Our fun-filled state legislatures

Sometimes a cigar is just an assault weapon.

Illinois had the tightest restrictions against carrying firearms in the country when a federal appeals court threw the law out, so their legislature was putting together a new one on Tuesday. Rep. Jim Sacia (R) was moved to speak in debate:

“Here is the problem in Illinois,” he said on the House floor. “I love you folks in Chicago. You’re the ones that have the problem, you have a runaway gun problem. Don’t blame the rest of us. This isn’t about Democrats, it’s not about Republicans. It’s because Chicago wants a warm fuzzy. ‘Let’s pass a bill that will eliminate assault rifles.’ Last year there were more people killed with hammers than with assault rifles.

“Here’s an analogy folks, I ask you to think of this. You folks in Chicago want me to get castrated because your families are having too many kids. It spells out exactly what is happening here.” (Raw Story)

Tell me Dr. Freud paid you to say that, just so he could prove his silly theory was correct.

As far as Rep. Sacia's penis (long may it wave!) is concerned, I'm pretty sure Illinois doesn't allow open carry. Put it back in your pants, Jim—oh, I'm sorry, was that your head?

We love you, Jim Sacia!

The above image represents Rep. Sacia receiving the kisses of the Humane Society, ASPCA, and Doudoubirds (who produced the picture) on March 9, 2012, after he moved to table a bill

aimed at criminalizing whistleblowers who expose animal abuse, unsafe working conditions, environmental destruction and other illegal and unethical activities on farms.

It was one of those deals where your friendly neighborhood American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) kindly writes it up for you, because of their concern for the embarrassment and humiliation an agribusinessman goes through when some busybody films him torturing animals.

What Doudoubirds and the others were too polite to note is that it was Rep. Sacia who had introduced the "ag gag" bill in the first place, on February 8, 2012. Looks like he just changed his mind all of a sudden, but he declined to explain why. Le cœur a ses raisons, etc., etc. Couldn't have had anything to do with his being up for reelection (really, he was unopposed).

On the question of the lethal blunt instruments, I think we all might want to ask ourselves how many times in the last year somebody used a hammer to kill four IHOP patrons (some members of the Nevada National Guard), 12 members of a Colorado Batman audience, six Sikh worshipers, or 26 people in a Connecticut elementary school, 20 of them first graders? See, a hammer is ideal for your intimate little date murder, for example, but it is not the weapon of choice for a templeful of Punjabis, all the males carrying daggers under their turbans, where the well-accessorized killer-about-town looks for something, shall we say, a little racier.

And remember, if you want to kill somebody with a hammer, a well-bred person uses a nail. It's neater. Jael and Sisera, Roman School, undated, from Wikigallery.

Other Unpleasantness

Charles Kesler:

Who knows what Bill would advise regarding our current contentions. He liked to surprise, whether by endorsing marijuana decriminalization or by opposing a blind man’s sailing expedition (“a profanation,” he insisted). Still, I’m pretty sure my old friend would say to depressed conservatives today something along the lines of what Barry Goldwater said to depressed right-wingers at the 1960 GOP Convention: Grow up, conservatives! Bill lived through and surmounted Goldwater’s 1964 debacle, the ensuing Great Society, Nixon’s presidency and resignation (at the time, hard to say which was more embarrassing), American retreat in the 1970s, the assassination attempt against Reagan, the various stains of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and other unpleasantness, not including, however, Barack’s Obama’s election in 2008. He was spared that indignity.

Hi racist! Let me remind you of the other unpleasantness:

Grand entrance and dances!

So first of all- yesterday was my 100th post! I had meant to do a whole special post for it, and instead I forgot and posted goat videos. Which honestly is so much better. And so incredibly me. So I'll just leave it at that!

But now it's time for another wedding post! Where we last left off, we had spent the first 45 minutes of our reception bar tending and greeting our guests. There had been a spread of appetizers (cheese/meat trays featuring Holmes County specialties- baby swiss from Guggisberg and trail bologna; as well as some other stuff that I really don't remember). But it was time to get things moving and get to dinner!

Our MC, who was the lead singer of the band, along with the DJ, asked everyone to be seated and we, along with our bridal party, lined up outside. We didn't really have a good plan for this, and I had meant for our bridal party to work their way up to the front of the room where our head table was and where most of their seats were. But whoever went out first missed the memo and ended up lining up along the back of the room. It worked out fine- there just wasn't as much space to dance our way into the reception. 

Our bridal party headed out first, to the awesome jam of "Let's Get Ready to Rumble." Figured no better way to get the party going!

Loved seeing our ribbon wands make another appearance!

We followed them up, to the musical stylings of Queen's 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love.'

Favorite part of this picture is Caroline running around in front of us.

As soon as we entered, we made our way up front to the dance floor to do our first dance. We had had a few choices for our first dance, but ultimately it came down to Sister Hazel- This Kind of Love.  We had talked about taking dance lessons, but between cost and running out of time- we just never got around to it. Meaning, we middle school swayed for the whole time- even throwing in the arm distance apart for a laugh.

This kind of love it's what I dreamed about
Yeah it fills me up
Baby it leaves no doubt
This kind of love it's why I'm standing here
It's something that we can share
I can't enough of this kind of love

I'm going to go a little out of order here, as I want the toasts to have their own post. And they came before the father/daughter and mother/son dances, so here they are. 

