Onyx Lynx

There's an essay shambling into view over the horizon (flee!  Flee for your lives!) and it's going to need *shudder* footnotes and *big shudder* research, so since AlterNet was rich in links today, I thought I'd put them here, where I might find them again.  Besides, my copy of The Age of Revolution should turn up Any Day Now.  (*guffaw*)  Also the weird article claiming "morality" as a conservative motivation is around here somewhere...

1. The deficit is actually shrinking, with charts and numbers.

   Once again, because it might be hard to register due to the drumbeat of deficit-scare propaganda, this is a fact: the deficit is falling at the fastest rate since the end of World War II. It is down 50 percent as a percent of GDP just since Bush’s huge $1.4 trillion fiscal 2009 deficit. And the deficit is projected to be stable for a decade.

2. Historical things about class.
3. What did I say?

   ...[I]t does raise some general questions about a possible relationship between the tone of anti-gay rhetoric and the identities of those who engage in such high-octane language on same sex attraction.

   All together now:  Gee, ya think?
4. Found it!  Georgel Lakoff on why the right likes the sequester.

   Moreover, ultra-conservatives do not see all the ways in which they, and other ultra-conservatives, rely all day every day on what other Americans have supplied for them. They actually believe that they built it all by themselves.

5. ETA:  Racism & sexism are drains on the economy.  Chauncey DeVega explains.

Don't worry; there'll be plenty of warning. Probably intestinal.

Southern Beale runs up against ... her doctor.  This is not an isolated incident or mindset.

Yes, Republicans. Do tell me more about bureaucrats coming between me and my doctor. I’m dying to hear.

And while we're at it: The sequestration effects by state, graciously linked at Republic of T.

Matt Mattox, dancer.

• Big banks and subsidies and *ahem* why banks should not have been deregulated.
• Another anti-gay person making "inappropriate contact" has resigned.  Seriously, they can't help themselves; the more they denounce non-heterosexuality, the more likely it is that they are practicing a furtive non-heterosexuality.  They need help, and I don't mean ex-gay ministry, either.
• Bill Moyers has a conversation with Richard Wolff about capitalism.  From billmoyers.com via AlterNet.

  On the one hand, there may be some jobs that are lost because an employer having to pay a higher minimum wage, will not hire people or will hire fewer. That will happen in some cases. But against that, you have to weigh something else. If the 15 million, that's the estimate of the White House, the 15 million American workers whose wages will go up if we raise the minimum wage, we have to count also, the question, those people will now have a higher income.
  
  They will spend more money. And when they spend more money on goods and services, that will create jobs for people to produce those goods and services. In order to understand the effect of raising the minimum wage, you can't only look at what will be done by some employers in the face of a higher wage in lowering the employment. You have to look at all the other effects.

  That's just a taste.

Mercury Rising's Phoenix Woman quoting Richard Wolff on the decline of the U.S. "left."  Because, oh God, footnotes.

• Via skippy, "March Madness"-style brackets for the Papal election.  Not quite the way it's done, but amusing in its way.
• Via Avedon's Sideshow, news that the Tea Party in Maryland actually sponsored a bill to forbid Maryland's agencies and workers from assisting in National Defense Authorization Act arrests/detainments.  (Scroll down:  It's Juice #3)  Civil liberties being defended by the Tea Party?  Where are my pearls--wait a minute.  More likely the Maryland group will be kicked out of the Tea Party.  Watch.
• Bradley Manning has passed one thousand days in stir without trial.  (The Guardian via Raw Story)  That's two and three quarters years.

  The least Manning deserves is stringent fairness in his prosecution, and stringent fairness cannot exist in the absence of openness and transparency.

• USA Today reports on another possible reason for the Pope's abdication.

  The three-man panel, according to La Repubblica, discovered an underground gay network whose members organized sexual meetings in several locations, including a villa outside Rome, a sauna in Rome's Cuarto Miligo distirct and even in a beauty salon inside the Vatican.
  
