Onyx Lynx

Via Southern Beale, the pre-autopsy report on NASCAR.

More than half the races were at least 10 to 30 thousand fans short of a sellout, because NASCAR was no longer affordable for the average family.

Instead, it was marketed more for the business-class side of society, the same path that basketball, baseball, and football took.

The true NASCAR fans were basically forced to watch their favorite drivers from the confines of their own living rooms, instead of the mega-seat stadiums that were built to house the faithful who hung around to watch the sport slowly be destroyed.

Not really a fan of NASCAR, but I enjoy the spectacle of heavily modified autos going vroom on carefully configured tracks on occasion.  Except the accidents, of course.

No, you don't want to know why I was running through several hours of documentaries on Fleetwood Mac yesterday.

Don't hit that metaphoric snooze button, says Anna van Z, and adds supporting links to readersupportednews.org and FAIR.

LowerManhattanite on the departure from the Senate of Joe Lieberman:

I will not miss him, and neither will you. His bogus “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” nature will be an afterthought after countless afterthoughts before it. That passive-aggressive backstabbiness and craven ransom holding of votes that should have been simple-human-decency-based will not be thought of as ironic or crafty politicking, but rather as what they were—underhanded and self-serving. His migraine-inducing plays for integrity when confronted with his misdeeds, trotting out the sad, soggy old card of neo-cons everywhere—“I marched with Dr. King”—will absolutely not be missed. Real warriors of that time never have to bring that shit up out of context. Only post-mid-life-crisis ideological flip-floppers looking to cover their naked asses from rightful criticism work that mawkish angle out of the blue.

Ron Patterson, co-founder of Renaissance Faire back in the day, has died.

Via the new paradigm, via Mills River Progressive:  Pointer to The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein, in particular this paragraph:

Yes, you can locate yourself as far as possible from the war zones, trash incinerators, toxic waste dumps, smog zones, bad neighborhoods, and other perils of an increasingly toxic world, but sooner or later the converging crises of our era will obliterate all defenses. No matter how diversified your investments, no matter how many guns in your walled compound or cans of food in your basement, the tide of calamity will eventually engulf you. Gates, locks, razor wire and guns can ensure security only temporarily, and a fraudulent, anxious security it is. Eventually we will abandon our bunker mentality and understand that the only security comes through giving, opening, and being at the center of a flux of relationships, not taking more and more for self; security comes not from independence but from interdependence. The survivors will not be those who try to insulate themselves in a fortress, but who are able to give, to help, and to contribute to a community. They will form the basis of a new kind of civilization.

We're definitely in trouble.

Milton Babbitt, composer.

(Also, in two weeks the New York Times will be limiting the number of articles one can see free.  Just so you know.)

(ETA:  These folks got left out.  Sorry.)

• Gladys Horton, Marvelette;
• Milton M. Levine, ant farms;
• David Frye and
• Charlie Callas, comedians;
• Dr. Eleanor Galenson, observed children's discovery of their sexual identity;

The Challenger.

[ETA:  Driftglass on causes.]

The Kampala Rolling Stone?  Is an accessory before the fact.

Southern Beale:  We do not value people.

• William Gibson's OpEd on digital vandalism in the New York Times.
• For lack of 2 cents in health care.  (I remember being able to go to doctors without insurance and being able to pay out of pocket.  You can't do that anymore.)  Via Echidne of the Snakes.
• Macadamia nut oil (I think there has to be a downside that isn't probable price, but I'm not as up on this stuff as I was) featured in Mark's Daily Apple. 

Pitcher retires because he doesn't feel he's earning the money.

“This isn’t about being a hero — that’s not even close to what it’s about,” Meche said this week. “It’s just me getting back to a point in my life where I’m comfortable. Making that amount of money from a team that’s already given me over $40 million for my life and for my kids, it just wasn’t the right thing to do.”

Via skippy:  Conservative Christians (and young people in that culture) divorce more.

She said the paradox can be explained by the accelerated transition into adulthood and early marriages that young conservative Protestants practice.

Factors that lead to high rates of divorce among Christians are the prohibition of sex before marriage leading to marriage at an earlier age and teachings against abortion and birth control, which lead to “shotgun weddings,” she said.

I don't suppose Catholics were included in the study?

Bruce Gordon, whose best-known role was as Frank Nitti on The Untouchables.

(ETA:  Saw a few minutes of the State of the Union address, and then the eye exam I was actually there for happened.  [Yes, I'm still myopic.])

