Monday Reads: If They Could Turn Back Time
Posted: August 26, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Bobby Jindal, Colin Powell, global warming, Running out of Time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Space-time Continuum, Turning Back Time, Voting Rights Act of 1965, wormholes 20 Comments
Good Morning!
Well, another Monday is here. It’s my turn once again to offer up the reads for the day before starting my usual Monday “student time”. Time sure stands still when you’re trying to come to terms with challenging stuff.
There’s an interview in Saturday’s NYT with the wonderful Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I have no idea how this woman stays on at SCOTUS with all those nutty men, but she does and she says she is staying put. She doesn’t think its her time to retire.
In wide-ranging remarks in her chambers on Friday that touched on affirmative action, abortion and same-sex marriage, Justice Ginsburg said she had made a mistake in joining a 2009 opinion that laid the groundwork for the court’s decision in June effectively striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The recent decision, she said, was “stunning in terms of activism.”
Unless they have a book to sell, Supreme Court justices rarely give interviews. Justice Ginsburg has given several this summer, perhaps in reaction to calls from some liberals that she step down in time for President Obama to name her successor.
On Friday, she said repeatedly that the identity of the president who would appoint her replacement did not figure in her retirement planning.
“There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president,” she said.
Were Mr. Obama to name Justice Ginsburg’s successor, it would presumably be a one-for-one liberal swap that would not alter the court’s ideological balance. But if a Republican president is elected in 2016 and gets to name her successor, the court would be fundamentally reshaped.
Here’s some research on wormholes that is very weird and intriguing. It is all about spacetime.
Wormholes! I feel like we haven’t talked about them since the ’90s. Basically, wormholes are theoretical objects that connect two different points in space. They’re allowed as possible solutions to Einstein’s equations for general relativity—indeed, Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen first discovered wormholes, which is why they’re also called Einstein-Rosen bridges. Unfortunately, wormholes aren’t perfect—Einstein’s equations also imply that nothing with nonnegative energy (that is to say: nothing that we know of) can traverse a wormhole, so they’re not going to make for useful intergalactic portals anytime soon.
Maldacena and Susskind, following Van Raamsdonk, posit that any time two quantum particles are entangled, they’re connected by a wormhole. They then go on to say that the wormhole connection between particles inside a black hole (the infalling virtual particles) and the particles outside of a black hole (the Hawking radiation) soothes out the entanglement problems enough so that we can avoid the firewall at the event horizon.
Note that this requires a profound rethinking of the fundamental stuff of the universe. Entanglement, a deeply quantum phenomenon, is fundamentally wound into to the geometry of the universe. Or, to flip it around, quantum weirdness may be stuff that creates the substrate of spacetime.
The Sunday news programs continue to have discussions on what will happen to voting rights now that the Supreme Court decision has muddied the waters. Cokie Roberts calls the changes “downright evil”. Can the Republicans turn back the clock on Civil Rights?
In a roundtable discussion on ‘This Week’, ABC News’ Cokie Roberts reflected on the progress in our country 50 years after the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech.
“Growing up in the Deep South in the era of Jim Crow, the difference is dramatic… It’s a great testament to the fact that when you do something like pass a voting rights bill. That makes a difference.”
Still, Robert’s expressed concern over recent legislation on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In June the Supreme Court invalidated key parts of this law, which spurred contentious debates on race and equal opportunity. Critics of the ruling call it a regression. Proponents argue that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is outdated.
Robert’s said, “What’s going on about voting rights is downright evil because it is something that really needs to keep going forward not backward.”
Former SOS Colin Powell was also on air Sunday. He continues to be one of the few reasonable Republicans left that finds his way to the airwaves even though his status has been greatly diminished by claims of WMDS in Iraq. Bet he wishes he coul go back in time and change that!! Where’s the spacetime continuum when a General needs one?
“These kinds of procedures that are being put in place to slow the process down and make it likely that fewer Hispanics and African Americans might vote I think are going to backfire, because these people are going to come out and do what they have to to vote, and I encourage that,” Powell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Following the Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in states like Texas and North Carolina are advancing legislation that would require voters to show photo ID at the polls.
“They claim that there’s widespread abuse and voter fraud, but nothing substantiates that,” Powell said. “There isn’t widespread abuse.”
A Republican who has been increasingly critical of his party in recent years, Powell endorsed President Obama in both 2008 and 2012.
He said the GOP’s moves on voting access would in particular damage the party’s effort to appeal to the growing minority populations it will need to win national elections in the future. “This is not the way to do it,” Powell said.
He said he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act.
“I would have preferred that they did not reach such a conclusion, but they did, and I can see why they reached such a conclusion,” Powell said.
Meanwhile, Bobby JIndal continues to write some of the weirdest, disjointed op-eds around. This one is ironic given the current challenge to his prized Louisiana School voucher program that appears to be enabling re-segregation of schools. Remember, this is an op ed on racism as you read this weird, theocratic screed. He seems to yearn for a more simpler time. Simple, say, as his mind.