  The gatherings, in turn, left them open to blackmail from people outside the Vatican, the report said, according to the newspaper.
  
  La Repubblica quoted an unidentified man described as ''very close'' to the authors of the dossier as saying it contained information about violations of the sixth and seventh commandments, which forbid adultery and stealing.

  This may be La Repubblica's article. It's in Italian.  See also AlterNet's reprint of Salon's article.
  
• Also from Salon via AlterNet:  Why right-wingers are wacky about wombs.
• Five things no one tells you about being poor.  From Cracked, not normally a political site.
• Bias toward men in the Oscars (which I will not be watching tonight again unless I'm feeling particularly insomniac).

Via Naked Capitalism, The "Fix the Debt" people are Not Our Friends.

Both parties want to starve the beast — underfund government so drastically that it can’t function alone. Both parties want to privatize public services. I was not joking, or being excessively snarky, when I wrote that the Democrats are every bit as evil as the Republicans when it comes to economic policy.

With details.

If you don't die first, you will get old.  You might have a pension (if the fund doesn't get looted, if the company doesn't go bankrupt, if you don't get grandfathered out), you might have savings (if you don't get sick or have long periods of unemployment or buy a house in the wrong economic market or need to help someone else out), you might have investments (if they don't "go south" or get taken over by vulture capitalists).  I do.  But I'm not a millionaire.  Hey, I'm not a thousandaire.  I planned on having adequate resources in my old age.  You know the joke about plans and God.

Again:  The government is not going broke.  The fiscal crisis is ginned up.  Closing corporate tax loopholes (*oooh!  class warfare!*) would more than pay for schools and libraries that are now being closed.

Why that is is an exercise left to the reader.

ETA:  Why one should finish the day's reading before posting:  Digby (Hullabaloo) on the conservatives' stance on Social Security and Medicare (they don't like them).  Via Avedon's Sideshow.  And 4 ways politicians don't understand poverty, from Cracked.

EFTA:  Bogus theories of poverty, and the reality, by AlterNet's Joshua Holland.

The AlterNet Special:

• USA has less class (there's that word again) mobility than most of Europe.
• What, does everything have to say "Published by The Onion" so it won't be taken seriously?  New York Daily News reporter poses snarky question; question works its way to GOP gossip aggregator and out from there.  Cue screeching.
• Alabama state representative unclear about anatomy.
• A brief historical overview of sex work in the USA.

"[B]order guard ... failed to protect the ex-Soviet nation from foreign teddy bears."

Sorry; my face won't straighten.

...a "power grab" in North Carolina.  (Mill River Progressive reporting.)

Their plan, in the form of SB 10 which has just passed the Senate, is a bill that would allow the Republican governor and legislature to remove current members and make their own appointments to the N.C. Utilities Commission, Coastal Resources Commission, Coastal Resources Advisory Board, Environmental Management Commission, and the North Carolina Turnpike Authority. This bill also eliminates 12 special superior court judges, changes the makeup of the state Board of Elections, and modifies the composition of the state lottery commission.

Not cool.  Remember that part of the "game" is to show government as inefficient.  Let's just suggest here that competence will not be the highest value.

If I lived in Research Triangle, I'd worry.

...as I was leaving church this morning after the Mass, there were a few people outside in front and a guy from the City writing citations for parking in front of the church.

The curb in front of the church (and the adjacent building, which contains the parish hall) is painted white, which is supposed to indicate that parking is permitted during church services.  Apparently nobody told this guy.  He wrote up the two cars parked there (one of which turned out to be the celebrant's) even though the pastor came out (bare feet, sweatshirt, plaid pj trousers) to explain and remonstrate.  Father S finally declared "You have no respect for the law!"  And the guy finished writing the citations and drove off in one of those green vehicles with the steering on the right.

I have suggested to the other witnesses and to one of the drivers that there are enough witnesses to go to Parking Violations (or whatever it's called) to fight the tickets (yes, I know the city is hard up for money.  The city does not need to go after people legally parked to get that money), and I hope they take me up on that, although not if I have a temp job that day.

