A Modest Thought Experiment

Sara Robinson invites the producers of wealth to go Galt.

No, it's not who you think.

In Memoriam

Another collection, but the New York Times resets tomorrow, so...

• Davy Jones, Monkee (Ken Houghton at skippy has a more interesting remembrance, as does Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.)
• Jan Berenstain, Berenstain Bears (I'm pretty sure I saw them before they were books)
• Red Holloway, saxophonist
• Dr. Tina Strobos, rescuer
• Buck Compton, veteran and lawyer
• Howard Kissel, theater critic (I read him from time to time)
• Steve Kordek, pinball wizard designer
• Dick Anthony Williams, actor, theater workshop co-founder
• Kay Davis, soprano
• Barney Rosset, publisher (Grove Press)

Leftovers

• Staph becoming "super-bug" on farms due to antibiotic overuse.

  The detailed new study helps to clarify how this new breed of drug-resistant staph, known as livestock-acquired MRSA, has become so prevalent among livestock so quickly—after only having been spotted spreading back to humans about a decade ago. “We can’t blame nature or the germs,” Paul Keim, director of TGen’s Pathogen Genimics Division and co-author of the study, said in a prepared statement. “It is our inappropriate use of antibiotics that is now coming back to haunt us.”

• Driftglass explains what American Conservatism is all about.

  But the Real American Conservatives are already here, Mr. Sullivan, and always have been. They were here long before you were born -- before your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born. They were here before you chose to make a living by lending your time and talent to their depraved cause. They were here before it began to dimly dawn on you that American Right is run by scumbags and monsters (a fact that Liberals have been trying to get through your thick head for 30 years.) They were here when their madness finally bucked you off of their gravy train and onto the next gravy train. They were here when you took up you new career -- whining that they had gotten Conservatism all wrong.

• Susie Bright posts two long interviews.  (Probably not work-safe; read at home or somewhere you'll have enough privacy to cheer and not frighten the neighbors.)  Via Avedon, although that blog is on my blogroll.  Link to entries at The Sideshow now displays entries instead of HTML.

You Know How Novels of Libertarian Revolution All Have Shady Wealthy Guys With Grudges as the Purse?

Arthur Silber on bullies and Afghanistan.

Occasionally, I think of the United States government as Gary. They're both remarkably stupid, and they both derive enormous pleasure from telling others what they may and may not do. And they both deliver threats of destruction to be incurred by their victims if the victims dare to disobey them. To make the comparison more accurate, I imagine Gary holding a machine gun which he points at me. By his side is a large pile containing many more guns, together with a huge number of knives and other weapons. I also have to imagine that Gary has already murdered 10 or 15 neighborhood kids (or more), and no one has done anything to stop him. Gary murders whomever he wants, whenever he chooses. It's just the way things are in our town. Nobody questions it; it sometimes seems that no one even notices.

This is the background on the riots in Afghanistan.

Very rarely I click on random links in other people's blogs; I've seen Fact-esque on a couple of blogrolls including Avedon's, but only looked at it once or twice.  Well.  The last post there is dated May 17, 2011.  Prior to that, there were two posts I should have seen.  Drat.  "The Rich Win. Always" and "Socialism - It's Not Just For Crackpots Any More."  Yeah, they're almost a year old.  Yeah, they're before Occupy.  Yeah, they were probably linked last year.  They're good reminders.  (Somebody yesterday pubbed an excerpt from Steve Gilliard's "I'm a Fighting Liberal" because that never gets old.)  Also a good reminder:  Mr. Santorum kisses up (ugh) to social conservatives (ugh) by telling them what they want to hear.  Excuse me while I embrace the porcelain goddess...

[Opens windows, sprays air freshener.]  Back.  When a conservative columnist calls the remaining GOP candidates "old news," it's the kiss of irrelevance:

When Romney, Santorum and Gingrich talk about their records, they talk about - or run from - what they did in the last decade - or two decades ago. As for Paul, he boasts about what he didn't do over the years.

That rant you hear bubbling up will probably strangle me first.

Two Things

1. Via skippy, "What Real Class Warfare Looks Like," by Paul Waldman at the American Prospect:

   This is how people with power tell people without power that they're nothing, that in order to access even the most modest help they'll have to submit to a ritual of abasement, treated like criminals and forced to hand over their bodily fluids.
   