When I look at America, I see a country that increasingly has lost its way in terms of morality. As a Christian, as I look at American culture over the past half century, I don’t like a lot of what I see. Divorce is through the roof, pornography is everywhere, sexual predators are on the loose and on the Internet, our abortion rate is higher than almost every First World country, vulgarity and profanity are mainstream and commonplace. In general, our culture has become coarser, and I regret that.
Which reminds me, Jindal thinks all this fuss about the Keystone Pipeline is “alarmist” and “anti-scientific”. Here’s a local op-ed that gives him the what-for.
It is time to stop being mad at Gov. Bobby Jindal. He’s just too funny.
He was out of state again last week, but we are long past feeling neglected while he pursues his White House dream. He can forget that for sure; a politician is heading for the exit when his most earnest speeches are greeted with laughter.
If Jindal did not bring the house down when he denounced Democrats as “extremist and unscientific,” it can only have been because he was far from home and his audience was unaware of his own efforts to spread ignorance and superstition. When his remarks were reported in this country, we were in stitches.
Jindal was in Canada, promising to “fight like heck” for the Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry oil all the way to Texas if President Barack Obama, who has been considering it for five years, gives his approval. This was not exactly Daniel in the lions’ den; Jindal was speaking at the Oilmen’s Business Forum Luncheon in Alberta.
If the oilmen had reason to welcome Jindal’s views on the pipeline, however, it is a safe bet that they have been exposed to enough geology to conclude the earth has been around for quite a long time. They wouldn’t have much use for Louisiana high school graduates who had been told tales of Adam and Eve in science class.
Sitting there while Jindal claimed to be on the side of science in the pipeline row, the oilmen would have been incredulous if you told them he promoted new-earth indoctrination. Why, they would have said, next you’ll be telling us he believes in demonic possession. Well …
Jindal has also termed global warming “conjecture” and “alarmism,” a comforting view that is much less common among scientists.
Jindal’s speech was otherwise the same, hackneyed fare; the “blind” ideologues of the “radical left” are blocking the pipeline because they want energy to “remain expensive.” They want the government to “tell Americans to live in smaller houses, drive smaller cars, set their thermostats higher in the summer and lower in the winter.” They want “negative growth,” while Republicans stand for prosperity and jobs..
This simple dichotomy leaves only one question answered. Why would anyone, anywhere, ever vote Democrat?
The analysis, in truth, is so shabby that Jindal is clearly not cut out for the intellectual rigor required of, say, a scientist. Jindal’s blithe assumption that the pipeline would reduce energy prices in America is highly debatable, while he is flat wrong to deny that companies plan to re-export pipeline oil for a quick profit.
Really, nothing is safe from Republicans these days. Hide your wives and daughters! HIde your groceries too!
Which 14 cities are running out of time due to Global Warming? The number one endangered city is Miami, Florida. Boston is number 3. You don’t get to New Orleans until number 7. Read on.
There is really no way around it: Thanks to climate change, sea levels are rising. A huge question on the minds of many is, what does this mean for America? Will sea walls and city planning protect major metropolises, or are we bound to lose some national gems? Unfortunately, the latter is a significant possibility. Read on for 14 U.S. cities that could be devastated over the next century due to rising tides.
So, what’s on your reading and blogging list this morning? Because, now it’s your time.
Caturday: Same Love
Posted: August 24, 2013 Filed under: just because | Tags: feminism 37 Comments
Happy Caturday, newsjunkies!
I see “Batman” is still trending on my social media feeds for the second day in a row. Gahhhh. Please alert me when the next super-shero blockbuster is due out, thanks.
Honestly, I’ve been super busy this week and really out of the loop news-wise, and even just feminist junkie wise this week, so y’all please chime in, in the comments, with whatever you’ve got on your blogging list this weekend. All I know is I still believe in equal rights for every last person on this earth! And, I really love this graphic from “Have a Gay Day” on fb.
Speaking of human rights for ALL–I’ll start with a super depressing story on one of the most marginalized and forgotten populations I can think of, then build my way up to some more inspiring stories.
So here it is, read it and, literally, weep… First Nations Women Are Being Sold into the Sex Trade On Ships Along Lake Superior:
Native women, children, and unfortunately even babies are being trafficked in the sex trade on freighters crossing the Canadian and U.S. border on Lake Superior between Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Duluth Minnesota.
Next month, Christine Stark—a student with the University of Minnesota, Duluth, who is completing her Master’s degree in social work—will complete an examination of the sex trade in Minnesota, in which she compiles anecdotal, first hand accounts of Aboriginal women, particularly from northern reservations, being trafficked across state, provincial, and international lines to be forced into servitude in the sex industry on both sides of the border.
