Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

7 years.

Catching Mathematical Elimination Fever...

Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

Oh, And...

Southern Beale looks at the New York Times' coverage of Republican Satanic panic the issue of whether or not there exists voter fraud.

Oh, really? Would someone like to tell what the core issue is, then? One side says voter fraud is a big problem, and the facts say that it is not. Meanwhile, one side is passing laws that take the Constitutionally-protected right to vote away from millions of people. That isn’t the core issue?

As the Season Dwindles...

Cleveland, Minnesota, and Colorado have been eliminated from the divisional races.

We're a long way from the '90s.

A Little Late, But

Cerberus at Sadly, No! reviews a review of the Republican National Con by a conservative.  With "Shorter," wit, and the following sentence:

Cause yeah, arguing that Barack Obama isn’t allowed to campaign against your candidate really is the only hope the Republican Party has left at this point.

Topiary Animals

For your consideration:

• While perusing Brilliant at Breakfast, I followed a link leading to Tom Degan's The Rant, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first studio session.  That reminded me of my own poor story (hearing their first song, unidentified, on Radio Luxembourg), which in turn brought memories of the other two songs I remember hearing, one of which was equally mysterious and was not resolved by the band coming to the US with the rest of their output.  So I googled, and lo!  it turns out that the songwriters were quite prolific and well-known.  The song was "Poof" by Kenny Lynch.  So now I know.
• Via skippy, more misogyny from Joe Walsh.  No, not that one (a point also made at the linked article.  Joe [the real one] might want to talk to his publicist).
• "School choice" is "vouchers" by another name:

  When given a clear choice, voters across the United States have consistently opposed school vouchers. Between 1966 and 2000, state ballot initiatives to allow public funding for private schools were rejected 24 out of 25 times. This dismal record led the pro-voucher strategists to rebrand the movement as “school choice” and as beneficial to public schools. In 2002, Dick DeVos suggested to a Heritage Foundation audience that the school choice movement should conceal its conservative roots. He advised that “properly communicated, properly constructed, [school choice] can cut across a lot of historic boundaries, be they partisan, ethnic, or otherwise.”

  (Article found via an old post of mine linking to a progressive blog which had this article on a sidebar. Is serendipity not wonderful?)
  
• Robert Reich last week had an opinion piece at SFGate.com which apparently I didn't catch.  It's about how the Republican falsehood machinery works:

  The answer is that the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers.
  The first is by repeating big lies so often in TV spots - financed by a mountain of campaign money - that the public can no longer recall (if it ever knew) that the mainstream media and its fact-checkers have disproven them.
  
  [...]
  
  The second means the GOP has developed to protect its mistruths is discrediting the mainstream media - asserting that it's run by "liberal elites" who can't be trusted to tell the truth. "I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans," Newt Gingrich charged at a Republican debate in January in what has become a standard GOP attack line.
  
  [...]
  
  The third means the GOP uses to protect itself is its own media outlets - led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere. Even if these outlets don't spread the lies directly, they can at least spread doubt about what's true.
  
  Together, these three mechanisms are creating a parallel Republican universe of Orwellian dimensions, where anything can be asserted, where pollsters and political advisers are free to create whatever concoction of lies will help elect their candidate and where "fact-checkers" are as irrelevant and intrusive as is the truth.
  
  [...]
  
  The Romney campaign has decided it won't be dictated by fact-checkers. But a society without trusted arbiters of what is true and what is false is vulnerable to every lie imaginable.

• Better news:  most of the anti-collective bargaining law championed by Scott Walker in Wisconsin has been struck down as violating both the state and US constitutions.  Mr. Walker will appeal, of course.  
• Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Occupy Wall Street?  NYPD.  Checkpoints, Charlie.

Time to retreat to a nice scary Stephen King novel, where the horrors, though drawing from the subconscious, are only on the page.

Also, my baseball team won yesterday.

Things of Note

• Teachers in Chicago are on strike.  Skippy cites Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money and his own experience to urge supporting the teachers in this action.  I know I mentioned being put off math by a teacher in 2nd grade, but I was also encouraged by several teachers all the way through K-12.  You do know that teachers don't get paid well, and are in certain circles expected to do the job out of love, right?  SUPPORT CHICAGO TEACHERS!!!!!
• Backstage at Security Theater.

  I really don’t want to hear how much shinier/sparklier/cheaper/better private contractors are. I also don’t want to hear about the budget deficit from phony fiscal hawks who are pocketing tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from these private companies. And finally, I don’t feel good knowing that our nuclear weapons programs are being handled by private, for-profit corporations. This is atrocious. If I were King I’d make this shit illegal.

• What newspapers and Major League Baseball have in common.  (Also known as "Water won't flow uphill no matter how you order it to, King Canute.")  (Psst!  Boston and Philly slated for elimination soon!  Like, this weekend.)