I danced with my dad to Somewhere Over the Rainbow- Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo`ole's version of the song (he's the big Hawaiian guy who played the ukelele). This song has always been a favorite of my dad- I even made him a whole CD with different versions of the song for Christmas a few years ago. This was another one of those moments that I thought would be super emotional, but it really wasn't. We were both just so happy and couldn't stop smiling. It didn't hurt that Caroline decided that she wanted to join in!

She danced with us like this for almost half the song. Was hilarious

Doug has a bit of a rocky family history. His mom, as I refer to her here, is actually his step mom. But she was the one who raised him and his brother for most of their lives. Plus his relationship with his biological mom isn't a close one. They decided to dance to Simple Man by Lynard Skynard. Thankfully the DJ was able to shorten it, as the full song is something like 5 minutes long- with a solid 2 minute guitar solo in there. So while Skynard is awesome, this was pretty unnecessary for their dance. 

And be a simple kind of man.
Be something you love and understand.
Be a simple kind of man.
Won't you do this for me son,
If you can?

I have to say, I was glad to have all the dances behind us. While I'll admit I love being the center of attention (seriously- my wedding day was the best!), it was still kind of awkward to have everyone watching us just sway back and forth. 

Up next: Toasts and our fantastic dinner!

My dream Obama

David Brooks writes:

The original Handsome Dan, purchased by Yale tackle Andrew Graves from a local blacksmith in 1889. From Wikipedia.

In my column last Friday, I inadvertently said that President Obama had no plan for helping Speaker Boehner control his caucus and averting the sequester other than his usual program of taxing the rich, or at least that's what I'm told I said, although it doesn't sound quite right. But apparently it actually wasn't quite right, is the thing, strange as it seems, and the White House actually does have some ideas that they have informed the Republicans about. Obama is still useless, obviously, but not in exactly the ways I described.

But since humiliation is good for the soul, I want everybody to know that I'm fully capable of acknowledging when I'm wrong, and I thought I would do that today by working it over in my mind and showing how my conclusion—that Obama is a [jump]
totally unsatisfactory president—is correct, even though I derived it from false premises. And then of course I'll append a lecture on what Obama ought to do instead. Or maybe just make do with the lecture. I mean, why does it have to be about me all the time?

First, he should not be Clinton. Clinton's policies were all very well for his time, but in the two decades since he was president [note to intern: who was president after Clinton? try to get back to me before teatime] our society has greatly changed, with massive increases in income inequality, infrastructure disrepair, and debt. Those wussy Clinton policies could party like it was 1999, because it actually was 1999, which is no longer the case.

Second, he should not be the socialist Reagan. This is the rut he has fallen into in his second term. He keeps pushing the collectivist, pro-government ideas favored by the people who voted for him, instead of the Republican ideas his supporters hate. In this way he consistently coddles his base, leaving them with the complacent belief that they're just as good as their opponents. He needs to challenge them, toughen them up, and teach them something about humility.

But my real problem with his current approach is the old stale-debate dilemma. Where we just go on having the same stupid argument we've been having since 1980. Obama promised in 2008 that he was going to come up with some fresh new debates and as far as I'm concerned he has just not done that.

But I have a dream. I have a dream that Obama will forget about being the conservative Clinton and the liberal Reagan and decide to be the centrist Teddy Roosevelt, packaging my ideas about maintaining the power structure exactly as is and making them sound as fresh as Baby out of the bath. I have a dream that Obama will be the Mao Zedong of the Tea Party, taking all the undeserved wealth from rich old people and turning it over to rich middle-aged people. I have a dream that Obama will one day remember what the philosopher George Santayana said, about how Americans don't solve problems, they just leave them behind. I have a dream that he'll just pack all our troubles in an old kit bag and drive on to the next frontier, of means-tested Medicare, VAT,  and telling the girls to hold tight until they get that M.R.S. degree.

Actually, according to the intern, Santayana didn't say that: I did, back in 2004. Or even 2002, when I was still an employee of that Billie Kristol, speaking of leaving your problems behind. Santayana was just my beard. What Santayana said was totally different. But that's not my problem, and if it is I can leave it behind too.

College girl--a Penn fan.

Editor's note: What Santayana actually said, in a somewhat light-hearted essay of 1892 attempting to explain Yale to his own university of Harvard, was that whereas the Harvard man is always anxiously trying to solve problems, the Yale man is above such preoccupations:

Yale has a religion. The solution of the greatest problems is not sought, it is regarded as already discovered. The work of education is to instil them revealed principles and to form habits congruous with them Everything is arranged to produce a certain type of man.  The mope of study, it ix true, is becoming very wide, and a glance at the programme of courses would riot suggest much more bin in the instruction than there is at Harvard or at a German university. But in reality these miscellaneous studies are at Yale merely incidental; they am "frill" concessions to the foreign idea, to the new desire of being a university and of leaving nothing out. lie essential object of the institution is still to educate rather than to instruct, to be a mother of man rather than a school of doctors.

[This text seems to have been digitized at a time when scanners were less reliable than they are now. Rather than try to correct it—to figure out what is meant by the "mope of study"—I'll leave it to readers to enjoy.]

I love to think of Brooks being the Professor of Humility, busily making himself into an artificial Yalie in just this complacent, snooze-in-the-armchair sense, frills and all, and misquoting the great philosopher without even realizing that Santayana was being funny.

The Prudes Speak!