Stark’s paper stems from a report she co-wrote, published by the Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Centre in Duluth in 2011, entitled, “The Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota.” Through the process of researching and penning this report, Stark kept hearing stories of trafficking in the harbours and on the freighters of Duluth and Thunder Bay. The numerous stories and the gradual realization that this was an issue decades, perhaps centuries, in the making, compelled Stark to delve further into what exactly is taking place.
She decided to conduct an exploratory study, “simply because we have these stories circulating and we wanted to gather information and begin to understand what has happened and what currently is happening around the trafficking of Native American and First Nations women on the ships” said Stark, in an interview with CBC Radio’s Superior Morning. “Hearing from so many Native women over generations talking about the ‘boat whores,’ prostitution on the ships or the ‘parties on the ships,’ this is something that… was really entrenched in the Native community and we wanted to collect more specific information about it.”
Through her independent research and work with the Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Centre, Stark interviewed hundreds of Native women who have been through the trauma of the Lake Superior sex trade. The stories she’s compiled are evidence of an underground industry that’s thriving on the suffering of First Nations women, which is seemingly going unchecked and underreported.
I don’t even have the energy this afternoon to rant. I’m glad Stark is researching this story. This is just so sad.
And, appalling, racist, misogynist, capitalist/classist, the whole she-bang of despicableness that is patriarchy:
In an article written for the Duluth Star Tribune, Stark describes one disturbing anecdote of an Anishinaabe woman who had just left a shelter after being beaten by her pimp—who was a wealthy, white family man. He paid her bills, rent, and the essentials for her children, but on weekends, “brought up other white men from the Cities for prostitution with Native women…he had her role play the racist ‘Indian maiden’ and ‘European colonizer’ myth with him during sex.”
Another important snippet:
I spoke with Kazia Pickard, the Director of Policy and Research with the Ontario Native Women’s Association based in Thunder Bay. Their organization has also been researching this issue. Kazia told me over email: “People assume that trafficking always takes place across international borders, however, the vast majority of people who are trafficked in Canada are indigenous women and girls from inside Canada and sometimes, as we’re now starting to understand, across the US border.”
In an earlier interview with the CBC, she also alluded to the possibility that there was trafficking taking place across borders in Southern Ontario as well. She made it clear to me that the image most people imagine when they think about “human trafficking” often isn’t accurate: “The majority of women who are trafficked in Canada are indigenous women and girls. So it’s not that you have people being trafficked across international borders in shipping containers or something like that.”
This is all too reminiscent of what I call the “stranger danger from within”… the manipulators and abusers with which women and children share a community, as opposed to the creepy guy no one ever knew:
In most cases it’s a lot more subtle. “Women may say they [have been pulled into it by] a boyfriend, there have been some reports of family members recruiting women into the sex trade… so it doesn’t appear in this sensationalized way that we may [think it is].”
All that said, there are nearly 600 aboriginal women who are currently missing or believed to have been murdered in Canada, a number the RCMP—who have are being accused of human rights abuses against aboriginal women on a monthly basis—have publicly questioned.
Well, now that I’ve sufficiently depressed you, how about a pick-me up? H/t to Joyce Arnold on this one–it’s a Bert and Ernie montage to Macklemore’s “Same Love”… Enjoy! … :
Here’s another one for smiles, just because:
Okay keep those warm and fuzzies somewhere nearby in your spiritual reserves, because this next one is depressing again…a not-so great development on a not-good story we’ve been following here at Sky Dancing…
Fukushima Nuclear Plant Facing New Disaster:
Storage tank leak sparks fears more could follow suit
Tokyo Electric Power Company workers have detected high levels of radiation in a ditch that flows into the ocean from a leaking tank at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.Japan’s nuclear watchdog said Thursday the leak could be the beginning of a new disaster – a series of leaks of contaminated water from hundreds of steel tanks holdng massive amounts of radioactive water coming from three melted reactors, as well as underground water running into reactor and turbine basements.
A new disaster? Uh, have we even resolved any of the previous disasters?!
This just sounds horrible, and I don’t want to be alarmist…I defer to experts on this stuff in our Sky Dancing community who can make better sense of all this of course, but WTF?!! Is this like a domino effect of Fukushimas? :
Tokyo Electric Power Co. says about 300,000 litres of contaminated water leaked from one of the tanks, possibly through a seam. The leak is the fifth, and worst, since last year involving tanks of the same design at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, raising concerns that contaminated water could begin leaking from storage tanks one after another.
“That’s what we fear the most. We must remain alert. We should assume that what has happened once could happen again, and prepare for more,” Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka told a news conference. “We are in a situation where there is no time to waste.” The watchdog also proposed at a weekly meeting Wednesday to raise the rating of the seriousness of the leak to level three, a “serious incident,” from level one, “an anomaly,” on an International Nuclear and Radiological event scale from zero to seven.
The watchdog urged TEPCO to step up monitoring for leaks and take precautionary measures.
