Almost Hallowe'en

1. First and foremost:  Welcome to the folks from Crooks and Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up.  I am honored.  Warning:  I do snark.  All the time.  You may have noticed.
2. Whistleblower punished for connecting Hive Collapse and pesticides.  Because bees don't make campaign contributions the USDA doesn't want to get in trouble with large corporations and large corporations don't need food.  By Susie Madrak in Crooks and Liars; longer article at the StarTribune.  Dr. Kelsey is spinning in her grave.
3. Whenever I read or hear about the Republican debates, two thoughts float to the surface:
   
   1. When listening to professional liars politicians, my mental mendacity meter has three levels:  Largely true/what I remember as true; true-ish but exaggerated; poppy seed of truth surrounded by prevarication and weaselling; and bullshit.  Four levels.
   2. Six Characters in Search of an Author
   Also, why aren't the candidates also publishing a Republican version of The Onion? That would actually be funny.

Lenny, Lenny, Lenny...

He's claiming to have spied on and blackmailed umpires.  No, really.

Take him to church.

In Memoriam

• Maureen O'Hara, actress
• Princeton Univerity honors the memory of John Nash.  (Obit here)

Jaundiced Eye

• Marty Ingels, comedian.
  
• Driftglass is keeping a running account of the "Pillory Clinton" hearings.  (Note:  SATIRE EXAGGERATED FOR EFFECT. ETA: Actual transcript of hearings.)
• Trey Gowdy insists there's something to it.
• Star, destroying planet.

You Can Hear Them Laughing Across a Crowded Room*

• So-called "crisis pregnancy centers" required to inform clientele of all options.  They don't like that and they're suing.
• Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister of Canada.  This is good news.
• Joe Biden will not be running for President.
• Myths of fluency, or myriad ways languages get used.  (Babbel.com magazine.)

* Sam and Janet Evening, of course.

In Memoriam

• Ken Taylor, former Canadian ambassador to Iran. Yes. That former Canadian ambassador to Iran. (Broad outlines of story in Argo.)
• ETA: Joan Leslie, actress

Good Question

• Bernie Won All the Focus Groups & Online Polls, So Why Is the Media Saying Hillary Won the Debate?
  

  Firstly, it’s important to point out that online polls, and to a lesser extent focus groups, are obviously not scientific. But it’s also important to point out that the echo chamber musings of establishment liberal pundits is far, far less scientific. It wasn’t that the online polls and focus groups had Sanders winning, it’s that they had him winning by a lot. And it wasn’t just that the pundit class has Clinton winning, it’s that they had her winning by a lot. This gap speaks to a larger gap we’ve seen since the beginning of the Sanders campaign. The mainstream media writes off Bernie and is constantly shocked when his polls numbers go up.

  Adam Johnson, AlterNet.
• Jurassicpork's imagining of President Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby as written by a selection of modern Republicans.  (Letter linked to in article, but you might want to see it first.)

In Memoriam

Dean Chance, pitcher.

Of Course It's Alabama

Via Avedon's Sideshow, voter suppression under another name, not to mention large numbers of unlicensed drivers having accidents, and huge lines at the Alabama DMV's remaining offices, because did the legislators and bean counters really think that making it difficult to get a driver license would prevent people from driving in a largely rural state?  (To those who believe that people who drive without a license tend to be more cautious to avoid police attention:  Are you kidding?)

Also, possibly the schools or churches or local organizations or whoever with transportation might want to arrange to bus or otherwise transport people, preferably in batches, to the DMV offices that remain open, rather than wait for the outcome of the inevitable legal maneuverings that should be happening right now.  (It could be a junior-to-senior rite of passage if high schools take it up.)  Yes, the later the injunction (or whatever) happens, the less likely countermeasures can be brought into play, but there's probably a deadline on registering to vote, and why register if you lack ID to be able to vote?

In fact, I'm in favor of organizing efforts to thwart disenfranchisement.  And I'm in favor of starting yesterday.  State political groups should be helping their poorer and/or older constituents obtain documentation or duplicate documents in order to get what will be accepted as voter ID, or should be making that information available.  Students could access that information through their schools, especially those attending out-of-home-state institutions.

To sort of quote Joe Hill:  "Don't mourn.  Organize."

Because those folks allegedly chewing their fingernails about voter fraud (you could put all the voter fraud committed in the last ten years, usually by those people "concerned" about voter fraud, onto the head of a pin and still have room for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball team to do the Lindy hop) are organized.  And they don't mean us well.

