Ten Years After

So it's the tenth anniversary of Lawyers, Guns & Money.  Lance Mannion does an overview, and Ken Houghton at skippy the bush kangaroo posts links to LGM's celebration.

Hey, they survived and thrived.

Three from The Smirking Chimp

• Inequality and "just happened."
  

  Think about some of the things we have come to take for granted. For example – and just one of many, many examples – we are told that corporations are only supposed to be about making money for the shareholders. But would a country run by We the People to do things to make our lives better have set up these things called corporations to be like that? What do We the People get from a system like that? Would corporations have been created for the purpose of doing things that benefit We the People and our country and our economy, not only a few already-wealthy people at the expense of our country and economy?

• Amnesia:  Not just for soap opera anymore.  (Braying about Benghazi.)

  Indeed, the hyper-partisan focus on Benghazi actually reflects the thoroughly bipartisan nature of America's fubarish foreign policy. We should be having long, heated, intense hearings on the US-NATO military intervention itself -- an illegal and utterly foolish assault which has plunged the country into violent chaos, empowered violent religious extremism and destabilized large swaths of Africa. It sparked violent civil war in Mali, for example; and even the dreaded Boko Haram in Nigeria have acquired copious arms from the flood of weaponry released by Western intervention, as well as funds and training from the extremist groups empowered by (and sometimes directly supported by) the Western powers in the regime change operation.

• Both sides of their mouths:

  The larger Fox message machine has been focused: There's nothing worse, nothing more callous and unimaginable, than vets being denied the government health care they're entitled to, and some dying as a consequence.
  
  Left unmentioned from Fox and friends? In the case of the recent implementation of Obamacare and the federal government's effort to expand Medicaid benefits, Republican governors and lawmakers in 24 states have refused, for partisan reasons, to accept the federal funds to insure more of their citizens. The result? Citizens are being denied government health care they're entitled to, and thousands may die as a consequence.

There was never any truly idyllic time, and now all the institutions, the counter-institutions, the zeitgeist, the culture, and the personal sphere are all poisoned.

Poisoned. Toxic. Lethal.

In Memoriam

• Maya Angelou, poet, writer, actress, dancer, activist (friends of mine met her once in Wisconsin).
• Massimo Vignelli, graphic designer (I love that subway map, even though I was tired of Helvetica Bold by 1985).

Another One Bites The Dust

Pennsylvania's ban on gay marriage ruled unconstitutional.  (Via Shakesville.)

It keeps coming down to what Judge Jones said: "...all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage."

Yesterday, Oregon's ban was also struck down, but the state won't appeal that ruling.  (Via Zandar Versus The Stupid.)

Meanwhile, via Feministing, "right"-wingers claim that Common Core educational standards--no, really, one of them said this--no, really!--will make children gay.  (Video [of Florida State Rep. Van Zant] at link.)  

(Yes, I need to post more often, but the sheer tinfoil-biting foolishness happening in the world has caused me to retreat to variants of 2048, and you know how addictive that is.  The choice of movies today is Godzilla, Neighbors, and Million Dollar Arm, none of which seem to be worth the price of admission.  Feh.)

Awww, Geeeee...

Co-founder of NOM gets realistic about the battle against same-sex marriage.

(Many on the "right" are not realistic.)