Today's Must-Read

Let's just privatize everything! (I have to admit, I've made the comment more than once that I'm expecting to hear any day now that the mayor is selling off the Chicago Park District to Disney. I'm only half joking.)

But, on a more fundamental level, the push to privatize municipal water systems has been pretty much ignored by the press. Granted, the press in this country has given into a fascination with shiny things, but someone, somewhere, should be dealing with some real issues, right? Well, some are:

City leaders and a group of organizers here have been fighting state efforts to take over our city's water system for several years. City of Asheville v State of North Carolina, et al. goes before the state Supreme Court next month. The originator of the bill (an ALEC board member before he lost his state House seat) insisted transferring control to a regional authority was not the first step towards privatization. You know, we just didn't believe him. The water situation in Flint, Michigan is sure to come up in oral arguments on May 17.

This is just one effort; there are others throughout the country. What's really sobering is just who is involved:

[Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-WI)] is not happy about the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, promoting water privatization and profiting from it. She wrote a letter to Dr. Jim Young Kim, President of the World Bank Group:

The letter, addressed to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, describes the failure of a World Bank-backed water privatization project in Manila, Philippines—the “success story” the IFC uses in marketing around the world—as the foundation of her concern. In Manila, the IFC advised the government to contract with two private corporations to manage the city’s water system, which it did in 1997 in a concession deal that favored one corporation, Manila Water Company, with less debt and better infrastructure. The IFC subsequently took part ownership in MWC only.

Since taking over, MWC has raised rates nearly 850 percent, and has even brought the Manila regulator—and the Philippines Department of Finance—into arbitration in an attempt to hike the cost of water even higher.

As part owner of MWC, the IFC is now in direct opposition to the government’s efforts to keep water affordable for its people. And while the IFC has stood by MWC, it has made $43 million from its initial investment.

Yes, those wonderful people who destroyed the economy of Greece are now investing in private water management companies while they push local governments into selling their water systems to those very companies.

This is, as I noted above, a trend -- charter schools/school vouchers, municipal water systems, city parking (in Chicago, you now pay for parking 24/7 -- you used to be able to park on streets free on Sundays and overnight -- but they do make it really easy to pay), you name it, it's being privatized, or someone's trying to.

Of course, these efforts are all being touted as leading to greater efficiency and lower costs, but that's patently ridiculous. I mean, you start by introducing another layer in the cost structure and introducing the idea that, for example, city services should be profitable. For someone. Like the World Bank. And frankly, anyone who thinks that non-government corporations are necessarily more efficient than government-run services has never worked in the private sector.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it just seems to be that some things should not be subject to the profit motive -- like the things we're paying taxes for.

In an emailed statement, Moore connected the issue to U.S. water issues:

“Yes, we’ve just now started shedding light on this local and national issue in the United States, but there are global implications to think about as well,” Moore added, pointing to the World Bank’s investments in private water companies. “It has become clear that there are those in positions of great power who are all too willing to prioritize profits over public safety.”

The people of Flint would agree. As I've said for years, we are dealing with the kind of people who would sell you the air you breathe if they could control how it gets to your nose. And if you cannot afford to buy their air, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.

Capitalism is not a human-oriented system. It is a commodity-oriented system; people are just consumers. When you stop to think about it, it's pretty immoral.

They Don't Give Up

And the arguments get more and more ludicrous:

A federal court rejected the argument from a Christian group in Kansas which said that evolution was religious "indoctrination" and should not be taught in schools.

After the state of Kansas adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) argued that teaching science without a religious explanation for the creation of the universe would indoctrinate children into atheism.

COPE said that teaching evolution took children “into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe – ‘where do we come from?’”

“The purpose of the indoctrination is to establish the religious Worldview, not to deliver to an age appropriate audience an objective and religiously neutral origins science education that seeks to inform," the group insisted.

Actually, the argument that evolutionary theory is a religion is an old one. It's nonsense, of course, but they still keep trying.

But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver last week upheld a lower court's ruling which said that COPE lacked standing to bring the suit because it could not show that it had been harmed.

“COPE does not offer any facts to support the conclusion that the Standards condemn any religion or send a message of endorsement,” the court decision stated. “And any fear of biased instruction is premised on COPE’s predictions of school districts’ responses to the Standards—an attempt by COPE to recast a future injury as a present one.”

In a statement, Americans United for Separation of Church and State said that COPE feared that scientific facts would cause "Kansas schoolchildren will be subtly manipulated into rejecting their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

In point of fact, most Christian denominations accept the theory of evolution, starting with the Roman Catholic Church. There's no real conflict, unless, like most fundamentalists, you don't understand the role of metaphor in religious texts.

The real point is that these characters are still trying to get creationism taught in public schools, after years of losing every court case. And it's the tactic they'll use on every other "social issue" that they hold dear -- after all, they're still fighting against Roe v. Wade two generations after the fact, and they'll keep chipping away at Obergefell and keep trying to get exemptions to nondiscrimination laws for their peculiar "religious beliefs."

No, the fight's not over, and won't be until all these idiots are safely buried.

How Others See Us

Ran across this at Balloon Juice (Thanks to Betty Cracker) and had to share it:

Newspeak, Republican Style

The right wing has been speaking in code for a while now, but it's become somewhat desperate lately. This article at The Hill is illuminating (via Hullabaloo).

Conservative Republicans are worried that political correctness is creeping into their party.

They point to the decision by a House committee to replace 50 state flags — including Mississippi’s, which is emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag — with 50 state coins from the U.S. mint.

Separately, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sidestepped the controversy this week raging over a North Carolina law barring transgender people from using bathrooms that do not match their born sex, saying he didn’t know enough about what he said was a state proposal.

And while conservative Republicans grumble that President Obama’s decision to pull Andrew Jackson off the front of the $20 bill is playing politics with currency, they feel there’s scant motivation in their ranks to stop him.

“Political correctness has crept into the Capitol,” said David Bozell, president of ForAmerica, a conservative advocacy group.

Brian Darling, a conservative Republican strategist, accused House GOP leaders of caving in to the PC police.

It occurred to me recently that "politically correct" has become code for "socially acceptable," with the added dimension of trying to make social acceptability a negative. (Remember, we are talking about figures who are past masters at flipping reality on its head.) The culture has moved on, as cultures tend to do, and the attitudes that conservatives hold and espouse -- prejudice in general, which is no more than a general fear and distaste of anything unfamiliar -- simply don't cut it any more with most Americans. Case in point: it's no longer acceptable to be openly racist, so we get code, also known as "dog whistles." I think a big part of Donald Trump's appeal is that he dispenses with the code and comes right out and says what his supporters are thinking -- he voices the right-wing id -- and slams "political correctness" whenever he can. That's also what make him repellent to most Americans.

Conservatives fear that squeamishness on social controversies is linked to what they see as a lack of full commitment to confront Democrats on major policy issues, such as defunding Planned Parenthood.

They are also making the case that if the GOP cannot fight President Obama and Democrats on those issues, it is no wonder they can’t take more basic steps in governance.

“If you can’t say that guys should be going to the bathroom in men’s rooms and women should have the privacy they’re entitled to, if you can’t make that case as a leader of the Republican Party, no wonder you can’t get a budget through,” Bozell said this week.

They just don't get it: their positions on social issues are non-starters at this point. In functional terms they seem to understand that -- they've lost on gay rights, including marriage, so now they've targeted trans people -- but they don't get the implications: if most people don't agree with you on marginalizing one group, maybe you should rethink your whole philosophy rather than just trying to marginalize another group. But then, if they moderate their stance on social issues, they have nothing left.

