Some Things Shameful and Called Out

• Shameful. (Containing the video)

  "There is absolutely no place in our Air Force for racism - it's not who we are, nor will we tolerate it in any shape or fashion," said Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, saying the school strives to create a climate of dignity and respect for all. "Period. Those who don't understand that are behind the power curve and better catch up."

• Calling that out (video, Crooks and Liars)

I have to suspect that similar things went on in OCS in the 40s. And the '50s.

In Memoriam

Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine

Oh, Really?

• Mr. Kushner is easily confused.

According to a report in Wired Magazine, the voter registration form for Jared Corey Kushner held by the New York State Board of Elections lists Ivanka’s husband’s gender as “female.” The goof prompted Wired writer Ashley Feinberg to ask “Is Kushner a woman? Did he just accidentally fill out the form incorrectly? Is he the victim of a malicious voter impersonation scheme? Unfortunately, there's absolutely no way to know for sure, because he has yet to provide Wired with a comment. But based on his recent history with paperwork, option two seems like a pretty safe bet.”

Kali Holloway, AlterNet

The really important visitor to the UC Berkeley campus last weekend.  Too bad a meeting with this cat and the insignificant blabbermouth couldn't have been arranged.

Dot Connection (Video)

The Trump/Russia connection.

Post-Antibiotics

He found that without increased infection control measures, like regularly testing patients for pandemic resistance, and quarantining anyone who’s a carrier, CRE would be endemic—i.e. living full-time—at nearly every Orange County health care facility within a decade.

Wired, Megan Molteni

I was working oh, twenty years ago, tracking patients with resistant bacteria.

I've Mislaid The One Ring Again!

Via Zandar Versus The Stupid:  From The Hill:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) is facing criticism after his office revealed that four voicemails sent from a nursing home where eleven residents died in the aftermath Hurricane Irma were deleted.

Scott's office responded saying the four voicemails, which were all received during a 36-hour period before the first resident died, were handed off to the appropriate agency and then deleted.

Really, they want us dead.

In Memoriam

• Lillian Ross, writer & reporter
• Jake LaMotta, boxer
• Charles Owens, golfer
• Brenda Lewis, soprano
• Stanislav Petrov, helped avert nuclear war

They're Still Trying

The data problem.  (The Atlantic, Vann Newkirk)

They're Still Trying.

Senate GOP fast-tracks last-ditch ACA repeal

time to apply more heat. Fast.

Stepping on Schmucks

• And while I do not think that even Mr. Brooks is stupid enough to publicly cross swords with Mr. Coates again any time soon, in the black-and-white contrast between their reactions to the election of President Stupid you can see the fatal flaw in our media laid bare.
  
  Our media is in the hands of gatekeepers who are determined to abort any discussion about anything that threatens their privilege, their status as gatekeeper or the Both Sides Do It narrative that keeps their whole world propped up. And until that changes -- until talking openly about our real problems becomes something the media works hard to accomplish and not avoid -- nothing else will change.

  Driftglass, of course
  
• Yastreblyansky flicks some dandruff another conservative "pundit" from his shoulder for lying.

In Memoriam

Catherine Bond, mental health advocate.

Resolutely Ignorant

• He won't hear what he doesn't want to hear, Senator Scott. 
• From Raw Story:

  Donald Trump signed into law a Congressional resolution condemning white supremacists on Thursday, after lawmakers maneuvered the president into backing a text triggered by his equivocal response to racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  
  Trump signed the resolution “rejecting White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups,” which was unanimously passed by Congress earlier in the week.
  
  The overwhelming passage of the text meant that Trump would have likely had any attempted presidential veto overturned.
  
  In a statement, Trump said he was “pleased to sign” the measure, adding that “as Americans, we condemn the recent violence in Charlottesville and oppose hatred, bigotry, and racism in all forms.”

• Oh, Facebook.  The Pro Publica report.  Making prostitutes look principled.  Big Bad Bald Bastard yelled at/about them for accepting a purchase of advertising from Russian "sources."  boing boing published Facebook's statement.  (In the extremely unlikely circumstance that a Facebook account has my name on it, it is, unequivocally a fake.)
  

In Memoriam

•  Len Wein, comic book writer
• Lotfi Zadeh, "fuzzy logic"
• Nancy Hatch Dupree, historian of Afghanistan
• Rick Stevens, singer (Tower of Power)
• ETA:  X Atencio, animator (and songwriter)

Schooled

The National Congress of American Indians kindly offered Steve Bannon a history lesson Monday after he blamed “leftists” for the notion that Native Americans were the first Americans.
The largest Native American advocacy group in the country said in a statement to TheWrap that indigenous people not only occupied the land that is now the United States of America long before Europeans, but also deserved much of the credit for the U.S. Constitution.
“‘America,’ a term Mr. Bannon uses to refer to the United States of America, owes its founding, its place, and its very survival to the original, Indigenous inhabitants of this land – the ‘First Americans,'” a spokeswoman for the organizations said. “America as a democratic society and government was modeled after the Great Law of Peace, the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy.”