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath waiting for TEPCO to do that. /sigh
I think I could use some more feminist lolcat, how about you? I really love this one:
And, as the trend of this post has been established, yes, I’ve got another sad one for you… via SocialistWorker, Struggling for their lives:
Orlando Sepúlveda reports from Chicago on a struggle led by immigrants whose loved ones are being denied a place on transplant lists at local hospitals.
Some of the hunger strikers at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Catholic Church (Orlando Sepúlveda | SW)
IMMIGRANT RIGHTS activists in Chicago held a memorial march, followed by a daylong occupation outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital following the death of Sarai Rodriguez, a 25-year-old undocumented woman who was in critical need of a liver transplant, but had been denied by the hospital last March, according to her mother, because she was uninsured and couldn’t afford the procedure.
Once again, I’m so exhausted by this. We can and must do better. This is an inhumane system. Human beings are not illegal. Insurance is not healthcare. And, healthcare is not a privilege–it is a right.
Here’s something cool to end with on Howard Zinn’s birthday:
“I feel very lucky to have been Howard Zinn‘s student. He was a very creative, magical teacher. He taught us how to think for ourselves, to analyze, to question what we read, and speak truth to power. He was just engaging in every way. . . .I don’t think I would have survived at Spelman in the late ’50s without Howie. But he was extraordinary. He didn’t just teach; he lived what he taught.” — Marian Wright Edelman
Continue reading this and other stories collected by the Zinn Education Project from former students in honor of Zinn’s birthday today and in honor of the impact of powerful teachers every day. Please read and share: http://bit.ly/1bQtaGI
Well, that’s what caught my eye this afternoon, Sky Dancers. Please share what’s caught yours and have a great Caturday!
Open Thread: Voices Against Violence
Posted: August 23, 2013 Filed under: Gun Control 11 Comments
Tony Bennett Raises His Voice Against Gun Violence
Greetings SkyDancers. Like many of us over the past week or so, I’ve been kind of glum. I think more so than anything, my gloom has its roots in the senseless number of gun deaths occurring on a daily basis in America. A few have been shared here this week. These are a fraction of all the senseless deaths that occurred, some tragically due to negligence. My own position on gun control is total repeal of the 2nd Amendment. A rational examination of the 2nd Amendment from an historical/rhetorical perspective unequivocally insists individual gun ownership is not a natural right enshrined in the Constitution. I’ll refrain from lengthy argumentation at this time, but merely disclose my stance. Even if one takes an originalist interpretation from the opposite perspective, another primary consideration is the responsiveness of our primary governing document. I would submit the Constitution was created with the intent to conform to the generation it serves, and should be altered to meet the needs of that generation. I don’t think the Constitution meets our 21st Century needs, and the 2nd Amendment reflects one of those areas in need of modification. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the Constitutional creators believed individual gun ownership was a natural right. What matters is whether we, in the 21st century, find individual gun ownership a reasonable proposition. Obviously, my position is no. In my view, We the People needn’t sacrifice one more life to gun violence. We the People need not succumb to belligerent falsehood disguising itself as natural right.
The Brady Campaign launched a new initiative this week with the intent to empower Americans to speak out against the unconscionable level of gun violence in this country. It’s called Voices Against Violence, and it introduces an innovative new protest tool: the first voice petition. The VAV mission resonated with me:
We are the Voices Against Violence
We are the voice of the people, and we will no longer be silent as gun violence devastates our communities.
We know that an overwhelming majority of Americans support common sense gun laws that save lives. We know that millions share our dream for a safer nation. And we know that by acting responsibly – and by working together for a common purpose – we can make America the safer nation we all want.
Now is the time to raise our voices against gun violence and urge Congress to take action.
Every day we wait, another 90 Americans die from a bullet. We’ve had too many moments of silence. It’s time to make some noise.
Join the millions who want to end gun violence with the world’s first petition you sign with your voice.
Enough is Enough!
Singer Tony Bennett, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma in 1965, will perform at the “Realize the Dream” rally as part of the Voices Against Violence (VAV) campaign on Saturday, August 24th at the Lincoln Memorial. The rally is a part of the “National Action to Realize the Dream” march planned to continue the efforts begun 50 years ago when Dr. King gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
I applaud Tony Bennett. Here he is voicing “If I Ruled the World.” I thought it fitting:
Until the 2nd Amendment is repealed, I’m all for much tighter gun control measures, including a national gun registry. I also support systematic firearms confiscation in certain cases – when an owner loses the right or is the subject of a restraining order. The NRA and its allies screech and howl about the dangers of a gun registry, but from a law enforcement perspective, I consider it essential, if only for law enforcement to be adequately prepared prior to responding to domestic violence situations, for instance.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA hypocrite
Radicalized gun advocates like the NRA oppose the very idea of a gun registry as tyrannical, an abomination, yada yada yada. Ironically however, Buzz Feed recently revealed that a massive national gun registry has already been compiled without the consent of any on the “list.” It was compiled and is in active use by none other than the NRA:
The National Rifle Association has rallied gun owners — and raised tens of millions of dollars — campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.