Colorado

Colorado.

Also, "voodoo" national security.

"Worst Voter Snipe Hunt Ever."

Jesse Taylor recounts the Great Republican Satanic panic Voter Fraud Investigation in Florida.  Set down that drink.

And Did I Mention Minnesota's Voter ID Law?

Phoenixwoman at Mercury Rising notes that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has belatedly noticed that implementing Republican Satanic panic voter ID is going to be a document and fiscal disaster.  Links to previous mentions of this problem included.

Ziggy Played Guitar

...but where were the Spiders?

Probably consoling the New York Mets, who've been eliminated.  Four National League teams mathematically eliminated.  No American League teams.  Yet.  (Give it a week.)

Jesse Curtis has completed the week of conservative-only news and he Has Questions.  (You should read it.)

Pecunium is hitting on all cylinders today:  "Mitt Romney is a Liar," which is self-explanatory, and "Won't Ask, Don't Care," on the first year after the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Chris Hedges, via Mills River Progressive, says we can't grow our way out of this.  Uh-oh!

In Memoriam

Dorothy McGuire, singer.

They were huge when I was six.

Baseball and Greens

Chicago Cubs and Miami have been eliminated from contention in their respective division races.  Wait til next year, anyone?

Philly.com has an interview with Jill Stein (via Corrente).  On third parties, Ms. Stein says:

Any time that a big national party has moved forward, it's been a third party that drove it there. The abolition of slavery initially had the Liberty Party as the counterpart of the abolitionists' social movement. The Liberty Party drove the agenda into another small party which called itself the Republican Party. It was an independent party called the Women's Party that drove the issue of women's right to vote into the mainstream. If you like child labor laws, Social Security and collective bargaining, they were all pushed by small independent parties, including the socialists, the communists and others. They were a real force. Historically, there is a lot of evidence that you can win the day even if you don't win the office. As Frederick Douglass said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Eulogy for Journalism and a Little List

1. Driftglass:
   

   Once upon a time there used to be a profession that, at its best, brought exactly that kind of pressure to bear on powerful institutions that abused their positions of privilege to cheat the public and screw over its opponents. That profession was called "journalism" and people like David Gregory have killed it and until people like David Gregory learn to fear for their professional lives at the thought of using their positions of incredible influence and privilege to carry Conservative water and cover their crimes under an avalanche of Fake Centrist bullshit, the professional of journalism will remain dead.

2. Question: Why do Republicans hate Americans? AlterNet's Erin Gloria Ryan wants to know!

   According to people who have seen the thing in its entirety, it's the most conservative platform in modern history. Critics call it "angry," "fringe," and "extreme," as it calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion in the case of rape, bars female soldiers from combat roles, blames sick people for requiring medical care, and officially declares gay marriage to be an abomination. In addition to being a policy compass — an indicator of what sort of laws we can expect from elected Republican officials over the next four years — the new platform is a giddy romp through all the reasons the grand ol' party might hate you.

Low-Tech Verifiable Voting

Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism on paper ballots, hand-marked, hand-counted.  It's the Quebec election system.

Suspicious Circumstances

The death of Sunny Sheu and the aftermath of the story.

While Galison’s contention above about a media coverup may sound a bit paranoid, he’s had repeated instances of initially interested media outlets pulling back from the story. Indeed, a writer at Business Insider indicated that he found the notion presented by the piece, that there is an ongoing coverup by the NYPD, and based on the information presented, he found that credible but his editors had doubts. Even so, Business Insider frequently publishes its own take on news and research; it could just as easily have picked up the story and posed the notion of a police coverup as a plausible rather than proven. 

 From Naked Capitalism.

Hmmmmm (also, the comments paint several different stories).

Just in Case

Because I've heard absolutely nothing about the Green Party this year (remember the Green Party?  They're still around), I'm linking to the Greens' 2012 presidential campaign site.  Candidates are Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala.

Also, Chris Hedges advocates strong measures in an interview about his new book at AlterNet.  (Actually at Truthout.org, reprinted by permission, but AlterNet's where I was directed by --.  Um.  This is why I need to post these things the day I see them.)

Missed Post #1900, And

I really need a movie right about now.

A Medley of Extemporanea

So the Democratic National Convention ends this evening and then I can concentrate on baseball (the stupid widget doesn't work this year, so I actually have to go to MLB.com, which is Entirely Too Much like going into a department store on December 23rd, what with all the videos and the stories about players and the various pronouncements, and that's not taking in team statistics and player statistics and past team statistics and retired player statistics and -- OK, OK.  I really want one-stop standings like a newspaper page.  How retro), since teams are falling by the wayside by now.  Which is to say that at 42-95, Houston is giving the snowball in hell a run for its money.  No one has clinched yet, though.

