Altered States

AlterNet, from various indicated sources.

• Least happy and healthy Americans live in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Virginia. (Originally at Appalachian Voices, Melanie Foley)
• North Dakota as a state close to libertarian ideals. (From Salon, Alex Pareene)

  But there is a reason that fewer people live in all of North Dakota than in Detroit, and there is a reason why the population of North Dakota slowly declined from the 1920s through the end of the 20th century: Not that many people want to live there. People are moving there now because of a natural resources boom (and those always last forever and always create permanent, stable communities, right?) not because North Dakota suddenly became a much nicer place to live, on account of freedom.
  
  New York and California, though, are both super-nice, even though we confiscate more money than North Dakota, and spend it on things like mass transportation (freedom from having to own cars!) and helping people without means get food and healthcare (freedom from dying!). Koch industries co-owner David Koch, for the record, lives in New York City. Though I imagine he and his brother will soon pack up and relocate to sunny, free Grand Forks.

• Conservative "morality." (From Robert Reich's blog)

  Conservative moralists don't want women to have control over their bodies or same-sex couples to marry, but they don't give a hoot about billionaires taking over our democracy for personal gain or big bankers taking over our economy.
  
  Yet these violations of public morality are far more dangerous to our society because they undermine the public trust that's essential to both our democracy and economy.

• Long-term fandoms as manifested through the Spinners and the Mets.  (Having just realized that next year will be my twentieth one as an Athletics fan and recalling that there were still substantial remnants of the '89 championship team wearing the green and gold.)

In Memoriam

Paul Williams, early rock critic, magazine founder, and writer.

In Memoriam

• Bob Teague, TV reporter (who I remember from the mid-'60s).
• Phil Ramone, record producer
• Fay Kanin, screenwriter/playwright
• Yvonne Brill, rocket scientist

More Contradiction

Another Tennessee representative with no clue about why immigrants come to the U.S.  Via Southern Beale.

It’s not about the benefits, you idiots. If immigrants just wanted free stuff they’d go to Canada, where they at least get some damn healthcare, not to mention a social safety net far more generous than ours. It’s about the opportunity. It’s about being free. It’s about a chance to create a life for yourself and your family. They come here to work and be united with family members who are already here. It’s all the stuff that the flag-wavers and patriots are constantly beating their breasts about: family, freedom, apple pie, the whole shebang. It’s not about the oh-so generous free stuff Uncle Sam hands out.

Furthermore, the entire premise that immigrants are a drain on America is 100% wrong. In fact, the whole “birth tourism” fearmongering Black has glommed on to is something exaggerated by the racist folks at FAIR, Numbers USA, the Center For Immigration Studies, and John Tanton’s other anti-immigrant front groups.

And finally, let me say: It is with tremendous irony that I read that conservatives claim the 14th Amendment has been misinterpreted for 145 years, but the Second Amendment (with all that stuff about a “well regulated Militia” which conservatives routinely ignore) has not.

Yes, Republicans. Do tell me about how you believe in a strict interpretation of the Constitution. I’m all ears.

Also, intransigence about civil rights was not limited to Republicans.  (What, Blue Dogs are an old phenomenon?  I'm shocked -- shocked!)

Opinion Alert

And by the way, I'm in favor of marriage equality.

I'm still waiting for opposition based on actual fact, rather than tradition, religion, and "We need someone to discriminate against!"  Also, conservative goal-post moving has become rather comical.

Also, Chairman Meow is Blinking at a Normal Rate Again

Comrade Misfit (Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I) calls out the NRA (actually, the official publication, American Rifleman).

We have a lot of things that people disagree on. If you are going to preach to the choir and effectively give up any hope of persuading the other listeners to adopt your point of view, then fine, shit like calling the President "King Pinocchio" is not the worst thing anyone has said about him.[footnote in original] Nobody with more than six functioning neurons is ever going to expect reasoned discourse from the likes of Glenn Back, Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump.

But if you want to have your point of view listened to by the other side and treated seriously, you don't do it by opening with insults. When the NRA claimed that the Obama Administration wasn't listening to them, well, shit, who can blame the Administration for that? Would you take seriously a guy who called you a Marxist tool?

The NRA used to be known as bipartisan. That the editor of their magazine is airing his inner wingnut is Not A Good Sign.

"The Piano Has Been Drinking"

• Driftglass has the video atop a post on the right-wing pundit mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but nothing says "Monday" like Tom Waits.
• Two related items from Mercury Rising's Phoenix Woman:
• A Senator from New Jersey (Robert Menendez) has been accused of sleaziness by something called the Daily Caller.  The Washington Post has refuted the smear.  There are ongoing shenanigans.
• Right-winger throws fit. Let the quizzing begin.