   And let's be clear—drug testing people on unemployment doesn't save any money, or reduce drug use, or solve any practical problem. But it does what it's intended to do: Put those people in their place.

2. Via The Slacktivist, Jesse Curtis writes "a lot of Christians don't care about poor people."

   We say it is the church's job to care for the poor, yet attend churches that don't help people pay their rent or buy groceries. It is the church's job and yet the pastoral leadership has not told the business owners in our congregation that the hiring of ex-felons should [be] prioritized. It is the church's job and yet we don't offer affordable child care during the week so single moms can go earn a living.

   There's more.

I'm going to hearken back to *gasp* the Great Depression and the fact that it affected pretty much everybody; that's why laws to restrain the financial industry could be passed and a social safety net installed.  (Also the fear of Communism was in the back of some minds.)

The Great Recession is maybe not as bad, but it is still hurting a lot of people whose only crime was believing the American Dream was realistic and not a sort of movable goal post.

All I will say about the "people with power" in the first item is that they obviously miss bowing and forelock-tugging.

Dellow Felegates!

• My brain has gone off to the Bahamas for the weekend.  Complaints about sunburnt cerebra will be snickered at.
• New krewe in New Orleans (next year for sure, Rocky!).
• Sex and mansplaining.
• Obituaries will be posted in the next four or five days; the NYTimes has some interesting-looking ones and March resets the counter.
• Yesterday's earworm was "Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle of the block."  That's why I pushed the brain out and booked the flight.

Another One Rides the Bus

Los Angeles Times to begin charging for online access to news.  March 5, 15 free articles in a 30-day period.  Maybe I should start working from the library...

News of the Day

South Carolina does not have "Chicago voters."

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Sara Robinson is back.

And she's still cutting to the chase:

If you’re a woman of childbearing age in the US, you’ve had access to effective contraception your entire fertile life; and odds are good that your mother and grandmother did, too. If you're a heterosexual man of almost any age, odds are good that you also enjoy a lifetime of opportunities for sexual openness and variety that your grandfathers probably couldn't have imagined -- also thanks entirely to good contraception. From our individual personal perspectives, it feels like we’ve had this right, and this technology, forever. We take it so completely for granted that we simply cannot imagine that it could ever go away. It leads to a sweet complacency: birth control is something that’s always been there for us, and we’re rather stunned that anybody could possibly find it controversial enough to pick a fight over.

Leaving aside the uneven access to contraception (information, money, time, attitudes, etc.), this is still a huge difference in women's expectations of life.

One Ethic

"[I]t's simply wrong to impose your notions of morality at the expense of the dignity of your fellow human beings."

Jurassicpork, elucidating the higher morality.

In Case You're Wondering What I Think About Political Misogynists

"No man who supports the anti-woman measures in this link should ever, ever be allowed to touch a woman again."

twistedchick

Seriously.

(Non-political misogynists, too.  It's time to have solidarity in this matter.)

Profanity Alert

Jurassicpork gets Rude about GOProud.

The right wing wants to legislate themselves into your bedrooms. And, think about it: aside from whom you sleep with, what distinguishes you from the straight community? You get up in the morning, go to work, pay your bills, your taxes, go to the vet, eat out and pursue dreams just like ordinary people. You don't go to your gay jobs, gay park your cars, pay gay taxes. When the right wing nut bags whom you keep trying to embrace tell you you cannot marry within your gender, they're also telling you your love for your fellow man or woman isn't valid, that it's shameful and disgusting and they keep quoting Leviticus.

The rest of it is quite Rude. If Rude disturbs you, please do not click on link.

Sex and Conservatives

I love a conservative complaining that the country is obsessed with sex. Actually, no. Conservatives are obsessed with sex, especially the controlling and punishing of it. It's not "the country" that is passing laws that constitute state-sanctioned rape-with-an-object as punishment for women who want abortions; it's conservatives. It's not "the country" that believes that if a woman works for an employer, he owns her vagina and can functionally dock her pay as punishment for fucking by refusing to offer her full insurance coverage offered to everyone else; it's conservatives. It's not "the country" that is so angry that some women out there might be having unsanctioned orgasmic fun that they have to set aside questions of economy and environment to punish those women; it's conservatives. It's not "the country" that is telling women to shut their legs as the only acceptable form of birth control; it's conservatives.

Amanda Marcotte. Yes, I know that means I've looked at Pandagon two Fridays in a row.

