Pegging the Meter

Via Comrade Misfits:  Due to circumstances of politics and stuff, Ted Cruz has had to sign up for Obamacare (it's CNN and video plays at link):

Cruz denied that there was anything ironic about him going on Obamacare, saying he was simply following the law.

"I believe we should follow the text of every law, even laws I disagree with," Cruz told CNN. "It's one of the real differences -- if you look at President Obama and the lawlessness, if he disagrees with a law he simply refuses to follow it or claims the authority to unilaterally change."

After the publication of this story, Cruz advisers said there was nothing unusual about the senator signing up for insurance coverage through his employer. They argued that Obamacare has wiped out the individual market, leaving Cruz with few options.

Cruz said he will continue advocating for repealing the law.

Andy Borowitz has too much fun with this news.

So

(Thank you, Peter Gabriel.)

Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz, a Republican Senator from Texas, has thrown his hat (no, not a sombrero) into the 2016 Presidential running, according to the Washington Post (by way of Shakesville).

(Yes, a cheap shot.  Trust me, there'll be worse, OK?)

So everyone is taking this seriously because mustn't upset the tea party someone has to start the horses.

Buried in the penultimate graf of the story is an innocent-looking sentence:

While he was born in Canada, two lawyers who represented presidents from both parties at the Supreme Court recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that they think Cruz meets the constitutional standard to run.

This is actually somewhat important because Article II, Section 1, of the United States Constitution states

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

And Senator Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta. That's in Canada. That large English/French-speaking country to the north? That's not and has never been part of the United States of America?  War of 1812?  Canada.  This "natural born" stuff has been stretched to cover overseas embassies, bases, protectorates, and territories, but not, so far, neighboring countries.

Of course, the Republicans could start now on annexation proceedings amending the Constitution to eliminate that requirement.  (I'm mildly surprised [not!] that doing that wasn't considered when Arnold Schwarzenegger was a rising Republican star.)  Although then they'd have to admit to lying about President Obama's birthplace.  Because they'd have to admit that being foreign-born was OK for Republicans (also that they can't find Hawai'i on a map, since they think it's in Africa somewhere).

Also, I don't think "He's the right kind of Hispanic" is going to sit all that well with non-Cuban Hispanics, some of whom have escaped from regimes as awful as Castro's.

ETA:  Southern Beale also noticed and has a suggestion.  Also, the full auditorium at Mr. Cruz's announcement at Liberty University was because attendance is mandatory.

"Dickensian" as a Term of Approbation Among Conservatives

You thought I was kidding about that, didn't you?

When you hear [Tom] Cotton call for the building of more and more prisons – by far the most expensive and least effective means of addressing poverty — or declare that food stamps (which feed roughly one in six of his fellow Arkansans) nurture a slothful underclass of criminals and drug addicts, something deeper is at work than the obvious level of dog-whistle racist pandering. He is also channeling the Victorian establishment’s ideology on poverty, virtually without alteration.

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon, reposted in AlterNet.

ETA:  Via Mercury Rising, Hermano Juancito on the same budget.

HELLO! HELLO!!! HELLO!!!!!!!

What have I been saying?

WHAT HAVE I BEEN SAYING?

...it’s clear as day that the actual intention here is to remove the main obstacle—filing paperwork—that prevents employers from telling you that you work 7 days a week or you lose your job.

Amanda Marcotte (yes, I know), Pandagon at Raw Story.  Wisconsin is only the beginning.  <Don Imus>WAAAAAAAAKKE UUUUUUUUUUPPP!!!!!!!</Don Imus>

I. Have. No. Words.

Well, maybe a few.

An Orange County (of course) lawyer has proposed to submit an initiative to the voters of the State of California:

Declaring it is “better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath,” it would require that anyone who touches a person of the same gender for sexual gratification be put to death by “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”

This is all fairly nutbar reactionary stuff, and, last I heard, murder and killing were against the rules of the religion allegedly being co-opted for this purpose.  Which is why I am not going to suggest that  somebody advocating (see what I did there?) this sort of extreme reaction is, perhaps, guilty in his heart of gay feelings; someone might shoot him.

Home Space Invaders

It’s a simple question. Here’s a simple answer: The advertising industry doesn’t care what you want.[Emphasis in original]

The ads following one writer about and what happens when he tries to opt out.  Jeff Fox, State of the Net, reposted at AlterNet.

