In Memoriam

Apparently I missed this last year:  Dallas Taylor, drummer (Crosby, Stills, and Nash) and substance intervention specialist.

Gory Details

Evan Robinson (Group News Blog) on the labyrinthine ways of the third party campaign, for anyone interested in that obstacle course dance.

Any "third party" candidacy must be seen nearly exclusively in the role of spoiler. Yes, this is a weird year, with Trumpers and Berners showing great enthusiasm among polities that mostly seem unwilling to vote. "Likely voter" models are out the window, or at least deeply in question. Something wild could happen. But the last 100+ years (only 25 or so presidential elections, really, so the sample size is small) says it won't. The most recent President of the US who wasn't either a Republican or a Democrat was ... Millard Fil[l]more (1850-1853), our 13th President who was a Whig.

In Memoriam

NYTimes obits, the last week or so, until I run out.

• Joe Garagiola, catcher and broadcaster.  A story about him.
• Rita Gam, actress
• Earl Hamner, Jr., screenwriter
• Santiago Erevia, soldier.  Medal of Honor awarded in 2014
• Garry Shandling, comedian
• Lester C. Thurow, economist
• Patty Duke, actress

(Actually, I ran out midway through the list, but the URL shows up, and that's what I really want. Well, that and little interesting facts about the deceased.)

It is odd that I never found Garry Shandling funny; I remember being exposed to the show (on HBO? in the '80s?) and being uninterested.  I'll take your word that he revolutionized TV comedy, but *shrug*.

Patty Duke I grew up with.  Um, alongside.  Um, at the same time, in different circles and distant cities.  (She was a few years older.)

Around My Hat

• Chauncey DeVega (Indomitable) quotes a black Republican who witnessed When It Changed in 1964.  (Jackie Robinson was a Republican.  Now go read the quote.)
• The history of tornado prediction, and a period when the mention of twisters was forbidden.  (Slate, via Atlas Obscura.)
• How the Media messed up primary coverage (or what makes the most noise gets covered, with the introduction of the Kardashian coefficient and an exploration of media biases):

  Just as with absolute numbers, the positive or negative nature of the media coverage is of no importance. What is important is the distance from 0—or irrelevance—one is at any given time. This idea, which the constantly trolling Donald Trump has exploited to perfection, we’ll call the Kardashian coefficient, or |k|.

  (The rest of the paragraph explains.)
• From Aeon:  Police working off outdated and false beliefs.

  Toward that end, our team questioned police officers on a number of different topics, asking them to call out certain patently false statements:
  
  · Police can tell when a suspect is lying
  · People confess only when they have actually committed the crime they are being charged with
  · Most judges and jurors fully understand court instructions
  · Eye-witnesses are always the most reliable source of case-related information
  · Most mentally ill individuals are violent
  · All psychopaths are criminals
  · We need to be ‘tough on crime’ by giving convicted felons harsher punishments
  · The death sentence is an effective way to deter criminal activity
  · Excitement improves memory
  
  Research has demonstrated that none of these statements is true, yet we found that, in our questionnaire of 50 true or false items just like this, our sample of police officers scored no better than the general public. Police officers got 39 per cent wrong and members of the public got 37 per cent wrong. The police seemed to know as little about these important policing issues as everybody else.
  
  Making matters worse, we found that our sample of officers generally indicated they exhibited higher confidence in their judgements than the general public, making them more confidently wrong.

  Explains a lot, eh?

• On Thursday, Senator Jerry Moran, who is also the former head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, came out and said what needed to be said: Senators should meet with Merrick Garland, hold hearings, and vote. Because the Constitution demands it.

  Crooks and Liars.  On the case.
  
• There's a phrase for this, enunciated by Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar:  "He can dish it out, but he can't take it."

There are a few obituaries I need to post.  Soon.

Because It NEEDS Repeating

• TORTURE IS MORALLY AND ETHICALLY WRONG.
• TORTURE DOESN'T "WORK."
• TORTURE IS NOT A CHRISTIAN VALUE.  (No, the Inquisition and witch hunts don't count for this.)

Yes, I am considering the source.  (Crooks & Liars.  Warning:  video clip.)  Pecunium, who is way more articulate about this than I am and has taught interrogation techniques, has a posting here in which he says:

One of the principle part of SERE school, where pilots and aircrew are trained in what it’s like to be tortured, is that everyone breaks. Everyone. Even when it’s known that the tortures are part of the drill, and one won’t be maimed, much less killed, they all break. So why do our politicians, and pundits, pretend that “bad guys” are different?