(Sidebar: I think the corporate wing of the Republican party found the social conservatives useful for several decades, as a distraction from their takeover of the government. Now, however, their extreme positions on social issues are eroding support for the party as a whole -- the bible-thumpers are not only an embarrassment, they've become a real threat to the party. And of course, anything that hints of pragmatism -- "softening" on marriage equality, letting people decide for themselves whether they are men or women -- is a no-go for the "Christian" extremists.)

So, whenever you hear a conservative railing about "political correctness," think about what they are actually advocating.

Getting Ready For November

And practicing on New York Democrats: Can you say "election fraud"?

In the lead up to the New York Primaries this past week, an alarming situation was discovered when hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters found themselves unable to vote for the candidates they wished. Some found themselves listed as Republicans or Independents, while others were removed from the voting rolls entirely. This voter purge hit the hardest in the borough of Brooklyn, traditionally a stronghold of Democratic values and a strong base of support for the party. That this voter purge, which affected people across the state, happened at all was a shock to elected officials and observers alike. And the voter purge happened so quickly, it was impossible to address in time before the election, demonstrating a coordinated plan behind it.

As the stories came in, what was revealed was something far more insidious than some kind of voter purge used to eliminate voters who had died or moved out of the area. Instead they found fraudulent documents with forged signatures. And when the voter purge was looked at carefully, it became clear that the purge was being very specific, targeting people by street and apartment building. And there were only a handful of people with access to the data and tools needed for performing such a well-coordinated voter purge.

This has a history, and guess who was involved?

In 2012, Mitt Romney with Karl Rove developed a voting tool the likes of which had never been seen before. This tool, called Orca, was a database so massive and finite that, using it, they could identify people on a street by street, or building by building basis. Orca worked in part by collecting data gathered by poll watchers, which would be funneled into a central database for processing. As a result, Orca gave the Romney campaign a tactical ability to target people not only who Romney wanted to show up to the polls, but to deny access for people who Romney did not want to show up to the poll. Unfortunately for Romeny in 2012, the hactivist collective Anonymous killed that plan, by overloading and crashing the central servers.

However, the data collected remains intact, and available to GOP insiders – insiders such as Diane Haslett-Rudiano. With access to such data, such a voter purge becomes trivial to perform.

The GOP Secretary for the district is the only one implicated so far, but I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg. I just wonder how far up into the party hierarchy this reaches.

This is just a hint of what we can expect in November, unless something happens to disrupt it -- the Republicans have gotten as crooked and venal as the Democrats in Chicago used to be. Where's Anonymous when you need them?

Today in Gun Safety

Sometimes, as I'm surfing through the news in the morning, I run across stories that comment on each other. Let's start with this, from Digby:

Apparently at least 60 kids under 18 have accidentally killed themselves and or other people already this year. It's a horror story. Here's the latest.

A 2-year-old Indiana boy fatally shot himself Wednesday evening after discovering a gun in his mother’s purse, authorities said.

The boy retrieved the gun when his mother “momentarily stepped away,” leaving her purse on the kitchen counter, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said in a news release.

I don't think I need to comment on the idea of leaving a loaded gun around where a two-year-old can find it. C'mon, people -- kids get into everything, usually when you're not looking.

Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars had the same reaction I did to the "solution" proposed by an NRA apologist:

Mamas, please rush right out and get some toddler-size body armor for your little darlings, because the NRA has decided the best way to avoid getting shot by some lunatic (or responsible gun owner) is to wear body armor.

Your little darling will look adorbs in a size 4T bulletproof vest. I'll bet you can even find one with Hello Kitty on it.

Seriously -- this idiot -- someone named Colion Noir, which has got to be a pseudonym -- is actually suggesting that we all go out and buy body armor to keep from being killed by some 2nd Amendment nutcase. A sample:

Look, if you don’t like guns and want nothing to do with them, you have every right to make less than smart decisions with your life, but I can’t think of a more passive way to protect yourself from being shot than owning body armor. I’m not saying you have to channel your inner 50 Cent and wear a vest general purpose. But have armor in your home or bag, you have nothing to lose. You may not like guns or me for liking guns, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about your safety.

MediaMatters has a full post. It gets really, really bizarre.

I Wonder, Sometimes

The Guardian is generally, in my estimation, one of the more sensible and reliable news sources out there, but sometimes. . . .

Technology giants including Facebook and Google face the prospect of their prestigious Silicon Valley headquarters becoming swamped by water as rising sea levels threaten to submerge much of the property development boom gripping San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Sea level forecasts by a coalition of scientists show that the Silicon Valley bases for Facebook, Google and Cisco are at risk of being cut off or even flooded, even under optimistic scenarios where rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions avoid the most severe sea level increases.

OK, granted, it's in their "Technology" section, but still -- I mean, we stand to lose most of the world's major cities, and in the U.S. all of Florida.

I mean, Google will move. That's no problem for them -- or, all things considered, a relatively minor problem.

In Memoriam: Prince

In case you missed the news somehow, Prince is dead. Here's a brief overview of his career.

I can't say that I was ever a real fan, although I did enjoy his music. I certainly can't deny, though, that he had a huge impact on American popular music.

Today's Must-Read

This somewhat lengthy post by Digby, especially the commentary on the Washington press corps vis-a-vis Paul Ryan:

But this desire to turn right wingers into statesmen based upon very little evidence is a common phenomenon among media observers. Perhaps it's because they can't believe the ego-driven ineptitude and/or ideological extremism could possibly be as bad as it seems so they look for any small sign of competence and run with it in the vain hope that they'll awaken from this nightmare and the Republican party will be normal again. If so, no Washington figure has benefited from this phenomenon more than House Speaker Paul Ryan.

For years he has been the up and coming "it boy" of the Republican caucus, leader of the young guns, the captain of the "deep bench" of new leadership that was going to lead the Party to the promised land.

Ryan is, as far as I'm concerned, the type specimen of the empty suit. As for his accomplishments (aside from budgets that didn't add up -- literally):

Paul Krugman memorably tried to remind everyone that Ryan had always been less than meets the eye:

The fact is that Ryan is and always was a fraud. His plan never added up; it was never, contrary to what people who should know better asserted, “scored” by the CBO. What he actually offered was a plan to hurt the poor and reward the rich, actually increasing the deficit along the way, plus magic asterisks that supposedly reduced the debt by means unspecified.

His genius, if you can all it that, was in realizing that there was a role — as I said, that of Honest, Serious Conservative — that self-proclaimed centrists desperately wanted to see filled, so that they could demonstrate their bipartisanship by lavishing praise on the holder of that position. So Ryan did his best to impersonate a budget wonk. It wasn’t a very good impersonation — in fact, he’s pretty bad at budget math.

And now you know why the Eagles' "Hotel California" reminds me of Washington. (If you need a refresher, scroll down to yesterday's "Culture Break" post.)

Happy Birthday, Queen Elizabeth

Just because.

About Those Bathroom Bills

I just had to post this. Via Joe.My.God.:

Sounds like one of my cousins. Sounds like most of my cousins.

Culture Break: Eagles: Hotel California

For some reason, I've been listening to the Eagles lately. So, this:

Somehow, this one seems appropriate, what with the Eternal Election Cycle and all.

(No, it has nothing to do with Glenn Frey's passing, although I knew about it.)

NC's "Not Discriminatory" Bathroom Bill: Oops!

Via Joe.My.God., this item from NC Capitol:

A coalition of religious groups that pressed the General Assembly to pass House Bill 2 last month quickly scrapped a plan Wednesday to have state lawmakers sign a pledge to support it. . . .