But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.
As much as I’ve read about the NRA’s undue influence on public policy, I’ve never encountered an explanation that adequately explains their continued success. But this database is that missing piece. And it’s a frightening piece. Apparently, the efficacy of the NRA’s political machine is attributable to tactics similar to the success of Obama’s innovative presidential campaigns; tactics, incidentally, that I’ve admired. Unfortunately, that which can be applied for good can also be utilized for ill. It would seem the NRA excels in micro-targeting, the element that proved so successful for the Obama campaign:
…the NRA is using tools similar to those employed by the campaigns of its nemesis, President Barack Obama.
“There are certainly some parallels,” said Laura Quinn, CEO of Catalist, a data analysis firm used by Obama for America. “The NRA is not only able to understand people who their members are but also people who are not their members. The more data they have, the more it allows them to test different strategies and different messages on different people.”
“Part of the way they have gotten to a place where they are able to do what they do is through data,” Quinn said. “There is some irony.”
The vast size of the NRA’s database and its sophisticated methods of analyzing the public mood go a long way in explaining the organization’s enduring influence. Even in an age when opinion polls show gun control measures gaining in general popularity and when wealthy benefactors like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are spending millions to counter the NRA’s lobbying and advertising budgets, the NRA has built-in advantages.
It would seem that the NRA’s violence-favoring-voice has many more octaves than I had ever imagined, though I should have guessed that it could target its pitch so precisely. The profit margins of the weapons manufacturing industry rely heavily upon the NRA’s vocality. Unfortunately, there is one voice against violence that will not be widely heard, in perhaps one of the perplexing ironies I’ve encountered in quite some time. I don’t have a reaction to it yet. I’m still processing:
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Heading into the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Mother Jones reports the speech is effectively silenced by copyright and inaccessible in the public domain. Lauren Williams writes:
I have a dream that on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls as they watch the footage on TV of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous words. I have a dream that on the red hills of Georgia, the great-grandsons of former slaves and the great-grandsons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood this week, open their MacBooks and pull up the seminal speech on the internet.
But that speech is not free, alas.
It will not be in the public domain until 2038, 70 years after King’s death. Until then, any commercial enterprises wishing to legally broadcast King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered August 28, 1963, on the National Mall, or reprint its words must pay a hefty fee. CBS and USA Today learned this the hard way in the 1990s, when both reached undisclosed settlements with King’s estate after using the speech without permission. Intellectual Properties Management, the King family business that works in conjunction with music company EMI Publishing to license King’s copyrighted image and works, did not respond to an inquiry from Mother Jones about the cost of hosting a video of the speech on our site.
Again, I’m not sure what to think of the King copyright situation. It doesn’t sit well with me. I’m conflicted. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, SkyDancers.
Dying Camellia – Herald of Corrosive Decay
Some pretty disturbing, but unsurprising news coming from Fitzwalkerstan. Religious radicals are attempting to amend the Wisconsin State Constitution. Mind you, I’m not at all opposed to amending the state constitution. As a matter of fact, I think it deserves the same level of overhaul due the U.S. Constitution. But rather than a progressive enhancement of founding ideals, Right Wing Extremists are attempting to solidify a regressive religionist state. A few implications of the amendment:
- It could be invoked to give parents and guardians permission to rely on “faith” and “prayer” rather than carry out their duty to seek medical care for gravely ill children.
- It would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control, or allow religious employers to pay women less.
- It could allow state employees to refuse to marry couples if such a marriage would conflict with their religion — if the couple is inter-racial, for example.
- Theoretically, this bill could even allow priests to refuse to report child rape without penalty.
- It could allow children to opt out of bona fide schoolwork that conflicts with their religion (e.g., no more evolution!).
One would think this amendment might ruffle some feathers, instigate some bristling, or at the very least raise some eyebrows. From what I can glean, it has yet to receive much attention. My guess, and this is only a guess, is that Wisconsin is deeply divided at the moment. The most devastating divide isn’t between Left and Right. The Left appears to be consumed with consuming each other in true cannibalistic Tea Party fashion rather attending to the right wing political juggernaut which beards down upon them. “Divide and Conquer” has successfully divided and is effectively conquering Wisconsin.
While in all likelihood this amendment won’t get much traction immediately, I suspect it will slowly gain the kind of well-funded propagandist support that has dissolved Wisconsin’s Progressive legacy in nearly every other sphere of governance.
To conclude on a more positive note: Van Gogh magnified like a gazillion times. Very enjoyable.
And the very weird. From Open Culture: Technology transforms Van Gogh’s self-portrait into photograph.
What’s on your minds, this evening?
Church at sur-oise, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890
Friday Reads: Life’s a Beach
Posted: August 23, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: conversion therapy, Fukishima, LGBT, Maureen Dowd, Obama's college plan 39 Comments
Good Morning!