1. This State of the Union is far more than a speech…it’s a test to see how all parties involved plan to move forward toward the 2012 elections. So, I’m looking to see what the President says…how the GOP responds, ‘cause they’ll need to take care not to fall into their usual dour faced Party of No pitch for gridlock as a cure for what ills us…
   
   …and I’ll be listening carefully to the Tea Party response and whether their Congressional spokesperson will present them as a movement within the GOP or publicly announce that the house to the right is divided.

   Angry Black Bitch, Shark-fu
   

2. I don't think I'll have the stomach for it. For one thing, I'm sure it will be a nauseating exercise in capitulation and selling out. Pretty much like what we've witnessed over the last two years. The WH says the primary focus will be on jobs - yet there will be no word from Obama, or from Democrats and Republicans alike, on curtailing the exodus of American jobs and production.
   This is the topic none of them will address (except for Bernie Sanders, bless his heart). That's because the folks our lawmakers REALLY represent - Wall Street, the investor class, and the absurdly rich - profit immensely from the outsourcing and the off-shoring of American industry. This is why Wall Street has had the best year since 1939. This is why the richest Americans are richer than ever, while record unemployment persists, while millions have lost their homes, and while our income has declined - along with our ability to pay for even minimal health care or send our kids to college.

   Mills River Progressive, Anna van Z
   

The 100 best sports nicknames (explanations drawn mostly from Wikipedia), by way of the seattlepi.com bleacherreport.  It's a slideshow with 100 (of course) slides.  One might quibble with some of the nicknames (am I the only person who heard him called "Awesome Dawson" when he played in Montréal? And I suppose they did shorten it to "Fridge"), but it's fun finding out some athletes' real names.

I look forward to women athletes with cool nicknames.

ETA the link.

That would be Lower Manhattanite of the Group News Blog, writing about moral hazard and the assassination of Malcolm X:

A basic difference of opinion will not move you to bring assault weapons to a town hall debate on health care, to hang nooses to and fro—just out of protest, mind you, or to vandalize opponent's homes and campaign offices. Once violence rears its medusa-head in mere discussions of policy, we have moved from an airing out of differences and debate to terroristic thuggery. And the general rule is: You terrorize when your opponent is someone you hate to the point where your ability to civilly disagree and engage in discussion has effectively left you.

The knifepoint, noose and bullet is the last bastion of the simple-minded zealot.

And when you keep these people madly frothing, knowing full well that you are agitating an unstable core and one of these nuts acts out—because when you talk of “the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed with the blood of patriots”, and you gun-sight ideological opponents and defend anarchic, bomb-making, would-be domestic bomb-tossers—you have tacitly incited that act and are on the hook for it. If not legally, then at the very least in the spirit of the law of basic common sense.

• Jack LaLanne, exercise and fitness proponent.
• Dagmar Wilson, founder of Women Strike for Peace.

  Ms. Wilson, an artist and illustrator of children’s books, had never been an activist but had long been worried about nuclear fallout. Women, she decided, should strike — take time from their jobs and homemaking for the cause of peace.

• John D. Kendall, encourager of music education through the Suzuki method (it's explained in the obit).

With pictures.

Close call in Maine.  By Anthony McCarthy at Echidne of the Snakes.

ETA:  Eastern Europe in '89-90, remembered by Chris Hedges at Truthdig:  "No Act of Rebellion is Wasted."

There is no theme.

Fiddler at Obsidian Wings:  "Paging Charles Dickens."

Yes. That's right. One of the wealthiest financial firms in the country is making more money every time another poor individual or family has to struggle to make ends meet by using food stamps. I would not be surprised to learn that the contracts were a result of budget cuts at the state level, eliminating the jobs of people in state human services departments who formerly did that work. It seems like adding insult to profiteering when someone in West Virginia or Pennsylvania, or any other state whose programs Morgan Chase administers, has to reach a call center on a different continent to ask about problems with their food stamps. I hope those calls are all on toll-free numbers.

Several.

• Judy Bonds, opponent of mountaintop-removal coal mining;
• Flo Gibson, founder and chief reader of Audio Book Contractors;
• Remmy Ongala, Tanzanian musician and activist;
• Milton Rogovin, photographer and social documentarian;
• Don Kirshner, hitmaker;
• Susannah York, actress;
• Wilfred Sheed, writer;
• R. Sargent Shriver, founding director of the Peace Corps and the last of President Kennedy's circle;
• Paul Picerni, whose best-known role was as Eliot Ness's assistant on The Untouchables;
• Phyllis Robinson, ace copywriter;
• Theoni V. Aldredge, Broadway's costume designer.

The Detroit Tigers organization will retire Sparky Anderson's number, 11, this year.

Not dead but off the air:  Keith Olbermann is eulogized by Cookie Jill of skippy and Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast.  (Probably also Jill of Feministing, but there's enough Jill here already.)