The pledge called for signers to oppose any legislation that "would allow men to use women's bathrooms" or "would force private persons and businesses to participate in events, engage in speech or promote ideas that violate their sincerely held beliefs." The pledge also called on lawmakers to oppose efforts to repeal any provision in House Bill 2 or to add the terms "sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression" to any state statute or policy.

They probably could have kept up the charade -- I mean, no one believed them to begin with, but they hadn't actually come right out and said that the whole point was to legalize discrimination against LGBTs -- if they hadn't included that last item.

 

Rep. Darren Jackson (D, of course) called them out.

The response is -- well, this is what you say when you get caught:

John Rustin, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, sent the pledge to all members of the House and the Senate. By mid-afternoon Wednesday, he had emailed lawmakers, saying the pledge was circulated "inadvertently" and should be ignored.

It becomes "inadvertent" when it blows up in your face.

And it couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people.

So It Wasn't Hunters With Stone Tools

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

There's a school of thought -- if you want to call it that -- out there that credits human being with all the extinctions throughout prehistory, particularly the North American megafauna at the onset of the latest interglacial period. I've pointed out time and time again that, in most cases, the populations concerned were already under stress from environmental changes (as in the onset of the interglacial). Well, that seems to have been the case with the dinosaurs:

Sixty-five million years ago, a massive asteroid slammed into Earth, causing tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, a global winter and the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

But what if the asteroid had glided safely past our planet? Would dinosaurs still be here today?

New research suggests the answer is probably not. Instead, scientists have found evidence that dinosaurs were in the midst of a long, slow decline that began millions of years before the asteroid struck. . . .

The authors are not sure what caused the speciation rate to slow down, but they have a few ideas. They explain that the Cretaceous period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago) was a time of drastic geological changes. The global climate was cooling down, there was prolonged volcanic activity and the continents were breaking apart.

Like I keep saying, environmental changes will do it every time.

Today's Must-Read

Now that the pain is over (for most of us), a very interesting article from Gaius Publius at Hullabaloo:

The following is another instance of the difference between neo-liberal governance and FDR-liberal governance. At present, tax filing — filling out and sending in a prepared multi-page tax return — is complicated and in most cases requires third-party software to complete. The government could do this for you, by filling in your forms with the information they have already, making those forms available online at a secure government web site and letting you add the rest of the data yourself.

But under our current neo-liberal government, the IRS doesn't do that. Instead, the IRS has agreements with vendors in the software industry, including the TurboTax giant Intuit, not to cut into their profit by "competing" with them in "providing free, on-line tax return preparation and filing services to taxpayers." Even though, as you'll see below, the IRS is compelled by law to do just that.

(Of course I was talking about taxes -- I mean, what's the worst thing that happens in this country in mid-April? Give or take a late-season blizzard.)

It's lengthy, but read the whole post. I found the differentiation between "FDR-liberal" and "neo-liberal" very interesting. Needless to say, as an amateur anthropologist, I'm in the FDR-liberal camp.*

And on that score, see also this from Mahablog:

Bill and Hillary Clinton are the quintessential American centrist neoliberals. American centrist neoliberaism isn’t as far Right as the European neoliberalism George Monbiot complains about. Call it soft neoliberalism. But it’s still neoliberalism, and it still feeds into income inequality.

There are a lot of different definitions of neoliberalism, but ultimately it’s about sacrificing the standard of living of working-class men and women for the sake of global corporate profits.

The article is mostly about Hillary Clinton and her history, but it's all really about her neo-liberalism.

* I should probably explain that: Government is simply the institutionalization of our less formal (but no less real) social organizations, something that we've inherited from millions of years' worth of our simian and anthropoid ancestors. Government, then, functions as "the group," or in some cases, the alpha male, keeping things orderly and functioning smoothly. The basic purpose, and the whole reason sociality has an adaptive value, is that it serves to ensure the welfare of the group. When one component becomes too powerful and/or forgets the basic purpose of society -- today, it's multi-national corporations, in the 18th Century is was the aristocracy -- you have a disaster in the making. Sadly, the correction, if things get too far out of hand, is usually violent and destructive.

Anyway, that's why I'm an FDR-liberal.

"Just Get Over It"

John Kasich, the sitting governor of Ohio and dismally trailing for the GOP presidential nomination, is, I guess, trying to sound statesmanlike in his interview. It doesn't go well:

Oh, man -- where to start?

There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty.

No, there's not a "legitimate concern." There is an effort to assert the primacy of a particular religion over all other rights. There's a basic principle underlying the viability of any society that hopes to survive: all rights have limits. We know that one well: Free speech does not include yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, the right to free assembly does not include a right to start a riot, and on down the line. Apparently, Kasich didn't get the memo.

We need to have a balance.

We've established that balance, in the adoption of nondiscrimination laws aimed at providing an equal status to those groups that have been historically discriminated against. Once, again, rights have limits, and what those laws do is establish those limits in certain areas: your religious beliefs don't allow you to refuse service to a paying customer, refuse housing to a potential tenant, or fire an employee because they don't conform to your beliefs. It's worth noting that in every case of "Christian martyrdom" -- the two bakers, the florist, the photographer (and have you noticed it's always the same core group held up as examples of "Christians" being persecuted?) -- they have attempted to hold themselves exempt from nondiscrimination laws because of their religious beliefs -- bringing their personal beliefs into the marketplace, where the law has said they are inappropriate. (I could go on at length about these bigots, starting with the idea that baking a cake is somehow "participation" in a wedding ceremony, but I won't.)

And if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just, for a second, get over it, you know, because this thing will settle down.

Oh, right. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington, Paine -- not to mention King, Ghandi, Mandela -- should all have just gotten over it -- it would have settled down.

I suppose this is all supposed to make Kasich sound reasonable, which, considering his competition, isn't all that difficult. Don't believe it for a minute -- he's just as bad as the others.

Congratulations, Republicans!

You've managed to turn us into a nation of paranoid freaks:

On April 6, UC Berkeley senior Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was supposed to fly from Los Angeles to Oakland, get to campus and go to class. Instead, Makhzoomi was removed from Southwest Airlines flight 4260, detained by security officers, questioned by the FBI and refused service from Southwest after speaking Arabic before his flight took off.

Makhzoomi is a refugee from Iraq whose father, an Iraqi diplomat, was killed under Saddam Hussein. He'd been in LA to attend a dinner with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and was trying to get back to Oakland to attend his classes at Berkeley.

This whole story is pretty gruesome:

On his way back to Berkeley, Makhzoomi, a loyal Southwest premier rewards member, boarded his flight to Oakland and called his uncle in Baghdad to tell him about Ki-moon’s event. At the end of the phone call, conducted in Arabic, Makhzoomi said goodbye to his uncle with the phrase “inshallah,” which translates to “if God is willing.”

When Makhzoomi hung up, he noticed a female passenger looking at him. Once he made eye contact with her, she got up and left her seat.

“She kept staring at me and I didn’t know what was wrong,” he said. “Then I realized what was happening and I just was thinking ‘I hope she’s not reporting me.’”

She was, actually. Read the whole story, if you can stand it.

Frankly, Southwest should get a lot of high-profile blowback from this, but it's probably not going to happen. What I would like to see happen is for that woman's name to be plastered all over the Internet, but then, I'm kind of cranky lately.

Karoli Kuns, who did this story at Crooks and Liars, is a lot more charitable:

This is what all the fearmongering has wrought. I guess I could rip on the passenger who thought she overheard something she didn't, but she's just as much a victim of the crap that gets tossed around against Muslims as everyone else is. Although, she might consider learning Arabic rather than pretending she understands a language she clearly didn't.

It's OK -- you can rip the woman as much as you like -- she obviously doesn't have the brains that god gave a doorknob, but she feels free to screw up someone else's life without having the vaguest idea what's going on.

