Onyx Lynx

• Gil McDougal, infielder
• Bella Akhmadulina, poet
• Stephen Solarz, Congressperson
• Mario Monicelli, director (Italy)
• Irvin Kershner, director (Hollywood)

Mr. Dave Stewart.  The pitcher.  His stare turned opposing batters, and any lingering basilisks, to stone.

• Anna van Z of The Mills River Progressive on approaching economic nastiness:

  You've seen [...] a report of how China and Russia have effectively dumped the dollar for trade, and will be using their own currencies. I haven't heard anything on network news about it over the past couple of days, which strikes me as a tad remiss, to say the least.

  followed by an excerpt from Wayne Madsen of Op-Ed News:

  Four million Americans will put financial pressure on municipalities and state governments already facing bankruptcy. Unlike Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and, to some extent, Spain, which have strong central government control, the United States is a federal republic and, as such, the collapse of the economy will be state-by-state and begin at the municipality level [...]

• Ilyka reblogged Blackamazon's point-by-point rebuke of Sady's semi-sarcastic potted history of how Jezebel got to be considered a Feminist Go-To Blog even though it publishes some fairly anti-feminist stuff.  (I think I have snipped all the loose ends.)
  
  One point:

  These spaces often get high traffic, are profitable, and are rewarded with plentiful attention and praise, and the people who create spaces for feminist media but don’t do it for profit, or who do it for a profit that isn’t exactly profitable, join in the praise and support. They welcome those blogs.
  Bullshit and i call it. Women who have had a non capitalistic non white focus or popculture focus , see the articles and within HOURS are predicting and going what in the hot happy hell. The women praising are also WRITING for and at points heavily linked to these larger blogs which SURPRISE SURPRISE up their hit counts . SHOCKING AINT IT? These blogs (XX, jezebel etc. ) are quickly shown to be racist, heteronormative , transmisogynist, and CLUSTER BOMBS of entitlement. Due o the funny thing of the audiences not being well in an way shape form focused on improving women but getting women and anyone who is interested in women as a demographic

  For the record (or the CD or mp3. Whatever): Whenever my attention has been drawn to Jezebel, it has not been for a shining article on feminism/womanism. Just saying.
  

What investment banking is good for.  (A bit more than "War.")

The article referred to is behind the paywall (abstract here), but the audio portion, featuring James Wood demonstrating the drumming style of Keith Moon is here.

1. This is approximately the 1,200th post, proving once again that one can say nothing at great length on a blog given the vocabulary size of the English language and serious shamelessness.
2. Santa Claus is coming to town.

1. Lincoln Chafee, newly elected governor of Rhode Island (actually, an aide), on same-sex marriage:

   "The governor elect feels that the issue should be addressed as soon as possible by the General Assembly, and does not believe that the question should be decided by a ballot referendum," the letter from Chafee's aide, Michael Trainor, said. “Marriage equality is a basic right that should be extended to all Rhode Islanders — a question not only of fairness and justice, but of economic development as well.”

2. Arthur Silber quotes H.L. Mencken:

   The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. Truth has a harshness that alarms them, and an air of finality that collides with their incurable romanticism.

   Luckily...

Officer: I'm sure I don't know, sir. I'm a trained police detective and all I see here is one Republican who has been beaten and mugged by another Republican.

Brooks: Ah, but to the truly trained eye, Officer, the implicit Liberalness here is evident.

Officer: (sighs) Mr. Brooks , "implicit" is from a Latin word. "Implicitus". It means "interwoven".

Brooks: You know Latin?

Officer: Yes sir.

Brooks: (mutters) Fuck me.

Officer: So explain to my untrained eye exactly in what way are Liberals "interwoven" with a crime committed against you on an empty street by a crazed Republican with a baseball bat?

Brooks: (petulant) Look, that's just the way it works.

Officer: The way what works?

Brooks: "Centrism".

Driftglass, for the win!

I'm not a Dick-head, but I'm actually interested in this book.

Via Mills River Progressive:  Jon Perr at Crooks and Liars on just how bad the idea of making permanent the Bush tax cuts is.  In ten parts.

Surveying his chart of two generations of GDP growth (above), Leonhardt was surely right to ask, "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?"

And we point cameras at her obsessively because you can never spend too much of America's mainstream political bandwidth huffing stupid straight from the bag.

Driftglass, of course.