  Really, Roger? Still pretending that the Washington Post is the only entity that’s called the Caller‘s smear job into question? When the FBI found it baseless? When ABC, the New Jersey Star-Ledger, and the Associated Press have all publicly cast doubt on it? Did all of these entities somehow interview the wrong hookers, Roger? Are they all paying hookers to trash the Caller? Really?

• Well, why does no one speak of America's oligarchs?  (From naked capitalism.)
• Income and wealth inequality.  (Yes, the title is hyperbole.  You've seen worse.)
• Surgical strikes, my a--  Excuse me.  Drone warfare is no better than non-drone warfare.
• "The piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking, not me."

Meanwhile at Milliways

• Jesse Curtis (Walk On) on a peculiarity of segregation.

And the next four are taken from AlterNet, which gleaned from diverse sources:

• Why the powers-that-be have been trying to discredit Noam Chomsky.
• Economic inequality may be permanent.
• Speculation on the "reasons" the neo-conservatives and G. Bush attacked Iraq.
• Cross-purposes:

  This might be seen in the situation described above like this: divergent speech that emphasises social distance is the language of conflict - specifically, in this case, class conflict: upper vs all the rest (but portrayed as middle vs under). This is what's used the moment any talk of raising taxes is involved. Convergant speech is dispassionate wonk talk, relatively drained of emotion - as well as inconvenient facts. The perversity of the situation is that conflictual language is used to exclude the interests and priorities of the large majority of the American people, while the dispassionate wonk talk is used to create a bipartisan elite concensus that fundamentally excludes just those interests and priorities. That's how you create an "expert" discourse of very serious people who are utterly out of touch with the world they are guiding to catastrophe.

  What goes on in Congress.

Y'know, if all they wanted to do was dance, I'd feel a hell of a lot safer.

It Turns Out

...that according to Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog (it's been mentioned before), there exists a biometric safety/authentication system for weapons.  (Company's named Armatrix.)

(Yes, it is geared toward police/armed forces, not toward private owners.  Yes, the movies will hate them.  Yes, legitimate buyers could go rogue.  Everything has flaws.)

If one is concocting an alcoholic drink, what would a Sonic Screwdriver be?

Get Out the Bulldozers...

From the Smirking Chimp, via Mills River Progressirve:  "Tell your Senators to defend Social Security and Medicare by supporting these amendments!" by Richard Eskow.  Because as a certain politician said (by way of Scratchings):

And let me say this as a politician -- I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks.

Parts of that speech, by the way, are quite scary.

Apparently we're not pushing the Senators hard enough.  I've said more than once that one of the factors in Social Security's creation was that during the Depression, everybody in positions of power either had been, was closely related to, or knew personally someone who was poor.  It's a shame that some legislators need personal tragedy to understand Medicare or Social Security or the Affordable Care Act.

"Climbing to Tranquillity"

Higher and higher...

• From ThinkProgress via AlterNet, what your neighbors may be imbibing with their morning beverage:

  O’Reilly, perhaps best known for his annual winter jeremiads on the imminent destruction of Christmas, explained to his audience that “secular progressives” are seeking to destroy such holy biblical figures as grown men in bunny costumes so they can legalize marijuana and allow abortions on demand[.]

  Followed by a direct quote and the information that the schools Mr. O cites get Easter Monday off.
  
  I went to a Catholic school. We didn't get Easter Monday off.
• From Salon via AlterNet, private sector parasites (and using the term "rent" in a way I have not seen since economics class):

  If one or more of the sectors providing inputs or infrastructure to productive industry charges excessive rents, then industry can be strangled. Industry cannot flourish if too much rent is paid to landlords, if credit is too expensive, if excessive copyright protections stifle the diffusion of technology. Even progressives must concede that guilds or unions or professions can use the power of labor monopolies to demand excessive incomes for their members and that at some point high taxes really do strangle the economy. (The evidence of successful high-tax-big government countries like those of Scandinavia suggests that you can go safely up to about 40-50 percent of GDP going to government, assuming the taxes are well spent and raised largely by less-distortionary taxes including consumption, property and wealth taxes).

• Apparently it is William Shatner's birthday.  Well...have...a good...one!

Orcinus Is Back!

Dave Neiwert is back at Orcinus, and will be reposting his Crooks & Liars work as well as writing a book abut killer whales.  Much better company than right-wingers!

Yes, I'll have to move the link out of Archived Blogses.  Sigh.

Chip, Chip, Chip

Implications of Social Security cuts for young people.