This is the result of fifteen years of Republican anti-Muslim fearmongering, or one of the results. (The real result is Donald Trump, but he bores the bejeezus out of me: he's just not an interesting figure. I was going to say "person," but he's really more of a symptom than anything else.)

One thing that came up in the comments to Karoli's article is that Americans are woefully ignorant of the rest of the world. By way of illustration, when I was in high school, one of the requirements for graduation was two years of a foreign language. Ditto college. (Most of my classmates took Spanish, because it's easy to learn; being me, I took Classical Latin, German, and Russian. If I were doing it now, I'd probably take Chinese and Arabic.) That's a state requirement; some states, apparently, don't require knowing anything about the world outside our borders at all.

But I digress.

One can almost excuse the woman who reported this poor guy, if one can excuse being an ignorant git. What's even worse is the behavior of airline security and the FBI: I would expect them to display a bit more in the way of reasoned judgment. Apparently. that's not a job requirement for any sector of law enforcement.

Welcome to Donald Trump's America.

Today in Stupid

I know, there's almost too much to choose from, but this story stuck out a little bit:

The lawsuit says many are either placed on what's called a Selectee List, which subjects them to extra scrutiny, or the more stringent No-Fly List, which prevents the traveler from flying.

One of the plaintiffs is a 4-year-old baby from California, listed in the lawsuit as "Baby Doe."

"He was 7 months old when his boarding pass was first stamped with the 'SSSS' designation, indicating that he had been designated as a 'known or suspected terrorist,'" said the lawsuit. "While passing through airport security, he was subjected to extensive searches, pat-downs and chemical testing."

"Every item in his mother's baby bag was searched, including every one of his diapers."

Remember that your basic TSA agent is not known for actually thinking -- remember the five-year-old handicapped boy who was forced to crawl through the security station without his crutches?

As for the list itself, it's become nothing more than a sick joke, as might have been expected, seeing as how it was first instituted by John Ashcroft when he was Dubyah's AG. According to the article, there are now over 1.5 million people on the list. I doubt there are 1.5 million terrorists in the whole world, but rationality is no longer part of our security establishment's repertoire.

OK -- the stories behind the lawsuit are bad enough, but the rationale -- well, I don't know whether to laugh or scream and throw things:

The FBI says on its website that "the TSC (Terrorist Screening Center) regularly conducts comprehensive and case-specific quality assurance reviews of its data to ensure the U.S. government’s substantive criteria for watch-listing are met and to ensure the records maintained in the Terrorist Screening Database are current, accurate, and thorough. The TSC also participates in redress procedures established by agencies that perform terrorist screening."

Can you say "bullshit"? I wonder how many of that 1.5 million are on the list because someone doing data entry can't spell?

Via RawStory.

And a foonote: more on our culture of paranoia.

Today's Must-Read

This headline brought on one of those "Aha!" moments about the 2016 presidential campaign:

Sanders may be bad on details but he has what Clinton lacks — the spirit of protest

That's what the whole election is about, on both sides:

Not that the fuzziness mattered to Sanders supporters. His devoted following, mostly white and young, will remain steadfast to the end. Their loyalty to him is reminiscent of the Donald Trump supporters who don’t seem to care whether anything that comes out of his mouth is based on fact.

This is because both of their campaigns are rooted in the narrative of protest. Sanders has erected a big social justice tent that can fit in just about everyone on the left who responds to a call for revolution. But the Daily News session revealed that the revolution may be as impractical and unachievable as Trump’s promise to Make America Great Again.

In spite of what you've been hearing from the corporate media, it's not just Trump's supporters that are unhappy with the status quo -- there's a large proportion of the left that's equally unhappy (and, in my own personal opinion, with much more justification). To Sanders' credit, he's attacking some of the real problems, rather than throwing up straw men to generate anger. I don't think he has a real handle on policies to address those problems -- not in a real nuts and bolts sense -- but at least he's focusing on something real, rather than deporting everyone who's not white and old.

Well, Finally!

Google had me locked out of Blogger for about 10 days. I'm still not sure what I did that got me back in, but here I am.

Let's hope it sticks.

You've Probably Noticed

That I haven't been around lately. Two reasons: recovering from surgery, which has been slow and painful, and the only thing in the news, aside from the occasional hate crime or terrorist attack, is Donald Trump, and to be quite honest with you, he's a crashing bore and certainly doesn't deserve to be slobbered over the way the press is doing.

PS -- forgot to mention it yesterday, but there are more republished reviews at Green Man Review, and a new one, my first in about a year. Go over and visit.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. . . .

So, I'm away from the Internet for five days, and this is what I come back to:

Eric Boehlert of Hillary-friendly Media Matters examines how the media's obsession with Donald Trump has yielded millions in free air time for the billionaire:

We seem to have entered unchartered territory where campaign coverage, at least Trump’s campaign coverage, is based on what’s popular (or what makes money for news outlets), and not based on what’s newsworthy. Casting aside decades of precedent, campaign journalism seems to have almost consciously shifted to a for-profit model.

Boehlert seems to be a little slow on the uptake. Hell, I don't even watch TV and I've seen broadcast media heading in this direction for years.

And it's not only yielded millions in freebies for Trump -- it's translating into millions for the corporate media as well:

As CBS chairman and chief executive Les Moonves told The Hollywood Reporter last month, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS.

"I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us," he continued, adding that the "money’s rolling in.

Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going."

It gets better:

Writing at The Observer, Ryan Holiday suggested a new paradigm is in play this campaign season:

Politicians have always sought to manipulate the public. What’s changed is that media is now not only a willing co-conspirator, they are often the driving force behind the manipulation. No longer seeing itself as responsible for reporting the truth, for getting the facts to the people, it has instead incentivized a scrum, a wild fight for attention in which anything that attracts an audience is fair game. And as long as theirs is the ring where the fight goes down, they’ll happily sell tickets to as many as will come.

Well, yeah -- can you say "Fox News"?

Digby brings us this:

This has got Fox News all wound up:

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria offered some commentary on his show Sunday about the rise of Donald Trump in the GOP and its similarities to the rise of Islamic extremism.

Zakaria said, “A main cause of the rise of extremism in the world of Islam has been the cowardice of Muslim moderates who, for decades, chose not to condemn bad ideas and ugly rhetoric.”

He believes they made the dire mistake of avoiding the “cancer in plain sight” and there is “a similar dynamic” at play in the conservative world.

Zakaria argued that the very same people trashing Trump these days aided and abetted his rise by, over the years, embracing “the rhetoric and tactic of the extremes.”

Tack this on to the post about who's aiding and abetting, and it's not a pretty picture.

And, from a slightly different angle, the breathless coverage of Sanders' upset in the Michigan primary: Maybe it's just that voters in Michigan know first-hand what it's like when you're living under a corporate-owned government.

About the Whole Sam Smith Oscar Speech Thing

Gods, get over it, people! Poor Sam Smith is getting all kinds of grief for what people heard, not what he said:

So he misquoted McKellan. Like no one's ever been misquoted before, and Smith was obviously overwhelmed. Any grown-up would cut him some slack. Even Matt Baume, who should know better, took advantage of the opportunity to show how "wrong" Smith was.

He quite plainly qualified his statement -- "If that's the case, or even if that's not the case" -- before getting to the real substance: a loud, proud proclamation he is an out gay man who has won this award, with full awareness that there's a lot more to be done.

I think I'm a little fed up with all these nattering queens who need to criticize something, anything. And frankly, the mere fact that this has been plastered all over the blogosphere as a negative story about Smith is really beyond the Pale.

OK. End of rant.

