In Memoriam

"Moose" Skowron, Yankees first baseman.

OK, I Got Sidetracked

At Brilliant at Breakfast, Jill quotes Amanda Marcotte on conservative/Republican efforts to destabilize the country and adds her own warning:

People simply can't fathom what the America of Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney will look like. They simply can't fathom one where the public school down the street doesn't exist, and where at best their elderly parents get a voucher for a thousand dollars to buy a health insurance policy from a for-profit company that will cost them $20,000...$30,000 or more a year because of the inherent health risks of living to old age. They can't fathom one where if you outlive your money, tough shit, there are empty packing crates all over for you to sleep in, and if you don't have children to take care of you (even if it's because you outlived them), then you deserve to die. They can't fathom having to pay a hundred dollars to cross a bridge that is only maintained because it's owned by a corporation that has a "right" to make as much profit as it wants. They can't fathom that if their child dies from E Coli from a bad hamburger that their child is simply collateral damage in the right of corporations to make as much profit as they want. They simply do not get what the Randoid utopia will look like for most people. And every time I explain to people what the implications of austerity are, they say "I just don't want to think about it."

[TW: triggery image] Messrs. Ryan and Romney and (yes) Paul are just the smiling, faux-friendly faces hiding the grinning skulls of the sorts of strangers who want you to step into their car, just for a minute...

Another Gone

Saw this news at Brilliant at Breakfast:  Pete Fornatale, dj.

...Well, progressive dj and promoter of singer/songwriters.  Denizen of WNEW-FM and WFUV.  A voice of my '70s and '80s.

(B@B features an interview featuring Pete Seeger and Roger McGuinn.)

In Memoriam

Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia.

Serendipity

I popped over to Driftglass this afternoon, as one does, and there was supposed to be a video of Spencer Ackerman eviscerating Beltway culture and not mincing his words, but it wasn't there (it is now; it appeared after I dropped a comment to that effect), so I teleported to Google and grabbed the first item that looked relevant.  It is not the item Drifty has and it's not a video, but it's about this weird weapon.

You know, there are children in this country who go to bed hungry.  But to the conservative mind, they're expendable.  Whereas this expenditure is peachy keen.

Yeah, tell me about how we need austerity.  [Word I don't use.]

News of the Day

• Trial of Mr. Edwards.

  Young testified for two days about how he helped hide Edwards' mistress Rielle Hunter while Edwards pursued the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and then kept her under wraps while Edwards angled for the vice president's spot on the ticket.
  
  During much of his testimony, Edwards stared straight at Young.
  
  This afternoon, Edwards' defense team began a cross examination of Young and zeroed in on inconsistencies and mistakes that Young made in television interviews, before a grand jury and in his book about the affair "The Politician: An Insider's Account of John Edwards's Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down."

• TB making a comeback in London.
• Street clocks on 5th Avenue.  Because the other two items are depressing, man.

Oh, And...

An open letter from security experts opposing CISPA.  Via Shakesville.  Really, it's That Bad.  (The proposed law, that is.)

Not Mr. Muller

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or what we call "mad cow disease" has turned up in California.

However,

1. it's a rare form, and 
2. it doesn't get into milk.

Reassuring, no?

P. S.

I have seen the new Blogger interface.

I am Not Impressed.

I have reverted until forced to use that thing, and bookmarked Picasa (as a Resource).

That is all.

Moanday

(It's good enough for Harlan Ellison, it's good enough for me.)

1. Digby calls the US by its proper name:  Empire (not that this is a secret; I think Lewis Lapham has trumpeted the term a few times, but by and large politically the word is seldom used).  Which means the comparisons and allusions to the Romans are apt.  And I need to find my Suetonius, because some of those Caesars were pips.  Meanwhile:
   

   None of this is to excuse any of it, of course. America's post-war imperialism is a complicated subject and one that is above my pay grade to sort out properly. I don't assume that the American empire is intrinsically evil. But this one was born of a Manichean struggle with the Soviets after World War II and it has always had a paranoid character. Coming about as it did in the atomic age, it's defined as an epic battle for survival and therefore must always do "whatever it takes" to ensure its security. I don't think you can "reform" that.
   
   [...]
   
   [...] If I had to guess, I'd have to say that the empire is probably going to run its course, as unpalatable an outcome as that presents.
   