In fact, the U.S. military leadership and congressional Republicans are also on opposite sides of everything from civilian trials for terrorist suspects to closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay to Iran to torture to how the U.S. perceives the Middle East peace process in the context of our national security interests. GOP lawmakers haven't even fared well on some veterans' groups congressional scorecards.

Via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, via Booman Tribune, which is on The Sideshow's blogroll.

Traditionally, conservatives either have or try to get the military on their side.  Something suspicious is going on here.

Myself, I’m way less interested in the vocabulary than I am in the attitude. The attitude’s evident right away even with the proper vocabulary, but bullshit has an odor that honest trying simply does not. I am not as worried about how you say what you say as I am about why you say what you say, if that makes sense.

There's more.  ilyka is back!

Fafblog!

(Why yes, it's a dinobear licking for honey.  What's your point?)

The link to Bernie Sanders--oh, wait.

Senator Bernie Sanders on the sheer avarice of billionaires.

The billionaires and their supporters in Congress are hell-bent on taking us back to the 1920s, and eliminating all traces of social legislation designed to protect working families, the elderly, children and the disabled. No “social contract” for them. They want it all.

And today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Terrance of Republic of T discusses Republican refusal to extend unemployment benefits:

Make no mistake about it. The GOP is saying "Drop dead," to millions of unemployed Americans. This is a conservatism that rejects not only the "compassionate conservatism" of the Bush administration (oxymoronic as the concept was during the Bush era), but rebels "against even the idea that compassion is a legitimate object of public policy." (Not to mention empathy.) This is a conservatism without empathy or compassion, that doesn’t pretend to have either, and is proud of it[.]

(I would think conservatism's lack of empathy and compassion would alienate the evangelicals, but I'm not sure who they think Jesus was.)

Lisa Golden (Hi, Lisa!  I know it's late!) of That's Why sent a letter to her Senators about this a couple days ago.  If you are cursed with have a conservative Senator, perhaps you should let them know that starving constituents have been known to do desperate things.  (Note:  I am not advocating doing desperate things--I leave that to the faux populists of the air.)

Sound of doom.  (Via holyoutlaw on Dreamwidth.)

Via the White House Blog's feed on my Network page at Dreamwidth (is that enough serendipity for you?), an article from Bloomberg.com's News side:

Health insurers last year gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health-care overhaul law, according to tax records and people familiar with the donation.

Remember: they were paying that kind of money to continue weaseling on paying your bill should you heaven forbid actually get sick.

So this may not be coherent.

I'm quoting and bolding a statement of Avedon's made in response to an Americablog posting that needs to be emblazoned somewhere (Hmmmm.  Maybe?):

Every time I hear someone saying it will take "a long time" or "years" or "a generation" to undo the mess we're in, I think, "Have you no understanding of history?" It was a miracle the Founders created what they did, and it took unique circumstances and thousands of years to get to that point. You think you're gonna come back from this? Unless something stops this train-wreck now - and I don't see anything like that happening - you can kiss it good-bye. Forever.

The Galt's Gulch gang are too busy hugging themselves to notice; the Tea Party people are mostly going "Nuh-uh, TV tells me so, it's trooooooo-oo!" and conservative/reactionary/Republicans are smacking their lips where no one can see.

When I was a child, I believed that if I could just talk to Fidel Castro, he would stop scaring everybody about Communism.

I don't believe that anymore.  I'd like to be able to cling to the illusion that people given good data make reasonable decisions, but that illusion is melting.

Years ago, I knew somebody who thought he'd survive Nazi Germany.

Theodore W. Kheel, The Mediator.

Have I mentioned that Orcinus is back?  Mr. Neiwert cites Kevin Phillips, who apparently foresaw the current economic situation, and concludes with:

Until we start electing Democrats who really want to put Americans back to work making things and recognize that Wall Street's speculative utopia is a global nightmare, we're going to be caught in this trap, and real economic recovery will remain out of reach.

Time for a left-wing populist uprising, perhaps?

Echidne of the Snakes, in the course of reporting on Digby's poking at a decision by networks and some websites not to carry ads for a "botanical aphrodisiac," even though Viagra and Cialis ads at the same networks and websites are rampant (complicated enough for you?), makes an observation:

We are finally beginning to notice that what everyone calls "sex" is really "sex as heterosexual guys see it". Whether anything about that will change is a whole different color of fishes, but at least we can start a conversation on pornography and related matters with a shared understanding that it's not "sex" we are talking about.

