon Carol would probably remind us, hand-counting of paper ballots remains the gold standard of the election process.  ETA:  And pecunium (Better Than Salt Money) has more specific examples.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast and Bruce Springsteen have decided.

It's That Man Again, Mom

Yes.  Indeed.  The two-legged weasel apparently thought that by releasing unredacted State Department papers pertaining to Libya (166 pages is not reams, folks; it's one third of a ream), he could somehow embarrass the President.  Unfortunately, he "forgot" to remove the names of the CIA "assets" in Libya before posting on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's website.  Apparently no one told him.  Party comes first, don't you know.  ETA:  Hi,  comrade Misfit!

Darrell Issa, just imitating Wikileaks because he hates them, he does, precious.  Also, a disgrace to his fellow mustelidae.  I'll be back; I need a hot shower.

Local Deadline Approaches

Californians?

The deadline cometh: Monday is the last day to register to vote for the November election - you can do it online, in person or through the mail, but the application has to be in election officials' hands by midnight.

To register, visit RegisterToVote.ca.gov, or visit your local post office, library or county registrar's office to get a paper application.

If you're like 544,000 of your fellow Californians, you'll go the online route: That's the number of people who have used the new, web-based system since it went public Sept. 19.

Paul Mitchell, vice president of the voter information firm Redistricting Partners, said the online system could result in a record 18 million registered voters in California by election day.

A Little Ethical Nightmare

Arthur Silber poses a scenario and sets forth a choice.

If you vote for Obama or Romney, that is certainly your right -- although you will forever forfeit the right to speak of "rights" at all. If a human being can be murdered for any reason, or for no reason at all, merely on the arbitrary order of someone who claims the power to issue such orders, she has no rights at all. You thus sanction the destruction of all rights, of all human beings -- including yours. The victim may be Mrs. Hamilton, or Joanna -- or you.

Politicians, as we know, never give up power.

At Last, Heh.

Mr. Romney's tax plan.  Because you need something good in the morning.  Or anytime.

(Via Echidne of the Snakes.  Straight-faced, too.)




[crossposted, of course]

Oh, No, Not Again...

Rearranging the deck chairs.  And calling for ice.                                                                                                                                                                                         .

Wha Hoppen?

Sorry; I just needed to change the background and everything.  There may be more fiddling.  We Shall See.

There's a Word for This

That word is "coercion."

Skippy points at a Think Progress article detailing Koch Bros. attempt to strong-arm employees.  With reproduced letter.

Just so you know.

A Little More Green in the Mix

I finally (and what took you so long?)(small print on screen.  Having to wake self up.  Busy) noticed that I can now listen to Daisy Deadhead's radio program via radio waves her radio website which kicks out a small player with each show when an entry is clicked.

I wanted to find her interview/conversation with Jill Stein, the Green Party Presidential candidate, mentioned recently in a comment.  That didn't turn up, [ETA (10/22/12): Daisy announces Jill Stein in February.] but the vice presidential Green Party candidate, Cheri Honkala, was given one question to answer by USA Today.  (Via naked capitalism)

In Memoriam

• Arlen Specter, former Senator and former Republican;
• Norodom Sihanouk, former King of Cambodia.  (He abdicated in favor of his son in 2004.)

The Amazing Shrinking Defense Budget and Other Stories

• The defense budget may have to shrink (horrors!) and the military may not be able to get all the toys it wants (perdition!) because money is kind of tight in the world.

  Not everyone agrees. Opinion pollsters say defense often tops the list of areas where the public would like to see cuts, while fatigue over the last decade's wars makes new overseas commitments hard to sell.

  [ETA: via Obsidian Wings]
  
• Mills River Progressive on Mr. Romney's plans for the American people who are not rich.  With video.  (Daisy got a picture at the Asheville Comics Expo of a gent in a Palpatine/Vader '12 t-shirt that is apropos here--fifth from the top.)
• Video (no transcript, not captioned), The Age of Uncertainty, ep 2 with John Kenneth Galbraith, at Naked Capitalism.  Social Darwinism, "moral" underpinning thereof.  A lot of it sounds very familiar...  [ETA:  Other episodes can be accessed once this one is played or at YouTube.  Ep 7 ("The Mandarin Revolution") is of particular interest.  Keynes and the Great Depression.  Need I say more?]

Three

Three articles from AlterNet:

• Mythologizing for fun and votes, or using some things people would like to believe, in order to get elected.
• Conservatives believe these four things about sex among the young.
• Americans susceptible to "behavior modification."  Some.  Particularly if they are "infantilized, dependent, alienated, and bored."  Hmmmmm.