It’s Friday and some how everything old is new again
Republicans continue to search for a president as impeachable as Nixon. I wrote about this last night, but wtf don’t they get about high crimes and misdemeanors? It seems to be another Clintonian search for votes during an election that’s not about the President.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said Wednesday that President Barack Obama was getting “getting perilously close” to the constitutional standard for impeachment. Coburn was speaking at the Muskogee Civic Center in Oklahoma.
“What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called impeachment,” Coburn said, responding to a question about holding President Obama accountable. “That’s not something you take lightly, and you have to use a historical precedent of what that means. I think there’s some intended violation of the law in this administration, but I also think there’s a ton of incompetence, of people who are making decisions.”
“Even if there is incompetence, the IRS forces me to abide by the law,” a constituent responded to Coburn.
“No, I agree,” Coburn said. “My little wiggle out of that when I get that written to me is I believe that needs to be evaluated and determined, but thank goodness it doesn’t have to happen in the Senate until they’ve brought charges in the House. Those are serious things, but we’re in a serious time. I don’t have the legal background to know if that rises to high crimes and misdemeanor, but I think they’re getting perilously close.”
Coburn then mentioned a story of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees telling him that officials at Homeland Security said to “ignore all the background” and just “approve people.”
“I’m documenting all this stuff as it goes along, but I don’t know where that level is,” Coburn added.
“Barack Obama is personal friend of mine. He became my friend in the Senate but that does not mean I agree in any way with what he’s doing or how he’s doing it. And I quite frankly think he’s in a difficult position he’s put himself in, and if it continues, I think we’re going to have another constitutional crisis in our country in terms of the presidency,” Coburn concluded.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Here’s the President’s plan to make college more affordable. Will it work and who will vote for it?
By the 2015 school year, Obama said, his administration will begin evaluating colleges on measures such as the average tuition they charge, the share of low-income students they enroll and their effectiveness in ensuring students graduate without too much debt.
The president also will seek congressional approval — which could prove difficult — to steer more federal student aid toward colleges that score highly in the ratings. A student in financial need at such schools might qualify for a larger Pell grant or a better interest rate on a federal loan.
The result, officials hope, will be relief for families from college bills that are in many cases three times as high as they were 30 years ago even after adjusting for inflation. Average tuition and fees topped $8,600 last year at public four-year colleges and $29,000 at private and nonprofit schools. The total annual bill, counting room and board, exceeds $50,000 at many elite schools.
“Higher education should not be a luxury. It is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford,” Obama told students packed into a basketball arena at the University at Buffalo.
Obama’s plan relies in part on his executive power to collect, manage and publish data. But it is likely to draw significant criticism from colleges intent on protecting their market share, and a divided Congress will present an immediate obstacle to elements of the plan that require legislation.
Obama said that in a global, knowledge-based economy, a quality college education is more important than ever. He pitched the ratings system as a consumer guide for prospective students and parents, evaluating which schools offer “the bigger bang for the buck.” His idea is that accountability will yield affordability.
“Colleges that keep their tuition down and are providing high-quality education are the ones that are going to see their taxpayer money going up,” Obama said.
New York Times star columnist Maureen Dowd just isn’t one to let the facts get in the way of a good story—or an accurate quote for that matter. Her most recent misdeed, for which she has apologized (most likely in the face of tape recorded evidence against her) is misquoting Progressive Mayoral Candidate Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray. A little background: de Blasio, the only candidate in the race who is talking about inequality (more severe in New York than just about anywhere else in the country) has lately overtaken longtime frontrunner Christine Quinn in the polls. (Anthony Weiner briefly led before self-imploding.) Quinn is an out lesbian, married to her partner, but that might be it in terms of her progressive credentials. She is seen as too cozy with big business and real estate.
But back to Dowd, who, it seems decided to stir up a little trouble. She quoted McCray, de Blasio’s wife, saying that she thinks Quinn is “not accessible … She’s not the kind of person I feel I can go up to and talk to about issues like taking care of children at a young age and paid sick leave.” Understandably, took this as implying that she, a childless lesbian doesn’t understand issues “like taking care of children,” in other words a swipe at her sexual orientation.
But McCray did not say that. Dowd compressed what she said to such an extent that it really altered the meaning. What McCray did say, responding to a question of why women may not supporting Quinn in droves is:
“Well, I am a woman, and she is not speaking to the issues I care about, and I think a lot of women feel the same way. I don’t see her speaking to the concerns of women who have to take care of children at a young age or send them to school and after school, paid sick days, workplace; she is not speaking to any of those issues. What can I say? And she’s not accessible, she’s not the kind of person that, I feel, that you can go up and talk to and have a conversation with about those things. And I suspect that other women feel the same thing I’m feeling.”
Pretty different. Although it should be said, Quinn was still mad.