Driftglass works Stand on Zanzibar into the profane review of Sunday news/discussion fora.  No, you have to read it.  Although among the dramatis personae:

Establishmentarian Marionette David Gregory asked “But don’t we have to have an Adult Conversation, with people...?” of a panel composed almost entirely of has-beens, sell-outs and depraved thugs he himself had assembled.

Anglachel:

The battle to properly institutionalize a movement goal, for example having health care for all on the model of Medicare instead of some hodgepodge of tepid ideas and bones thrown to the insurance companies, or declaring that Social Security is not in trouble and will not be on the table instead of allowing it to be nibbled to death by ducks, or that the banks need to be reformed and their criminal management brought to trial instead of handing them bags of cash, or declaring that there will be a stimulus package big enough to jump start the economy instead of preaching fiscal austerity and allowing unemployment to rise, is what a president is supposed to do.

Anthony McCarthy at Echidne of the Snakes:

[Quote from Ted Ralls' book]

Even if a leader like Obama were inclined to push for the sweeping reforms that might save American late-stage capitalism from itself, as did Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and there is no evidence that the thought has crossed Obama's mind -- his fellow powerbrokers, fixated on quarterly profit statements and personal position, would never allow it.
The media talks a lot about reform. But it's too late for nips and tucks. Reform can only fix a system if the system is viable and open to change. Neither is true about the United States of America.

...Nor can we do it with the lazy click of a mouse as we send another $20.00 to Move-On.org. No, it can only be done by a radical change, and I mean RADICAL, namely, a radical change in HOW WE SPEND OUR MONEY.
If there is something predictable about a call for a real boycott that would have a real impact, it is that the cynics and the slackers will discourage even considering trying it. They will say that it is unrealistic because it is destined to fail. [...] 

One of the first things the left could do would be to BOYCOTT ALL FOX PROGRAMS, ALL OF THEM AND ALL OF THE MURDOCH EMPIRE'S MEDIA PRODUCTS . A left that can't give up The Simpsons to avoid fascism and civil war is a left that has already given in.

The Sideshow:

None of our "Deficit Hawks", of course, are talking about getting rid of the genuinely wasteful public expenditures that harm rather than help us - an over-inflated war-making machine that squanders billions on destructive policies that actually make the world a more dangerous place for all of us, for example. And a security state that terrorizes ordinary people going about their ordinary lives while, with the help of the odiously destructive War on (Some) Drugs, imprisoning more hapless citizens than any other country in the world does.

[...]

For quite a while, now, The Sideshow has been trying to remind people that what the conservative ruling class wants is not merely to make money, but to push the rest of us back down into the dirt. The hard-scrabble existence you and your children face is not just an unfortunate by-product of their "grown-up" program, it is the goal.

1. Brilliant at Breakfast has two links for lunch:
   
   1. "Security Theater Update," featuring a letter about the radiation levels of the scanners and the problems therewith, and do you want to be the guinea pig?  Not to mention the charming alternative of being groped (it's time for someone to invent flexible clear plastic armor or even a flexible clear plastic "chastity" belt; and cross-country driving is looking attractive again) by strangers publicly or privately.
   2. "A few plutocrats..." or 

      But as long as we are willing to vote for people who get out on the stump and say, "Look! Look at that [black guy/illegal immigrant/Muslim/Indian guy/welfare mother/pick a boogeyman any boogeyman]! HE's your problem!" -- while they lift our wallets from our back pockets; as long as Americans jump at the red meat tossed at them by opportunistic hatemongers like Sarah Palin and Rand Paul; as long as we persist in this fantasy that if we just stuff enough taxpayer cash into the pockets of the wealthy they might hire a few people, we're going to continue to be like the proverbial frog in the slowly-heating water on the stove -- unable to see our participation in our own doom.

      With bonus analysis by Kevin Hall at McClatchy.
2. Anglachel anatomizes the Democratic Party:
   

   The trouble with the Democratic Party, an organization that is the worst in politics except for all the others, is that it has not discovered a way to recombine the populist and progressive modes of its liberalism in a way that matches the force of the New Deal coalition. Until it purged itself of the Dixiecrats, it could not do this. Since doing so, the progressive faction has not cared to do this.