A Pot of Message

• Walking a mile in others' shoes.  
• Via skippy, New Mexican official recorded teaching voter suppression:

  Am I the only one that’s had about enough of this war on democracy? The “True the Vote” nonsense and other accusations of voter fraud by the right wing (incidentally, all of the recent fraud scandals are by the right wing) are just excuses to lock minorities and others out of the election because it is well-known that they prefer to vote democratic (with, notably, their best interests).
  
  Interfering with that in any way is un-American, to say the least. We are a country that prides ourselves on the democratic process and this has no place in it.

• Spain still has not totally shaken off the effects of the fascist Franco regime.  (Although Franco is still dead.  I know there are Saturday Night Live fans out there.)
• Terrance Heath's take on the VP debate and Mr. Biden.
• Matt Taibbi's take on the VP debate and Mr. Biden.  [ETA:  via Mills River Progressive]
• Southern Beale on yet another lying politician.
• What was that about Republicans being better on security issues?

Nice to Nasty

• Cara continues with the Top 5 Motown Singles of 1970.  Marvelous.
• The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union.  I suppose that means they now have to start a war...
• Women are now allowed to inherit in Botswana.
• Best smackdowns of right-wingers.  (Not necessarily zingers, note.)  Oh, all right, a taste.

  On a September episode of her eponymous MSNBC show, Melissa Harris-Perry had on “business and finance expert” Monica Mehta as one of her guests. Mehta was spouting a lot of right-wing, pro-business, anti-welfare talking points, which Harris-Perry clearly took issue with. The discussion came to a head when Mehta referenced the risks taken by business owners. “What is riskier than living poor in America?” said Harris-Perry, raising her voice. “Seriously, what in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it'll be a good school and maybe it won’t. I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No! There is a huge safety net that whenever you fail will catch you and catch you and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people. And when we won’t, because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness! We cannot do that!"

• Ten conservatives trying to spin slavery as a Good Thing.  I have flushed better digestion by-products.

Paper Clips and Erasers

• Some advice for the Vice Presidential debate, too late to do any good, of course.
• Via Mills River Progressive, a jeremiad on America:

  Moreover, tyranny and violence came out in force, rights to free assembly and speech had long disappeared and no one had been there to notice. Worse still, more openly sold those rights for nothing more than the promise of security, with only those of intellect, fewer each day it seems, aware that the enemy was and is…us.

• Echidne of the Snakes on sexist questions when interviewing women but not men.

There were other interesting links, but I ended up tracking down an ancient kerfuffle.  Those were the days...

Yes, it's more "Fox News Lies," but the picture (thanks be to Photoshop) says it all.

"Including 'An' and 'The'"

So I am perambulating in downtown Oakland, as is my wont, and I happen to pass the Paramount just as the naturalization ceremony has concluded.  In front of the theater there are tables and hawkers and people with signs because the first thing you need to do after becoming an American citizen is to buy a cover for your certificate.  There are Romney and Obama tables, with pamphlets, and there are people both near the tables and scattered in the crowd and the only sentence they know is "Are you registered to vote?"

Mostly.

I am coming up alongside the Romney table.  The man there is repeating "Are you registered to vote?" to the people passing him.  I start to pass him.  "Hello, how are you today?"

Now it might have been that he varied the sentence every 8 or so people so that his mouth didn't seize up.

Nah, you don't believe that either.

See, I am not, to put it plainly, the Romney demographic in about 7 or 8 different ways, three of which are visible.

So I turn.  And I smile.  And I say, "Fine, thanks, and you have just confirmed what I've been saying on my blog for months.  Thank you."

And I walk away and offer congratulations to the people who know a lot more about this country than "patriots."

My Best Buster Keaton Face

Via delux_vivens on dreamwidth, Brad Friedman (of the Brad Blog, because there are 3,000 Brads in Blogtopia ™) on the voting scandal in Florida.  Three guesses as to the perpetrators, and the first two don't count.

Scant Mercy

• Long and beautiful post at flip flopping joy about roadkill, Battlestar Galactica, absent fathers and the Chicano archetype.  Very worth the time.

• It would undoubtedly shock Geller and her Islamophobic buddies to know that Muslims have been in America for so long they could almost have formed a welcoming committee to the Daughters of the Revolution.

  Lynn Parramore at Naked Capitalism. There's more.  I believe I mentioned that the Syrian community of lower Manhattan predated the Civil War.
• Southern Beale at First Draft:  Please Just Go Galt Already.