Because it sells. [...]

[...]

Fear sells. Torture advocates (you can’t call them apologists when they use the word, and say we need to do the deeds) are selling fear, and fear is like yeast, once you put it in the dough, it won’t stop so long as it is fed.

Mr. Trump might consider jokes about his hands grounds for torture. Really, you don't want that.

In slightly more encouraging news, Radovan Karadzic has been convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 40 years.

In Memoriam

• Rob Ford, notorious Toronto mayor.
• Gogi Grant, singer (I loved her hit when I was a kid, and still remember the chorus).
• The victims of Brussels.

Way Too Much Carl Hiaasen

On a conference call.

A conference call.

(Because I find that typing "Man plots overthrow of West Virginia legislature" fries the circuitry.)

Make no mistake, he deserves jail time.  All these guys deserve jail time.  But eventually there will be somewhat intelligent plotters.  Those are the guys to worry about.

So Uncivilized...

Part of a series on cities of the past;  the original Benin City was razed by the British in the late 19th century.

Addendum

• Happy St. Patrick's Day if you're actually Irish.  Not being so, I was not fool enough to drive today.
• Statistics and numbers and charts, oh my.  (Zandar Versus The Stupid.)
• Anonymous hack Donald Trump.  (Either way.)

If This Goes On...

Acute angles in science fiction:

We’ve watched Donald Trump rack up a steady stream of GOP primary victories. As he moves closer to securing the Republican nomination, we move closer to the disastrous possibility of Donald Trump actually being elected president.
But note what we haven’t yet seen — the sudden appearance of dozens of time-traveling visitors from the future desperately scrambling to prevent that from happening. That’s surprising.

Fred Clark, The Slacktivist at Patheos.

But of course that doesn't take into account "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed."  (He does nibble about the edges.)

Abdul Alasaad, guest blogging at naked capitalism, studied the effect of refugee movement on the economies of host countries.  You might want to read it.

On April 28th 1994, when the Rwandan genocide was triggered by the crash of a plane carrying the President of Rwanda and Burundi, approximately half a million Rwandan migrated to Tanzania within a week. Economists who studied the impact of this flood of refugees found that the hosting country, Tanzania, did not suffer. In fact, there was a net economic benefit, due to the flow of money that entered the local economy via these refugees and their savings. The researchers also noticed, that when a sufficient mass of refugees enter a country, new branches of the economy begin to develop as aggregate demand widens.

Pi Day

...and this time, I don't have to sweat the seconds.  Heh.

In Memoriam and Yahrzeit

• Yahrzeit (10 years on).
• In Memoriam:
  • Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor
  • Lawrence Van Gelder, journalist and critic

Mmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

• WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is claiming that the man who tried to rush the stage at his Ohio rally Saturday morning is connected to Islamic State militants — an allegation Middle East experts dismiss as farcical.

  SFGate.com, via AP
  

• On Sunday, Trump signaled to his legion of followers that it might be time to express their anger by becoming "disruptors" at Sanders' events.
  
  "Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!"

  Crooks and Liars

• I'm glad that Yggy [Matthew Yglesias] here has finally seen the light. But he should have been denouncing this jackass nine months ago, where Trump should have been run out of the party instead of being enabled by Yglesias and the Village because Trump somehow represented the "legitimate and very real grievances of working-class white men", with folks telling themselves that Trump would "moderate" in the general and couldn't possibly be as awful as his critics were warning us:
  
  [...]
  
  He was worse. Now he may be President. Was it worth your professional reputation to say "Hey guys maybe he's not so bad", Matt? Because my question is if you're making judgment calls this badly, exactly why should we listen to you in the future?

  Zandar, calling out Mr. Yglesias (Vox)
  
• Neal Gabler catches up with Driftglass.
• Lance Mannion.
• The Rude Pundit.
• Professor Chaos to Ben Carson at the Daily Irritant:

  Okay, see, that makes it even worse. You're saying that Trump actually knows better. Like he knows perfectly well that most Mexicans are not rapists, most Muslims don't hate America, and that whether or not Megan Kelly was on her period has no bearing on how she does her job, he's just ginning up hatred and anger to attract the worst element of American society into his camp, consequences be damned. Which is probably at least partly true. Trump can't possibly be as stupid as he seems to be. But you pointing that out isn't really helpful to him.