In Memoriam

Gary Carter.

Carter was an 11-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove winner. His bottom-of-the-10th single in Game 6 of the 1986 Series helped the Mets mount a charge against the Boston Red Sox and eventually beat them.

[...]

"Nobody loved the game of baseball more than Gary Carter. Nobody enjoyed playing the game of baseball more than Gary Carter. He wore his heart on his sleeve every inning he played," Mets Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver said.

[...]

Carter played nearly two decades with the Mets, Montreal, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He led the Expos to their only playoff berth and was the first player enshrined in Cooperstown wearing an Expos cap.

Excuse me, it seems to be raining in here...

(Via Brilliant at Breakfast's remembrance:

As I write this, we are watching that April 9, 1985 game on SNY. It was nearly twenty-six years ago, Dwight Gooden vs. Joaquin Andujar. Those players are all middle-aged men now but on TV they are forever young, forever at the top of their game. And there is Kid, shaking off a fastball hit on the elbow. For all that I don't believe in the Christian notion of heaven, I hope there is one for Gary Carter, one where he can see the parents he missed so much on that day in 2003 when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. And I hope there is a Field of Dreams there, where he can once again flash that grin and hit home runs and be young and healthy.

)

ETA:  metsgrrl features an essay by a Montréaler.

Gleesome Threesome

1. On the off chance that the weirdness with Sideshow links is
   
   • Safari and
   • Peculiar to my computer 
   I'm going to link to the one in which Mr. Zechman (transcribed) explains the robo-signing deal for you. Let me know whether you get a regular web page or a lot of HTML gibberish.
2. Echidne of the Snakes on the (shall we say) stacked-deck Issa hearings:

   It's not about religion and conscience because only those religious groups which oppose the Obama compromise are invited to come and speak.

   It's the equivalent of holding hearings on (say) steroids in surfing and only inviting Iowans as witnesses. As for Mr. Issa's endgame, see The New Yorker's profile.
   
3. Jurassicpork points out shenanigans in the Maine caucus.  ETA: NYTimes' Katharine Seelye has fallen across this.

"Morals" and Health

Pamela Merritt, who used to be Shark-fu (apparently I missed the changeover) at Angry Black Bitch, details what a "morality" exemption for health care means.

When I heard that a certain Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) introduced an amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would allow any employer to refuse to cover whatever service they claim a moral objection to…well, I thought about my previous experience with Lupron and why I ended up on the pill.

I thought about having to explain my bitness to my employer...about having to make some sort of case for meds that are legal and that I have no moral objection to.

[...]

This so-called birth control battle is about a lot more than contraception...it is about not having to beg, negotiate, or endure a forced public confession to get access to services and medicine denied based on some employer’s morality glitch.

And some people have moral objections to medicine, period.  Some people have moral questions about pain-killers.  Some people morally object to the existence of other people.  As the job market is currently structured, one may end up working for those people.  Wanna bet?  Do you have sex, drink coffee or alcohol, smoke, listen to really loud music?  Someone's "morality" has probably been offended.  Do you want that person in a position to deny you treatment?

ETA:  And Southern Beale echoes.

"Veeerr-y In-teresting!"

Sports columnist blames Josh Beckett for epic collapse of Bosox last year.

(via Dr. Grumpy in a way.)

Just This Once

I've got a medical appointment.  No, really.

1. Bob Somerby gets the grand slam.  (TW:  Ableist language in 2nd link.)  Poor children, conservatism against reality (special guest star Paul Krugman), Clinton, and attention focused on trivia.  Have at it.
2. Your politicians want to turn back the calendar.  Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast has the story:

   I remember a few years ago reading an article about how young women were unconcerned about the anti-abortion rhetoric of the right and how frustrated at their lack of concern older women were who remember the fight for abortion rights, and even some who remember the world before Griswold v. Connecticut. "Oh, they'll never make abortion illegal again," one young woman was quoted as saying. Well, yes they will, as we are now seeing in states where abortion may still be legal, but is impossible to obtain. Now they're coming for your contraception. And they'll get it too, if we let them.

3. Radiation from Fukushima scheduled to reach Tokyo tomorrow.  (In case you had forgotten about the big quake and tsunami in Japan last year.)
4. Religious liberty or money?  Insurance coverage for autism denied.
5. Accents in opera (more a question than an exposition).
6. Via skippy, Marcy Winograd leaving the Democratic Party for the Greens.
7. Trinity Cemetery Uptown, an encapsulation of New York City history.