  Yes, please go. Go now. Don't wait until November. You are a bloated leech on the hard work of the middle class, the real engine of our economy, and the very people whom you deride as living a worry-free existence thanks to your sacrifice. This country would be better off without you. Ta-ta. Buh-bye.

I Thought I Was a Pessimist...

...but jurassicpork has me beat.

And that was after I saw this item at Raw Story/Pandagon on female supporters of Todd Akins.

Sorry I ruined your lunch.

Morning Cup of Lava -- I Meant Java. Java.

Article on debt and individualism by Philip Pilkington, posted at Naked Capitalism by Yves Smith, ending thus:

Almost every moral pillar of our contemporary societies – from the discipline of economics, to ideas that dominate about what constitutes good statesmanship – militates against the formation of such a new mythology. And, as psychopathology teaches us well, people are quite stubborn in their giving up of their mythologies, despite their possibly high degree of dysfunction. But given that the stakes are rather high and humans are a fairly adaptive species, we may surprise ourselves yet.

The daily howler has a posting on Jim Lehrer, moderator of last week's debate.  It is not flattering.

Jesse Curtis on Christianity and citizenship:

Besides, as some of the earliest Christians showed, the command to submit to government is conditioned upon being able to do so without violating any higher moral principles, such as loving our neighbor and sharing the gospel. Paul may have told the early Christians to submit to Rome, but he didn't tell them to get excited about the armies spreading Roman values on the frontier.

Also, you might want to stop eating rice:

It was no secret that arsenic was going into farms and fields where our food is grown, and yet the question of where the arsenic went was mostly ignored. The FDA recently released its own tests, confirming Consumers’ Union’s findings. As their data shows, even organic rice contains arsenic. (Organic farmers cannot use arsenical pesticides, but they can use manure from chickens fed roxarsone and other arsenical drugs.)

Let the River Run

So I mention Gary Johnson and he promptly turns up in the Grauniad (I hope that is correctly misspelled) advocating the legalization of marijuana.  Too bad he's a libertarian.

Conspiracy theories are supposed to be coherent, people!  I mean, really, the point of conjuring up a conspiracy is to make sense of something that doesn't make any sense.  This one would be like Warren Buffett deciding to buy up, oh, all the Twizzlers and then refusing to sell them on the sly to teenagers.  Not even Tea Partiers could be that brain-dead.

Here's a list of bills Mr. Obama proposed or favored that have been blocked by Republicans.  With sources.  Note that one of them is a jobs bill and one extends unemployment.

I have been to St. Vartan's and had Khataiff.  Yum!

Flights of Fancy Sing Thee To Thy Rest

The political class of the United States needs an intervention.  Possibly long-term.

• Gary Johnson (who I think is the Libertarian Party candidate, which shows how great an impact he has) was not invited to the debate (awwwww) and also seems to believe the men represented on Mount Rushmore were third party candidates. He apparently doesn't realize that:
  
  • Teddy Roosevelt was a third party candidate after he'd already been President,
  • George Washington did not belong to a party,
  • Abraham Lincoln's party was not a third party by the time he ran,
  • And Thomas Jefferson organized an oppositional party.
  Which means he's wrong on the history Right There.
• Echidne of the Snakes discusses Rep. Paul Broun.  No one seems to have mentioned to Mr. Broun that the Vatican has conceded that Galileo was correct; perhaps someone should.

Beeping to Beat the Band

• Ocean acidification.  Specifically, the Newsrag of Record downplaying it:

  So what is the coded message here? Yeah, we’re gonna lose some species, but they are so obscure most scientists don’t recognize them. The fact that acidification can and likely will make the ocean hostile to many forms of life, either directly or second hand, by diminishing their habitat or food supply, is acknowledged in “many will not adapt to new oceanic conditions,” a remarkably bloodless formulation.

• Permanent floating Global Financial Crisis.

  Yet unlike other post-Enlightenment political philosophies – both the capitalism of Adam Smith or the communism of Karl Marx – Mill saw growth as more than material. Borrowing from its classical antecedent – the Ancient Greeks spoke of humanity’s goal aseudaimonia, or flourishing – modern society is built on the ideal of improvement, development, growth and expansion, but it needn’t be so mono-dimensional. Indeed, Aristotle considered an essential pillar of eudaimonia, or one of the four cardinal virtues, to be moderation.

Because Naked Capitalism never sleeps.  Apparently, neither do I.  zonk