David French:

Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto highlights a revealing and much-talked-about exchange between the Washington Post ombudsman, an anonymous reader, and an anonymous Post reporter exploring the Post’s bias against social conservatives. While the entire exchange (and Taranto’s analysis) are worth reading, I wanted to pull out two quotes of interest. First, the WaPo ombudsman:

Because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment — one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution — most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.

Taranto’s response:

That “libertarian” is quite a dodge. Most journalists are anything but libertarian in areas where that would mean siding against the left, such as guns, education, taxes, nonsexual health care and nonmedia corporate free speech.

I agree with Taranto — “libertarian” is the wrong word. And this raises a pet peeve. It’s astounding how many times liberals say “libertarian” when they really mean “libertine.”

Stick to your guns, social conservatives! Make sure the Republican party never strays from its mission to scold.

Giggles

One of my favorite things about my husband is that he'll occasionally be sitting at his computer and just start laughing hysterically. Normally, he is wearing headphones, so I don't know what he is watching/listening to. This past weekend, I kept hearing a Taylor Swift song coming from the guest room where his computer is, followed by insane laughter. And every time I watch either of these videos- I seriously lose it. Enjoy!

The video that started it all:


And then came this gem:

To the pure, all things are Purim

Thers, reporting Dov Hikind's amazing Purim prank, makes the minor error of supposing that there are few African American Purim parties. This would not be entirely true. There are up to 150,000 black Jews in the U.S., even before you count Amar'e Stoudemire, and that's a lot of false noses. But there's not much photographic evidence, I'm afraid.

Purim in San Francisco, 2008.

[jump]

Y-Love, world's first gay Orthodox Jewish African American rap artist. Photo by Schneur Menaker via Washington Blade. Not clear whether he should be regarded as in costume or not.

Not Purim, but festive. Michael W. Twitty, culinary historian and Judaics instructor. Via Jewish Museum of Maryland.

Best Purim rap ever.

Last year in Jerusalem. Very limited range of Purim costumes permitted, but next year in Williamsburg, right?

This year in Tel Aviv, from Haaretz/Moti Milrod. Not cool.

Retroactionary Watch

Weasley clock project, from Oh Gizmo.

Times, writing about how Republicans don't seem to mind cutting the Pentagon budget any more:

“Fiscal questions trump defense in a way they never would have after 9/11,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. “But the war in Iraq is over. Troops are coming home from Afghanistan, and we want to secure the cuts.”

So it's no longer after 9/11? Shifted temporal direction again?

This time I think it's a little less insane: not retroactionary time travel but the more familiar cyclical view of time. Think of it in terms of a clock. As the big hand travels down from 12 to 6 it's two, five, ten, a quarter, and so on after wherever the little hand is; and then from the 6 back up to 12 it's before whatever's up next, say the next crisis landmark. (In Germany, where 9:30 is halb zehn or "half ten", they start anticipating a tiny bit earlier—I think some do that in England too.)

So we got somewhat blindsided when on 9/11 "everything changed". It did, but only for a metaphorical half an hour. It stopped being after 9/11 when Obama first got elected—at figuratively 9/11:30—and started being before Obama commits some military blunder, twenty-five to Iranian invasion, or a quarter to Syrian quagmire, or what have you. Of course that didn't happen, though some Republicans continue to hope against hope that he did something wrong in Benghazi.

They could always try old Senator Dole's crack about "Democrat wars" but it didn't work very well last time, after the little escapades in Grenada and Panama and so on, and it seems unlikely to play any better as we extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan. They can't get back to their preferred "Democrats are weak on defense" stance, though, until that minute hand finishes its current tour. Might as well encourage cuts, in the meantime, especially in Democrats' districts. Then when it's campaign o'clock they can start howling about how Obama gutted our forces, leaving us once again prey to that North Korean invasion that the high school kids will have to repel. OMG, wake up, sheeple, it's already five to Red Dawn!

Sickness

This winter has not been kind to me. Normally, I get sick once during the winter months and am thankful for that. Not this year. And I fully blame the back and forth weather. 40 and sun one day, negative 5/snow/wind the next. My sinuses can't handle it! They feel like they are going to explode. This post comes off a weekend where I spent the majority of my time curled up on the couch under a blanket, watching all sorts of TV shows.

The one nice thing about being sick is the ability to catch up on my Hulu queue and marathon shows on NetFlix. We're a no cable family- so internet TV on our Roku all the way! So here is how I spent my weekend:

 

This was ALL day yesterday. Made it through 7 episodes. Was actually dreaming about Fairy Tale characters last night (this was probably a combination of the NyQuil and the 7 hours spent watching this show). But seriously, I love it! I really enjoy how they jump back and forth between modern day and the fairy tale worlds. I'm totally hooked.

Life is another one that I marathoned through on NetFlix. I finished this up last week- as there were only 2 seasons of the show before they cancelled it. Thank God that the series was somewhat resolved though. I hate when I start a series on NetFlix and make it to the end to realize that the show was cancelled and the finale is a total cliffhanger (HawthoRNe being the one that jumps to mind). While the end of Life wasn't exactly satisfactory, at least they didn't leave any huge open ended questions.


Guess I was on a Fairy Tale kick this weekend, because I also watched this movie. I kind of loved it. The over the top costumes, the dialogue (as corny and over the top as it could be), etc... Maybe I just love Fairy Tales- but I did enjoy it!