Spotlight

I haven't seen it. I think I probably will. (Frankly, I pay so little attention to movies, except for superhero epics, that I hadn't even heard of it until seeing lists of Oscar winners this morning.) And then two stories I ran across this morning brought it right front and center.

First, from Digby, a post about the background story:

But I have to say that I think it's pretty amazing that the biggest Christian church in the world has been revealed to have covered up thousands of cases of child rape over the course of many decades, perhaps centuries, and they somehow came out with their moral authority intact. This I will never understand. This wasn't just a slip-up. These are among the worst crimes human beings commit, a total taboo, particularly in a church which has no compunction about policing the sexuality of its flock.

I don't know that I agree with the "moral authority intact" part: granted, the Church never had much moral authority with me to begin with, but after the revelations of child sexual (and other) abuse not only in Boston, but in Chicago, in Ireland, in Germany, in Australia -- globally -- what little respect I had for the Church is gone. Not even in tatters, just gone.

And then I ran across this story:

Vatican finance chief George Pell admitted Monday the Catholic Church “mucked up” in dealing with paedophile priests and vowed he would not “defend the indefensible” before an Australian inquiry.

The jaw-dropper was this comment:

But he denied the Church’s structure was to blame for the way it handled paedophile priests, despite counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness saying many inquiries around the world had found those in senior positions did not take proper action.

“I don’t think it calls into question the divine structure of the Church which goes back to the New Testament, the role of the pope and bishops,” he said.

The Church's structure has had everything to do with the way this was handled, starting with the Church's contention that it is above the law and with its first priority: protecting its privilege.

Australia, at least, has called a Royal Commission to investigate. One wonders why the House Witch-Hunt Committee wasn't on top of this.

And for those who thought Pope Francis was going to fix everything, Digby has this quote from an article by Sarah Larson in The New Yorker:

Before I left, we talked about Pope Francis and his often disappointing response to the crisis, as well as the Church’s inflexible positions on the celibacy requirement, women in the clergy, contraception, homosexuality, and so on. I told Rezendes a theory I’d heard from the comedian and childhood-rape survivor Barry Crimmins: that Pope Francis is the Church’s way of changing the conversation without changing the Church. Rezendes looked thoughtful. “That makes some sense,” he said.

(Emphasis added.)

Granted, Francis has a lot of very conservative inertia to overcome, but the idea that his election is a way of deflecting attention from the moral bankruptcy of the hierarchy makes a lot of sense.

And for those who haven't seen it, here's a trailer for Spotlight:

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More Updates

It's Sunday, which means more updated links to reviews at Green Man Review.

Who knows? I may even come up with something new soon.

Today's Must-Read

From Bruce Hay, one of Antonin Scalia's former law clerks:

His own weapon was the poison-barbed word, and the battleground was what he once labeled the Kulturkampf, the culture war. The enemy took many forms. Women’s rights. Racial justice. Economic equality. Environmental protection. The “homosexual agenda,” as he called it. Intellectuals and universities. The questioning of authority and privilege. Ambiguity. Foreignness. Social change. Climate research. The modern world, in all its beauty and complexity and fragility.

Most of all, the enemy was to be found in judges who believe decency and compassion are central to their jobs, not weaknesses to be extinguished. Who refuse to dehumanize people and treat them as pawns in some Manichean struggle of good versus evil, us versus them. Who decline to make their intelligence and verbal gifts into instruments of cruelty and persecution and infinite scorn.

This is the Supreme Court justice beloved of the right, the same one who thought that procedure is more important than innocence.

Read the whole thing -- it's devastating.

Via Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Because We Need It

Via Digby:

It might be impossible for any one person to adopt every pet in need of a good home, but these kids are doing the next best thing — by bringing shy shelter dogs out of their shells.

An innovative new idea, called the Shelter Buddies Reading Program, is already making a huge difference for animals at the Humane Society of Missouri.

The idea is simple: train kids to read to dogs as a way of readying them for forever homes, all while instilling a greater sense of empathy in the youngsters, too.

Read the whole thing.

And Now, the Antidote

I love this sort of thing:

The first kiss for a returning sailor after a long deployment at sea is a sweet and memorable tradition. But in what is believed to be a first for the Royal Canadian Navy, that time-honoured ceremonial kiss was between two men.

There were loud cheers today when Master Seaman Francis Legare embraced his partner, Corey Vautour, after more than eight months at sea. “I have been away for 255 days, so it feels great,” a smiling Legare said. “I am speechless.”

HMCS Winnipeg, which has a crew of 250, returned to Victoria on Tuesday after a tour in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Being the first sailor off a ship is considered an honour and privilege in the Canadian navy, and it’s decided by a random raffle.

Toto, I don't think we're in Texas any more.

Today In Disgusting People

The latest bigoted baker looking for martyrdom:

A same-sex couple says they were saddened last week when a Longview bakery refused to bake their wedding cake, and the business owner said it would have offended her faith for the business to be linked to the event.

See -- you don't even have to "participate" any more to be offended. I wonder if living in the same town as this couple offends her faith?

And you get prejudice and ignorance in one hefty package:

Edie Delorme, co-owner of Kern’s with her husband, David, said she was up-front when the couple replied. “And when they said it was them, I said, ‘Sorry. We don’t provide cakes for homosexual marriages,'” she said. “It’s not against people or what they choose to be part of.”

Of course it's against people. What does this idiot think her actions are based on? (Sorry, "the Bible" is not the correct answer.) And what they "choose" to be part of? From a woman who has voluntarily subscribed to a bigoted version of a religion that's a lot better than what she represents.

Sorry, but these people disgust me. And of course, this is Texas.

You Really Have to Wonder

I mean, why would anyone take a statement like this seriously?

Anti-government attorney Kory Langhofer argued over the weekend that the Supreme Court could continue to decide cases 5-4 in favor of conservatives after the death of Antonin Scalia because the deceased justice could effectively cast votes from the grave.

"There's no Ouija board required to figure out how Justice Scalia would vote on these things, he's already voted," Langhofer told KPNX during a panel discussion on Sunday. "We're at the second-to-last step in how these cases unfold when Justice Scalia died."

"We know exactly what he thought," Langhofer continued. "And it's not unprincipled to say we should give affect to that."

It's not a question of principles -- it's a question of whether Langhofer has all his marbles. I think the answer is either 1) no, or 2) he's just yankin' someone's chain. (And reading through the rest of the story, option 2 seems to be the case.)

And someone actually took this seriously enough to reply, rather than just bursting into hysterical laughter.

Wanna know why public discourse in this country has become so degraded? Look to our "independent" press; they're the ones who set up nonsense like this as legitimate discourse.

In Trump's America

Things like this happen:

According to a police report Knoble — who described herself to police as a ‘soccer mom’ — confronted Adly Ohalley and his wife, Worood Abumayaleh, as they sat in their car in Brooklyn Park waiting for their son.

“Suddenly a lady came with a rifle,” Abumayaleh said in an interview. “Knocking very very hard. And she said, ‘Open the window or I’ll kill you. Open the window.’ And I was scared, I couldn’t even call 911 or do anything. I just froze, my brain froze. I just said, ‘Maybe she’s going to kill us now.'”

“She asked us, ‘What are you doing here?’ I told her that we are picking up our son from this house. She said, ‘What house?’ I said, ‘This house,'” Ohalley recalled, before adding, ” “So she came around with her rifle, pointed it at me, and said, ‘Get out of the car, and move in front of me to the house to prove that your son’s in there. So she put the gun on my back.”

As you might guess from their names, Mr. Ohalley and Ms. Abumayaleh are Muslim.