The ads that follow me around mostly don't relate to me, and I plan to keep it that way.  (We do not speak of the business whose ads kept turning up on all the news sites even though it has no local presence and sells nothing of interest to me.  As for the anti-Obama spots I've seen everywhere:  You got the wrong vempire.)  That's why I refuse to countenance AdWords and AdSense.  Although I'm thinking of cooking something up with CafePress...

Happy Pi of the Century

Pi Day.

I'm going for coconut creme, myself.

(I don't expect to get the seconds right.  Tough.)

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit

Requiescat in Pace

Father Seamus Genovese

ETA:  Also, Sir Terry Pratchett.

Paging King Canute...King Canute, To The White Courtesy Phone, Please...

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection commands the sea level not to rise has an unwritten policy forbidding the use of the terms "global warming" and "climate change." Story (not written by Dave Barry) originally from the Miami Herald.

The Tribute Vice Pays to Virtue

• The worshippers of Mars are offended:

  Sadly, it appears that MNU [MidAmerica Nazarene University] may have given into the furor and decided that a Christian clergyman preaching the peace the founder of the faith stood for is simply too controversial for their campus.

  The chaplain suggested that American Christians in particular are violence junkies. By Zaid Jilani, AlterNet.
  
• Daisy's Dead Air reports on the upstate South Carolina march commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights March in Selma.
• Yes, I have seen Selma.

I Had Forgotten Completely

Via Comrade Misfit, General Petraeus' plea bargain.

Gallimaufrey

Disclaimer:  No Doctor Whos were harmed in the making of this post.

• "What ISIS Really Wants," the article that appeared in The Atlantic last month for the March issue, is long and, I believe, intended to frighten.  The scholar who provided some of the information has since explained what he meant.  (I saw it here -- Fred Clark makes a further point about extremism and perceived authenticity.) 
• Gordon Atkinson (formerly Real Live Preacher) has an irregular series of essays on Lent, of which this is the most recent (as of today, that is); last year's Lenten essays are here.  (I'd meant to post that link last year.  Better late than never.)  His spiritual journey is never less than fascinating.
• Racism 101.  ETA:
• "Why We Must Call White Supremacy By Its Name" by Jesse Curtis.
• "Addicted to White Victimology:  Artie Lange Doubles Down..."by Chauncey DeVega.
• Sponsors of California's now-voided Proposition 8 are not exempt from the state's campaign finance disclosure laws, said the US Supreme Court.
• Doubling down on stupid.  My own experience with this sort of thing is that I did not believe any of that stuff about President Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, or the dress until overwhelmed with the evidence (and confessions).  I blame years of Perry Mason et al.
• Olive oil falsification.  (via twistedchick at Dreamwidth)

  ...69% of all store-bought extra virgin olive oils in the US are probably fake. This study reported that the following brands failed to meet extra virgin olive oil standards:
  
  Bertolli
  Carapelli
  Colavita
  Filippo Berio
  Mazzola
  Mezzetta
  Newman’s Own
  Safeway
  Star
  Whole Foods
  Seeing brands that pride themselves on being healthy and natural like Newman’s Own and Whole Foods is very disappointing. However, it’s very likely that the fault goes back to the supplier.

• Honduras as libertarian "paradise" and why the Galt-goers aren't relocating there in droves.

Oooh-Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...

Log Cabin Republicans chartered as official volunteer party organization in California.  Of course, not without a fight...

In Memoriam

• Minnie Minoso, ballplayer (Chicago)
• Orrin Keepnews, jazz producer

Mendacity, Mendacity, Mendacity

Why the lies.

When Governor Walker replaced “the search for truth” with “meet the state’s workforce needs” in the charge to the University of Wisconsin, he did not make an error. He was articulating the principle that has driven Movement Conservatives since their earliest days: Facts and arguments can only lead Americans toward a government that regulates business and supports working Americans, and they must be squelched. The search for truth must be replaced by an ideology that preserves Christianity and big-business individualism. Religion and freedom for mega-business, Movement Conservatives insist, is what America is all about.

Heather Cox Richardson, Salon, reprinted at AlterNet

In Memoriam

• Yasar Kemal, novelist
• Eugenie Clark, marine biologist
• Dori J. Maynard, journalist/activist
• Yataka Katayama, Nissan/Datsun Z cars
• Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, university president (Notre Dame)

All New York Times obits.  It's the end of the month.