While these aren't sick weekend watches- we're also super into Homeland (on season 2), Justified (catching up on the current season), Luther (a pretty awesome NetFlix watch), and counting down the days until Game of Thrones!

Slack or be slacked

Ross Douthat:

the decline of work isn’t actually some wild Marxist scenario. It’s a basic reality of 21st-century American life, one that predates the financial crash and promises to continue apace even as normal economic growth returns. This decline isn’t unemployment in the usual sense, where people look for work and can’t find it. It’s a kind of post-employment, in which people drop out of the work force and find ways to live, more or less permanently, without a steady job. So instead of spreading from the top down, leisure time — wanted or unwanted — is expanding from the bottom up.  Long hours are increasingly the province of the rich.

Sadly, no. Marx called it the reserve army of labor, a mass of people large enough to guarantee that employers would be able to keep wages down at subsistence level forever, or until the collapse of the system.

Naturally it includes short hours—if they keep you under 30 hours they don't have to contribute to your health insurance. So you pick up additional gigs as you can. I wonder how many hours young Ross puts in, and I mean sitting at the keyboard, not standing around at PR functions munching on Danish.

Found by tourist Sophie Nørgaard in San Diego. She remarks: "Danish pastry - Ingen rugbrød, men "PEAR DANISH" ????!"

Thanks to Steve M. for reading it first.

Unmanned

An exceedingly callow young denizen of Thinktankistan called Michael Kugelman has undertaken the task of teaching Pakistanis to stop worrying and love the drone, or at least put up with it, in an op-ed in the online Dawn, and Matt Taibbi just savages him for it, in his own blog:

So there it is, folks. Welcome to the honor of American citizenship. Should we replace E Pluribus Unum with We Don't Kill as Many Children as Measles? Of course people aren't mad about bombs being dropped on them from space without reason; they're mad because anti-Americanism is alluring!

He also tears a fine new one for the authors of a Times editorial in favor of a drone court, though he misses Emptywheel's insight, which I think is indispensable, that it would be a system for punishing crimes before they are committed.

Aerial Target: Design for an unmanned, radio-operated plane for use against Zeppelin aircraft and controlled  bomb, 1916.

Taibbi includes the first real discussion I've seen of the issue of cowardice in drone fighting:

What kind of a people kills children by remote control? If you're going to assassinate someone, you'd better be able..., morally, to look him and everyone else in the eye when you do it – or else don’t do it. If you're going to pass the ultimate sanction on someone, it had better be a decision you’re comfortable making before everybody, including the target, his family, your family, the world in general.

Here I think there's a sentimental error. There are really two kinds of cowardice at issue, physical and moral: by shooting from his video arcade thousands of miles away from where the missile is going to explode, the killer protects himself from the danger of being shot at, and also from the knowledge of the sin, if I may use the word, that he is committing. But it isn't the drone pilot who makes these decisions; it's the higher-ups that station him there and tell him when to fire, and the higher-ups never have to kill anybody, and thus come to grips with moral cowardice, at all. (I think as a matter of fact we'll soon be seeing cases of severe PTSD among those drone pilots even though they've never heard a scream or smelled death.)

Anyway, this is just the logical endpoint of a process that has been going on for centuries, of alienating the deathworker from the death, in a line that is linked so tightly with the development of industrial capitalism that they might be just about the same thing. Beginning with explosive black powder and the adoption of the guns that enabled Europeans to conquer the Americas, much of Asia, and practically all of Africa, and carrying on with the development of distance artillery, air power, and "smart" weaponry, there has been a constant evolution of technology meant to kill Them while preserving as many as possible of Us.

But the spread of drones also marks the culmination of an opposite trend dating back to the Second World War, when the death capacities of military technology from the Blitzkrieg to the Bomb finally became so great that even the worst people in the world agreed it was time to pull back. Henceforth the normal form of war for the self-denominated civilized nations would be counterinsurgency, in which your goal is not so much to kill everybody as to win the hearts and minds of the survivors, meaning you should make an active effort to kill fewer of them, while the enemy's ability to kill you is relatively limited anyway.

OQ-2A Radio Plane, attack drone designed by Reginald Denny for the US Army, ca.  1941.

With the development of the Kill List for Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and so on (and maybe this will extend to Pakistan as well once Brennan has taken over at CIA), President Obama and Father Brennan took upon themselves some of that moral bravery Taibbi is talking about, as I've said, of knowing whom they're killing, by name and by face. For what it's worth.

I'm not suggesting that Obama has discovered a recipe for morally acceptable war. I'm saying if you think it's disgusting or laughable then going back to conventional kinds of war is not an alternative. The only alternative is no more war at all.

What in Tarnation?

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Fox News photo.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal on Meet the Press, 2/24/2013, with new photographic evidence of the existence of Hell.

One entity, one vote!

This photo of Kalispell is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

If Rep. Steve Lavin (R-Kalispell) gets his way, owners of property in, say, Troy, but who live in, say, Ekalaka, will be able to vote and run for office in municipal elections in Montana even though they are not residents of the municipalities in which they’re voting. Even more startling, Lavin’s bill, HB-486, can be construed as giving the out-of-state corporate owners of property in a Montana municipality a vote in that municipality’s elections. Walmart’s bigwigs in Arkansas might be able to vote in Kalispell’s city council election by mail ballot.  (James Connor's Flathead Memo, February 21 2013)

And immediately, of course, the blamesters, as I like to call them, are snapping at your heels. "You're already buying the candidates, that isn't enough? Now you want to vote for them too?"