3. Shakesville's Melissa McEwan writes:
   

   It's not about the "right fight." I don't know any feminist/womanist who wouldn't give anything to never have to worry about rollbacks of Roe ever again. I don't know any LGBTQI activist who wouldn't give anything to never have to spend another moment advocating for rights LGBTQI people don't have ever again. I don't know any anti-racist activist who wouldn't give anything to never have to be concerned with a person of color being denied access or opportunity ever again. I don't know any advocate for people with physical disabilities, people with neurological disabilities, undocumented immigrants, the poor, the uninsured, the unemployed, fat people, non-Christians, abuse survivors, veterans, and/or other marginalized people who wouldn't give anything to never have to fight for equality denied or be obliged to teaspoon oceans of bigotry ever again.

It's Veterans Day. Even in this funky corner of the galaxy.

Making Light doesn't seem to have its usual crop of links on the Great War, but:

1. bossymarmalade on Dreamwidth reposted the video on Canadian Chinese WWII veterans (link going to this year's repost) with more details (it's still heartbreaking). 
2. Native American Netroots has an article on the situation of the serving military with regard to state tax laws and/or whether they are domiciled on reservations, and it is not surprising to learn that information is not particularly widespread.  
3. Shark-fu's post from last year is so on point that I'm relinking it. 
4. [whoops, wrong again], but last year's post is still pertinent [and this year's post is ongoing documentation]..
5. Prof. Susurro's evocative pictures, with:

   I am grateful to the members of my family who fought in wars to stop Hitler and Fascism, and glad for those members who survived the unjust war in Vietnam to make it home and fight against anymore unjust deployments and raise awareness about the real needs & rights of the Vietnamese and Cambodian people. To all the military families who have sacrificed for our safety and the safety of women and children in times of crisis and ethnic cleansing, in Somalia, Bosnia, and all around the world, thank you. I am forever grateful to those veterans who fought for freedom of enslaved African Americans, founded civil rights organizations, and continue to struggle for the equality of marginalized people inside and outside the military. And to those who continue to sacrifice and to protect innocent civilians from those on both sides who think their lives do not matter or kill them with prejudice, thank you and come home safe.

6. What I said in '08.

[Crossposted and edited to correct misconception.]

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Idiculous, to use the formulation at Shakesville) wants to investigate, investigate, investigate, and poke his nose in to the bank bailouts, the stimulus, and health care reform, and he wants to create seven (7) subcommittees.  Via skippy the bush kangaroo's Cookie Jill, who adds:

so, while seniors are worrying about medicare/medicaid being cut, while millions of unemployed people worry that they won't get an extention on their unemployment benefits, while thousands of families worry about where they will live after they lose their home in the foreclosure mess, issa and his bully buddies are spending money to sit around on their fat a****s and flap their lips.

In order to save some time for Rep. Issa and his crew, the following mysteries have already been solved:

1. Some bird named Darrell Issa was a major contributor to the Gray Davis gubernatorial recall election back in 2003.  
2. The Padres choked.  Face it.
3. Contrary to the advice of William Goldman, George W. Bush (remember him?) started not one, but two land wars in Asia.
4. The Beatles are who broke up the Beatles.
5. Dr. Richard Kimble's wife was murdered by the one-armed man.
6. Contadina put 8 great tomatoes in that little bitty can.
7. Everyone rolls their eyes when the Chargers are mentioned.
8. Piltdown Man was a hoax.
9. Both Alaska and Hawai'i have been states since 1959.
10. "Penny-wise, pound-foolish" is not equivalent to "fiscally responsible."
11. Popcorn just basically tastes better with butter.
12. People move to Florida because 
1. Except during hurricane season, the weather is So Much Better, and
2. All their friends are there.
13. I wouldn't say that all virulent homophobes are secretly self-hating gays, but lately that's the way to bet.   There seem to be quite a few in the Republican Party...
14. The Highland Clearances (in Scotland) really happened.
15. Businesses, like children, need regulation, or they will (as they have) run amuck.
16. He got to the parking space before you did.
17. Global warming/climate change does not give a rat's patoot about anyone's politics.
18. Partitioning nations was a mistake we are still paying for.
19. Women don't get recreational abortions, any more than men get recreational castrations.
20. Steve Perry won't be singing in Journey in the foreseeable future.

Terrance at Republic of T analyzes Republican/Tea party victories, Democratic defeats, and the reasons therefor:

• Part I;
• Part II;
• Part III; and
• Part IV.