Harping (a Little) on the Subject

• The lies and contradictions of libertarianism.  Drug deregulation is not sufficient to mask other deficiencies of the libertarian "ideal."
• For example:  Rand Paul in 21 quotes.

  [#10.]"I never, ever cheated. I don't condone cheating. But I would sometimes spread misinformation. This is a great tactic. Misinformation can be very important."

Both articles from AlterNet.  Yes, Reason would counter with hypotheticals.  However, I remember airline deregulation.

Sideways

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz's evolving relation to music and why governments are worried about young Muslims' musical tastes.

In Memoriam

Earl Lloyd, basketball player. First black player in NBA.

ETA:  And I just saw that Leonard Nimoy had died.  Fine actor, indelible roles.

Take Him to ... Detroit.

D & D Stats of the 2016 GOP Contenders.  First of a series.  (Goblinbooks.)

Two Reporters and a Fabulist

• David Ettlin remembers his friend Joseph Challmes and makes one wish one had known him.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates pays tribute to David Carr, who gave him a leg up as an editor.
• And then there are reporters (TV anchor division) who lay claim to war experiences they didn't actually have.  And I'm utterly failing to remember earlier instances.  "Vultures, vultures everywhere!" 

Fear of Education, with Side Order of Libertarianism

Twice in one day!  My smelling salts, Morty!

• Echidne of the Snakes links the acts of Boko Haram and the Oklahoma House Education Committee:

  I don't aim to compare the Islamic State with American conservatives by putting these news in one list (they are certainly not the same or comparable in horrible violence), but to point out the shared string in the violin concertos:
  
  What is taught to children matters very much to certain political and religious groups. Books are powerful! Books may need to be banned or burned! [...]
  
  Ignorance is a powerful weapon which makes education also a powerful weapon. Hierarchical systems fear the idea of widespread democratic education, and they are correct in that fear.

  Students in Denver protested against a similar attempt by a school board there.
  
• Oklahoma in particular is hiding from a murderous legacy of racism. (Orcinus.)

  An understanding of Oklahoma history would not be complete without at least some knowledge of these incidents, particularly because they loom so large in the history of race relations in America as a nation.
  
  It also would give young people a clearer and fuller picture of the scope and nature of how history has shaped modern race relations in America. At a bare minimum, it will prevent privileged and sheltered whites from asking ignorantly: "Why haven't blacks done any better since we ended slavery?" or asking: "Why do Native Americans insist on clinging to their reservations?"
  
  This and similar kinds of examinations of the darker chapters of American history actually do a great deal to shed light on our current dilemmas, particularly when it comes to issues of race, ethnicity, and religion, and particularly by white folks.

• Kevin Carson (Center for a Stateless Society) on libertarians, why

  Libertarianism is frequently perceived by the general public, not entirely without justice, as a movement of mostly white male 20- or 30-somethings, disproportionately from the tech industry or other white collar jobs, who see themselves as victims and everyone unlike themselves — women, LGBT people, people of color — as naturally collectivist barbarians.

  and how some of the Old Guard libertarians play directly into the stereotype. I have to say here that I have been encountering libertarian thought and ideas since the '70s (thankfully not in any sustained manner) and libertarians do not know what to do about people Not Them.  They invariably suggest individual actions and solutions.  Individual actions and solutions may work for some people some of the time.  But this means that every encounter with another person must be negotiated as though one is applying for sainthood (without reciprocation), and even if one attains local sainthood, strangers or relocation (people move in the US.  A lot of people forget that) mean having to start that dance all over again.  There are reasons for "collectivism," and one of them is that groups have more power to change situations otherwise detrimental to them (which is why there were unions and why there are two-day weekends, which you will lose if you do not fight for them now).  Mr. Carson also points out a streak of disguised conservatism and some parallels to Gamergate.  Found via Making Light.

Driftglass Hits a High Hard One, With "And What Would You Know About Love, Mr. Giuliani?" Sacrifice Fly

• Speeding up the game.  Uh-huh.  We'll see.
• Driftglass diagnoses Post Iraq Memory Pandemic among proponents of the war:

  Post Iraq Memory Pandemic -- or PIMP -- is a much more rarefied condition than PTSD, which seems to strike mostly well-fed, sanctimonious pundits, Iraq War architects, college Republicans and a whole warped menagerie of Conservatives bloggers who spent the war as far as humanly possible from any actual combat, while exhorting War, Inc. to continue shoveling the nation's blood and treasure down the rat-hole of their fantasies of empire.
  
