In Memoriam

• Lotfi Mansouri, S. F. Opera director
• Seamus Heaney, poet
• Sathima Bea Benjamin, jazz singer/activist
• Red Burns, "Godmother of Silicon Alley"

Wishing Now I'd Requested Overnight Delivery of That Shipment of Words

The projected gutting of the New York Public Library, as reported by Lambert Strether at naked capitalism.  Specifically, the main branch at 42nd and 5th.

...the real fight here is for public purpose, as opposed to the civic vandalism of rentiers[.]...

Putting in an Order for a Shipment of Words...

...to the outlet at Poughkeepsie.

• Cornel West (via Raw Story) on materialism and virtue (video), because I have been mumbling for years about how commodifying everything including things and values that should not be commodified is destructive to "society" and "values."  Except I've not quite got the words right.  I have figured that insisting that "everything has a price" leads to libertarianism as opposed to liberty, and I have noticed "civic virtue"seems to be a forgotten quality (and besides, both Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer are running for office in New York City, so what is civic virtue anyway?), and anyone can see that the politicians bleating the loudest about "values" don't seem to have any.
  
  In other words, Dr. West, it's not only civil rights leaders. Also, Volpone is satire.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates on President Obama's speech at the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech:

  Like Du Bois, Barack Obama has taken the stage at a moment when it is popular to assert that black people are the agents of their own doom. There has never been any other such moment in American history. The response to Trayvon Martin, indeed the response to Barack Obama himself, has been to attack black morality, to highlight black criminality and thus change the conversation from what the American state has done to black people, to what black people have done to themselves. Like Du Bois, Barack Obama believes that this these people have a point. His biographer, David Levering Lewis, says that Du Bois came to look back back on that speech with some embarrassment. I don't know that Barack Obama will ever reach such a conclusion.

  Of course that was only one part of the speech. I will point out that W.E.B. Du Bois was not the first person to make the suggestion and Barack Obama will not be the last; the "black people are the agents of their own doom" meme pops up periodically because it's visible, superficial, and easy even if one knows the underlying causes.

Pass the Salt, Please

• Via skippy, the Texas Department of Transportation, faced with roads damaged by truck volume due to the oil boom, are planning to convert some of those roads to gravel and lower the speed limit.  No, really.

  “This is a safety issue,” Underwood said. “It’s not ‘our roads are bad and we’re not going to keep them up.’ It’s ‘our roads are bad and we’re trying to protect the driving public.’”

  Other states have weight limits and speed limits and enforcement.  But their roads are bad and they're not going to keep them up.
• Walk On presents a video of John Lewis speaking at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and discusses how right wingers claim a moral authority that they do not in fact possess.

  All of these outlets [listed in previous paragraph; Fox news, et al.] are opposed to the civil rights movement, opposed to what King stood for, opposed to one of the only living moral giants of American history, John Lewis.

• ETA:  Terrance Heath meditates on the journey between 1963 and the present.  With statistics.

In the Annals of the Real World Trumping Satire, It Is Impossible to be More Absurd Than Reality

Or why The Onion has been misfiring lately.  Apparently only the details are fiction.

Paul Bibeau, Goblinbooks, writes:

As for me personally, I am getting scared to make fun of this stuff. The craziest nonsense I write is starting to come true.

I think I made the same point a few years ago and so did Aristophanes, probably.

In Memoriam

•  Albert Murray, scholar
• Marian McPartland, jazz pianist and radio host
• Sid Bernstein, impresario (I was one of those who had a ticket to the first Shea concert, though not Carnegie Hall)

*Headdesk* Department

• In the Odd How That Works section, a Texas megachurch previously in the antivax camp is urging the congregation to immunize (or stay quarantined) after a measles outbreak (all 11 cases in the county) is traced to them.  

  Pearsons did her best on Sunday to try to put a biblical spin on why the church had flip-flopped on its vaccination stance.
  
  “There are a lot of people that think the Bible — we talk about walking by faith — it leaves out things such as, I don’t know, people just get strange,” she said. “But when you read the Old Testament, you find that it is full of precautionary measures, and it is full of the law.”
  