• "What Really Made the Right Nuts."  Booman Tribune.  Brief selection:

  Simply put, a population that makes up the core of the Republican base has been committing suicide, overdosing on opioids, and drinking itself to death at a rate comparable to the AIDS epidemic. And the Republicans not only spent zero time trying to help them during the Bush and Obama years, they didn’t even seem to know that this was happening to them.

• Also from Booman, Hillary Clinton and for-profit colleges.

  Yet, she wants us to believe that now when she is elected to the Presidency, she will crack down on an industry that provided her and her husband with such lucrative sinecures. Color me — skeptical, at best. And you wonder why young people, many of them crushed under a heavy burden of student loan debt, and their parents, as well, don’t trust her?

• No More Mister Nice Blog, redefining "political correctness."
• More from Susan of Texas:  "It's About Power."  And who has it, who thinks they ought to have it, who wants to get it, fears losing it, the whole megillah.

  It's really incredible, when you think about it. We are so accustomed to conservative hypocrisy that we seldom stop and marvel at how blatantly brazen they have become.

What, isn't that enough?

"Won't You Please Come to Chicago Just to Sing?"

Hmmmmmm...

• Trump rally in Chicago cancelled.
• Zandar, quoting from Raw Story,  suggests that the cancellation was the desired result.
• Has Mr. Trump promised unity?  I miss all the good stuff.
• Chauncey DeVega went to the cancelled rally.  His preliminary report.
• Breitbart News upholds their reputation.  That is, their spokesperson quit and called them liars.  That is, one of their reporters was bruised by Trump's campaign manager.  

Nobody's Perfect

• It's the fifth anniversary of the big quake and tsunami that took out the Fukushima nuclear plant, and it seems that it will take 40+ years to decommission.  And according to Reuters (via Zandar Versus The Stupid), the radiation from the melted fuel rods destroys the robots sent in to locate the fuel rods.
• Also via Zandar, none of the Republican candidates condemned beating up a black protester at a Trump rally.
• Chauncey DeVega (Indomitable) analyzes what seem to be the prime current Republican concerns.
• Avedon Carol covers the Democrats and finds them wanting, but still better than the Republicans.
• In memoriam:
  • Ben Bagdikian, media critic and journalist
  • Keith Emerson, keyboardist, Emerson Lake & Palmer

Pleased to Meet You; Hope You Guess My Name

Back in the '80s there was a bit of a tiff over whether US support of dictators was, strictly speaking, OK, and some of the conservatives thought that supporting authoritarian regimes was a Good Thing.  (That was Jeane Kirkpatrick in Commentary in 1979.)  With the end (mostly) of communist governments in the late '80s-early '90s, the term 'totalitarian' went out of fashion, but authoritarianism continued to spice up various national leaders' rule.  Conservative and "right-wing" thinkers do tend to lean in the authoritarian direction, especially some of the nationally known pundits.  Like Mr. Douthat.

Susan of Texas lays Ross Douthat to waste.

This is the reason for this entire exercise in doh. Douthat is the authoritarian follower and wanna-be leader. Trump is the authoritarian leader. Douthat is completely authoritarian. His work is authoritarian; he attempts to create a more authoritarian world. Douthat is in fact more authoritarian than Trump, whose self-indulgence keeps him too busy to worry about others' personal lives. Douthat doesn't like these facts so he ignores them and pretends that "authoritarian" means "bad man" and therefore he can twist the word into any use he finds convenient.

I need to check The Hunting of the Snark more often.

Keith Moon Collapsed on Stage 40 Years Ago Today

He was sick.

• In memoriam: Sir George Martin, music producer.
  
  ETA because too sleepy last night:  Sir Paul McCartney remembers and a few of the Martin touches.  (Rolling Stone.)
  
• The reason I don't write too much on the Flint water situation is HULK SMASH!  (Not a link.)  ACLU of Michigan has produced a short (45 minute) documentary video and Yves Smith at naked capitalism provides a brief written intro.
• Driftglass on the ongoing trainwreck Republican primaries.
• Another conservative thing (from Paul Bibeau's Goblinbooks):

  There's another pattern you've probably noticed. It has to do with conservatives and their relationship to:
  
  A) The black guy in that big white building they don't control anymore, and
  B) Facts.