  Like PTSD, PIMP destroys the capacity of the afflicted to perceive history and linear time, but in a much more selective and specific way. For example, those who mounted up on their Very High Horses to demand in the name of Patriotism that other people's children be sent off to fight and die for their failed imperial dreams now just...can't...seem...to...remember whole swaths of recent American history.
  
  They cannot remember what they wrote. What they said on the teevee.

  Remember that war is an intelligence test, and if people (I use that term loosely) who favor going to the proposed war do not in fact put their own bodies on the line, there is probably a con job going on, and going to war is a Bad Idea.
• Wayne Barrett (Rudy G's biographer) on Mr. Giuliani's latest attempt to impugn President Obama's patriotism.  (NY Daily News, via News From Me.)  That may play among ignorant Republicans, Mr. G, but New. Yorkers. remember. you.  [ETA:  I should have known: The Rude Pundit quotes Mr. Obama and has a few words for Mr. G.]

Also, GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

In Memoriam

• Louis Jourdan, actor.
• ETA: Lesley Gore, singer/songwriter
• ETA: Sam Andrew, guitarist/founder of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Busy Week

• The day designated as President's Day, which I still think of as Washington's Birthday.
• Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras (I must have cheap beads somewhere.  And perhaps I could make pancakes just this once).
• Ash Wednesday (for Christians) opens the Lenten season.
• Pitchers and Catchers Report begins the runup to baseball season.

Purim isn't for another couple weeks.  I'm thinking of hamentaschen.

A Musing

• One (although not the only) reason the more trollish some men react badly to perceived misandry ("perceived misandry" can be as little as side-eye or as much as Arlene Aileen Wuornos) is that they know in their bones that misandry is what they deserve.  Seriously, "society" goes to a great deal of trouble to condition women and girls not to loathe men and boys in spite of behavior few individuals would tolerate from other individuals.  Misogyny, on the other hand, is barely masked.  Try stating a simple distrust of men.  Go ahead.  I'll wait.  
• Department of Caring About Children, Our Most Precious Treasures (/sarcasm):
• Finnish mothers get a starter box from the government for babies including clothing and a small mattress.  (The BBC, via skippy.)
• Republican legislators want to remove maternity care from mandated health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (and also want to repeal Affordable Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare, primarily because Obamacare works) because only people with uteri get pregnant.  (Echidne of the Snakes.)
• I've seen a lot of Columbo episodes lately.  (Scratches scalp puzzledly.)

More Indignation

1. War and culpability:
   • Because I've wondered too:  Where is the antiwar movement we should be having?  I mean yes, it was noticed that that stuff worked last time.  Nevertheless.

     In the last six decades, the American national security state has succeeded strikingly at only one thing (other than turning itself into a growth industry): it freed itself of us and of Congress. In the years following the Vietnam War, the American people were effectively demobilized, shorn of that sense of service to country, while war was privatized and the citizen soldier replaced by an “all-volunteer” force and a host of paid contractors working for warrior corporations. Post-9/11, the citizenry was urged to pay as much attention as possible to “our troops,” or “warriors,” and next to none to the wars they were fighting. Today, the official role of a national security state, bigger and more powerful than in the Vietnam era, is to make Americans “safe” from terror. In a world of war-making that has disappeared into the shadows and a Washington in which just about all information is now classified and shrouded in secrecy, the only way to be “safe” and “secure” as a citizen is, by definition, to be ignorant, to know as little as possible about what “our” government is doing in our name. This helps explain why, in the Obama years, the only crime in official Washington is leaking or whistleblowing; that is, letting the public in on something that we, the people, aren’t supposed to know about the workings of “our” government.

     Tom Englehardt, TomDispatch, republished at AlterNet.  Note the last several paragraphs.
     
   • Deconstructing pastoral metaphors.

     We don’t prepare for war, because we want peace. We prepare for war, because war is exactly what we want. We don’t use violence because it solves problems. We do it even when it creates more problems than it could ever solve – as the most heavily armed nation in human history, whose population is still under threat from prehistoric imbeciles after 14 years of a global campaign of intervention and targeted killing, you’d think that would finally dawn on us. You’d think we’d finally realize that people like putting on uniforms and shooting each other and incinerating each other’s homes, and it’s because of some flaw in our character, some stupid neurological quirk that might have been useful when we stabbed elephants with sticks and worshipped the sun… but is pretty foolish now that we’re smart enough to hit every major population center with a nuclear warhead in the space of a busy afternoon.