This, by the way, has been a rant.

In Memoriam

• Paul Prudhomme, chef (Cajun cuisine).
• Billy Joe Royal, singer

We Can't Keep Up Those, Those Roads and Aqueducts!

I'm a little late to this party:

[...] everyone knows that American infrastructure—what used to be called our public works, or just our bridges and railways, once the envy of the world—has now been stripped bare, and is being stripped ever barer.

What is less apparent, perhaps, is that the will to abandon the public way is not some failure of understanding, or some nearsighted omission by shortsighted politicians. It is part of a coherent ideological project.

"The Plot Against Trains," Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, May 15, 2015.  Because it's emblematic.

(This is the same strain of "conservative" that goes into spasms about "anarchists.")

Oh, And...

• The Jill Stein for President website has probably been live since June.
  
  (My current favorite candidate for President is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who [as you remember] is not running.)
• California Lawyer has ceased publication.  It was published by Daily Journal Corp., which publishes legal newspapers in California.  The website will probably continue.  I'd hate to miss articles like the one about e-discovery:

  In its recent Formal Opinion (No. 2015-193), the State Bar of California Standing Committee On Professional Responsibility and Conduct concluded that “a lack of technological knowledge in handling e-discovery may render an attorney ethically incompetent to handle certain litigation matters involving e-discovery, absent curative assistance under rule 3-110(C), even where the attorney may otherwise be highly experienced.”

  I spent a couple of years poring through legal newspapers (job); this stuff interests me even though I don't have that legal twisty mind.
  

"'Old Spice Means Quality,' Said the Captain to the Bo'sun"

"Look for the package with the ship that sails the ocean!"

• In the "an honest politician is one who stays bribed" department, wealthier donors to political campaigns want more clout.  Particularly, those giving money to presidential candidates want more fanservice say in the campaign.  (I got the link from Comrade Misfit, but it's been no secret since the Citizens United case.)

• Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser, Obama said it's important to recognize that some parts of the country remain uncomfortable with same-sex marriage and that it will take time for them to catch up to the majority of Americans who support such unions.
  But while Americans hold dear the constitutional right to practice their religion free from government interference, he said that right can't be used to deny constitutional rights to others.
  "We affirm that we cherish our religious freedom and are profoundly respectful of religious traditions," Obama said during remarks that were interrupted by repeated applause and cheers. "But we also have to say clearly that our religious freedom doesn't grant us the freedom to deny our fellow Americans their constitutional rights."
  "And that even as we are respectful and accommodating genuine concerns and interests of religious institutions, we need to reject politicians who are supporting new forms of discrimination as a way to scare up votes. That's not how we move America forward," he added. That was an apparent reference to some of the Republican presidential candidates.

   I remember mumbling something about "conservatives" getting elected or appointed to county clerk/justice of the peace jobs and blocking or attempting to block marriage equality there, but maybe I was wearing my satirist hat that time. 
• In the interest of reminding people that there is another candidate:  Tavis Smiley interviews Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate.  (Video with transcript at Read the transcript link below the player.)
• The headline says it all.

  As Speaker of the House John Boehner was often the only grown-up in the room, compared to the rest of his caucus. Eugene Robinson compared John Boehner to “a hapless substitute teacher whose unruly class refuses to come to order.” Now, Boehner’s exit leaves his chaotic caucus entirely without adult supervision.

  Republic of T, right on the money.

In Memoriam round-up:

• Yogi Berra, catcher and aphorist (if you've ever heard or said "It ain't over till it's over," you can probably blame Mr. Berra)
• Frank E. Petersen, Jr., Marines' first black general
• Frank D. Gilroy, playwright (The Subject Was Roses)
• Daniel Thompson, bagel machine
• Judy Carne, actress
• Jack Larson, actor/playwright
• Martin Milner, actor
• Candida Royalle, erotic filmmaker
• Dean Jones, actor
• Paul Royle
• Wes Craven, horror filmmaker
• Jackie Collins, novelist
• Dickie Moore, child star and businessman
• Rev. Everett C. Parker, landmark media bias case
• ...and Adrian Frutiger, type designer

Sorry; got out of the habit last month.  Also, the Los Angeles Times limits one to 5--5--articles now.

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

Tenth.

If You Had "Today" in the Pool, You/ve Won!

Mostly esteem and Marvel No-Prizes, though.