Comrade Misfit notes that the person whom Congresswoman Giffords defeated in the last election is maneuvering to remove her from office and replace her with himself.  The photo is an editorial comment.

Article from The New Yorker about Mr. Issa. Maybe now other politicians will misbehave.

One of the odder things lately is that I actually looked at the stats.  Now for me, with, oh, 10 readers, checking the stats is like getting furtive glimpses of myself in store windows; once in a great while one catches toilet paper stuck to one's shoe, but most of the time it's "Who is that?"  It is amusing in a WTF manner to discover that two websites apparently linked to me at random, but in spite of there being two posts directing readers to Vagabond Scholar, this blog does not show up on the list of people who linked to the Jon Swift Memorial Roundup. Also that's a strange assortment of posts that were read in the last month.

Oh well.  I went poking around at Vagabond Scholar and stumbled across "The Five Circles of Conservative Hell," which confirms my suspicions and then goes further (quote is from middle section):

Nothing chafes a rich wingnut's ass quite like the idea of the wrong sort of people living in anything better than abject poverty, especially without their permission. These are the type of people who rewind the first part of A Christmas Carol over and over again and never go to the end, so they can enjoy the part where Scrooge is still a dick. (Yeah, one of the movie versions. What, you think they're readers?) Republican president Eisenhower made his peace with the New Deal, in large part because it worked extremely well, but these assholes won't be happy until they're destroyed the social safety net for all those lesser, "non-rich" Americans, and the elderly have to eat cat food.

[Emphasis in original.] This went up in July and comes with a nifty graphic. I don't know how I missed it.

• New Alabama Governor Robert Bentley makes George Wallace look statesmanly.

  Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told a church crowd just moments into his new administration that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned Tuesday whether he can be fair to non-Christians.

• Budget cuts will affect real people in Missouri.

  In reality, when the state budget director says that the state is going to find savings by downsizing mental health care facilities, he’s speaking about facilities that allow people with the mental health issues to remain in the community and receive treatment…people who were once warehoused in institutions or on the streets…people who have families desperately trying to find a decent placement for them.

• Budget cuts will affect real people in South Carolina.

  Koller promises to cut more services.
  
  Which services are those? I wasn't aware we had any social services left, but I'm sure they'll find something to take away from us.

• The Southern Sudan Referendum (official news next month, but the landslide choice was independence) and other news links of interest.
• And one small chuckle (via Noli Irritare Leones).

[a partial repost]

Back in the summer of '63, my godmother, my mother, and the kids (I don't remember either Dad or my godmother's husband going on this trip, and I don't remember whether they were already divorced or if that was later) *gasp* drove up to *gasp* Hyannis, Massachusetts, for a vacation-like time. (Wait. Dad must have been there; Mom drove but she didn't normally do long distances.) Mom and Aunt J joked about repeating the Coué affirmation ("Every day in every way I am feeling better and better."), but that only lasted a day; we visited either Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket (either trip required a ferry); we took pictures (with our Brownies) of the Honey Fitz on a day trip to Hyannisport, but of course President Kennedy wasn't there. On the way out of New York, we passed the Polo Grounds; that was the second and last time I saw the old ballpark.

It turns out that my brother-in-law actually saw a game played there. Unfortunately the game was football; before they were the Jets, the New York Titans took the field there.

So with that in mind, be it known that the 2010 World Champeens are bringing the World Series trophy to the old neighborhood in a couple of days, and the New York Times had someone write up a brief history of the Polo Grounds.

He's baaaaaaaaaa-aaack!

Apparently Mr. Darrell Issa (or crew) has removed information about himself from his Wikipedia entry.

However, there is still the public record.  And it would appear that Mr. Issa has, over time, behaved in ways approved by rappers seeking street cred.

Via supergee at Dreamwidth, Mercury Rising's excerpt of an article linked by Howie Klein.  The article itself.  The San Jose car theft/scam case.

Perhaps he believes everyone is as crooked as he is.  (His brother, from what I've read here, would seem to be a piece of work.)

You know what every last Democrat in Congress needs to start shouting in front of every camera and into every microphone they can find...?That Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is only alive today because she had access to some of the best healthcare on the planet, which is paid for by the taxpayers of this nation, who deserve the same as she's got.

Emphasis (and link) added.

Actually, I think everyone should start doing that.  Where's my megaphone?

Ellen Stewart, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club.

(No, not that one; see Jonathan Swift.)

The National Rifle Association, as noted in other venues, has the main American political parties in thrall; it defends one's right under the 2nd Amendment to own firearms.  (There's a bit of less savory history in there, but that's not at issue.  Today.)