I'm going to have to add Naked Capitalism to the blogroll simply in self-defense; everybody else links to them.  Mills River Progressive linked to this article by Ian Welsh, in which basic economic facts are set forth one by one.  Time to call the Uh-oh! squad.

You think I'm kidding.

I have mentioned it twice before, but Minnesota's voter ID law is going to cost serious money (and of course will not stop non-existent voter fraud).  Think of it as using stacks of money to swat the Red-Sequinned Blue-Booted Fly.  Via Mercury Rising.

Southern Beale reports that hackers have allegedly broken into PricewaterhouseCoopers and stolen next year's Oscar winners Mr. Romney's tax returns, which they are holding for ransom.  It's probably a hoax.

Obviously a bad case of lucroencephaly, or Money on the Brain...

On the Labor Front

Musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra are not being paid and have been locked out.  Via Iron Tongue at Midnight.

What?

Short Shrift

Southern Beale, writing at First Draft, on that angry white men thing:

No, I still say the Angry White Men who comprise the bulk of the Republican Party are basically angry at their cultural irrelevance. They're angry their racist, homophobic, misogynist jokes aren't funny anymore. They're angry that the '60s happened, and then the '70s, and then the '90s happened, when Communism died and they no longer knew who to be angry at. They're angry they're unable to influence the culture at large, that no one even bothers to launch boycotts of their outspoken, angry musicians because when was the last time Hank Williams Jr. was relevant, anyway? The modern Republican Party has become so regional and parochial, Ohio's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate recently faked a Southern drawl at a Romney campaign event.

This is how they ended up with Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair which, as one Nashville blogger observed, was actually a step up from the bulk of the modern Republican Party. Hell, at least Eastwood was trying to have a conversation with President Obama.

They just need to dance more. [/dismissive]

ETA because all the good stuff turns up after I hit Publish:  Melissa McEwan on Values, featuring the "values" ad the Republicans are running.

Despite their reflexive and compulsive intoning of the word "values" during every election year, as if it's a magical incantation that can be uttered only by those who understand its complex truth, it doesn't really mean anything, in and of itself. It's an ethically neutral word. Everyone has values. What matters is not that you have values, but what values you have. Joseph Stalin valued killing people. Jeffrey Dahmer valued eating people. George Bush valued torturing people. I value not killing people, not eating them, and not torturing them. See? Everyone has values.

See, I value letting people make their own choice about what kind of relationships they want (some people don't actually want marriage, after all, and some people would like close ties with more than one other person.  Yes, that's shocking.  Deal), or as the limerick put it, "for what and with which and to whom."  I get the impression that given the power, some conservatives would cheerfully institute arranged marriages.  For them, it seems to be all about mating and breeding, and most people are not cattle.  Right?  Furthermore, insisting that the only good marriage is heterosexual means that the occasional LBGTQ person caught in that trap (family, social pressure, Republican busybodying) is going to end up miserable for however many years until getting the divorce.

Nobody is forcing anyone into a same-sex marriage (hey!  Maybe that's their problem!  No one is being forced to do it, so it must be Wrong!); I see no shotguns.

No. They Don't.

Apparently Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic has been investigating the national vote suppression scheme.

A few days ago there was a long article about South Carolina's Marci Andino, the executive director of the state's Election Commission, whose testimony in federal court exposes the mechanism to be used to deny or invalidate votes.

This isn't about protecting against voter fraud. This is all about taking away the vote from minorities, the poor, and the ill -- taking it away from people who have voted without incident for decades. It's not Andino's fault. She's just the poor bureaucrat left to try to explain the inexplicable: how all of this could come to pass in the United States of America 50 years after passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Also, a little history about the Voting Rights Act and the weaselly excuses for the voter ID push.  Yes, I said "weaselly," which may be insulting to actual weasels.

Your Labor Day Selections

• Things organized labor pushed to get.
• s. e. smith on labor in general and freelancing in particular:

  Today is also a day when I think of the people who are working on Labour Day—those who keep the vital systems we need moving in motion, like doctors and nurses, bus drivers, firefighters. And those who must work because they have no choice, because they cannot afford the time off and they work for workplaces that don’t observe the holiday; restaurant staff, retail clerks, other service workers for whom the calendar never pauses.
  
  And of freelancers, a growing segment of the working population in the United States. 30% of the population is employed in ‘contingent’ labour, either full or part time, and 55% of those people are women. Working as a freelancer is difficult, and the level of difficulty is often wildly underestimated by people who may see it as romantic or fascinating, but not hard.

• Letter from an angry white guy, but it's not what you think, via Brilliant at Breakfast.
• How governments spend their money, by Dr. Science at Obsidian Wings.  With graphs.
• Where the Polo Grounds used to be.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Also

I'm still trying to figure out why this movie is being called a documentary when it is clearly speculative fiction.