But, we've not quite arrived at the trumpbagger paradise yet: Knoble was arrested, tried and convicted of "felony terroristic threats."

But give it time.

I Saw Goody Two-Shoes With the Devil!

That's a line one of the cast came up with during a long rehearsal for Arthur Miller's The Crucible way back when -- the scene where the girls are accusing everyone and anyone of consorting with Satan. Somehow, it just seems to fit this latest "news":

How in the world could the death of a Supreme Court justice on a remote ranch in Texas be linked to Hillary? Well . . . because of her own words and campaign desperation.

Just weeks ago, on January 26th, an enthusiastic supporter in Ohio publicly asked Hillary if she would be willing to name Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. Her response? Hillary responded with, “What a great idea . . . he is brilliant and he can set forth an argument and he was a law professor. He has got all of the credentials.”

Clinton has been running against her socialist opponent, Bernie Sanders, as a continuation of the Obama legacy. What better way to continue to give voice and power to the Obamas than to place the two-term president on the highest court in the land?

Clinton’s and Obama’s supporters went nuts over the concept of “Justice Obama,” lighting up Twitter and Facebook. The “Supreme Idea” was a winner. But like all evil plans, someone has to die to get the ball rolling. Enter Antonin Scalia.

If this were a political crime thriller, it would be too unbelievable to sell. But in the world of the Clintons they somehow have managed to get away with murder and more for decades.

The story got one thing right: it's too unbelievable to sell as a crime thriller, but in the world of wingnut conspiracy theories, it's a perfect fit.

Today's Republican Party

This was just too good to let pass:

Yesterday on “Trunews,” End Times radio host Rick Wiles discussed “the possible occult connections” to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he concluded was murdered by President Obama and was a human sacrifice to mark the pagan festival of Lupercalia.

Wiles explained that the “Luciferian” “devil-worshipers” who control the government are out for blood, noting that Lupercalia is observed between February 13 and 15. Scalia’s body was discovered on the 13th. “There’s always human sacrifice involved,” he said, claiming that Scalia was “killed” to mark the beginning of pagan fascism ruling over the U.S.

“The 13th was the 44th day of 2016, Obama is the 44th president of the United States,” Wiles said, “so you have this numerology thing taking place.”

Wiles said that the assassins who killed the conservative justice “deliberately left the pillow on his face as a message to everybody else: ‘Don’t mess with us, we can murder a justice and get away with it.’ And I assure you, there’s a lot of frightened officials in Washington today, deep down they know, the regime murdered a justice…. This is the way a dictatorial, fascist, police state regime takes control of a nation.”

“The day the justice died, the day justice in America died,” he continued, “they got away with it.”

I wonder if Wiles has endorsed anyone for president yet. If he has, the only one I can see admitting it is Ted Cruz.

There's a sound clip at the link, if you want the full effect.

Via Joe.My.God.

Dear Republicans: Overturn This!

From USA Today:

Spc. Shane Adriano and Pfc. Tristian Resz chose the Greene County Courthouse as a venue because they wanted something small and intimate for their Feb. 11 wedding. It was to be just the happy couple, a few supportive friends and a judge.

But after they shared their "first married kiss" photo on Facebook, their small ceremony turned into a worldwide event.

Marriage and the military. SNAP!

(And they do make a really cute couple. Best wishes, guys.)

Via Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Watch: The Real Scalia Legacy

Cenk Uygur, a reformed conservative (can we say "ex-rightie"?), on the rush in conservative circles to create the myth of "Antonin Scalia, the Greatest Legal Mind Ever."

Scalia's comments about evolution are total bullshit. And no, most people have not believed in the Devil. Jews didn't even believe in Hell or the Devil (as Christians conceive of him) until late.

I'm sure you can find more nonsense.

A Day Late, Just Because

I seem to remember this ad from last year, but it may be just the music, which seems to pop up everywhere. At any rate:

Needless to say, the likes of Linda Harvey and Janet Porter hated it, so it must be a good thing.

(And a side thought: considering all the ads that stress inclusiveness and especially the number that are showing gays and lesbians favorably -- which is to say, just treating them as perfectly normal -- and the fact that their boycotts are big flops, it's no wonder the god-botherers are so hysterical: when it comes to hearts and minds, they're losing. Badly.)

By the way, if anyone knows the title/artist on that song, leave it in the comments. It's going to drive me crazy now.

Thanks.

Todat's Must-Read

From Digby, on Scalia's real legacy.

But then, if there’s one Supreme Court justice who exemplifies this propensity of modern American conservatives to bend the system for partisan ends when needed, it was Justice Antonin Scalia. His legacy as a hardcore legal conservative is second to none, but it will always be over-shadowed by one decision: Bush v. Gore. The Republicans had already begun the process of destroying the integrity of Congress with its partisan witch hunts and the impeachment circus of the 1990s; but if there’s one Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for the total abandonment of any pretense of dignified non-partisan adherence to traditions for the sake of preserving the integrity of our institutions in the eyes of the public, it is that one.

Read the whole thing.

Antonin Scalia, Follow-Up

The reaction is starting to hit the blogosphere. Here's my comment at a post at Box Turtle Bulletin:

I have no particular feelings about Scalia’s death, except that it’s always sad for someone when someone dies.

He may very well have been a brilliant legal mind, but he never let that get in the way of his ideology, and he was an ideologue — I always thought of him as the Vatican’s representative on the Supreme Court.

He’s been called a “true conservative,” which perverts the meaning of conservative: he was a reactionary, pure and simple. As a thought experiment, compare him to Richard Posner, who sits on the Seventh Circuit: a real legal scholar, a brilliant analyst with impeccable conservative credentials, and a jurist who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. (His opinion in Baskin [http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/usca7_ssm_20140904.pdf] is not only erudite, but scathing in its dismissal of the states’ claims. I wouldn’t mind at all seeing Posner nominated to take Scalia’s place — he’s everything Scalia was not.)

What’s going to happen is that anyone Obama nominates is going to be ignored by the Senate. Even if there is pressure to proceed with a confirmation vote, some red-state asshole will put a hold on it.

But then, this is the Republican party, which is still working on making Obama a one-term president.

Also, here's Jim Burroway's commentary on Scalia's "brilliant legal mind."

In the next several days, we’ll have a number of pious politicos tell us what a great Justice he was, and why they want more Justices like him on the bench. And we’re also going to hear a number of politicians and thought leaders tell us what horrible people we are for remembering Scalia for the judicial scourge that he was. But how can we remember him otherwise, particularly when his oft-quoted dissents from four landmark gay rights cases are so memorable?

So in the interest of remembering that great man Antonin Gregory Scalia, here are some choice quotes from those four dissents.

It's worth reading the whole post, just to see Scalia skewered by his own words.

This, from Ted Cruz, via Joe.My.God., is pretty funny -- but then, consider the source:

Today our Nation mourns the loss of one of the greatest Justices in history – Justice Antonin Scalia. A champion of our liberties and a stalwart defender of the Constitution, he will go down as one of the few Justices who single-handedly changed the course of legal history.

You have to wonder if someone in Cruz' camp was able to write this with a straight face.

Cruz, of course, is only one of the Republicans who are calling on the Senate to stall on any nomination from Obama, because Freedom! and the Constitution! (With just a bit of racism and obstructionism.)

For a fun Twitter recap, see this post at Balloon Juice.

John Cole has a no-holds-barred post at Balloon Juice that sort of sums up Scalia pretty well:

“There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction.”

“My concern is that in making life easier for ourselves we not appear to make it harder for the lower federal courts, imposing upon them the burden of regularly analyzing newly-discovered-evidence-of-innocence claims in capital cases (in which event such federal claims, it can confidently be predicted, will become routine and even repetitive).” – Antonin Scalia

This is the man that Ted Cruz called an "American hero."