   None of this is to say that President Obama hasn't been eager to advance the security state, particularly considering that his campaign in 2008 largely rested on his alleged anti-war bonafides. He is reported to particularly enjoy the secret authority of the commander in chief, so he is deserving of some special condemnation. But the truth is that he is the latest in the long line of post-war Imperial presidents who have done this to one degree or another. At some point, you have to look to the larger system, not the man or the party.
   
   Just as it's naive to put your faith in the president to "do the right thing" I'm fairly certain it's equally naive to believe that voting against one presidential candidate or the other to protest the national security state will change anything. It goes way deeper than partisan politics. Indeed, it's immune to them. Which is why people who've been around a while shift in their seats and get uncomfortable when someone says they must stick to their principles and reject partisan loyalty. When it comes to the empire, it's hard to see exactly what good that will do.
   
   Having said that, I do believe it's important to speak out regardless of who's in charge or what "emergency" is currently requiring that we all "watch what we say." I don't know how to break up the empire, but I do know that people of conscience still exist and could change the dynamic over time while others are subject to persuasion, at least around the edges. And someone's got to preserve the principles underlying the constitution aside from the 2nd and 10th amendments. We may need to use them again someday.

2. The previous Empire's established church is having conniptions over whether to ordain female bishops.
   

   The great Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch—whose new book “A History of Christianity,” or, in America, “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years,” prompted [Rowan] Williams to write, “It will have few, if any, rivals in the English language”—told me, “Rowan has enormous grace, he gives his opponents space, but he has a lack of killer instinct, which I’m afraid is a necessary quality for leadership.” MacCulloch, who is gay, trained for the Anglican priesthood, withdrew as an ordained deacon, and later explained his decision this way: “I was determined that I would make no bones about who I was; I was brought up to be truthful, and the truth has always mattered to me. The Church couldn’t cope and so we parted company. It was a miserable experience.” When I asked him about female bishops, he said, “The historical against-women argument about twelve male apostles—it comes from the early years of the Christian era and the spectacles put forth by the male leaders, who had wanted to be the ones to ‘see’ Christ first. By the end of the second century, a male leadership had emerged, and after that it became the ‘men were what the Holy Spirit intended’ argument and then the ‘tradition of the church’ argument. It was specious. Slavery was also our ‘tradition’ for seventeen hundred years. If you want a doctrine of the Holy Spirit, you change.”

3. You should be checking in at  Fukushima Diary.  Also at Mills River Progressive, where Anna van Z spotlights a report from theintelhub.com.  Not good.
4. In better news, a flash mob dumbfounds some gay-haters.  With video.

Gee, it's getting late...

Recall Update

Two from the Brad Blog:

• On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued two one-sentence orders declining to hear both appeals filed by Republican state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen in two different polling place Photo ID cases. In both, judges in lower courts had blocked the controversial voting rights restrictions passed by Republicans last year, finding that the law violated the state Constitution's guaranteed right to vote.

• Several weeks ago we told you that Kathy Nickolaus, the controversial and oft-failed County Clerk of Waukesha County, WI, was stepping aside for the state's upcoming recall primary and general elections on May 8 and June 5.
  
  The news that she would not be performing her usual election administration duties came on the heels of yet another embarrassing debacle in the state's most Republican county during their April 3rd Presidential Primary.
  
  Nickolaus' decision to temporarily hand over her duties to Waukesha's Deputy Clerk Kelly Yaeger for the two recall elections was prompted after calls for her resignation by the chair of the County Executive Board as well as local newspapers. The most recent mess was said to have been caused by a failure of her computer system to upload computer-reported elections results of county municipalities until 6am on the morning following that election.
  
  Shortly after the latest mess, during an interview while we were guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show on April 6th, election integrity expert John Washburn of Wisconsin Fair Elections explained to us that Yaeger had been both hired and trained by Nickolaus herself.
  
  [...]
  
  Nickolaus' failure resulted in a call for a state-wide recount and a months-long hand-count process during which thousands of ballot bags were discovered to have been open or torn, featuring missing or changed security seals and serial numbers and even computer-printed results tapes indicating they'd been printed days prior to the election.

In Memoriam

Jonathan Frid, actor, and Levon Helm, drummer.