[crossposted]

Polishing the Cat

Because for some reason or other, Harper's feed now opens in my email, so I have to remember to check it, which means the last time I looked a couple of days ago there were 25 items, I missed the article by Jack Hitt entitled "Obama Derangement Syndrome."

The charge from the other side is that mainstream media outlets have abandoned their duty to check simple, knowable facts. For instance, the GM factory Ryan suggested was closed during the Obama Administration was actually shuttered in December 2008, i.e., during the final months of the Bush Administration. Every outlet, except the most devoted Republican organs, has now reported this. So, there has been a big shift now. Daily political journalists have perhaps heard the message that they are not doing their jobs and feel bad about it.

That’s one explanation, and possibly it’s the truth. But the Republicans have also succumbed to the Obama equivalent of what Charles Krauthammer called, more than four years ago, Bush Derangement Syndrome. There is no problem of our time that cannot be assigned to some failing in the leadership of Barack Obama.

Time for a walk.

Barrett Strong, Kander & Ebb, Pink Floyd, and the O'Jays

Via The Sideshow, "Wall Street's War Against the Cities," the effort to bankrupt cities and states in order to pauperize the populace.  Excuse me.  To drive down wages.

The problem is that the financial system itself is rotten. This has turned today’s class war into a financial war, with the major tactic being to shape how voters perceive the problem. The trick is to make them think that cutting taxes will lower their living costs and make housing cheaper, rather than enabling banks to take what the tax collector used to take. That is the key perception that needs to be spread: cutting taxes leaves more “free lunch” income available for banks to lend against, loading the economy deeper into debt.

Here’s why the present track can’t possibly work. State and local pension funds are $3 trillion behind because they are only making 1% returns these days (the only safe return), not the 8+% that they were told to make in order to pay pensions by “capital” gains (that is, the bank-financed free lunch). The Fed is keeping interest rates low in an attempt to re-inflate real estate and other asset prices back to the happy decade of Bubblemeister Greenspan. If interest rates rise – by enough to enable California, Chicago and other localities to obtain enough interest to pay retirees what they promised – then banks will see the collateral for their mortgage loans fall.

Please read the whole thing. It's scarier than Freddy Kruger.

"It'll Cost Ya"

Second verse, same as the first.  Mercury Rising:

That’s right, folks: The good folk of Kittson County are being asked by the Minnesota Republican Party to shell out nearly $112 for every man, woman and child in the county, and to pay for something that won’t fight fraud but will make it harder for legal voters like shut-ins, veterans, and college kids to vote.

See also the first comment.

Really, it's Republican Satanic panic.

ETA:  Not only Republican Satanic panic, it would seem that voter fraud is a Republican sport.  Bradblog (via skippy):

Apparently, the only "portion of what happened" that could be "classified as fraud", at this time, was courtesy of Vos' own wife.

For the record, it's unclear from the new reports whether Samantha Vos voted in person or via absentee. If by absentee --- the way that voter fraud is usually carried out, in the instances where it occurs --- there is no polling place Photo ID law in the world that would have kept her from doing so. If she voted in person at the polling place, despite having declared herself a resident of Idaho earlier this year, it's likely she still retained an unexpired WI driver's license and so, even under her own husband's strict polling place Photo ID restriction law, likely would have had no problem casting her fraudulent votes this year.

Amputating a leg to cure a cold?

In Memoriam

Hal David, songwriter.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

We Have No Right to Prate About Morality

or:  Arthur Silber is right.

No one will be prosecuted for the deaths of prisoners tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These outcomes should once again focus international attention on the Justice Department’s conduct. Mandatory provisions of the Convention Against Torture should have compelled the department to open criminal inquiries into cases in which concrete and credible allegations of torture exist. It failed even to open inquiries in almost all such cases, and in the tiny handful of cases in which inquiries were opened, Justice Department figures were busy murmuring assurances from the outset that these investigations were a mere formality, and that actual prosecutions were unlikely. So did Durham conduct a bona fide investigation? We can never know the answer to that question, because everything that Durham did was cloaked—as proper process in fact requires—in secrecy.

Hello Earth

Via skippy, the reason the Romney/Ryan plan for Medicare is a Very Bad Idea.

Medicare—like other insurers—can keep its costs—and recipients’ costs—low, by having the largest risk pool possible. That is the beauty of a single-payer system, of which Medicare is a highly successful example.

And that’s precisely where the Ryan/Romney Medicare plan falls on its face. Ryan/Romney turns Medicare into a privatized voucher program. Under the Ryan/Romney plan, Medicare-eligible seniors will be encouraged to seek out private insurers for their “Medicare” plan. Paul Ryan boasts that this is a way to save money. It’s not, and that risk pool deal is the reason.

We have private insurers currently with regular health care. That's why it's so expensive. Remember?