And it seems I'm too slow or something for the job.  Oh well.

Almost Forgot

P.S. I got the job (6 weeks worth, anyhow.  No details, and posting will be light for the duration)!

Items of Interest

Via Arthur Silber (whose post I thought I'd linked to, but apparently not), who is promoting opposition to war with Iran, this article by David Graeber in response to this article by Chris Hedges.

• Chris Hedges:

  Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, rather than physically destroy, becomes, in the eyes of Black Bloc anarchists, the enemy. Black Bloc anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas, who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems.

• David Graeber:

  Successful movements have understood that it’s absolutely essential not to fall into the trap set out by the authorities and spend one’s time condemning and attempting to police other activists. One makes one’s own principles clear. One expresses what solidarity one can with others who share the same struggle, and if one cannot, tries one’s best to ignore or avoid them, but above all, one keeps the focus on the actual source of violence, without doing or saying anything that might seem to justify that violence because of tactical disagreements you have with fellow activists.

Rattling the sabers at Iran continues to be stupid, which must be why government officials periodically do it.

In Memoriam

Whitney Houston, singer.

This Is a Watchbird Watching You

Well, a drone Watchbird, anyhow.

You know, I own a hat that can be seen from space, but that's not why I bought it.

My B.A.D. Self

I have been awful this year and not really investigating blogs new to me, even though I fell across a few of them.  (Also, I need to prune blogs that have been silent for over a year, and yes, I do remember about Fafblog!.)

I added operaramblings already, but I will be adding Fukushima Diary, Forgotten New York, La Lubu, and a blog to be named later.

*Sigh*

Well, I still can't link directly to entries at The Sideshow, so I recommend the last 2 entries (as of 11 February 2012) with the transcripts of Stuart Zechman's podcasts, which pack a lot of pertinent information.  (He's the Z in Virtually Speaking A-Z.)

At Grantland, there is some speculation on concussions in football, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and what might happen if football faded away.  (One of the things not mentioned is the reaction by Republicans and libertarians, you know, the shrieks of "nanny statism," the moans about testosterone, the spurious concern about "a path out of poverty," the gibbering about "hallowed tradition" [oh wait, they're still using that on same-sex marriage], the attempts to demonstrate that concussions aren't that serious, or we'd have more brain-damaged detectives.)

There was something else, but apparently I closed that window.  Found it!  operaramblings reviewed L'Amour du Loin (Kaija Saariaho) at Canadian Opera, but noted:

A significant number of people, young and old, left at the interval. This disturbs me on all sorts of levels. This is quite an accessible piece and it was presented in a production that emphasised that and despite that some people obviously didn’t get it. This worries me far more than people who get offended by blood or nudity in a new production of some over performed Puccini piece. There’s a catch 22 here. A new audience is put off by the idea of opera as a boring museum piece and a section of the traditional audience boycotts anything that isn’t stuffed and mounted.

Seattle pitchers and catchers report Today!

Round-Up

1. Jill (Brilliant at Breakfast) on the illusions of not-rich Republican voters:

   And still they vote Republican. They vote Republican because they want to believe that their plight is the fault of black people, or of the very women in the workplace who are keeping a roof over their heads because for some reason, female unemployment is less. They want to believe their plight is the fault of illegal immigrants who they think took their jobs from them by being willing to work for peanuts. They want to believe that if those hippies had just kept their mouths shut in the sixties, the world would be like it was for their grandfathers, who worked eight hours in the plant, were home at five o'clock for dinner, had steak once a week for Sunday dinner, and then retired with a full pension and paid retiree medical insurance. They want to believe that this isn't as good as it's ever going to be again. Because the dream dies hard.

   With a long Krugman quote and a small sample of Charles Murray because

   Only someone who is paid a handsome salary by the American Enterprise Institute can say with a straight face that $27,860 is enough to live "a decent existence" when $22,350 is the federal poverty level for a family of four.