• No matter how silly the conspiracy theory you can concoct connecting Antonin Scalia's death to President Obama, you cannot come up with anything sillier than the National Enquirer's concatenation of cockamamie (seeing what I did there yet?), but a "hate talk radio host" is trying to push that narrative.  (Crooks and Liars, because we're still in drought and standing under a hot shower for two hours to get clean after direct exposure to that kind of thing is out of bounds.)  I begin to suspect that conservatives cannot, indeed, handle the truth.
• ETA:

  It occurs to me that if the Senators won't do their jobs, they shouldn't get paid. Just like anyone else, if it's too much trouble for them to advise and consent on President Obama's nominee because of some non-existent rule, they should simply forfeit their taxpayer-funded paychecks and benefits until such time as they feel led to do so.

  Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars on Senator Warren's speech in the Senate on the refusal to allow a vote on anyone President Obama might nominate to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

He's not alone.

Mmmmmmm-Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Some folks find this man frightening.  (Link to AlterNet has links to Washington Post articles.)

(Since I'm not a purist [well, OK, peaches have no place on pizza or bagels.  Other than that...], I'm just going to wait until there's a candidate to support.  Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders both have interesting flaws and policy positions.  I would not support any of the Republican candidates, even for animal control officer.  Reasons are well distributed over many posts.  I hope that didn't come as a surprise to anyone.)

Also, there will be some verbiage on the voter suppression stuff shortly.

Thankful for the Rain

...just that I'd like to go to church.

OK, back.

• Once again, the '60s are dead.  For reallio trullio this time.  Graham Nash is feuding with David Crosby.  (Mr. Kantner is sitting while Mr. Lennon, Mr. Hendrix, and Ms. Joplin are cackling evilly and laying bets, Mr. Welch and Ms. James look on with sardonic smiles, and Ms. Holliday shrugs a "Kids these days" shrug.  Spying Ms. Anderson, Mr. Kantner sidles up to her and says "See what you missed?" and she replies "The ailments were more fun.") Via skippy.  I think.  Nope.  SFGate.com.
• Definitely via skippy:  How Big Pharma killed medicine.
• Oh no he didn't!  Well, not officially.  By implication.  Heh.  (Goblinbooks.)
• Manure, via Driftglass.  Featuring a video from the Thom Hartmann Program about the Caucus Room Conspiracy which names names.  (Video if it doesn't load with the post.)
• Zandar on why Mr. Bloomberg won't be running.  With graphs.
• Via Comrade Misfit, CDR Salamander on illegal orders.

Looks like Stupidity is winning the war.

Oh, And...

• Because I keep putting it off:  Echidne of the Snakes on the limits of sarcasm and how to explain the last Republican debate to an alien.
• Stonekettle Station on "The Latter Days of a Better Nation:"  Part I.  Part II.

Two Blogs With a Weasel Between Them

• The Daily Irritant on invoking History that everyone knows already for filmed fakery.
• Driftglass with 9 (nine)(no, really) Dramatic Inception Chipmunk videos, driving home the point about lousy cinematic propaganda.

Seriously, both postings contain a trailer for the movie in question. Make sure the check from Mr. D'S. clears before seeing this flick.

In Memoriam

Nancy Reagan, President's widow.

In Memoriam

• Shannon Forde, New York Mets media relations (link to Faith and Fear in Flushing; they link to official ESPN obit, but I like theirs better).
• Pat Conroy, author (The Water is Wide, The Great Santini).  The New York Times obit, somewhat more anecdotal.

Double-Dip

• Driftglass strikes twice:
  • (Uses a term I hope won't exist in real life, with bonus Monty Python sketch.)
  • Rubio's Virginia.
• Hilzoy on Twitter, Storified.  (Um.  Hilzoy analyzing the Republican Party on Twitter, gathered at Storify.  Careful, that corpse is still twitching.)
• Bad Lip Reading with Ted Cruz at Crooks and Liars.
• ETA:  Ask a silly question...

Good night...and good luck.

"Play La Marseillaise! Play It!"

• The Rude One likens Mr. Trump to Adam Sandler and gets rude with the American electorate.
• Nate Silver on possible partisan realignment.
• Unofficial Beatles.  


• Yes, that should be a video, and it should be the one indicated in the title of the post.

A Little Juxtaposition Music

• Let us begin with Eric Garland's article on the ongoing destruction of Guitar Center:

  It turns out that the old HR aphorism, “This company’s greatest asset is its people,” actually means something. [...]
  