And of course, the tinfoil hat brigade is out in full force. From conspiracy theorist and all-out wingnut Alex Jones (video at the link):

Jones: My friends, it's Saturday night, this is an emergency transmission.

Jones: The question is, was Antonin Scalia murdered? And the answer to that is, has the Bill of Rights and Constitution been murdered? Has it been reported that members of the Supreme Court have been blackmailed? Yes it has.

When they kill somebody they say, "it appears to be natural causes, nothing to see."

And I wish it was natural cause, but man, my gut tells me no. And if this is an assassination, this signifies that they are dropping the hammer.

I'm not making this up.

Feel free to add any of your own favorite reactions in the comments.

Report: Antonin Scalia Found Dead

No, that's not a joke. This is coming from multiple sources, so I'm taking it as accurate. From the San Antonio Express News:

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said.

Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.

According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.

Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, of the Western Judicial District of Texas, was notified about the death from the U.S. Marshals Service.

And from The Dallas Morning News:

The U.S. Marshal Service, the Presidio County sheriff and the FBI were involved in the investigation, the paper reported.

A federal official who asked not to be named told the paper there was no evidence of foul play and it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes.

Anything I might say at this point is going to be misinterpreted, or worse, will not be misinterpreted.

Oh, By the Way

More updates on reviews. You can, of course, check them out at Green Man Review.

In My Country, We Call That "Projection"

From the clueless Marco Rubio, on the president's visit to an American mosque:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) somehow found a way to criticize President Barack Obama's speech on Wednesday denouncing anti-Muslim bigotry.

Rubio, who often stresses religious liberty and his own faith on the campaign trail, said Obama's words at a Baltimore mosque were intended to divide, rather than unite, the American people.

"I'm tired of being divided against each other for political reasons like this president's done," Rubio said at a Wednesday campaign stop in Dover, New Hampshire. "Always pitting people against each other. Always! Look at today: He gave a speech at a mosque. Oh, you know, basically implying that America is discriminating against Muslims."

"Implying"? When the entire Republican stable is demanding discrimination against Muslims?

This counts as a WTF? Moment, I think.

Footnote: Mustang Bobby has a good comment on this at Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Giggle du Jour, Iowa Caucus Edition

Fox News, sticking its neck out:

Culture Break: Journey: A Twofer

I may have mentioned that I've been making an effort to listen to things that I haven't listened to in a while -- when you've got I forget how many hundreds of albums stored on your computer, you tend to keep going back to a few favorites and lose track of other things that are equally interesting.

At any rate, guess who popped up on my radar this morning:

There's something about Steve Perry's voice -- like, it's perfect.

And then this came up:

I don't love the video, but it's the official video, and the song is one of their best.

I really sort of miss the '80s, sometimes.

Today in WTF?

This whole story is so bizarre I can't quite believe it's real:

School trustees in a conservative community near Fresno are battling to save a dress code that currently prohibits boys from wearing earrings or having their hair long, the Fresno Bee reports.

On Wednesday, the board of trustees for the Clovis Unified School District voted to strike down changes to the current decades-old dress code, even though it may violate state law. Despite the looming threat of litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union, the board voted 4-3 to keep the dress code as-is.

Somehow, this is all about gender equality and "conservative values." I might be more sympathetic to the latter if I thought that conservatives had the faintest notion of what values are about. As for the "gender equality" part -- I'm old enough that I remember when a man wearing an earring was a sign of rebellion, not gender identity. (At one point, I wore five.)

“Let’s get real, what we’re doing is looking at a lawsuit if you don’t vote for this. I’m sick and tired of the ACLU. Because of them, I can have a male come into my daughter’s bathroom,” Melissa Fairless said at the board meeting. “I’m so tired of my rights and my conservative values being trampled on because of this gender equality. Stand up for what Clovis believes in and say we are going to take this to court and we are going to fight this.”

Guess who sounds like an idiot who's swallowed all the anti-gay, anti-trans bullshit being spewed by the usual suspects. As if it were even relevant to a dress code.

I give up. Maybe this country deserves Donald Trump. I wonder if I could apply for refugee status in Canada.

More Review Updates

Quite a few today, in a lot of categories. To save yourself some hunting around in the Reviews pages here, go visit Green Man Review for todays' "What's New."

Culture Break: Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons: Winter

This seemed appropriate, the more so since my review of Carmignola's performance on this album has magically reappeared at the new Green Man Review today:

A note: You may have noticed that I prefer to post performance videos of musical pieces. Sadly, the one performance video I found of Carmignola doing this piece is not up to par. Oh, well.

Look At It This Way

Donald Trump is at 32% support in the latest polls from New Hampshire, significantly ahead of his rivals for the Republican nomination going into the primary. However, that means that 68% of Republicans in New Hampshire do not support him.

Jeanne Cleveland, a retired teacher, pursed her lips sourly at the mention of his name and tried to summarize her distaste in diplomatic terms.

“I think he’s arrogant,” she said. “I think he’s rude. I think——”

She paused, reaching for the right words. “Let’s just say, I don’t like the way he represents us as a country.”

To avoid any confusion, Mrs. Cleveland put it plainly: “I don’t like Trump.”

In this, the retired teacher, 70, from Hollis, N.H., has ample, baffled and agonized company in New Hampshire as the presidential primary enters its final, frenzied weeks, with Donald J. Trump remaining atop poll after poll of the state’s Republican electorate.

Or is he? So deep is the dislike for him in some quarters that people like Mrs. Cleveland’s husband, Doug, question the accuracy of polls that so consistently identify Mr. Trump as leading the field with around 32 percent. “I’ve never met a single one of them,” Mr. Cleveland said about those said to be backing Mr. Trump. “Where are all these Trump supporters? Everyone we know is supporting somebody else.”

Via Digby.

Footnote: Also via Digby, this is funny:

The Republican National Committee has disinvited National Review from participating in the Feb. 25 GOP debate because of its outspoken opposition to Donald Trump. . . .

The RNC's decision, which was confirmed by a committee spokesperson, was made after the committee concluded that National Review was no longer an impartial participant.

Today's Must Read: Martin Luther King, Jr., Edition

Compare and contrast: First, this, from Dispatches from the Culture Wars, about the "Christian" right and its impact on American politics:

But the Christian Right also has a theocratic vision that is not merely reactive. It is proactive, and has deep roots in history and, in my view, it is gathering strength and momentum. While many people across a wide swath of public life—including journalists, scholars, and political activists—have delighted in repeatedly writing the Christian Right’s obituary, the theocratic coalition and the way it carries out its politics has dynamically evolved.

Thus, assumptions most of us have about the nature of religious pluralism, the rights of individual conscience and separation of church and state—and arguably democracy itself—cannot be considered as givens in public life. The Christian Right has developed profound legal, political and electoral capacities (the misguided beliefs of some otherwise sensible people that it is dead or dying notwithstanding). Christian Right presidential candidates remain prominent and the movement has increased its numbers in the Congress and in state governments and functions as a major and sometimes the dominant faction in the Republican Party in many states. The Christian Right remains one of the most powerful movements in American history.

And then, from Bark Bark Woof Woof:

For me, growing up as a white kid in a middle-class suburb in the Midwest in the 1960’s, Dr. King’s legacy would seem to have a minimum impact; after all, what he was fighting for didn’t affect me directly in any way. But my parents always taught me that anyone oppressed in our society was wrong, and that in some way it did affect me. This became much more apparent as I grew up and saw how the nation treated its black citizens; those grainy images on TV and in the paper of water-hoses turned on the Freedom Marchers in Alabama showed me how much hatred could be turned on people who were simply asking for their due in a country that promised it to them. And when I came out as a gay man, I became much more aware of it when I applied the same standards to society in their treatment of gays and lesbians.