2. The personification of NOM (the [ugh] organization, not the syllable that means yummy food), Maggie Gallagher, was profiled at Salon by Mark Oppenheimer, and two reactions were:
1. From Pandagon:

   Oppenheimer really spells out something that's well-known in activist circles around gay marriage, both pro and con, which is that Gallagher's hostility to gay marriage is rooted, bizarrely, in her endless bitterness that her pregnancy in her sophomore year resulted not in a proposal of marriage, but in being dumped. This wound is the one her entire life is about tending (not healing, because she really scratches at it and keeps it nice and raw). Really, she's about the closest thing that modern life has to one version of the movie villain, the person whose profound evil is rooted in a single trauma, and who without that might have been a really good person.

2. From Noli Irritare Leones:

   If, on the other hand, you don’t see any reason to believe that Ruth’s and Leslie’s marriage will precipitate the unraveling of the traditional family and subsequently the stability of society and the ruin of us all, if you think, for instance, that, for all that Maggie Gallagher’s Yale boy friend walked away from their son, on a societal level an increase in fathers walking away from their children is more likely to be precipitated by a decline in blue collar jobs with good union wages, then Gallagher’s activism will seem woefully misdirected. Particularly if you don’t see Ruth’s and Leslie’s marriage as all that different from your own.

Which rather solidifies my opinion of Ms. Gallagher as "a crank."  (Has Massachusetts or Sweden or Iowa sunk into the sea yet or gotten hit with a load of brimstone?)
3. Bob Somerby (The Daily Howler) on fitting one's (conservative) ideas to a candidate.

   Brooks is sketching a novel the pundit corps likes to type about major candidates. Here’s the problem: By now, it’s abundantly clear that this novel doesn’t fit Candidate Romney. For good or for ill, it’s abundantly clear that Candidate Romney’s outer pronouncements don’t flow directly from his inner core. For good or for ill, he doesn’t possess an unshakeable set of convictions.

4. One Christian's experience with the "slippery slope."

I had a phone interview. I'll be very surprised if I get the job.

Yessssssss! Redux

Sadly, No reads (brain bleach!) National Review Online so you won't have to.  In this instance, Cerberus analyzes the response of a conservative lawyer in NRO.

So as you may have noticed from the hordes of QUILTBAG people fucking outside of your home (all of your homes and every home, multiple of your homes if you are John McCain), Prop 8 was just struck down as unconstitutional today…again, but this time at the 9th Circuit of Appeals level. The proponents of Prop 8′s long delay tactic principled stand for direct democracy truly tried its best to win the day for bigotry, but was sadly hamstrung by things like “not having a leg to stand on when asked to argue their case secularly” and “not having someone to argue their case who wasn’t also criminally insane”.

Warning: the word "butthurt" is used.

Jokers!

Yes, I am late on this.

Alabama state senator against raising teachers' salaries but in favor of raising legislators' salaries.

Wonkette (!) via j-crew-guy on dreamwidth.

Yessssssss!

9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared California's Prop. 8 unconstitutional. (Full text here.)

Back in the Saddle

1. Margaret and Helen get militant.

   In the past Margaret and I have stood up for Planned Parenthood. But that is no longer good enough. Today, tomorrow and every day that we have left on this planet, we won’t just stand up for them, we will stand up for women everywhere. We will vote for them. We will advocate for them. We will fight for them. And we will start right here. Right now. My grandson tells us that people from all over the nation and even from other countries read this web page blog of ours. Well, I can’t imagine why, but if you are going to read it, then you should use your head for something other than a hat rack and learn a thing or two about the real Planned Parenthood.

2. Katha Pollitt (by way of Echidne of the Snakes) on the business with birth control and the bishops.

   According to Walsh, religious freedom is reserved for “anybody but Catholics.” Nonsense. Are Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other pacifists exempt from taxes that pay for war and weapons? Can Scientologists, who abhor psychiatry, deduct the costs of the National Institute of Mental Health? As an atheist, a feminist, a progressive, I ante up for so much stuff that violates my conscience, the government should probably pay me damages. Why should the bishops be exempt from the costs of living in a pluralistic society? Walsh cites the Amish, who are exempt from buying health insurance because they have a conscientious objection to it, but the Amish are a self-isolated band of would-be nineteenth-century farmers; they don’t try to make others read by kerosene lamps or demand the government subsidize their buggies. The Catholic church, by contrast, runs institutions that employ, teach and care for millions of people, for which it gets oceans of public money. A great many of those employed and served aren’t even Catholic: at Jesuit universities, almost half the students aren’t in the church; at Notre Dame, almost half the faculty is non-Catholic, and that is not unusual. The vast majority of Catholics long ago rejected the Vatican’s ban on contraception. Catholic women are as likely to use birth control as other women. What about their consciences?