The changes to the cost-of-living formula used by Social Security proposed by President Obama may sound small at first, reducing recipients’ checks by a few dollars every month. But the formula, known as chained CPI, is cumulative. You lose a few dollars this month. Next month you lose those same dollars and a few more. After 20 years the average Social Security recipient’s check will be more than $100 less than it would be under the current formula. To make matters worse, many economists argue that the existing cost-of-living formula already penalizes seniors because it fails to reflect the higher proportion of health care expenses in most seniors’ budgets, and the reality that health care inflation has outpaced broad inflation for many years.

It would probably require too much empathy and imagination to expect our senators to vote on this as though they would have to live on Social Security themselves, what?

Time to contact your senator.

Needless, Expensive War 10 Years After

• Jurassicpork focuses on the children.

  These war-warped children will grow up with a keen sense of their own nation's history as surely as African American children grow up learning of their forbears' slave status. They will grow learning how George W. Bush tried to rush elections and a Potemkin village illusion of political and economic normalcy in early 2005 even while sectarian forces were literally tearing each other to pieces, during a long period in which our most awesome military couldn't even secure the single highway leading to the airport in Baghdad.

• From Truthdig: An Iraq war veteran, dying, pens a letter to Bush and Cheney:

  Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

• Veterans Today:  The books were cooked.

  Former VA doctor Steven Coughlin told congress the department suppressed and manipulated data backing the health claims of Iraq, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf veterans.

Last two links via Mills River Progressive.

P.S.:  THERE WERE NO WMD!  So, needless, expensive, and under false pretenses.

Notas Bene

1. The somewhat annual notice about comments:  They are moderated after ten days.  Yes, I do check.  That's why spam disappears every day.
2. Yes, both I Blame the Patriarchy and Dreadful Acres are on the same segment of the blogroll;  Twisty Faster turned the lights back on.  Probably in late spring I will move anything that hasn't updated in a year to the Archived section.  I may change other things as well (not the layout; I like it whole lots better than my old layout.  I hope it's easier to read, too).
3. Message to Winter:  Let the door hit you on the way out.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Threat and menace.

Courtesy of ksix, who commented with the link at Avedon's Sideshow, a video with music, bad language, problematic visual effects, and information about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Why yes, it does sound a little paranoid.  On the other hand, where's the transparency?  Why should the negotiations and the details be such a secret?  The run-up to NAFTA was quite public.

Although NAFTA has not exactly been kittens and puppies; North American Free Trade Agreement produced a few problems.

I posted some links from Mills River Progressive a couple days ago.  Here they are again.  Democratic Underground.  Public Citizen (.pdf)

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's Day to those who celebrate.

Putting Your Voice Where Your Mouth Is

Bernie Sanders, US Senator for Vermont, has a petition opposing budget cuts:

We are strongly opposed to benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the needs of our veterans.

We demand a budget that puts millions of Americans back to work in decent paying jobs.

Follow-Up

Comrade Misfit corroborates link posted for Robert Parry's article at AlterNet with David Taylor's account of the Lyndon Johnson tapes (scroll down to second audio tape clip).  This is part of a BBC radio series.

To say that politicians are pond scum is insulting to pond scum.

Oh, By the Way...

Mills River Progressive has some information for you:  You might want to check this out.  Also this.  (Contains link to .pdf from Public Citizen.  Not light reading.)  And there's more at Democratic Underground.

Short version:  We're in trouble.

We Appear to Have a New Pope

Well, that was quick.

Name to be announced later today.

[Later]  Well, it's later.  It's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is taking the name Francis.  Yes, after St. Francis Xavier of Assisi (My mistake.).  He's from Argentina.

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

It's Monday Again, Isn't It?

• Via twistedchick at Dreamwidth:  Watergate and Iran-Contra were the result of crimes mostly hidden.  Consortium News' Robert Parry via AlterNet, probably in support of his book on the subject.
• Mr. Krugman calls out progressives on the economy:

  So my advice has , obviously been -- part of it is that we need infrastructure, and there’s not enough people -- but also, yeah, you need to take a look at the way people express things. I[f] you think it’s really stupid to be cutting spending now, you should start your article by saying, ‘It’s really stupid to be cutting spending now’ instead of saying, ‘the deficit is a significant problem over the medium term, and then, four paragraphs in, say, ‘I do not think it is a good idea to be cutting spending now.’

