To One Side of the Law

Via Zandar Versus The Stupid and Crooks and Liars:  Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, is in trouble.  Specifically, felony securities fraud trouble.  Mmmm-hmmmmmmm.  The case against him is to be presented to a grand jury in upcoming weeks.

Apparently, marriage equality bad, but fraud good.

In Memoriam

• Chris Squire, musician (bassist and co-founder of Yes)
• Marva Collins, educator

Whooooooo-Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Supreme Court.  5-4.  Same-sex Marriage is legal in all 50 states.

Excuse me while I jump up and down with glee (not Glee) and joy amd thanksgiving to the Lord.  The Pride parade is going to be especially ecstatic this year.

Court Upholds ACA. Bears Discover Cars.

Yup.  Supreme Court okayed the health care subsidies that help the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare') to work.

Naturally, the conservatives are whining.  And apparently "banana republic" is code for the UK.  Well, no.  But the conservatives quoted, especially the ones "concerned" about the cost! Oh My God, have no similar qualms about sending troops to Syria or Iran.  Because it's dee-fense.  That seems to be the excuse, anyway.

To be entirely Fair and Balanced:

• Not all conservatives are stupid
• Not all conservatives are racist
• Not all conservatives are liars
• Not all conservatives are sexist
• Not all conservatives want me, personally, dead
• Not all conservatives believe the labor movement should return to the golden days (spit) of 1910
• Not all conservatives are whining losers
• Not all conservatives want to impose their religions on everyone
• Not all conservatives are in favor of restoration of the Bourbons
• Not all conservatives are ranting xenophobes
• Not all conservatives are ranting homophobes, and those who are are not necessarily in the closet (it's hard to remember that when they keep getting outed)
• Not all conservatives believe liberals are conspiring against them
• Not all conservatives sling cant about small government and then try to criminalize as many acts as possible
• Not all conservatives are thieves
• Not all conservatives are rich, or think they will be rich tomorrow morning
• Not all conservatives lack empathy except for relatives and friends.

...but some are and do, and those form the stereotype of The Conservative, which is repellent.  Forties movies had the cliché of the Cultured Nazi, but I found that repellent as well.

(This is a piece of the rant that is simmering on the back burner while I absorb Ta-Nehisi Coates' essays on Confederate flag and race in America (there are more; these are a taste) and various postings from the last month.)

In Memoriam

Gunther Schuller, classical and jazz musician and teacher.

In Memoriam

Phil Austin, member of Firesign Theater and voice of Nick Danger.

In Memoriam

• Kirk Kerkorian, rich guy.
• Blaze Starr, burlesque queen who knew politicians

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In Memoriam

• Ornette Coleman, jazz innovator
• Christopher Lee, actor
• Ron Moody, actor

Actually, I Liked the Possibility of Hyperintelligent Bees...

Mr. Scalzi on not addressing every flare-up of ongoing kerfuffles.  (I've seen some of the comments he refers to.  Entitlement is not a river in E--well, it's not.  I had to listen to a lot of Fairport Convention and Marvin Gaye to regain my calm.)

Seriously, there are reasons I deeply distrust certain ideologies, entirely aside from the dislike of abstract me.  (The rant that would normally follow here was loud, high-pitched, and incoherent, although the martial arts movements were unmistakeable.)

In Memoriam

Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor and writer.

Uh-oh...

Via skippy:  Buzzflash at Truthout presents 10 hallmarks of "regimes" that apply to U.S. (yes, that's on purpose).

Today is the 123rd anniversary of the arrest of Homer Plessy, plaintiff/appellant of Plessy v. Ferguson.

In Memoriam

Ronnie Gilbert, singer (the Weavers), psychotherapist, and actress.

In Memoriam

• Jean Ritchie, folk singer  (Ad may play.)
• Betsy Palmer, actress.  Also, panelist on I've Got a Secret.

To the Warehouse

Thank you, sorta, Virginia Woolf.

I've moved some blogs to the Archived blogroll.

Here, have some Blind Faith (Blind Faith music proper begins at 9:55; previous material is the histories of the members of the band).

I'm beginning to think Robin Williams was right about Fukitol, except America is still taking it on the sly.

In Memoriam

Mary Ellen Mark, photographer.