  “Why did the Jewish people, why did they not die out during the plague? Because the Bible told them how to be clean, told them how to disinfect, told them there was something contagious,” Pearsons continued. “And the interesting thing of it, it wasn’t a medical doctor per se who took care of those things, it was the priesthood. It was the ministers, it was those who knew how to take the promises of God as well as the commandments of God to take care of things like disinfection and so forth.”

  Give viruses and bacteria a shelter and they will turn on you. 
• Things that make me glad that conspirators of this sort aren't very bright:  Police foil far-rightists' plan.

From Raw Story.

A Thing of Beauty and a Joy for Today

Via Iron Tongue at Midnight:  Today's Google Doodle.

*Ahem*

That last post was number 2222.

We Have Stories, and Our Stories Reflect Moral Complexity. They Have Doctrine.

• Sophie's Choice, The Americanization of Emily, and Bradley Manning:  The process of hard choices (and torture).  Arthur Silber, making purveyors of "morality" look like buzzy-voiced unthinking jackals.  
• Via three different sources, one young woman rescued by food stamps (and kindnesses).  Comments unkind to jackals the politicians causing this quandary.

In Memoriam

Elmore Leonard, writer.

I only read one of his books (and it was not one of the ones made into a movie), but whooooo.

This Just In

The CIA admits to its role in Iranian coup in 1953.

Why yes, that did come back to bite them.  The '53 Iranian coup gets aired out every so often, particularly after bouts of saber-rattling.  Now with more documentation.

(Still 'meh.')

Meh.

Meh.  Maybe tomorrow.

I Wish It Would Rain

• Real reason for the fear hatred of Obamacare.  (Yes, it's Daily Kos.  You'll live.)
• Because in real life, Sisyphus is not a myth:  John Lewis on refighting the battles of civil rights.
• Economist Feud (with bonus round).  Krugman in the house!  (Article by Bill Black.)
• Yves Smith writes:
  

  An army of lawyers enabled this activity. We’ve had a lot of complaints about the failure to prosecute bank employees and executives, but perhaps the better question is why have virtually no foreclosure mill attorney been disbarred? Even when the firms like David Stern or Stephen Baum are targeted, the key attorneys often reconstitute elsewhere.
  
  [...]
  
  The state AG wanted to go after the foreclosure mills. The state bar association barred that action and has proceeded to clear the attorneys. If in a state like Florida they’ve looked at 149 cases and found nothing wrong, they are going to find nothing wrong.

  Virtually no lawyers disbarred.
  
• Republic of T reports on gay-bashing around the world.  Warning:  Graphic imagery, verbal and video.

Relatively Unrelated Relativity

Or Rossum's Universal Robots.  Your call.

• Long essay at Shakesville from Melissa McEwan, encapsulated in the first two lines and given detail and specifics thereafter.  Coda here.
• "Amazing amounts of money get looted in the normal operation of American health care."  Mr. Somerby at the Daily Howler on the lack of reporting on health care pricing.
• Why you don't want municipal services privatized.  Southern Beale with two examples, one local, one in Oklahoma.
• "Stop and frisk:"
• Pecunium's take;
• Zandar's take;
• Comrade Misfit's take.
• [It turns out I got this item from a locked post, so.] 
• [Warning for ableist language, specifically the word "madness" when what is meant is "irrational and self-destructive patterns of behavior or belief."]  Reprinted at AlterNet, Henry A. Giroux's article in CounterPunch on trends in the United States that appear to be irrational and self-destructive.

  ...[R]esponses to social issues are increasingly dominated by a malignant characterization of marginalized groups as disposable populations. All the while zones of abandonment accelerate the technologies and mechanisms of disposability. One consequence is the spread of a culture of cruelty in which human suffering is not only tolerated, but viewed as part of the natural order of things.
  
  Before this dangerously authoritarian mindset has a chance to take hold of our collective imagination and animate our social institutions, it is crucial that all Americans think critically and ethically about the coercive forces shaping U.S. culture—and focus our energy on what can be done to change them. It will not be enough only to expose the falseness of the stories we are told. We also need to create alternative narratives about what the promise of democracy might be for our children and ourselves.