You have no idea how hurtful that is. When you're a corporation. In fact I have no idea either, not really. It's a little like the question of whether the unborn child feels pain or not, inside the womb, sheer guesswork. They're at another—some say a higher—order of existence, and we can't communicate directly with them. Does that mean they don't care? You can say any spiteful thing you want and it's not going to bother them? Hath not a corporation cameras? Hath not a corporation recording devices, with microphones planted in certain meeting rooms, lavatories, and so forth? If you prime us with alcohol, do we not leak?

The fact is, corporations live among us, in their disembodied way, working hard, playing by the rules, and trying to ensure a better life for their subsidiaries. If they have an interest in Kalispell, it's sort of like living there, except for the living part; they're concerned, just as you or I might be, with the little things that make a place a home, like do you have to pay workers minimum wage even if they're illegals, or how strict are they about hazardous wastes. Corporate citizenship is second-class citizenship; they feel they deserve the real deal. Is that asking so much? (Apparently yes, the bill didn't make it out of committee. But it's the thought that counts.)

Lazy Linkage Post

This is an interesting and pretty thing, but it runs the ChromeOS. For the money, it's useless: I can get any number of cheap laptops that do more.

Whether or not the Pixel can actually sell in any significant numbers is an, as yet, unanswered question. Pichai wouldn’t disclose specific sales numbers for any Chromebooks, but he said he believes that the appetite for a high-end Chromebook is there, noting that since Google and Samsung launched their $250 Chromebook 125 days ago, that specific computer has been the best selling laptop on Amazon every single day.

“This is targeted for a segment of users who have committed to the cloud,” he said of the $1,300 Pixel. “We believe we’ve built the best laptop from a hardware standpoint.”

Surprise! Canadians whining about Americans. Like about 95% of this blog's output.

"In [Argo], Canada and Ottawa didn't exist," [former Canadian ambassador to Iran] Taylor told the New York Times' Carpetbagger blog. "It's a great film, it's great. But at the same time, it was a Canadian story that's been, all of sudden, totally taken over by the Americans. Totally."

"I don't want to be hard on Tony Mendez," he added, referencing the CIA agent played by Affleck who led the covert op. "I want to give him all the credit I can. But at the same time, I'm a Canadian, and enough is enough."

Taylor also told the Associated Press today that it would be "a further reflection" on Affleck if Argo wins Best Picture and he fails to thank the Canadians who played such a huge role in the real-life version of events.

Genesis Death Sandwich discoverers steal your joke:

Researchers using text-analysis software say they've discovered a new literary device in the first book of the Bible: the "Genesis death sandwich."

The name refers to a familiar rhetorical structure -- sandwiching bad news in between the good. In the case of Genesis, the slices of white bread are themes of life, and the slimy cold cuts in between are mentions of death.

"The structuring of life and death in Genesis appears to be something that hasn't been noticed before," researcher Gordon Rugg, a senior lecturer in Computing and Mathematics at Keele University in the United Kingdom, wrote in a Feb. 21 blog post. "We think it's a standard literary device being used on a larger scale than had been previously realized. No aliens, no secret codes, no conspiracies, but some striking images, and a great name for a band."

Nick Cave tweets!

The Q&A did not start well. His disdain for the process was quite clear as he said wearily on one six-second clip: “Whatever it is I’ve been roped into doing, I’m starting now.”

The first response, to whether he hated the event, also proved particularly apt: “I am hating this… beyond measure and I haven’t even started yet.” He later said the whole process was “bullshit”.

Sequester break

The sequester event is evidently driving the natives mad, to the point where David Brooks found himself typing a lie so egregious that he was obliged to post a correction, which is as far as I know a unique occurrence in the history of the column, and then submit being taken to the metaphorical woodshed by Ezra Klein, though of course Klein is so courteous and Brooks so fatuous that he may not realize he's been there.* I hope the kids in Humility Class think to ask him how it felt, though.

The Vixen thinks the sequester was a kind of present from Obama to Boehner, a device meant to help the Speaker get some control over his goofy caucus, but too complex, alas, so that he couldn't figure out how to operate it. There's something to that, for sure (note that Boehner did manage to split the Fiscal Cliff into parts and get half of it down, the tax rise half, at the beginning of January—the sequester is what's left).

But I don't think Boehner himself sees it as a gift. I think, in the pattern that's been repeating itself two or three times a year, he begins by believing he's tricked Obama ("I got 98% of what I wanted") and ends up feeling that the tricked one is himself: he's raised his patrons' taxes, the Hastert rule is broken, he failed to defeat Cantor because Cantor didn't even want to run for Speaker, and all he got was this lousy T-shirt. You can already see the outlines of the same thing happening in the next couple of weeks or so: in the deal he's finally forced to accept the chained Consumer Price Index will be hedged round with compensatory machinery, and the Medicare cuts will turn out to be the $137 billion that the CBO just lopped off its projection.

Fen de Villiers, Time Sequestered (wood, plaster, ink). Photo by Tim Peters.

*Brooks also slipped into another reference to a "progressive sales tax", meaning his dread X-tax, which is starting to make him sound like one of those exotic single-issue perpetual presidential candidates, like Pierre "Pete" DuPont and Malcolm "Steve" Forbes. Patrick "Pat" Buchanan. David "Dave" Brooks. Could Brooks really have his eye on those truly vast spaces for entertaining? Or is he just after a gig at CNN?