More Workings of a Disordered Mind

1. Increasingly I'm thinking that the Elves sailed to the middle of the ocean and then chopped a hole in the bottom of the ship.
2. Some more about CISPA with a link to an ACLU letter to your legislator from Mills River Progressive.  Really, lawmakers have become more like con artists than most con artists.  You do know that your average grifter, no matter how charming, does not have your best interests at heart?
3. Speaking of exhumed conservative nastinesses:  Tennessee is trying to slide a "Don't Say Gay" bill through the system again.  Southern Beale has the story.  Presumably, the Precious made them do it.
4. The neighbor on the next block over has artichokes!  And beds that other neighbors tend!  
5. Another obituary for publishing.  And it is so true about the editing.
6. Mur Lafferty on the hatred of girls.  And it is hatred.  Don't kid yourself.

   I hope someday I can fly a kite like a girl. And do kung fu like a girl. And draw like a girl. And you know what? I wish I could cry like a girl. You get it all out, and then you look for the next thing, bouncing back with amazing speed. You don’t do like me, hold it inside as long as possible, letting it fester, bringing me down for days. You are not bitter.
   
   So they hate you. But fuck ‘em. Because you are a force of nature, a powerhouse of emotion and talent and stubbornness and potential.
   
   You’re worth a billion of them.

7. Conservative hatred of youth, from Pandagon.
8. Driftglass brings the Johnny Cash, in case you need to know what populism really sounds like.
9. Dick Clark died; Daisy's Dead Air has a tribute.

"From Out of the Aether," Another Voice

(Paying tribute to an Atlanta fanzine of my youth.)

1. I fell across an article by Eli Zaretsky, "Why America Needs the Left."
   

   Indeed, more than the struggle between Left and Right, the struggle between the Left and liberalism over the meaning of equality is at the core of U.S. history. Without a Left, liberalism becomes spineless and vapid; without liberalism, the Left becomes sectarian, authoritarian and marginal. In contrast, the Right is merely a reaction to the Left.
   
   But the difference runs deeper still. Behind the Left’s commitment to equality is a passion for emancipation from entrenched forms of oppression. Criticizing forms of domination that liberals tolerate or ignore, the Left stands not only for equality, but also for an enhanced concept of freedom.
   
   [...]
   
   Occupy Wall Street represents a stark contrast to the missed opportunities of the Obama presidency. The protests on behalf of the 99% bear witness to the irrepressible American commitment to equality and speak to the impossibility of a successful resolution of the current crisis without a robust, independent Left. Given the fact that Occupy Wall Street has already changed the discourse of American politics, nothing could be more harmful than for the movement to be absorbed into the neoliberal, corporate-dominated Democratic Party. Instead, its goal should be to recreate a permanent radical presence in American life. For that to happen, progressives, liberals, feminists, ecology activists, gay liberationists, pacifists, antiwar activists as well as the Occupiers must reaffirm their common identity as a Left.

   I would say "a Left" because I don't believe in monoliths, but that's just me.  Also, I've got rock salt in the salt shaker.  Something's missing...
2. Department of No, They Don't Give Up:  CISPA,  successor to SOPA and PIPA.  Via Shakesville.  Text of bill.
3. Mental Floss presents six Onion articles that were taken seriously. 

Hero

I don't hear too much about Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, NJ, since I'm on the wrong side of town, but he made the news this morning.  Naturally, pushback is expected (link from Wonkette is Onionesque) as well as irrelevant negative reports.

Also, Friday the 13th actually fell on a Friday for a change. ;-)

Driving Some Nails Home

Seriously unpleasant time travel as performed by legislative bodies:

The conservatives are at least partly right: birth control and equal pay (somewhat equal, anyway) were the great victories of first and second wave feminism. They are trying everything in their power to take those things away, in the hopes that it’ll activate a Time Turner that will erase the source of those changes as well as the changes themselves. They say we are pigs, they say we don’t need any silly pin money, they say these things and they should be embarrassed, they should be ashamed at what just came out of their mouths, but no one is shaming them. The news treats it like a simple partisan debate. Point for blue, point for red. But no matter what young folks might say, these men know we’re not in a post-sexist or post-racist culture, that they can rely on old, ugly misogyny and the reluctance to stand up for women’s rights that has tinted gender relations in this country for pretty much ever to lube their legislation up nice and slick. When women are outraged, you don’t have to listen, after all. Bitches be crazy.