3. Fred Clark at the Slactivist on the metamorphosis of the Republican Party.  Which leads to another post which should be read.
4. And a happy 200th birthday to Charles Dickens!

Genie, Bottle, Stuffing Back Into, Impossibility of

1. What your "social conservatives" want. Southern Beale nails it:

   This is the difference between the phony “pro-lifers” of the Republican Party and the pro-choice side. The phony “pro-lifers” — the people we call “forced birthers” — are trying to roll back the clock to that time pre-Gloria Steinem when men could still decide these issues for women, when modern medical advances hadn’t wrested that control from their hands. When women’s sexuality was still something to be afraid of. They’re fighting stuff that’s already been decided by the culture and trying to pretend that the solutions modern medicine and the pharmaceutical industry have created don’t exist. This strikes me not just as delusional but pathological.

   Have I been clear on not trusting, believing, or voting for libertarians?
2. It's a victory, but we'll still have to fight:

   That's what this fight was about. By pressuring Komen, anti-choicers were basically trying to make "women are people" the pariah position, and trying to make anyone who holds the "women are people" position without apology seem like they were out of the mainstream. Having people scrambling to disassociate themselves from you is a really great way to discredit you and your ideas, and that's why so many people with what I consider poor morals really love a witchhunt. So the fight was over who basically owns the mainstream: anti-feminists or feminists, people who think of women as expensive sex toys/gestation machines or people who think of women as people? That's why everyone was so upset. And that's why the feminist win was so meaningful.

   Pandagon. Incidentally, apparently the Komen foundation has done other skeevy things (one example). Culturally, we are slowly evolving out of the anti-feminist mindset. Hey, maybe that's why they're afraid of evolution! :-)

1. I can't link to the Sideshow until the display problem is fixed, but today's entry is worth your time.
   

   ...it's a reminder that Americans - yes! even Republicans! - have a lot of agreement with movement liberals on some crucial issues. Instead of railing against Republicans, it's time to learn to talk to our countrymen.

   I admit, sometimes, I lose patience.  (Noooooooo!)  Because I keep thinking I'm talking to rational people and they're throwing coils of barbed wire on the floor.
2. Doghouse Riley on the media's narrative and why it should not be believed or trusted.
   

   This is precisely what happened in '96 with Bob Dole, and last time 'round with the "moderate" and Press favorite emeritus-turned-geezer John McCain. Movement "conservative" candidates have been uniformly short of brainpower since Ronald Reagan picked up the Goldwater mantle. The Press refuses to say so. The only time Palin was called a ninny four years ago is when Peggy Noonan and Chuck Todd thought their mikes were off. We went though eight years of Obvious Obliviousness of George W. Bush; Weisberg made some bucks on the man's foolish utterances, but only after 2000, when America was informed (as it will be again, shortly), that this made Ol' Dubya just our kind. Strange? This is what the Republican party has been since 1980.

3. Stacey Campfield scandal watch.  Southern Beale keeps us informed.

We Got Windmills, Cheap

Via Just An Earth-bound Misfit, I, Georgia rules that the President may remain on the Democratic primary ballot.  The judge's decision (.pdf) is here.

In Memoriam

[forgot to crosspost this yesterday]

• Ben Gazzara, actor.  I remember him principally from Run For Your Life, one of those Lone Man Running From X things prevalent in the mid-60s; I suspect it hasn't worn well.
• Zalman King, director and producer and, way back, actor.
• Camilla Williams, lyric soprano, first black woman with contract at major US opera company. [ETA: Iron Tongue at Midnight found a video.]

It's Almost Time for

Blogroll Amnesty Day!

And I'd better get to work, because I've fallen into habits routine rounds.

The Bees Were Poisoned

Mills River Progressive has the links.

In Memoriam

Don Cornelius, creator of Soul Train.

The Hippies Are Correct, Sir.

Atrios summarizes what Driftglass and Brilliant at Breakfast and Digby and Daisy and Terrance Heath and Avedon and Lisa G. and Doghouse Riley and Shark-fu and Jurassicpork and practically everyone have been saying since, oh, 2008:

Suddenly everyone's jumping on the idea that maybe jobs and economic growth are a wee bit important.

Got that? Because there'll be a test.

(via Shakesville)