Somebody had to do it.  If he graduated from a reputable university/college, the institution should be ashamed.

As You Know, Barb,

The tag/label I use for attempts at voter suppression and tales of voter "fraud" (there are more insect parts in your average hot dog than cases of actual voter "fraud," and most of it seems to be committed by Republicans.  Just saying.  Want to finish that hot dog?  There's a ball game this weekend) is, as I've mentioned the punch line to what may be a Dick Gregory sketch [Mr. Gregory was just slightly before my time and may not have been considered child-friendly] , which may refer to literacy tests, in which the prospective voter is handed a sheet in Chinese.  The Election Commissioner wants to bring this sort of stupid back.

Critics say the commission is a pretext for Republican efforts to make it harder to register and to vote, and that it will reach a predetermined conclusion, that tough new rules are needed to prevent fraud,” the Times noted. “Studies have repeatedly shown that illegal voting is very rare, and that voter impersonation — perhaps the main danger suggested by advocates of tighter election rules — is next to nonexistent.”

Those studies, however, don’t hold sway with Gardner, who told the paper that additional voting restrictions could be a boon to turnout.

(AlterNet, from Raw Story by David Edwards)

Yeah, really.

Meta

The Atlantic, Kurt Andersen:  "How America Lost Its Mind."  Or, what's with the crackpottery.  With video.

Of course, I have a few nits:

And then factions of the new left went to work making and setting off thousands of bombs in the early 1970s.

Hundreds, honey.  There's a book to be called Fantasyland:  How America Went Haywire.  I want to see the footnotes, frankly.

Quick substantive quote:

Another way the GOP got loopy was by overdoing libertarianism. I have some libertarian tendencies, but at full-strength purity it’s an ideology most boys grow out of. On the American right since the ’80s, however, they have not. Republicans are very selective, cherry-picking libertarians: Let business do whatever it wants and don’t spoil poor people with government handouts; let individuals have gun arsenals but not abortions or recreational drugs or marriage with whomever they wish; and don’t mention Ayn Rand’s atheism. Libertarianism, remember, is an ideology whose most widely read and influential texts are explicitly fiction.

[Emphasis in original.]
(Mr. Andersen appears to be somewhat conservative.  Keep that in mind.) Note his section on 45.

Via odaiwai's comment at Making Light.

Concepts Picked Up in Childhood That Finally Have Application

(Trump appointee):

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt told CNN on Thursday that discussing climate change right now is inconsiderate to the people of Florida.
"Here's the issue," Pruitt told CNN. "To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm—versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm—is misplaced."

There was a [folk?] song lyric when I was very young to the effect of 'The roof doesn't leak if it's not raining, and I can't fix it when it's raining.'

May be too apropos.

In Memoriam

Dr. Jerry Pournelle, writer.

The Nineteenth Century Called. It Wants Its Resident Back.

So. Let's revisit the 1800s to remember why we don't want to do that for real, aside from the disrespect for the dignity of every human being. Ahem.

• Cross-country travel takes much longer than a week.  Much longer.
• Your personal computer is an abacus.  The Difference Engine is not mass-produced.  The telephone is in its early stages.  Not pocket-sized at all.
• Indoor plumbing is making inroads but isn't ubiquitous.
• The streets are dotted with horse excreta.  (Buggy whip manufacturers make good money.)
• Financial panics occur and take down the entire economy.
• 19th Century medicine.
• All suits have to be custom-made, and many tailors were immigrants.
• No air-conditioning.
• No credit cards.
• Vaudeville as mass entertainment.  No TV or radio.
• Very little football.  ( A plus for me, but hey!)
• Little variety in cuisine.

Reincarnated member of the American Know-Nothing Party speaks. As usual, spewing profound ignorance and toxic stupidity insensitivity.

In Memoriam

Kate Millett, influential feminist writer. I read most of her stuff in the '70s and '80s.

Including for Parking Tickets

Putting one slightly in mind of "The Jigsaw Man."

ETA:  Perhaps he and his "followers" can go sunbathing as the storm makes landfall.

"I Did Warn You Not to Trust Me."

• Sessions’ entire speech was shot through with falsehoods and distortions, each one playing directly off ugly racist stereotypes and assumptions that have nothing to do with the facts on hand.
  