Certain "conservative" thinkers claim that the intent of the Founders should be the primary consideration in interpreting (U.S.) Constitutionality.  These folks are not above trying to resurrect attitudes of the past, either.  (Apparently it has not occurred to them that they can have the stagnancy and hate of the 12th century or the toys of the 21st, but not both.)

So.  Combining these two strains of thought and the 2nd Amendment itself ("A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.") leads to:

• Well, yes, everyone should bear arms and be trained in the bearing thereof.  Rigorously.  Male and female.  Urban and rural.  All races.  Native-born and immigrant. Tourists.  There should be written and demonstrated-skill tests.
• The Founding Fathers having written the Constitution in the 1700s, only the firearms available in the 1700s should remain uninfringed.  That would mean...flintlocks, muskets, arquebuses, blunderbusses, and cannon.  They were good enough for hunting then, they're good enough now.  People were killed using those weapons.  Sure, manufacturing new ones would require retrofitting factories that now turn out things like Glocks, but it would reinstill American values of patriotism (these are the weapns that beat the British!) and ingenuity (not easy to use, not intuitive.  Think Windows on top of MS-DOS) and silly words (blunderbuss!  blunderbuss!  blunderbuss!).  And it would create jobs!  (Also, learning to aim the cannon would foster mathematical studies like you wouldn't believe.)
• And what happens to all the sidearms and rifles in the armed forces?  Well, that's why they're called the "armed" forces.  And when one leaves the armed forces, one should be required to turn in all weapons issued.  One might re-enlist, of course.

OK, so that's understatement bordering on dismissal.  Sorry.  I mean the attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords, the killing of six other people including a 9-year-old girl, and the climate of political discourse in this country.  Well, maybe not the last, because, you know, thunderstorms.  (I have, incidentally, added the London School of Economics to the blogroll because Mick Jagger when I want information in that field, I want the good stuff.)

After CNN, which gave us a number of hours on the situation without an update, but did allow the gradual infill of data, my sources have been 1) The New York Times and 2) the New York Daily News.  Now the Daily Snooze is not the totally reactionary fishwrap of yore, when they took McCartney's side against Lennon.  Um, excuse me. (Sen. Joe) McCarthy's side against anyone to his (political) left.  There are still some matters in which they are quite conservative (ablist and pejorative language in the reportage; fiscal matters), but they've been to the left of the Post (Murdoch's rag) for many years now, and it was through the News' Mike Lupica that I learned that the little girl was the granddaughter of Dallas Green, who'd managed the Mets, Yankees, and Phils in his day.  The Times meanwhile had an article about local gun culture.

And there is much blathering about the rancidness of the loose lips on the right who never met a violent metaphor they didn't immediately take to their bosom.

OK.  Remember how violence on TV was decried for decades, how it was feared that impressionable minds would become inured to mayhem, how a culture of shoot-'em-up, beat-'em-up in media was going to translate into Real Life?

Don't hear that much anymore, do you?

Part of the reason is that "violence" is now cordoned off to after 9:00 pm on the broadcast channels and pretty much anything goes on cable because outside of broadcast rules parents control what's seen.  [Break for laughing yourselves sick.]  Part of it is that the impressionable minds are indeed inured to mayhem and are watching CSI and NCIS for the cadavers.

So.  Verbal threats.  Harlan Ellison had a story in, I think, either Deathbird Stories or The Glass Teat, about a couple of yackamores in a theater balcony and what happened when they were asked, politely, once, to cut the chatter by someone whose next response was to throw them off the balcony.  The examples of conservative wishing-dead that have been brought up are things one might hear in an ill-regulated schoolyard or among twelve-year-olds discovering beer.

Threats with guns, that's a different matter.

Bob Herbert reminds us that we are a violent society in denial about it except when things like this happen.

Homicide is white noise in this society.

The overwhelming majority of the people who claim to be so outraged by last weekend’s shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others — six of them fatally — will take absolutely no steps, none whatsoever, to prevent a similar tragedy in the future. And similar tragedies are coming as surely as the sun makes its daily appearance over the eastern horizon because this is an American ritual: the mowing down of the innocents.
[...]
If we were serious, if we really wanted to cut down on the killings, we’d have to do two things. We’d have to radically restrict the availability of guns while at the same time beginning the very hard work of trying to change a culture that glorifies and embraces violence as entertainment, and views violence as an appropriate and effective response to the things that bother us.

That last is kind of key: "violence as an appropriate and effective response to the things that bother us."