(Yuki-onna is awesome!)
And Echidne questions some evolutionary psychological findings:

But there are alternative explanations. The one which seems to be the most obvious one to me is that the authors assume a causal chain from fewer-marriageable-men to all the other variables, whereas the variable they use is a ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women. It may be the denominator that is the crucial variable here.

Young people in the United States move a lot. They go to college in other states than their own, they choose to find work in other states than the one they were born in. Come to think of it, young heterosexual women (men) could move from an area with a scarcity of unmarried men (women) to one where this is not the case. Thus, the implicit assumption in the study that people stay put in a particular place does not hold.

But more importantly, the results could follow from certain states being more amenable to high-level careers for women than other states, with more of the necessary industries, a more affluent client base and more universities and colleges which women need to attend first to get into those career paths. In short, the operational sex ratio may not push the results because of a scarcity of men. It may be correlated with the results because an "abundance" of young educated women have settled in certain states: those with the best career climates for women.

Light cultural fare (from Operaramblings):

It really shows its roots in the silent Expressionist films of the German cinema of the 1920s. The visual language is similar and the director is absolutely not afraid of silence or just low level background noise. This gives it a really spooky and grim feel. The acting is quite stylised and the singing style is rather different from what we have come to think of as the Berlin cabaret style; it’s generally thinner toned and much less dramatic. This is less true of Lotte Lenya, who sings Jenny, or Ernst Busch, who sings the Street Singer, but it’s still a long way from Ute Lemper. The crowd scenes could almost be out of Metropolis. It’s pretty effective. The main plot change is to bring in the idea of Polly buying a bank rather than continuing Macheath’s burglary business (straight out of Dreigroschenroman) and ending up with Tiger Brown buying a seat on the board with Macheath’s bail money rather than the great big “reprieve chorus” of the stage version. This is where it becomes a more pointed social critique than the original. In effect we are being asked to believe in a conspiracy between finance capital, organised crime and the Metropolitan Police (hence the title of this post). This probably seemed pretty broad satire to Pabst and his screenwriters. Now it seems that all that is missing is News International.

It's probably time to revive Threepenny Opera.  Not that it's ever been dead...

And Speaking of Dingleberries

He's been fired.

Next time he exhibits his posterior, one hopes he will have washed it beforehand.

In Memoriam

Mike Wallace, investigative reporter.

Greetings of the Season

In this case, a slightly late Happy Passover and a punctual Happy Easter to those who celebrate either or both!

Reminder from Mr. Curtis:

The church is not threatened by secularists or gay people or abortionists or liberal politicians. We're doing a fine job slandering and misrepresenting the message of Jesus all by ourselves.

Damn, I've Forgotten the Cool Quote I Was Going to Use

The baseball season has begun (my team lost, but the pheenom hit a homer) and, since some conservative is not only showing tush but pointing at dingleberries as well, I appreciated Dave Ettlin's account of the minor-league season opener of the Baltimore and Washington affiliate teams.

(I went with two friends, we had good seats, we had a marvelous time.  Although it was too cold.  I started thinking Irish hot cocoa.  Like Irish coffee, only with cocoa.  Antifreeze.  There really should not be night games before June.  You know?)

Easter being tomorrow, supergee at Dreamwidth linked to an Esquire article by Charles P. Pierce on Easter's radical central character (no, not the bunny).

Oh, And...

The futurist talks about the future.

Translating

Sara Robinson on conservative code, or what Mr. Santorum was really saying when he said that stupid thing.

When wingnuts say stuff like this, it is never, ever offhand. This narrative is making the rounds on the right because somebody is laying the groundwork for an imminent, planned political action. Santorum's screed is the first stage of this campaign. It's a story that justifies the coming action, and puts the issue on the public table for discussion. It explains to right-wing followers that public universities, already well-understood as havens for liberal (!) public employees (!!) who exist only to corrupt the youth (!!!), are now also so blatantly unpatriotic (!!!!) that they no longer deserve taxpayer support.