• Zandar on opposition to Black Lives Matter:

  And let's not forget that crime involving white Americans still encompasses the majority of violent crimes in the US, but anything and everything has to be done to paint BLM suppoerters are thugs, criminals, radicals and dangerous lunatics for daring to say "Hey, in 2015 America still has structural racism issues that are leading to the execution of black people at the hands of our government."
  
  The only reason any of us black folk exist is because we haven't been killed yet.

• The incident of the retired tennis player waiting for a car in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.  Response of the Commissioner.
• Reasons for and purpose of drug violence, Johann Hari, AlterNet.

• Those dead horses won’t just beat themselves, you know.

  Laura Resnick, comment at File 770.  (You may need to scroll down a bit.)
• More research is always needed.

Stuff Waiting a Week [or More] to Get Posted

It's the low-level despair.  It's the kerfuffle, it's the Trump campaign, it's some family stuff, it's the general life situation.  It was probably the earthquake Monday, which was much too close for comfort.

I'm looking at a lot of posts and sighing "You want to write about that?"

• Anthony Vicino (SF Signal) wanted to know why where are all the People of Color (PoC) in science fiction and fantasy is still being asked.  Tobias Buckell responds in a comment there and expands on the subject.
  
  All I'm going to say here is that:
  1. A piece of this is marketing "wisdom" which is actually a lot of ossified "rules" from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, usually couched in "tend to" language.  Survey results sometimes budge a few of the assumptions of marketing a millimeter or so, but the process takes years and meantime the old "guidelines" are in effect.  Marketers tend to (see what I did there?) prefer highly stratified markets because it is easier to "tailor" the message of "You wanna buy this for [emotional or status reason]" rather than actually extolling the product.  For example, cigarettes.  Nobody born after 1975 has any reason to believe smoking makes one "cool."  Very few people would respond to "Cigarettes!  Because respiratory/pulmonary ailments are so much fun!"  But because humans have a basic bias toward not doing what we're told, cigarettes are currently touted as A Choice one can make as an adult,  knowing the dangers.  You know, like suicide bungee jumping.  And that message is subtly tailored to various demographic groupings, including the teenagers that are not supposed to be targeted because underage and illegal. (Whooops! Rant!)
  2. Spend a day on the New York City subways and then tell me PoC don't read sf/f.  (Of course the people who need to do this won't.  Cowards.)
• When I saw this item, my first thought was Purple Rain.  Guess it's time for a rewatch.  Let's get nuts!
• Cerberus at Sadly, No! on a reaction to the Boy Scouts' decision to allow gay adults to serve as leaders:

  And we end with the usual Scott Lively bullshit and calls for violence, but yeah, it runs a little hollow when you try to claim the moral high ground after claiming it is only “natural” for you to lust after some 12 year old girl, because that’s “not really pedophilia”. I’m sorry, you can’t spout that shit and then expect to come off like the sober defender of values. You just can’t.
  
  And it is amazing that losing so many battles against feminists and queer rights activists is revealing you “traditional culture enthusiasts” for what you are and burning away the little pockets you like to hide in to cultivate your victims. And so, I say shine the sun bright into your little troll holes and kill traditional culture so dead that no other child needs fear some fucker who thinks “sexual urges” are so powerful that the natural result of an adult and a child together must be rape.
  
  And then let us cleanse it all with fire.

• Scott Lemieux on John Roberts (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, that is) efforts to hollow out the Voting Rights Act.  Lauren Kelley at Rolling Stone interviews Ari Berman on his new book which traces the history of the Voting Rights Act.  (PS:  There are more unicorns in Nebraska than there is voter fraud in the United States.)
• Zandar on Democratic party internals.

  The really weird part is that nowhere in the entire piece do I see the words “Debbie Wasserman Schultz” who, as chair of the DNC, would ostensibly be the person in charge of the election strategies and GOTV tactics that Greenfield is complaining about, but I guess Greenfield has never met her or something.
  
  Also, there is the small matter of the impressive number of Democrats who lost by running as far away from Barack Obama as possible in 2010, 2012, and 2014 but no, the problem is of course Obama.
  
  That’s the Beltway wisdom, and it will be for a very, very long time.

  And of course I have to wonder why that is.
• Avedon's Sideshow's latest is chock-full of informative links, so just go there.  You should do that anyway.

Weekend With Bernie

Video of Senator Sanders at the Iowa State Fair.  With summarizing article above by Bethania Palma Markus, from Raw Story, at AlterNet.