Dowd’s accuracy has been shaky, and she can be pretty offensive,
WTF is it with Dowd? Does she have to be the only woman in the room?
This is another story that I can hardly believe in this day of science and fact. But, it seems that about 30% of the population believe that Gay people can change their sexual orientation. Some one should ask them if they could change theirs!!!
In the wake of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s announcement that he will sign a bill banning so-called “conversion therapy” for gay teens, the Pew Research Center pointed to recent research that more than one in three Americans believe sexual orientation can be changed.
On Tuesday Pew republished the data — gathered in 2012 — in a sobering reminder of just how far this country has to go in terms of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender acceptance. The survey concluded that slightly more than half of all Americans believe an LGBT individual cannot change sexual orientation — while 36 percent believe it’s possible.
These numbers reflect a small shift toward increased tolerance from a decade ago, according to Pew, which in 2003 found that 42 percent of Americans felt being gay was changeable, while 42 percent believed it was not.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, LGBT advocacy group GLAAD’s Director of Religion, Faith & Values Ross Murray explained that New Jersey’s gay conversion ban “focuses on the harm that comes from trying to force someone’s sexual orientation.”
The widely disputed idea that sexual orientation is “curable” or changeable is bad enough, but even worse is that many people who end up in gay conversion therapies are minors, Murray told HuffPost. “[They] did not choose the program for themselves,” he said, “and may have been forced into it by a parent who was influenced by religious leaders.”
It makes me think that the Spanish Inquisition is still not that far away!
I was rather shocked to find out that fishing off of Fukishima has just been suspended!
A fisheries co-op in Soma Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, said Thursday it will end its trial catch at the end of this month, signaling an indefinite halt to all local fishing operations off the prefecture because of the constant flow of highly radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant into the Pacific.
The move by the co-op in Soma Futaba, in the northern part of the prefecture, follows a decision by a co-op in Iwaki, in the southern part, to drop plans to resume operations on a trial basis from Sept. 5.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday it noticed puddles with high radiation levels near an area where a number of radioactive water storage tanks stand at the Fukushima plant. At least one of the tanks has been leaking, and it is believed the water it contained seeped down and merged with tainted groundwater that is flowing to the sea, and ran to the Pacific in drainage channels.
Tepco later admitted that 300 tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from the tank, which should have been holding about 1,000 tons. It said Wednesday that water from the tank probably flowed to the ocean through drainage channels.
Hiroyuki Sato, head of the Soma Futaba cooperative, said, “We want the central government to take steps to pull us out of this trouble as quickly as possible.”
JJ has written about this but it is really truly shocking!! What is going on with Fukishima and why aren’t more countries involved?
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka attends a news conference in Tokyo. Following the discovery that highly contaminated water is leaking from one of the hastily built storage tanks at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan’s nuclear watchdog said officials are concerned that more steel storage tanks will spring leaks.
So, those are the stories that I’m following this morning. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Irrational Exuberance
Posted: August 22, 2013 Filed under: Tea Party activists | Tags: Affordable Health Care Act, Obamacare 21 CommentsSo, I am not exactly going to use the term “irrational exuberance” quite in the context that it was originally uttered by Alan Greenspan in 1996. Maybe
irrational mania or hate-driven zealotry or crazy-go-nuts gullibility are better terms. Whatever the case, the so-called “Tea Party” ginned up by the histrionics of folks like Ted Cruz , the low information and thought ability of Sarah Palin, and the whacko ideology of the neoconfederate Pauls believes that taking down “Obamacare” and our government is the be all and end all of their existence. There’s some articles today looking at their efforts. Why are they doing everything from crowing townhall meetings and running strange ads? There’s an interview there with one of the exhuberati that’s pretty damned strange.
Another objection that’s been raised is that this would only lead to a government shutdown or default, and Republicans would get blamed for that. Are you advocating that outcome?
The outcome we would like to see is that the American people don’t have to pay for Obamacare, however that comes to pass. It’s like driving from L.A. to San Francisco — there’s a million different ways to get there. We believe this approach is the last, best opportunity to prevent the American taxpayer from having to shell out the money and support Obamacare.
Think for a second. You’re a taxpayer, an ordinary American working woman. You’ve got to pay for a health-care system that Congress is exempt from. You have to participate in a health-care system that big business, political cronies, congressmen and their staffs do not have to participate in. That doesn’t sound like a democratic republic to me. That’s what’s got the grassroots upset. We are not serfs. We are citizens.
The House has had, what, 40 votes to repeal Obamacare, and what has that done? Besides given members of Congress a bloody shirt that they can wave on the stump back home and say, “I’m against Obamacare”? This effort to ensure right now that Americans don’t have to pay for Obamacare is the best way to go about it. It’s not just bloody-shirt-waving for the voters, it’s an actual, working thing.