Meanwhile, the Readings for the Day:

• Echidne of the Snakes (of course) on the Tea Party's response.  (As if they'd know anything about anarchism or anarchists.  Give me a break.)
• Anglachel on mental illness and political events and the point where "both sides do it" has some small validity.  
• Radical Hott Off Notes (via Dumblr Bumblr Tumblr) quoting from Shakesville and adding a thought.
• Barbara Walters defends Sarah Palin. (via the NY Daily News)

Another study via echidne, this one with old survey data and flawed methodology.

That something of this sort is eagerly publicized does tell us that anything which supports traditional sex roles as ingrained gets an easier pass to popularization than alternative kinds of studies. A nonexistent new study is exciting to talk about, actual existing new studies are not.

What is driving this? Mostly the bias of people "knowing" what they "know." There's a very strong prior belief bias among the audience of these pieces, created by the common popular myths of women as gold-diggers and/or frustrated housewives or nasty feminist harpies.

A certain conservatism (not to be confused with "conservatism" as a political stance) seems to be inbuilt in the human psyche.

In other news, I want to go off and study Latin for a while.  It's a language that already has a word for several people famous for blabbermouthery:  vaniloquidori.

Political action committee goes after the college football bowl playoff system.

Note:  I couldn't care less about football, college or otherwise.  I just find this funny in a twisted fashion.

Yahrzeit.

Divorce rates are lower in families when husbands help more with housework, shopping and childcare...

Via Echidne of the Snakes, who posits that studies with conclusions outside Accepted Narrative are ignored.

 I've fallen behind in keeping track of obituaries:

• Ryne Duren, pitcher;
• Margot Stevenson, stage actress;
• Frank Bonilla, scholar specializing in Puerto Rican and Latino Studies;
• Gerry Rafferty, singer and songwriter ("Baker Street" is playing in my head.  Again.);
• Jill Haworth, actress (the original Sally Bowles in Cabaret, on stage, as opposed to Liza Minelli in the movie version, the original Sally Bowles and the original Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera for those keeping score);
• Pete Postlethwaite, actor (I remember him in The Usual Suspects);
• Anne Francis, actress (Honey West and Forbidden Planet, of course);
• Hideko Takamine, actress ("classical Japanese cinema");
• Janine Pommy Vega, poet and traveler.

There seems to be a Thespian theme here; perhaps the afterlife is mounting a production of Stage Door.


[crossposted]

It seems that Michelle Bachmann was appointed to the Intelligence Committee, which gave David Katz of Comments from Left Field an idea...

In which Dave points out that people are more patient with visible disabilities.

I have noticed an impatience with people who merely think differently in myself occasionally. Working on it.

Via Shakesville, the CBC reports a doctor saying what activists have said for years:  It's not lifestyle, some people are just heavy, and yo-yo dieting only makes things worse.

"We keep hammering home the stereotype of the fat, lazy slobs who are eating fast food all the time who are not moving, not exercising or not taking care of themselves, making poor choices, when there's very little science that actually backs this up." [Emphasis mine.]

ETA: I can't believe I didn't notice that I'd forgotten to insert the link.  Link added.

When I posted this, I hadn't realized anyone had thought more systematically about the subject.

From Restructure! via Daisy's Dead Air, an article on "Chinese" food as it is practiced in America (chop suey I knew about; General Tso's chicken, not so much).  (Remember the rule about only patronizing Chinese restaurants where Chinese people are a preponderance of the customers?  That's why.)

• On food, meditation, fat, comparative religion, guilt, and mindfulness, from flip flopping joy.
• The other mistake of the Founding Fathers, from The Way the Future Blogs.

Because thought was involved.

Stéphane Hessel's proposal to re-awaken the values of the French resistance movement, as fueled by outrage:

Hessel's book argues that French people should re-embrace the values of the French resistance, which have been lost, which was driven by indignation, and French people need to get outraged again. "This is an appeal to citizens, young and old, to take responsibility for the things in our society that don't work," he said. "I wish every one of you to find your own reason for indignation. It's precious." Hessel's reasons for personal outrage include the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's shocking treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, protecting the environment, the plight of Palestinians and the importance of protecting the French welfare system. He calls for peaceful and non-violent insurrection.

Via The Sideshow.

I am reminded by Digby by way of Batocchio that the situation we're in was diagnosed by Phil Agre in 2004.

I am referring, of course, to "What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It," which Avedon links to about once a year, and which, because I've assumed that anyone who reads this also reads The Sideshow, I've never bothered to mention.

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

These ideas are not new. Indeed they were common sense until recently. Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves "conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is. They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns of human history. Only by analyzing this deception will it become possible to revive democracy in the United States.

There are ideas one may want to argue with, not to mention references current in 2004, but the analysis is on the money.