Hint:  Neither "bipartisanship" nor "moving to the right" are solutions, at least not solutions the American people, that wondrous mass of contradictions, want.  Also, dismantling and discrediting the 50 state strategy, which was successful in 2008?  Was--what is the technical term again?  Oh, right--stupid, short-sighted, and defeatist.  It's like the Florida Marlins trading everybody after winning the Series.  Think the Yankees won 27 World Championships by dumping their roster at year's end?  Because if you do, I have a nice bridge I'm unloading this weekend, cheap.

Weird analysis of the last election by Hendrik Hertzberg.

• Stuff invented in Oakland, CA (and stuff that wasn't):  The Wave (sorry, metsgrrl), the fortune cookie folding machine, fantasy football, et al.
• Glenn Smith at Firedoglake asks the question that's been bugging me for years:  "Why the Fear and Loathing?"  (via The Sideshow)

  I don’t buy the standard line that the anger is all about economic worries. I have economic worries, too, and they haven’t led me to hate brown people or black people or city people or educated people.

• Via Making Light, the BNP brought low in part by marmite.
• The dangers and lesson of "put[ting] two fingers up once too often."  (via Oursin at Dreamwidth.)

  Of course, at 49, I am not the same person I was at 16. The older you get, the more you realise that the complexities of life are unknown territory to the teenage mind: this is not a defence, more a belated plea of mitigation. The past may be another country, where things were done differently, yet even at 16, I knew I had done something terribly wrong.

  (I do know how to blurb, I do I do!)
  
• Ta-Nehisi Coates on "The Cops We Deserve."  He has examples.  (I'd just like to say that I think I deserve better cops than that, and probably so do you.)
• ETA:  Orcinus is back from the grave suspended animation!

OK.  Certain amount of duplication, but not enough to call it crossposting.

1. Jim Yeager on a scary statistic.
2. Two from Anglachel:
1. Who the Democrats are losing;
2. Audacity deficit?  from Mr. Krugman.
3. In memoriam:  Lance Christie, co-founder of Church of All Worlds.
4. Lisa Factora-Borchers at My Ecdysis on the use and misuse of the term "kyriarchy."  
5. The Republican solution to Life, the Universe, and Everything.  With a side order of Wiscon and principles of feminism/womanism.
6. Not wearing the orange jumpsuit and upholding the double standard (ie, IOKIYAR).

Brilliant at Breakfast must be full of fnords today, because as I sat down to read it, I had a horrible sneezing fit and all my sinuses liquidated.  That's years worth of Jello.  I copied a statement before the eyes started watering and the palate itch returned.

Here's the statement:

Florida has been the receipient of a shitload of Federal stimulus funds, but not one Democratic candidate in this state made note of that. And Florida is just one example.

Scott Horton notes that since Kyrgyzstan's April revolution, their politicians have noticed that what the American government really cares about is the air base.

Also:

Notwithstanding a decision to terminate military aid in 2004 and fairly strong language from the Bush Administration following the massacre in Andijan in 2005, Uzbekistan was able to purchase more than $50 million worth of training and equipment directly from U.S. companies and over $12 million more through U.S. government channels. Indeed, the shutoff of American direct assistance in Uzbekistan seems to have coincided with the mysterious appearance in Uzbekistan of prime U.S. security contractors such as Blackwater.

Ya think?

Sparky Anderson, baseball manager.

So in Bible study this evening (which, as usual, got sidetracked, but that is part of its charm), somehow we got onto Our Lady of Fatima and one of the visions of one (two?) of the children.

They were shown a vision of souls tormented in hell, and instructed that these were souls whom no one had prayed for and to pray for those who had no one to pray for them.

I didn't know that.

I have been praying for those who have no one to pray for them during what I call the free prayer period (yes, I'm aware there's probably an actual name.  I'm having a braino right now, OK?) for a few months now.  Sometimes, if I don't, someone else does.  I don't remember hearing the phrase before.  It...just sort of came to me, and I was thinking mostly about the homeless.

Something larger than myself.  OK.

Because Santa Claus is back on the case!

The World Champion San Francisco Giants!

Shark-fu is still Getting Out The Vote.

Pecunium writes on a particular election campaign and explains his reasons not to vote for the Republican candidate, which goes beyond the party affiliation and gets into history.  It's a terrific piece of writing, too.

At this rate, I'll have to take the mail ballot in tomorrow. [grimace]