For some reason, the right wing always seems to think they get to pick and choose what their tax dollars go for even though their representatives and our representatives do that for us as clearly outlined. They seem to think that they don’t have to pay for birth control or abortion services or whatever it is that drives them to hysteria while I have to pay for their wars, their Isreal at all costs policies, their police state, their gay conversion therapies, and their screeds and lies that basically outline state ownership of women.
The deal is that the anti-Obamacare movement will fail if it does not succeed now. Folks like Ted Cruz basically know this.
Cruz’s suggestion that conservatives can still win the defund fight is getting attention, but the really important quote here is Cruz’s concession that conservatives have not won “the argument” in a long time. Here’s why: Cruz almost certainly knows full well that this is the last chance to win the broader argument over Obamacare. Once the law’s benefits kick in, it will probably no longer be winnable.
Obamacare opponents cite polls showing Obamacare’s unpopularity to justify continued efforts to repeal and/or sabotage the law, whether through a government shutdown or through more prosaic methods. But, as even some Republicans are now acknowledging, the Republican position on health care is untenable as long as they fail to offer a meaningful alternative that would accomplish Obamacare’s core goals — expanding coverage to many millions of uninsured and protecting consumers and those with preexisting conditions from insurance industry abuse.
This is the argument conservatives are losing: As unpopular as Obamacare is, there is simply no evidence that this dissatisfaction translates into public support for repealing the law entirely and simply letting the “magic of the marketplace” ensure that everyone is covered. And a number of writers — Jonathan Bernstein, Aaron Carrol, Ezra Klein,Jonathan Cohn, and Paul Krugman — have already explained well why Republicans can’t offer an alternative to Obamacare that accomplishes what the law accomplishes, and why there’s simply no meaningful Republican alternative to embracing Obamacare’s general approach or essentially doing nothing.
For several years now, Republicans have been able to paper over this problem by making the political argument only a referendum on the lurid, nightmarish vision of Obamacare they have painted (with some success) for voters. But as even Cruz seems to recognize, the actual contours of the argument we’re having will only become clearer as Obamacare’s concrete benefits kick in — very likely rendering that argument unwinnable. That leaves Republicans in the position of hoping the law is a disaster and doing all they can to bring that about. But that posture only further underscores what makes the GOP position untenable in the first place. Cruz is absolutely right: time is running out.
Undoubtedly, the law will begin to morph into something else should the political and governance process in Washington work again. The absolute hysteria on the right caused by the law is nearly as bad as the attempts by the right to circumvent civil rights, gay rights or reproductive rights. The weird difference is this law has some component that is likely to benefit nearly every one. It isn’t aimed at relieving oppression of any one group. It’s aimed at solving a nationwide problem created by our very dysfunctional healthcare system that mostly became dysfunctional because of the system of paying for health care.
From the day the Affordable Care Act was enacted, every Republican in Congress and most Republicans in state and local governments have done everything imaginable to interfere with its implementation, and have systematically opposed the kind of legislative “fixes” that are normal for any major new law, while loudly cheering for its failure. Now we are told that executive measures to make the law work mean that it’s not the law of the land. So what exactly happened when the president signed this legislation on March 23, 2010? Does the legitimacy of a law depend on acceptance of it by its opponents? Think about the implications of that theory, and recall that not so very long ago Republicans tried to drive a president from office on grounds that his efforts to hide sexual impropriety threatened the very Rule of Law.
That last sentence deserves a second look because there are calls to impeach Obama over “ObamaCare”. This is another clear indication that the Tea Party and Republicans–n general–are rarely about the Constitution. What is their generally accepted definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors”? Even Republican congress critters don’t seem to understand our Constitution.
Kerry Bentivolio is a Republican member of The House of Representatives from the great state of Michigan. He’s also clearly deranged. Bentivolio is the latest TEApublican to throw his voice in support of impeaching President Barack Obama. Speaking at a town hall meeting in his home district, the congressman told a constituent that essentially he doesn’t like President Obama, would love to impeach him, but he just doesn’t have any of the pesky evidence you need to actually convict a sitting president on impeachment charges.
“You know, if I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream come true,” Bentivolio told the constituents. “I feel your pain, I know, I stood twelve feet away from the guy and listened to him. I couldn’t stand being there, but because he is president I have to respect the office. That’s my job, as a congressman, I respect the office.” A dream come true, congressman? There used to be a time in this country where impeachment was considered such a drastic undertaking that even a president’s political foes took no glee in doing it.
All of this just isn’t rational under any logical paradigm. So, that just brings me back to the the conclusion that this is mostly about anger, hatred, and racism at a very visceral level. This is also what probably ties what should just be a basic economic policy issue to basic civil rights issues and it’s also what makes the Tea Party a mostly white movement tinged with strong elements of neoconfederates, christofascists, and gun toting preppers. These folks seem to like their social security and medicare and scream loudly when these programs are threatened. They only seem to hate it when folks outside of their ‘own’ might get access to something that they’re convinced doesn’t benefit them even when it likely does. That’s just plain crazy talking.
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