Going Up to the Bell Tower...

• Somebody (I lost track of whom) linked to Stephen Fry's tumblr, wherein he horsewhips a British fish-wrapper and its owner and provides historical context.  A minor example:

  The Mail still can’t quite live with the shame that it has always, always been historically wrong about everything - large and small - from Picasso to equal pay for women. Because it has always been against progress, the liberalising of attitudes, modern art and strangers (whether by race, gender or sexuality). Of course they’ll leap on a Stephen Lawrence bandwagon once the seeds of their decades of anti-immigration racism (read a 1960s or 1970s Daily Mail) have been sown, but deep down they have always come from the same place and had the same instinct for the lowest, most mean-spirited, hypocritical, spiteful and philistine elements of our island nation.

  The Open Letter he refers to is here.
  
• Mills River Progressive points to the definition of fascism and some current examples.  (And yes, the term was misused and overused by the "left" for many years; between Godwin and "fascist octopi," the word and the concept were leached of rightful horror and power.  And humans tend to forget history.  And those with the visceral loathing of fascism born of exposure to it are dying out.)
• 1936.  That is all.

They Do Things Differently There

• Echidne of the Snakes excerpts Katha Pollitt on reproductive decisions in Europe and adds her own opinion.
• Jim Steranko on Twitter (hint:  Multi-episodic!).

Almost Had It, There

• The Daily Howler on the coverage of one of the candidates in the New York City mayoral election (hint:  Not Weiner) by a prominent columnist at the New York Times (hint:  Not Brooks),  with a quote from a commenter (not me) on the article:  "When did the Times editorial page become Tiger Beat?"  And here, America, is your handbasket; step carefully and be sure to strap in, the destination can be a bit rough...

• Now, Republicans are making another attempt to literally take food from the mouths of millions of working families, children, elderly and disabled Americans.

  From Republic of T., crying out for justice.
  I begin to wonder whether these Republicans have ever read the Gospels.  For people professing to be Christians, they display a remarkable ignorance about what Jesus of Nazareth preached.  Remember Jesus?  Christianity is centered around Jesus.  Not around capitalism or power.
  
• Secret accusers and information sources.  Where have I heard that before?  Sounds a little like the latter stages of the Dreyfus case or rumors about the Inquisition or Stalinist justice or something.

Brief Update

The San Diego County Clerk who had filed suit to stop same-sex marriages has withdrawn his petition.

In Moskva, Email Reads You

Yes.  Ancient Boris Badenov-type joke.

Via Mercury Rising, transcript of PBS's NewsHour aired August 1, 2013. Small and unrepresentative sample of the conversation:

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, what does that say, Russell Tice, about what the government -- you're saying -- your understanding is of what the government does once these conversations take place, is it your understanding they're recorded and kept?

RUSSELL TICE: Yes, digitized and recorded and archived in a facility that is now online. And they're kind of fibbing about that as well, because Bluffdale is online right now.

And that's where the information is going. Now, as far as being able to have an analyst look at all that, that's impossible, of course. [...]

Let's just say that the official reassurances of the NSA sound a bit hollow.

Two Incidents

I'm not going to say it.  I don't need to say it.

1. Student movie with fake guns draws cops with drawn guns.

   One of the actors immediately let go of his fake assault rifle. But another held onto his replica handgun, forcing officers to make a life-or-death choice. An officer knocked the gun from the actor's hand and handcuffed him, drawing a peaceful climax to what could have been something far worse.

2. Police chief stopped and frisked.

   Now maybe I’m just being totally optimistic here, but maybe this incident will be the final catalyst necessary to get Bloomberg and his clown show of a police department to drop this nonsense before somebody gets the idea that Chief Zeigler might have a federal civil rights complaint on his hands. Maybe the ridiculousness of having one of their own bagged by the ["Stop and Frisk"] program (and this happened in early May 2008, we’re just now hearing about it some five years later) will embarrass the NYPD enough that they start to reconsider this odious practice.

    (Via Zandar Versus The Stupid from the New York Daily News.)