[crossposted]

Other Voices, Other Rooms

Since I am in the midst of the spring decluttering (the Augean Stables?  Hah!  Easy!), here are some words by other people that particularly struck me this morning (outside of the discovery that the ballyhooed space my alma mater was providing for certain activities has proven to be inadequate to the purpose):

• I repeat: Mitt Rommey, do not start a debate about who is more unprincipled, opportunistic, and pandering during this election, because YOU WILL LOSE THAT FIGHT. And YOU WILL LOSE IT EVERY TIME. And the news of your loss will have to be delivered to each of your twelve gold moon mansions, because no one is sure where you live anymore. (That is a metaphor for your ever-changing positions, Mitt Rommey, JUST IN CASE THAT WASN'T CLEAR!)

  Melissa McEwan, Shakesville

• I grew up in a country that envisioned space travel and technology and science and discovery as good things. Today I live in a country that is one step away from burning witches.

  Jill, Brilliant at Breakfast
  

• Here’s a wild-haired tinfoil hat conspiracy theory for you: I have a friend who is convinced that the Obama Administration cut a deal with the Republican Party. The deal was that the GOP would not field any viable presidential candidate in 2012. In return, the Obama Administration wouldn’t prosecute any Bush Administration officials over the faulty intelligence that led to the Iraq War, their use of torture against detainees, etc.

  Southern Beale
  

• In Lawrence O’Donnell’s America, every dumb-ass in the "press corps" would feel free to ask White House candidates about the pronouncements of their church's leaders from hundreds of years in the past. Do you know how stupid this country would be if that was standard practice?
  
  Pope Pius IX was the head of O’Donnell’s church in 1863. Do you know how many ridiculous things he said? Should Candidate Kerry have been quizzed on these matters in 2004?
  
  If Candidate Kerry had been quizzed, what would Lawrence have done?
  
  One more point about the small tiny mind of the instinctive bigot:
  
  O’Donnell complained that Romney’s church didn’t allow blacks to be priests until 1978. O’Donnell’s church doesn’t allow women to be priests right to this very day! Such awkward comparisons will never occur to pieces of work like O’Donnell and Dowd as they display their instinctive bigotry toward The Other’s religion.
  
  Should journalists have hounded Candidate Kerry about this matter? If they had, what would Lawrence have done? Trust us: He would have screamed and bellowed and yelled.

  Bob Somersby, the daily howler
  

And apparently nobody is pointing up this, probably because it got mentioned last year:  The guy whose lies about WMD of Saddam Hussein justified that stupid war in Iraq confessed on BBC2 as part of a program on spies.  (Modern Spies, which may not be visible in the US.)

I got nothing.

And They Get Paid to Spy on You

No, not the police, although more of them at lower levels are in fact tracking cell phone use (allegedly of suspects, and we know where that leads).

Ever since cell phone companies were granted immunity from lawsuits by the Bush Administration and the spineless Democrats who enabled them, this has been inevitable. It’s bad enough that the government and law enforcement can eavesdrop, read your e-mails and even track you with your cell phone without a warrant. Now corporations like AT&T are making money off of it.

And where are those lovers of the constitution, the Tea Party and self-described “Constitutional conservatives”? What, no rallies in front of AT&T or Verizon HQ? Nope, it’s always * crickets * with that crowd — until they get their marching orders from Fox News, of course. And heh heh, we all know where Rupert Murdoch stands on things like phone hacking! So don’t hold your breath.

In the last two V. I. Warshawsky novels, Vic turns off her cell phone when she realizes it's being used to trace her movements.

Really, why are we allowing Big Brother-type surveillance to grow?  Nineteen Eighty-Four was a cautionary tale, not a blueprint!  (OK, nor as glamourous as David Bowie makes everything sound.)

Southern Beale's post includes a link to the New York Times article which, since we non-subscribers are now cut back to 10 articles per month, I prefer to avoid using unless I must.

Because I Have

...seen Bruce Springsteen  and the E Street Band in Philadelphia.  (24 years ago.  Different stadium.  Different tour.)

Three Unconnected Things

• Jill (Brilliant at Breakfast) administers a spanking "tough love" to Keith Olbermann on the occasion of his firing by Current TV.
• Sara Robinson looks at the state of religion in the world.
• Jesse Curtis spots a conservative paradox:

  This kind of stuff is all over the conservative blogosphere. I frankly refuse to believe that the average conservative writer is as stupid as they are making themselves appear. After all, these basic distinctions between the cases are ones that very young children could make. I think this is a willful obfuscation of the facts so as to better score points for the team.