  None of this should be a surprise, however.

  Amanda Marcotte, Salon, in AlterNet.
  
• Two from Yastreblyansky:
• Dream a Little Dream
• The Pretzel of Power
• M. Bouffant reprinting a letter appearing in the Salt Lake Tribune.
• Chauncey DeVega (Indomitable) podcast.  History lesson.

It's early in September.

The Chicago White Sox and Oakland Athletics are already eliminated from the divisional chase, and Detroit is not far behind (maybe that's why they traded Verlander).

In the National League, just as in ancient times, Philadelphia and the Mets are out of the race as are San Diego and San Francisco.  No, I don't believe the Dodgers have the most wins this year.  And I'm still not used to Houston being in the American League and leading the Western Division.

"The North Remembers"

Fred Clark on the meaning of words and a Radley Balko tweet.  Is thing of beauty.

Yes,

There's been a bit of tidying up.  Most of the blogs that haven't been updated in a long time have been moved to Archived Blogses.  And I've finally added Colorblind Christians.

Now to squash the urge to buy notebooks and new pens.  School's in!

Waking the Witch

It's Kate Bush earworms all the way down.  "You're like my yo-yo that glows in the dark..."

First:  I have nothing against the note that follows mi and is a long long way to run.  Yes, I know, the Twitter has a character limit.  I am an antifascist.  I am a mature antifascist.  "Antifa" sounds like quack medicine.  No, the coffee is finished.  I am opposed to fascism.  This has to do with fascism is opposed to me.  Yup.  I'm a [Groucho] Marxist (they don't like those, either).

Theodore Sturgeon wrote a fair number of stories dealing with difference, even though he sometimes made mistakes.

1. No More Mister Nice Blog

   You see where I'm going with this? I'm sure there are literally hundreds of young folk calling themselves anarchists and similar names, as there have been for decades, running around the US from demonstration to demonstration, towards whom I have a partially indulgent but critical attitude, because I think even the most systematic anarchist thinking is utopian and sentimental, but can't help admiring the fervor of their engagement; and I think some young people calling themselves anarchists or anti-fascists or what have you showing up for demonstrations have an unfortunate willingness to mix it up with anybody on the right who's looking for a fight, which I think is morally questionable and tactically messed up, a "major gift to the right", as Noam Chomsky is saying; and I know a number of people are using the word "antifa". But I'm starting to think it doesn't add up to being a thing.

2. Mustang Bobby (Bark Bark Woof Woof) on religious con artists.

   When they think “one of their own,” they’re not thinking about someone who shares their religious convictions; they’re thinking about someone who knows how to run a good con and pluck the pigeons. Religious hucksters like Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Jim Bakker see in Trump a fellow con artist and one they admire because he was able to pull off his swindle without having to hide behind a veil of piety and false prophecy. He was even able to get away without paying taxes, the same as they do, but without having to come up with the religious angle.

3. Sarah K. Burris (Raw Story carried by AlterNet) on possible Russian scandalmongering.
4. BooMan Tribune.  Ahooooooogah!
5. Vagabond Scholar.  Because I didn't do a proper Labor Day post.
6. And since I didn't, six women instrumental in the labor struggle from Feministing.
7. The Rectification of Names.
8. Oh, and...

"Pausing for the jet."

The Day before Yesterday is Too Far in the Past

• 40 years of difference in the prospects of janitorial work.
• Megachurch response.
• Evan Robinson at Group News Blog [Warning: Loads slowly] is running a series documenting the Confederacy:  Part 0; Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.
• Not disgracing the hat.
• Wonkette.  Why weren't we told?

In Mem-More-iam

• John Ashbery, prize-winning poet
• Walter Becker, Steely Dan
• (Mark Evanier on Shelley Berman)

Cloudbusting

Raw Story:  They're coming for your weekends!

Among the documents is a 10-page fundraising letter dated April 22, 2016 and penned by SPN president and CEO Tracie Sharp. It bluntly describes its $8.39 million “Breakthrough 2016” campaign to advance the alliance’s goals to “defund and defang” unions and “clear pathways toward passage of so many other pro-freedom initiatives in the states.”

Among the so-called victories that have put the “wind at our backs,” Sharp writes, are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s dismantlement of collective bargaining, and so-called right-to-work laws —which weaken worker protections — passed in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia. It also boasts of its battles against teachers unions and touts the expansion of charter schools as being aligned with the alliance’s “pro-freedom” goals.

They aren't pro your freedom!

In Memoriam

• Richard Anderson, actor
• Shelley Berman, comic (third comic this fortnight)  I believe I mentioned him as a formative influence on my sense of humor.  Maybe $DEITY is having trouble stomaching Trump too.