This resonates with me, since it mirrors my own upbringing and the attitudes instilled in me by my parents.

I find it appalling that the extreme right, which is diametrically opposed to everything that Dr. King stood for and fought for, has tried to appropriate his name and legacy.

Think about this the next time you hear a Republican talking about -- well, anything.

And, of course, read the whole thing -- both of them.

A Note on Reviews

Links are being updated every Sunday, as reviews are (re)published at The Green Man Review.

Of course, you could always visit there to see if your favorites have reappeared.

Today's Must Read

This post, from Mahablog. I think it hits the essential differences between the contemporary left and right:

Go back to the first sentence in the SOTU quote above – The future we want – opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids – all that is within our reach. This is the liberal/progressive vision in a nutshell. . . .

I don’t think the Right wants that stuff. They may say they do, but their votes say otherwise. All they seem to want is wealth and power for themselves, and if that’s at the expense of others (including fellow Americans), so be it. And because they don’t understand what we lefties hope to achieve, nothing we do or say makes sense to them. All they understand is power and privilege.

Just think about what we're hearing from the candidates of both parties: the Democrats are talking policy aimed at the most benefit for all of us, the Republicans are peddling division.

I'm old enough to remember a time when both parties subscribed to a vision of the greatest good for the greatest number. They differed on how to get there, but the goals were essentially the same. Not any more.

Read the whole thing.

Today In Disgusting People

On Fox News, of course. The Fox "experts'" reaction to Iran freeing 10 American sailors within 24 hours:

O’Reilly did, however, make the case for the negotiated release. He pointed out that Iran is already holding other Americans in prison. “If you demand and insult, maybe they hold the 10 sailors. So the Obama administration’s going to say, ‘Look, we got them out of there in 24 hours. …If we had insulted the mullahs, maybe we wouldn’t have.’ “

But Harmer would rather sacrifice American lives. “It’s better that they remain in prison forever as hostages than the United States apologize to Iran,” he told O’Reilly.

(Emphasis in original.)

You know, it's been a basic tenet of international relations pretty much forever that war is the last resort when diplomacy fails. What we have on the right is the idea that war is the first step, and diplomacy happens after you've won and can dictate terms. I guess the right never figured out Vietnam.

And there's something very, very wrong about anyone who would rather that Americans were held by a not-friendly regime in what we can confidently assume are horrible conditions rather than give any credit to the president and secretary of state for doing it right.

And we have a tie for first runner up today:

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Saturday morning he was not aware of the specifics of the release of four Americans held prisoner in Iran, but said it would be wrong to for their release to have come as part of a prisoner exchange, saying it creates an incentive for enemies of the United States to take U.S. nationals hostage.

How long have nations been making prisoner exchanges? A couple thousand years? And Marco Rubio thinks it's wrong. Okay.

Here's Ted Cruz trying to be positive on Twitter:

@tedcruz

Praise God! Surely bad parts of Obama's latest deal, but prayers of thanksgiving that Pastor Saeed is coming home. https://twitter.com/jaysekulow/status/688372688809766912 …
8:59 AM - 16 Jan 2016

The twitterverse isn't real happy with him, mostly because of the dig at the Iran nuke deal.

Donald Trump:

Now I have to see what the deal is for the four people, because someone said they were getting seven back. So essentially, they get 150 billion plus seven, and we get four. Doesn't sound too good. Doesn't sound too good," he said. "I am happy they are coming back, but it is a disgrace they have been there this long, a total disgrace.

The "150 billion" is Iran's money.

Jeb!"

I would say ... if you do not release them, that there's going to be military action, that that's an act of provocation, an act of war. What I would do in January is recognize that Iran is not an ally. That's how the Obama administration views this," Bush said.

And now you know why his candidacy is dead in the water.

What really strikes me about these presidential hopefuls is that we've somehow managed to get very small people thinking that they're leaders. They're not -- they're just vote whores, and they're not even very good at that.

I've Been Meaning to Post

I really have. I thought maybe it was time for another "Today in Disgusting People" post, but there have been so many that I just couldn't narrow it down.

Oh well.

Soon.

Culture Break: 6 Pack Band: Hum Hain Happy

India's first transgender pop group. See here for more information:

(Yes, I have a weakness for Bollywood musicals.)

Culture Break: Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Finale

I'm not sure what I think about this, except to note that it's not your standard Swan Lake.

If you're interested in more, here are links to the full ballet, Part I and Part II.

The Great Oregon Wildlife Refuge Standoff

I'm sure you're as heartily sick of the Bundy clan's latest adventure in armed insurrection as I am. The only redeeming feature is that it's kicked Donald Trump off the headlines for a couple of days.

Reading through some of the coverage, it occurs to me that the right wing is, quite correctly, seeing this little episode as toxic: these guys look like the fools they are, at least to a national audience, and the powers that be in the Republican party are very well aware of the optics.

Just one indicator: Megyn Kelly interviewed Ammon Bundy and wasn't really giving him a pass:

After Bundy defended his decision to lead a small militia to take over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, Kelly challenged him.

"You know the argument on the other side, which is, these ranchers — whom you support but are not directly involved — had their day in court. And they were found guilty, and it went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied their appeal. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work in our country when it comes to the rule of law?" she asked.

"Yeah, well let me ask you — and I’m sure you know the answer, but who was the plaintiff?" Bundy asked in response.

After a pause, Kelly told Bundy to "keep going."

And when Bundy asked the same question again, Kelly took another brief pause.

"I’m waiting for you to make your point. Generally I don’t answer the questions on my show; I ask them," she said.

This is Fox News, where the likes of Tony Perkins regularly get tongue baths from the likes of Megyn Kelly. (And you're probably protesting that Perkins is a different order than the Bundys. Well, yes: the Bundys are honest.)

Even more revealing is this:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Monday called for armed protesters who occupied a federal building in Oregon to "stand down peaceably."

"Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds," Cruz told reporters in Iowa. "But we don't have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence against others. So it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation."

And from Marco Rubio:

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio also addressed the issue Monday, telling an Iowa radio station "you cannot be lawless."

Rubio said during an interview with KBUR that he agrees "that there is too much federal control over land especially out in the western part of the United States."

"We should fix it, but no one should be doing it in a way that's outside the law," he added.

These were people who were falling all over themselves to support Kim Davis, another right-wing law breaker.

And from the moderate wing:

John Weaver, a senior aide for GOP candidate John Kasich, said in a tweet: "I know a good federal compound for Bundy and his gang: a U.S. penitentiary."

So far, I haven't seen a reaction from the Donald.

Small indicators, but they're there.

Oh, By the Way

I was so out of it over the weekend from this damned cold (yes, came down with a cold on Christmas Day that moved right down into my lungs) that I barely noticed New Year's Eve.

And yes, that is Chicago. Pretty impressive, huh?

Today in "More Guns!"

Words fail me:

An Oklahoma man who who shot a 14-year-old boy in the back while he was playing “ding-dong ditch” on New Year’s Eve has not been arrested for the shooting, reports NewsOne 6.

According to police, Cole Peyton said he and two friends were ringing doorbells and running away well after after midnight on New Year’s Eve. After ringing the bell at one house, one homeowner stepped out of his door and shot the teen once in the back and again in the arm as the honor student told his friends to run.

I was about to suggest that there should be some sort of psychological screening for potential gun purchasers, if only to establish that they display a certain degree of maturity and solid judgment, and then I remembered: this happened in Oklahoma.