  I suspect that the real members of the MI [musical instrument] community will see each other again, sorta like when you’re putting together bands in the same town. Hey, everybody always needs a bassist. You know, unless you’re an MBA who never cared for the biz in the first place, in which case, all good – maybe PetSmart is hiring execs?

  From naked capitalism, crossposted from his own blog.
  
• Paul Bibeau (Goblinbooks) in the voice of Donald Trump as -- aw, go read it. ;-)
• Speaking of which, Driftglass has a related video...
• Chauncey DeVega (Indomitable) illustrates the desire for the fortunate accident/slip of tongue that folks hope happens to Trump sooner or later.  Um, I wouldn't rely on that.  Usually screenwriters or fortuitous and well-concealed videographers are involved.

Persons of Pallor

• In a post-civil rights movement society where equality and freedom for all is our publicly-avowed ethic, White identity is unmoored from its founding logic. Yet no coherent mass White identity has emerged to take its place. Perhaps more than ever before, we don't know how to understand a society where two things at once are true: Whiteness is advantaged, and millions of White people live in poverty and despair.
  
  There are nineteen million poor White Americans, the census bureau estimates. Yet our popular media and cultural narratives have no room for them. We can't even talk about them. Poor Whites are "working class" or "blue collar." They are not poor. Why? Because to be poor is to contradict the basic narrative of Whiteness.

  Jesse Curtis, walk on, addressing Trump's appeal.  It's pretty disturbing, so keep that in mind.
• Ben Carson claims President Obama "grew up in white America."  Dude, that one has been tried several times in the last, oh. eight years.  It didn't work then.  It won't work now.  By the way, has anyone mentioned to Dr. Carson that the President isn't running?
  
  Incidentally, and just for the information: Many black and mixed-race people brought up in "white America"  identify as black (and/or mixed-race) without having lived in a ghetto, gone to substandard schools, or gotten addicted to heroin.  Because, you know, really, there are a lot of behaviors, etc. that are totally extrinsic to blackness.  There are also stereotypes.  No one needs to be a stereotype.  If Dr. Carson needs President Obama to fit a stereotype, that says a lot (and nothing good) about Dr. Carson.

• What these dissenting voices are pointing out, in their own 21st century version of “parrhesia,” is that the relationship between guns, masculinity, whiteness, democracy and notions of “freedom” constitutes a very particular and specific form of privilege that is usually denied to other groups in the United States.

  Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable, concerning the media coverage of gun violence with respect to race.
  

Tiresome, I know.

The New York Times...The Daily News

I need Speed Repeat on some of these videos.

• It is a True Thing that if the Rude Pundit begins a sentence with "Let's put this as politely as possible," there are going to be Extremely Rude Words.  I warn you because I am going to quote one of his points because some things are irresistible:

  4. Speaking of, at this point, someone could discover Donald Trump's secret strangled hooker burial ground and his followers wouldn't give a flying fuck. He could be caught in bed with a dead boy, a live girl, and half a sheep, and he'd still get at least 35% of primary voters. If you ever thought that Trump would go away quickly, you were an idiot. If you still think that Trump will burn out at some point, you're an even bigger fucking idiot. Trump has already taken out the seaside villages, and he's on his way to Tokyo. Your puny conventional weapons will have no effect.

• operaramblings reviews a Dmitri Hvorostovsky recital, but I had to giggle at the first paragraph.
• "Free trade" as disadvantageous.  (via skippy)  
• Solar power in Florida, the Koch brothers, and utilities.  Looks boring, eh?  

  The full political might of Florida's IOUs was on display in December, when a deceptive campaign, funded by the state's electric utilities, crushed a citizen-led effort to open Florida to solar competition through the 2016 ballot. "When your opponents have no ethical foundation, have unlimited resources and are willing to say and do anything to defeat you," says Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which led the pro-solar effort, "it's a tough hurdle to overcome."

  Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, by way of skippy.

PS: "Miami 2017" is next year.

In Memoriam

• Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former UN Secretary-General (first one from the African continent).
• George Gaynes, actor.
• Harper Lee, author (To Kill a Mockingbird).
• Denise Matthews, a/k/a Vanity, singer/actress/minister
• ETA:  Tony Phillips, infielder for Oakland Athletics, et al.
.

Most Beautiful Words in the English Language

...Pitchers and Catchers Report!

Also, Willie Mays visits the Giants in Scottsdale, Arizona.