Yes, I do have to get a link to the Greens.  There are months of this ahead of us.

In Memoriam

Julian Bond.

Civil rights leader, legislator, real social justice warrior.

The world is very much poorer today.

Wreaking Crew (Wrecking Crew, Too)

• Republicans still want to abolish Social Security.
  

  From Rand Paul to John Kasich, from Marco Rubio to Rick Perry to Lindsey Graham to Ted Cruz to Jeb Bush to George Pataki, all agree that Social Security should be privatized. And with the possible exception of Mike Huckabee, all agree on undermining the only program that keeps millions of older Americans from ending their lives in poverty rather than dignity. Chris Christie, robber of public employee pensions, would swiftly raise the retirement age to 69, threatening grave hardship for blue-collar, lower-income Americans. Carly Fiorina would inflict similar suffering on workers who weren't fortunate enough to snag an undeserved $40 million "golden parachute," like she did.
  
  Behind Republican warnings about the solvency of Social Security -- and their enduring desire to privatize -- are major financial interests that would like to seize the system's revenue streams for their own profit.
  
  

  Joe Conason at AlterNet
• Bonus: Mr. Trump as American authoritarian (he's increasingly reminding me of a cross between Greg Stillson [The Dead Zone] and Pol Pot.  Not my idea of fun times, if you catch my drift).  And there are journalists and pundits who absolutely love that sort of thing.  You don't want to live under authoritarian rule.  (We used to know that.)  And you don't want to have to find that out first hand.  Capisce?  (John Dean at Justia.com, reprinted at AlterNet.)

Plus and Minus

• Via Mercury Rising, the Digital Bodleian (Oxford) Library collections.  (I don't know how accessible it is because I haven't figured out how to use it yet.  Also, the links are a bit slower than their appearance, if that makes sense.  Also also, it continues to crack me up that Hebrew manuscripts are classed as "Oriental.")
• Zandar excerpts a long piece from the Washington Post on the gradual dismanatling of public education in North Carolina.  It's ugly.

  That’s right–our state government has maimed public schools so it can offer tax dollars to for-profit charters and private schools with totally inadequate government oversight from the same systems that declared public schools inadequate in the first place.
  
  [...]
  
  ... With an unassailable, veto-proof majority, North Carolina Republicans seized control of this state and unleashed a devastating blow to public schools.
  
  They have systematically pared budgets to the bone. They have insulted, antagonized, and demoralized teachers through stingy salary offerings–and they’ve muted the organization that had for many years protected them.
  
  As a result, public schools have suffered, and Republicans went the extra mile to design a new school rating system that exploited every weakness. It became the perfect excuse to bring private schools and for-profit operators into the mix, diverting critical taxpayer dollars from public schools into the deep pockets of companies like Pearson, sometimes without even a competitive bid process.
  
  And now? What’s happening today?

  Research Triangle slowly becomes an island?
  

Creepy Crawly Creepy Crawly Creepy Creepy Crawly Crawly Creepy Creepy Crawly Crawly Creepy Creepy Crawly Crawly Creepy Crawly Creepy Creepy

• There are reasons for separation of church and state.

  This is what freedom of religion really means in America: the freedom to inflict Christianity by law upon the rest of the people, but any other religion (or distinct lack of one) is not tolerated. I'm glad that Lincoln County finally got rid of the prayer sessions, but the journey to get there was spiteful, ignorant, and discriminatory to say the least.

  Zandar Versus The Stupid.  For the win.
• Margaret and Helen, specifically Helen, pointing out the realities of Planned Parenthood, rather than the falsehoods and lies the Republican candidates for president would like people to believe:

  Millions of women have been going to Planned Parenthood for nearly 100 years. We all remember the exceptional care and the quality of the information we received from the staff at those clinics. We remember when Planned Parenthood staff held our hands and comforted us during some of our scariest moments. We remember the relief we felt when they provided us with medically accurate information that we so desperately needed. And women of my age also remember what it was like when safe, legal abortions were not available.
  
  Contrary to what Republican men think, none of us ever went into a Planned Parenthood for a well woman exam, cancer screening or birth control and mistakenly had an abortion instead.

  No one not in possession of a uterus should have anything to say whatsoever about what possessors of uteri do with said uteri. This is the sort of thing that makes me regret that there is not nearly enough solidarity among women to pull off the Lysistrata strategy.
  