In Memoriam

Tanith Lee, writer

Speaking of StumbleUpon

I clicked on this by accident.  Happy accident.  Here's an intelligence character test for the candidates for next year's presidential election.  Here's a post about Texas and its political culture and that Jade Helm thing, with ableist words and this sentence:  "Why would you need some secret plot to get Texans into a Wal-Mart?."  Here's a post from 2012, with gobbets of right-wing gibbering debunked.  Stonekettle Station, Jim Wright, proprietor.  Probably will offend you.  Eventually will offend me.  But at the moment providing distraction from the ongoing kerfuffle (seriously, the sour grapes on one side have been filling Grand Central Station).

(No, I haven't been talking about StumbleUpon.  Why do you ask?)

In Memoriam

Anne Meara, actress and comedian.

I enjoyed Stiller & Meara's act, and if you were listening to radio in New York in the '70s and '80s, all I have to say here is "a little Blue Nun."

In Memoriam

First report, which I saw because I worry occasionally about sibling and spouse.

Follow-up, today.

John F. Nash, Jr., mathematician.

Go, Ireland!

Ireland votes in favor of marriage equality by a landslide.

There's still the enacting it into law part, but what a wonderful message the Irish have just sent the world!

Another One

The headline at Alternet (from an article from Salon), An Anti-LGBT Pastor’s Outed on Gay Dating Site, is rapidly becoming the "Dog Bites Man" of news.

One of the things I would dearly love to hammer into the heads of all these God-fearing Christians and conservatives on the down-low:  Marriage will not make you straight.  Marriage can't even make you rich, happy, or moderately good-looking.  Marriage won't transform your race, ethnicity, ancestors, or birth relatives.  Marriage can't change your taste in clothes, home furnishings, automobiles, or movies.  Marriage does not alter your sports loyalties or your favorite TV shows.  And if marriage doesn't do any of these things, what gives you the idea that marriage will "fix" your sexuality?  It's like expecting that buying size 28 waist 28 inseam jeans, without nasty surgical interventions or unpleasantly stringent physical modifications, will magically reduce your body to fit.

To put it in the vernacular:  Nuh-uh.  Ain't gonna happen.

Current assumption is now that the more virulent the anti-gay pronouncements, the more likely that person is at least bi-curious and just hasn't been caught.

By the way, that's not the oncoming rant.

You Might Want to Check Your Hat (and Assumptions) at the Door...

• Via the sidebar at Ian Welsh's blog, The Archdruid Report takes a long and not optimistic view of the future.

  In the last years of the nineteenth century, it was common for politicians, pundits, and mass media in the United States, the British empire, and other industrial nations to discuss the possibility that the advanced civilization of the time might be headed for the common fate of nations in due time. The intellectual history of the twentieth century is, among other things, a chronicle of how that discussion was shoved to the margins of our collective discourse, just as the ecological history of the same century is among other things a chronicle of how the worries of the previous era became the realities of the one we’re in today. The closer we’ve moved toward the era of impact, that is, the more unacceptable it has become for anyone in public life to point out that the problems of the age are not just superficial.

  Yes, it is long, and yes, it is presumed you know history.  Deal.  There's more, and it is not reassuring.
• I was there because I followed a link from Avedon's Sideshow to an Ian Welsh (aha!) article on East Germans twenty-five years later.  Katarina Witt was not alone.  Plus a mention of comparative surveillance.
• I have the makings of a rant coming on.  You may want to assemble protective clothing now.

In Memoriam

Annette Funicello, actress and singer (and Mouseketeer). Avedon Carol had a link, and I visited and discovered that it happened 2 years ago.

Oh well. We all make mistakes.

In Memoriam

B. B. King, bluesman.

Racialicious produced video and snippets from interviews.  An excellent sidebar.

In Memoriam

Grace Lee Whitney, actress, whose life post-Trek was unexpected.

More Manure

• Mike Huckabee (The Republic of T) is a dose of ipecac.

  Huckabee’s ideas about women aren’t quite medieval, but they’re at least Victorian. Last January, at the Republican party’s annual winter meeting, Huckabee said that the Democratic party told women, “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.” Huckabee then went on to argue that Republicans aren’t waging war on women, but “they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
  
  Right. Women who use birth control are “victims of their gender.”