      Paul Bibeau, Goblinbooks.  (The comment objected rightly [as do I] to the "prehistoric imbeciles," but the rest of the paragraph is good.)
   • The "right" wing wants you stirred up.

     As Atrios and plenty of others like to remind us, a lot of what Right Wingers say they say just to piss liberals off. But there’s something else at work, as well. They’re trying to piss each other off as well. More to the point, their pundits, their talking heads, many of their politicians, their halfway intelligent bloggers, all following Rush Limbaugh’s lead, are trying to piss off the conservative base. It’s a strategy. Make the yokels boiling mad and keep them mad at those Others and they’ll be too worked up to think about who’s really been screwing them over.
     
     This is an inherent evil of the American Right, an evil it perpetrates upon itself as much as upon the rest of us: its divisiveness.
     
     And this is not an effect of its rhetoric or its politics. It is the intent.

     Lance Mannion on his blog. 
2. On the pro-science front:
   • Libertarian Fail (people who do not know that handwashing, Pontius Pilate notwithstanding, cuts way down on disease transmission [this has been proved with childbed fever and contagious diseases, although because it was not "discovered" in the last ten years, perhaps Mr. Tillis has not run across this information.  Or any other.] should not be allowed to legislate their ignorance).

     See, this is what’s wrong with Libertarians. They think that the glorious unfettered magical free hand of the market makes everything wonderful when all it really does is burden the general public. You know what? I have a life. I don’t want to have to research every fucking restaurant in town to determine if they’re opting out of certain health regulations or not. I’d much rather have a health department fully staffed with health inspectors who enforce our health laws. If we truly did make our restaurant health regulations optional, I’d never eat out again. Because if you’re going to skirt one, you’ll no doubt skirt all the others.

      Southern Beale for the win.
   • Republic of T has a general roundup along with facts:

     Measles, on the other hand, leads to nasty complications, and kills.
     

     • It’s one of the most infectious diseases around.
     • Ninety percent of those exposed to it will get it, if they’re susceptible.
     • It can remain airborne for hours, exposing everyone in the vicinity.
     • Every person who gets it can spread it to 12 to 18 people.
     • For every vaccinated person who gets it (resulting in a mild case), between 40 to 80 people are exposed.
     • Measles is transmissible and virtually undetectable for several days before the red, painful rash gives its presence away.
     • It’s early symptoms — high fever, cough, and muscle ache — so closely resemble the flu that it’s often initially misdiagnosed.
     • One in 1,000 people with measles will get pneumonia. Between one and three in 1,000 will die of pneumonia, brain swelling, or other complications.

     The US declared measles eradicated in 2000. Now it’s back, along with other diseases, because the anti-vaccination movement has grown. A recent survey showed that 30 percent of Americans — especially young people — agree with Chris Christie on vaccinations.

   • Legionseagle at Dreamwidth, warning against demonizing anti-vaxxers. (I've had to catch myself about that.)
3. The New Yorker offers a podcast on Islamic extremism.

There are reasons holing up in a cave looks good.

IMMUNIZE 'EM!

• Measles has reached Marin  and San Mateo Counties.  Parents in Marin are allowed to send their children to school without required inoculations. 
• Measles is highly contagious.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suggests that parents should have a choice in whether to immunize their children.
• Roald Dahl lost a child to measles, and wrote a letter begging parents to immunize their children.
• The Rude Pundit also urges vaccination, and is not at all polite about it.
• P.S.  That "research" alleging a link between MMR vaccine and autism?  Fraud.

Breaking Belated B.A.D.

Because I didn't do it last year.  I'm sorry.  I got into Chauncey DeVega and Goblinbooks and such and moved more cherished blogs into the Archives.  Several folks stopped updating (or died) in the last three years.  I haven't been posting nearly as much and am hereby threatening to change that.

I will be adding We Are Respectable Negroes to the blogroll sometime this week.  I will also be adding Daisy's tumblr,  Nothing left to do but smile smile smile..., which is an interesting combination of photos and feminism.  And Norman Spinrad At Large will definitely be entered as Time Insensitive, because he doesn't post that often, but his essays are always worthwhile.

Explanation of the history of Blogroll Amnesty Day and why it's an important tradition.