Afternoon Update:
Second paragraph seems to suggest wrongly that the Happy New Year Fiscal Cliff deal is all that needs to be said about taxes, but it's not, as BooMan reminds us: additional revenue was always part of the deal.

The Party of Death

There's an interesting slapfight going on at The Corner right now. This might be the fuel.

Since 1985, when Tanton, using his position at FAIR and U.S. Inc., created CIS, it has attempted to become the scholarly face of the immigration restrictionist establishment.162 CIS is supposed to “[b]uild the intellectual basis for immigration law reform”163 by supplying information to FAIR and other anti-immigration activists. The same environmentalist, abortion, and population-control ideology permeates CIS, its funders, and founders.

Mark Krikorian, the current executive director of CIS, used to work for FAIR. When asked about the ties among CIS, population-control groups, and John Tanton, he stated:

The center [CIS] has no views on population control, no views on China’s one child policy, or anything else. The guy you mentioned, John Tanton, he’s an eye doctor or retired doctor, he helped arrange our first grant, he’s a population guy, Malthusian in a lot of ways, has never been on our board, doesn’t know where our offices are, never told or had any hand in the opinions, development, or views of the research of the center in any way. I met him a couple times and he seems like an affable enough guy, but what do I know, and what do I care.164

Tanton’s own writings to donors and others contradict Krikorian’s statement. As noted earlier, Tanton told Cordelia Scaife in a letter that “For credibility this will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for Immigration Studies, as we’re calling it, is starting off as a project of FAIR.”165 CIS’s supposed independence from FAIR was a façade. Tanton was intimately involved with its founding and guided its positions from the start. As late as 1994, Tanton’s front group U.S. Inc continued to funnel money to CIS.166 Tanton arranged a lot more than a first grant for CIS—he created it, funded it, and provided its ideology.

Mark Krikorian says immigration-wets are Mexicans and Muslims, big whoop.

John O'Sullivan:

Nor need you hire a researcher to uncover what they think. Mark writes regularly for the Corner. When were you last horrified or outraged by him? My guess is never.

There was this...

Mario Lopez is returning fire.

In all of the discussion about my Human Life Review article, it seems telling that no one attempts to refute any of the facts laid out in it. Indeed, Mark Krikorian is proud of the “common cause” he has with some on the left — it’s worth exploring who some of these people are.

The evidence shows that John Tanton and some of his close allies in the radical environmental movement started the Center for Immigration Studies. Prior to getting CIS off the ground Tanton helped create NumbersUSA and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, and he was heavily involved in groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, Zero Population Growth, and the Michigan Council for the Study of Abortion.

More here and here and here and there must be more elsewhere.

What all of these people are dancing around is that immigration hawks don't have a problem if the immigrants are white.

They're Coming For You

Michelle! Someone has noticed you're a big fat liar! And they made it ILLEGAL!

Bouffant pointed at some nice clear rubberface video. There's more to be done with it once I get the facial recognition plans worked out.

Cheap shots: Dinner before tender

I wish ThinkProgress would stop doing this:

Fox Host Calls Universal Preschool ‘Immoral Crazy Talk’

 host Gerri Willis called the effort “immoral“:

WILLIS: I have to tell you, I think it’s immoral to make all of these promises, when you know you can’t afford it, we can’t afford it. Preschool for everyone, are you kidding me? We don’t have the money for that! … This is just crazy talk and I think it’s immoral to put this across as something that’s actually doable, when it’s not.

It would be delightful and hilarious if she had said that universal pre-K was immoral crazy talk, but she didn't; she said that it was immoral to hold out parents' hopes of having it when (according to her, and no doubt she is wrong) they can't. Making your opponent's words say something they weren't meant to say is a Republican trick.

Also too, the way they then proceed to bury their silly joke in solemn discussion, proving to the skeptical that preschool is not immoral or crazy. They could have used the time better [jump]
showing that it's not undoable (using CAP's own numbers: about $10 billion a year, the approximate cost of a month in Afghanistan or refurbishing one aircraft carrier.

The Yellow Kid. Via Wired.

Weirdest allegation made against Nate Silver:

David Brooks, New York Times:

One of the features of the era of big data is the number of “significant” findings that don’t replicate the expansion, as Nate Silver would say, of noise to signal.

No, he wouldn't. Just no. Sid Caesar might have said it, or Mel Brooks. Is Mel any relation?

Ming Dynasty "Zhengde" imperial ware yellow glaze and red coloring porecelain jar with kylin & phoenix pattern in relief

Comment on a post by M. Bouffant (irrelevant to the post, which was a very nice photograph, although yellow plays an important part in both):

Anonymous said...

She bought the stratеgy from cooking pionеeг Barbara Kеrr.
You maу ρerhaps be able to achiеѵе ѕought after rеsрect anԁ gοod reрutation
with еnablе of yοur роwег anԁ courage.
Stіr in оnіonѕ, сelery, chopρed yellow bell pepper
аnd prеρaгe dinner before tendег.

Yellow Pig. By Miriam Shenitzer.

What's it all about, Dickwad?