• Paul Ryan (I don't think he's running, but who knows these days?) doesn't understand poverty.  Or statistics, apparently.

  And Republicans have been throwing this accusation around for a couple of years now: that the War on Poverty has been a $12 trillion (or $18 trillion or $22 trillion, depending on who is telling the lie) waste of money that hasn't helped anyone in America.
  
  That's just an out and out lie.

  There is a graph.  (Zandar Versus The Stupid.)
• Via Wonkette, Maine governor supports a law that forbids welfare recipients from spending on an interesting array of foods:

  This bill, S.P. 195, introduced by state Senator Roger Katz (R-No Shit), seeks to run around that exemption and ban the poors from using their EBT riches for even those items. They are specifically asking the USDA for special permission to ban poor people from buying “food items that are otherwise subject to the state sales tax and for bulk purchases of grocery staples that, if purchased in smaller quantities, would be considered prepared food and therefore would be subject to the state sales tax.” Get it? If you buy one slice of gourmet baloney, you’d have to pay the higher tax, but if you buy a whole package, it’s considered a “staple.” UNLESS YOU ARE POOR. Then, according to this bill, you can’t buy any of it with your EBT card, because that would be … wasteful? Not nutritious? Just a fun new rule to show how gross you think poor people are?

  I'm surprised none of that bunch have tried reintroducing sumptuary laws yet.
  
• News too weird for words.  [ETA:  Story at sfgate.com.  Still weird.]

Om Nom Nommmmm

This year's Oakland Greek Festival is next weekend (May 15-17).  The San Francisco Greek Food Festival isn't until September.

Check, Please.

Mark Morford gets sarcastic.

(Well, to be fair, Mark Morford is always sarcastic.  Here with frosting.  Mike Huckabee deserves no less.)

The other kerfuffle is still happening and is strongly reminiscent of "Mr. Costello, Hero" at this point.

And So It Begins

So far, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (Democrats) and Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio and Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina and (maybe) Ted Cruz (Republicans) and other people who've slipped my mind are running for President of these United States.  Which means they'll poison the entire summer.  I realize that boring everyone to tears so we won't look closely at the issues is a feature of this system, not a bug.  Nevertheless, pay attention to those folks behind the curtain.

• Bernie Sanders (naked capitalism) defends European socialism.

  ...Sanders went on to defend democratic socialism and explain, in detail, why America should be trying to emulate Northern European countries rather than belittle them. The ABC host and former Bill Clinton advisor tried to pin the Vermont senator down, musing aloud, “I can hear the Republican attack ad now: [Sanders] wants America to look like Sweden,” to which Sanders deadpanned in response, “That’s right. And what’s wrong with that?”

• Carly Fiorina (The Republic of T) probably thinks we've forgotten about Hewlett-Packard, among other things.  She's wrong.

  Fiorina is running on her resume. Specifically, she’s touting her business experience as CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP) as the main reason why she should be elected. “I’m very proud of our record. We went from a market laggard to market leader. Unlike Hillary, I have actually accomplished something,” Fiorina likes to say. (See above for comparison of “accomplishments.”
  So what was Fiorina’s track record at HP? Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett Packard from July 1999 to February 2005. The company was lagging when Fiorina was hired. While it’s likely no one could have saved HP from decline, Fiorina’s efforts failed to impress. A top HP executive who joined HP shortly after Fiorina told Yahoo Finance, “She was polarizing [and] disenfranchising.” One top tech CEO said: “She was a value destruction machine with near zero cultural sensitivity. … Carly self excused the barrage of criticism by saying it all came with her necessary role as a change agent. … The [Silicon] Valley opinion was universally and viscerally negative. I literally don’t know a single person who thinks she was great and unfairly treated.”

• Ben Carson (The Republic of T) doesn't get it.

  What Carson doesn’t get about “turmoil in our cities,” is that in cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, and Detroit, people lose hope because their isn’t much of any way to get the things, or the life, they desire. That’s because jobs have disappeared from these cities, in large part due to economic policies and trade deals that made it easier for businesses and corporations to ship jobs overseas, where labor was cheap and unorganized, and environmental protections were few or non-existent.

And the basketball and Stanley Cup playoffs roll on. Thank $DEITY for baseball.

Last week, the anti-same-sex marriage people tried science.  And I mislaid that link.