• "Five Ways Privatization is Poisoning America" -- no, I don't think that's too strong.
• Toward a discussion about names and identity, from Flyover Feminism (via Shakesville):

  Names can be given, they can be claimed, and reclaimed. They can be denied by the people they are “given” to, or denied by people who refuse to recognize the names we claim for ourselves. Names can be imposed as way of erasing authentic identity. Many of us have multiple names and straddle identities. There are a range of stories – historical and personal – to be told about naming, a variety of meanings signified by names.

  Following up on the thinking here.
  
• Implementing reforms recommended at Vatican II ran afoul of the authoritarian imperative.

  There are no valid reasons in scripture or in the Church’s tradition that rule out the ordination of women. Women who were leaders in the Jesus movement routinely presided at liturgies and celebrated Eucharist, but today every effort is made to maintain the Church as a patriarchal community.

• Employment, the economy, cautious recovery.  (From No More Mister Nice Blog.)  And a right-wing pundit who blames President Obama for airport hotels.  (And the first comment is sufficiently snarkalicious that it gets its own link.  It is, however, ableist.)

Boondoggle 401

Advanced Boondoggle.

When it came to the C-130, the process worked like a dream. “By following this strategy from year to year,” writes a team of scholars of lobbying, “Lockheed has been able to turn what was to be the C-130's doom in the 1970s into a regularly funded military spending program, all without a single request having been sent by the administration to Congress.” Lockheed was so successful on Capitol Hill that its work even garnered a name in honor of the 50 planes bought for every one requested: "C-130 math."

Prerequisites:  Introduction, Beginning, and Intermediate Boondoggle; Marketing in Washington, DC; Congress, Nuts and Bolts 101 and 201; Arachnid Psychology 201

(TomDispatch.com, via AlterNet)

Someone's kids will go hungry to pay for these.

Two Things

• Penny-wise, pound-foolish, or how sequestration is going to cost serious money by cutting funds for treating addictions.  (Republic of T, with dollar amounts.)  You know, Congressfolks shouldn't be drawing salaries until they've worked out this budget thing...
• Today is International Women's Day; Shakesville has thoughtful posts on 
• the choice of changing one's name
• loving, respecting, and trusting women
• being a feminist while living in a rigidly conservative area
and a Nina Simone video, "Four Women."

In Memoriam

Alvin Lee, guitarist (Ten Years After).

Antibiotic Resistance Front

Seriously.

So what’s the takeaway? Public reaction to news of antibiotic resistance seems to follow a predictable pattern: Instant alarm, followed almost immediately by apathy. Despite writing about this for years, I still haven’t figured out whether people think it will never happen to them, or whether they assume there will always be another drug to save them — both assumptions that are incorrect. But I’ve also written about the CDC for years, and I can’t remember many times when they have made statements as strongly worded as yesterday’s. It will be interesting to see whether the news sinks in this time.

I may have mentioned that I did a very little bit of work in this area back 15 years ago.  Let me repeat:  This is serious.  Take it seriously.

ETA:  VERY SERIOUSLY!

Facepalm

Bradley Manning's statement.  Which I think I posted elsewhere.

Requiescat in Pace

Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela.

Award

Tom Tomorrow, the Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning.  (News from Vagabond Scholar.)

That Theme of Paganini

From Daisy's Dead Air:  Bradley Manning nominated for Nobel Peace Prize.

Hot Stuff

Not referring to the little devil here, Jesse Curtis is on fire this last week:

• Diversity training

  Anyway, I bring this silly little episode to our attention because it presents a nice little microcosm of how racism functions on the right. It is a bigotry too cowardly to honestly present itself. Beck and O'Reilly are unwilling to say -- or perhaps even to face in their own hearts -- what they believe, namely, that white males should enjoy all sorts of privileges in life that others do not.

• Oral arguments in the Voting Rights Act case at the Supreme Court

  But as Justices Kagan and Sotomayor pointed out, the states covered by section 5 do in fact continue to correspond to higher levels of litigation and voting rights discrimination.

• Short post

  By the way, I should have mentioned that Justice Scalia was right about the concept of racial entitlement. He just forgot which race this concept has worked for in the United States.

• Video of John Lewis's reaction
• Justice Scalia exhibits tush

  If Scalia had made that argument no one would have a problem with what he said. Perhaps, for example, 10 districts with 30% minority population would provide better representation than 5 districts with 60%. We should be thinking of ways to make our system more democratic. But Scalia was arguing the opposite point, that despite minorities' under-representation in elective office, we need to get rid of this "racial entitlement." That is every bit as offensive and racist as it would have been if he had argued, as some liberals seem to think he did, that the individual right to vote is a racial entitlement.

(Because the states covered specifically would enact voting restrictions the minute they could. It's not a dead letter yet.)