At a town hall in Phoenix on Wednesday, KTVK asked the former Republican presidential nominee if he regretted insulting the man

“Of course not,” McCain insisted. “I call people jerks all the time, they call me a jerk all the time. That’s what it’s supposed to be about, it’s supposed to be fun.”
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1A3Xe)

Except when Susan Rice talks about you, because that's totally below the belt.

International Relations

An American writes a polite letter:

PARIS (Reuters) - The CEO of a U.S. tire company has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.

Titan International's Maurice "Morry" Taylor, who goes by "The Grizz" for his bear-like no-nonsense style, told France's left-wing industry minister in a letter published by Paris media that he had no interest in buying a doomed plant.

"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.

The lazy socialist Frenchman writes an unaccountably rude response:

As the leaked letter drew outrage in France, Montebourg penned a scathing response, spelling out the reasons why France routinely ranks as a leading destination for companies to invest, beating China and India in mid-2012.

"Can I remind you that Titan, the business you run, is 20 times smaller than Michelin, the French (tire) technology leader with international influence, and 35 times less profitable," Montebourg wrote, in a two-page letter in French.

"This just shows the extent to which Titan could have learned and gained, enormously, from a presence in France."

From the hazy mists of the past comes a memory confirming Taylor's nobility:

He built up Illinois-based Titan over 23 years into a global brand in tires for tractors and other off-road machinery and ran for the White House in the 1996 Republican primary, campaigning on a pro-business ticket.

At that time, he admitted to being "abrasive" in order to "get the job done": "The politicians, they all want you to like them," he told an interviewer. "I don't care if people like me."

To Montebourg, the author of "Kill All the Lawyers and Other Ways to Fix the Government" wrote: "You're a politician so you don't want to rock the boat ... France will lose its industrial business because its government is more government."

No cheese-eater should think he can impugn the character of a man who ran for president on the Republican ticket.

Goodbye Kevin Ayers

There is a nice tribute here:

The sublime singer/songwriter Kevin Ayers—an original member of psych-prog legends Soft Machine (and their predecessors, the Wilde Flowers)—passed away in his sleep Feb. 18 at age 68. The cause of death has not been reported.
Ayers played on Soft Machine’s classic self-titled debut album and then set off on a long and rewarding solo career, all the while occasionally collaborating with innovative musicians such as Brian Eno, Nico, John Cale, Robert Wyatt, and Mike Oldfield. Ayers wrote some of the most memorable and compelling compositions on The Soft Machine (aka Volume One), including the catchy as hell and exceptionally eccentric “We Did It Again,” “Lullabye Letter,” and “Joy of a Toy.”

Weekend Recap!

I know, I know- it's already Wednesday. But in my defense, I did have Monday off so really the first day of my week was only yesterday. 

I love three day weekends though! And this one was no exception; spending a lot of time with friends and catching up with those that we haven't seen in forever. 

Friday night- we were finally able to start watching the current season of Justified! We watch this show with friends of ours, and they were behind. Now that they have caught up- we can start watching again. We made it through 2 episodes- and I'm super excited for more.

Saturday- grocery shopping (we're getting really good at meal planning for the week and doing all our shopping on one day- even better we went to Aldi's so it was cheaper), lounging and heading to Ohio City for Brite Winter Fest. Since Doug works bright and early on Sunday mornings, we headed down a little early and first enjoyed a few beers and food at Market Garden Brewery. I'm always happy with the food and beer here- and this was no exception! I'm still dreaming about the beef cheek sliders I had...mmmm.

After Market Garden- we were back and forth between Nano Brew and the outdoor stage listening to live music and keeping warm by the campfires. It was pretty cold, but the perfect snow was falling- big flakes coming down. Exactly right for a Winter fest!

Loving all the snow!

Sunday, I hosted a jewelry party - which meant I made way too much food and mimosas (though there can never be too many mimosas...even 3 bottles of champagne worth). A little Cards Against Humanity, dinner at my brothers, and cuddles with my niece- it was a perfect Sunday. Followed by a completely lazy Monday. I did do laundry- but I also caught up on almost my entire Hulu queue as well- AND the last episode of Downton Abbey (HOLY SHIT). 

And now it'd Wednesday. Woke up to a damn blizzard this morning so I took public transit. I'm really ready for winter to be over.

Politics and Weaponry

Eliana Johnson gives up on her defence of Hitlerian sensibility to concentrate on Democratic equivalence with the festering evil of Republicans:

Colorado state representative Joe Salazar demonstrated yesterday that, as far as politics are concerned, making undiplomatic remarks about rape appears to be a bipartisan issue. The Democratic legislator cautioned yesterday that women, fearing they are going to be raped, may shoot and injure innocent victims.

Arguing a in favor of bill that would ban the individuals from carrying concealed weapons on college campuses, Salazar acknowledged, “There are some gender inequities on college campuses” that put women at risk. He explained, “It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at.”

Salazar continued, “You don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop, pop a round at somebody.”

This is a stupid thing way to put it; most women are pretty aware of both the threat and when the threat is about to become more than that. So condemn condemn condemn, it's okay by me. I can imagine what his point might be, but why offer charity? Anyway:

Republican senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were defeated in November after making remarks about rape and reproduction that were widely criticized by politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle.

Here's what Todd Akin had to say:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

And here's what Richard Mourdock said:

“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said. “And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

[...]

Democrats seized on the remarks following the debate. Perhaps anticipating the impact they might have, Mourdock tried to backpedal in the minutes following the debate.

“Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that anyone could suggest that. That’s a sick, twisted - no, that’s not even close to what I said,” he told reporters, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

But he reaffirmed his view that conception is determined by a higher power.

“It is a fundamental part of my faith that God gives us life. God determines when life begins,” Mourdock said. “I believe in an almighty God who makes those calls. ... There are some things in life that are above my pay grade.”

Is run-of-the-mill women-are-silly sexism the same kind of sexism as God's-plan-is-to-make-you-have-your-rape-baby-and-is-rape-legitimate-anyway sexism? If so, then yes, this Colorado state representative is just as brain-numbingly terrible as the two Republican Tea Party candidates for the US Senate.

Congratulations are due, I suppose, to Colorado Republicans for playing the sexism angle when they don't give a shit.

Now With Bonus Animated Gish

Original thought

Shorter David Brooks, New York Times, "What Data Can't Do":

Not everything that can be counted counts.
Not everything that counts can be counted.
Not everyone that counts hangs out with Friedman.
Like I know the CEO of a bank with a branch in Italy.

Image via Katherine on MySpace.

Update 2/20:
What is most dangerously wrong in Brooks's column is ably dismissed by Paul Krugman. I'm pretty sure there's something hilariously wrong about the way Brooks reads Naseem Taleb, but I'm far from sure I understand Taleb myself—anybody out there care to help out?

Pre-Crime does not pay

Flower chucker. From Notional Value.

As Emptywheel has been pointing out in her series on "Setting Up a Department of Pre-Crime", discussing the FISA or FISA-like court that might be established to oversee the president's American-murdering activities, such a court is going to be in the very odd position of, [jump]
effectively, sentencing people to death not for crimes they have committed, but for crimes they may commit at some point in the future, and which are not even necessarily crimes.

BRENNAN: Senator, I think it’s certainly worth of discussion. Our tradition — our judicial tradition is that a court of law is used to determine one’s guilt or innocence for past actions, which is very different from the decisions that are made on the battlefield, as well as actions that are taken against terrorists. Because none of those actions are to determine past guilt for those actions that they took. The decisions that are made are to take action so that we prevent a future action, so we protect American lives. That is an inherently executive branch function to determine, and the commander in chief and the chief executive has the responsibility to protect the welfare, well being of American citizens. So the concept I understand and we have wrestled with this in terms of whether there can be a FISA-like court, whatever — a FISA- like court is to determine exactly whether or not there should be a warrant for, you know, certain types of activities. You know…

I don't see how you can really fault Brennan's reasoning here—that Jesuit training really does tell. FISA could rule, perhaps, on whether a drone could be used to spy on an American citizen, but not on whether he ought to be blown up. It isn't something a court should be asked to do. Indeed, I'd personally think an attorney who took part in such a procedure would be guilty of an ethical violation, like a physician who assists in an execution.

Whereas, if it's a war, the whole argument is irrelevant anyway. You don't kill people in a war because they're "guilty" of some crime or other, actually or potentially, you kill them, I suppose, because your commander's commander's commander believes that's how the war aims are to be achieved. And by the laws of war you should only kill those who are "belligerents", the wagers of war, who are doing the same thing on the other side, i.e. doing their best to kill you in turn.

But when they try to demonstrate that it's a war it gets embarrassing.

KING: It’s analogous to going to a court for a warrant — probable cause…

(CROSSTALK)

BRENNAN: Right, exactly. But the actions that we take on the counterterrorism front, again, are to take actions against individuals where we believe that the intelligence base is so strong and the nature of the threat is so grave and serious, as well as imminent, that we have no recourse except to take this action that may involve a lethal strike.

No Jesuitical refinement here: note how he plunges into the word salad: "our actions are to take actions", and the way "imminent" gets squeezed in because it's part of the legal argument rather than because it contributes any meaning, and "action that may involve a lethal strike" (what does it involve otherwise?). It's because he wants to make two quite different statements at once, one of which he knows to be absurd, or would know if he allowed himself to think straight about it. That is, what exactly does it mean to say that they "have no recourse"?

It means that this decision to "take action that may involve a lethal strike" is one of those Tough Decisions, or decisions that the Tough take even though they are plainly both morally and tactically wrong, precisely because if they don't decide that way it will put their Toughness in doubt. Because it is obvious, if only from a purely pragmatic standpoint, that raining death from the sky on Afghans and Yemenis and Somalis and whoever else (the case of Pakistan being absolutely sui generis, so much worse than the others that it can't be considered at the same time) is not the best way to win their hearts and minds, even if only a tiny number are not "guilty" or belligerent.

From Jackie No Name.

And in any case Al Qa'eda isn't a nation, isn't a caliphate, isn't an army, isn't anything one can make war against—scarcely even can be said to exist except as an on-off criminal conspiracy—and is not a "grave and serious, as well as imminent" danger to anybody unless we make the mistake of thinking we know where all the "members" are.

But we had to have a war, didn't we, with the Authorization to Use Military Force of September 14 2001:

a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. 

(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

Just as it is not the constitutional responsibility of the judiciary to horn in on this kind of issue, it is the constitutional responsibility of the legislature to do so. And since this is really the most irresponsible Congress in the history of the Republic (or at least right up there in the top five), nothing is going to happen. Obama legally has all the power John Yoo and Robert Delahunty say he has, I'm afraid, and all we can do is be grateful he's not using it all, and hopeful he will continue to use less and less.

From The Pictionary.