In Memoriam

Robert Conquest, historian (via File770.com)

Mr. Conquest, a poet and science-fiction buff, turned to the study of the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s out of dissatisfaction with the quality of analysis he saw at the British Foreign Office, where he worked after World War II in the Information Research Department, a semi-secret office responsible for combating Soviet propaganda.

“The ambassadors varied between people who were interested in politics and people who were interested in music,” he told The Guardian in 2003. “I wanted to study the evolutions at the top in Soviet Russia.”

Fascinating.

There Was a Crooked Man

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been booked at a Dallas-area jail on felony charges alleging that he misled investors before becoming the state's top lawyer.

Paxton arrived at the Collin County jail Monday to be processed on two counts of first-degree securities fraud and a lesser count of failing to register with state securities regulators.

From sfgate.com; the article is only a little longer.

Mentioned here exactly 1 month ago.

Because "Conservatism" Depends on Not Remembering Anything Happening Over a Day Ago

Why the Iranian government doesn't trust the U. S. (Paul Bibeau, Goblinbooks)

6. Our highest-level officials call for the destruction of their government. We know that Iranian officials are targeting US troops and calling for "death to America." But people in the most powerful positions in Washington have spent decades looking for ways to destabilize and topple their government.

(Links in article.)

It's a funny thing. People in positions holding power almost always demand total trust and almost never deserve it. But suggesting caution or skepticism or even out-and-out distrust on the part of the less powerful group or individual toward the more powerful usually yields accusations of impugned honor, whining about hate, or displays of hurt feelings.  And usually the less powerful group or individual backs down until the next reminder that caution, skepticism, and out-and-out distrust are in fact the correct response to the provocations of power.

In Memoriam

• Ivan Moravec, pianist
• ETA:  "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, wrestler

I Need To Be Out of Here in 6 Minutes

So.

• Terrance, Republic of T, on Sandra Bland and The Talk.
• Echidne of the Snakes, quoting someone very astute about Camille Paglia, in lieu of writing about her.
• The New Yorker finally discovers Samuel R. Delany.

"Standing in the Slide Zone"

• You're not hearing about the lawsuit against Monsanto for Reasons.

  You would think that coverage of something the whole world wants to see – the first step toward the successful downfall of Monsanto –would be a hot news item; a newsworthy tidbit that every paper, radio station, and blog would want to spread across their pages with double bold headlines. But wait. . . just six corporations own ALL of the media in America, so there isn’t much luck there.
  
  That’s why you have to go to sites like Russia Insider or Al Jazeera to find real news outside of certain alternative news channels in the US, and even those are white-washed from Facebook pages, and given secondary ratings on Google pages.
  
  Matthew Phillips, the attorney suing Monsanto in California for false advertising on Roundup bottles, has asked the LA Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, CNN, and Reuters, one of the world’s largest news agencies to report on the lawsuit (Case No: BC 578 942), and most enforced a total media blackout.
  
  When I spoke with Phillips over the phone, he said that he has tried posting the suit in Wikipedia’s Monsanto litigation section, but it keeps ‘disappearing.’ He says that he has also noticed posts on Facebook about this lawsuit get removed.
  
  Phillips points out that as long as Monsanto can keep this lawsuit off of most of America’s radar, then his client base would be relegated to just the citizens of California.
  
  If other attorneys were to follow his template-style lawsuit, which he wrote in English, devoid of extraneous legal-speak to encourage others to also take action against Monsanto, then suddenly the plaintiff count could be closer to several million.

  We shall see. (via skippy)
• Why the Republicans are unfond of the Iran deal:

  The chain of events inside Fantasy Iran Deal is actually pretty simple: Brave Republicans talk enough Democrats into abandoning the deal, it goes under, and Iran shows its "true colors" and the American people demand war and regime change. And in 2017, under a Republican president and Congress, they get that war against God's enemies, because Onward Christian Soldiers. That war is magically won in six weeks and the US, having disposed of a terror state, suddenly has everyone falling in line to appease our might.
  
  It's total lunacy, of course. They can't say it because of precisely that reason. But we know exactly what will happen should Republicans win the White House and keep Congress: war, plain and simple.

  And a war they themselves won't be fighting.  And you know why.  (via Zandar)
  

In Memoriam

Anne Rule, true-crime chronicler.

In Memoriam

• Bobbi Kristina Brown, only child of famous parents
• Peg Lynch, writer (and radio star), who I knew about because every Friday musical cues from her show were posted at The Bleat, an old blog that used to be funnier than it is now.