Which reminds me...

As you may have heard by now, Pope Benedict XVI is stepping down at the end of this month.  (I use "stepping down" for a reason.)

So of course my brain went to strange places.  One of the places it went was, what do you call an ex-pope?  The vast majority of ex-popes are dead when they quit.  Does one refer to Benedict as Former Pope?  Pope Emeritus (which wouldn't have the duties of the office, but admits that it used to was)?  Dowager Pope (like Dowager Countesses, moving the retinue to a smaller house and becoming social lions)?  Do ex-Popes get busted back to previous rank (Cardinal Ratzinger) or all the way back down to Private Father Ratzinger?

(I'd hope he's pleased to get his name back, though.  I imagine the first month of his papacy, the conversations always began "Benedict?"  "Who?  Oh, right.")

And the College of Cardinals (from which one almost never graduates) has to convene and do the whole thing with the black and white smoke.  Stan Musial, sadly, died recently, so --

Ahem.

And does he go on an inspirational lecture tour?  I think of him competing with Rick Santorum for sanctimoniousness--and losing.  Or he could join up with Jimmy Carter.  Humble work is in the office's bloodline.

[ETA:  Emeritus Bishop of Rome.  Something like that.  *giggle*]

Those barnacles really don't want to come off.

• Comedy of cruelty and the long history of bands of privileged young women in New York.
• The Republican plan for your state:

  We already have a red-state model, and it’s called Mississippi. Or Texas. Or any number of states characterized by low public investment, worker abuse, environmental degradation, educational backwardness, high rates of unwanted pregnancy, poor health, and so on.

  (Texas gets away with it because there's still oil. As they run out, they're looking the full Mississippi in the face.)
• Have you read Little Dorrit?  (I have said more than once that conservatives think "Dickensian" is a term of approval.)  Because you may want to reread it; debtors' prisons are oozing back.
• Think Progress (Aviva Shen) via AlterNet:

  On ABC’s This Week Sunday morning, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called out Tom Cole (R-OK) for his claim that President Obama is responsible for the automatic budget cuts set to go into effect if Congress cannot reach a budget deal by March. The so-called “sequester” includes steep defense cuts intended to motivate Republicans who refused to agree to any deal that included a tax increase in 2011.
  
  When Cole tried to pin the cuts on Obama, Ellison reminded him that Cole himself voted for the Budget Control Act that created the sequester[.]

• We keep learning that LAPD is full of bad actors, and we keep being surprised.  (No link to the manifesto in question, alas.)
• The Guardian (Jill Filipovic) via AlterNet: How conservatives don't "get" marriage.

  Most importantly, end the cultural mythology around marriage.
  
  Marriage is great, if you want it – but it's best begun out of love, not societal pressure. We should care about the security and happiness of our neighbors regardless of their marital status. The decline in marriage rates for low- and middle-income Americans is alarming not because marriage should be a universal goal, but because it reflects the current state of marriage as a luxury good, a way for the upper classes to perpetuate their wealth and power.
  
  The answer isn't "Get married and you'll be rich and powerful." The answer is to break down the extreme inequalities that incentivize marriage for some and make it seem out of reach for others. Marriage should simply be one model among many for human kinship and a strong family. Let people do what they want.

  "Luxury good." Indeed.
  

Pitchers and catchers report!

Part of "the opposition" is dying off.

(I sort of nod "Uh-huh" at assertions like that because they're a bit simplistic; also because some of the poison has leached into other areas.  It's a puzzle piece, not the puzzle.)

All right, let's see if I find everything I mean to post and remember to link this time.

• Paul Krassner (first of six parts) on his time as an underground abortion referral service.  Remember, this is what conservatives want to restore.
• From a Daily Kos reprint at AlterNet:  Trying to be scary about paid sick leave.

  The evidence shows that paid sick leave does not hurt businesses. Meanwhile, it keeps workers from having to choose between going to work sick and paying the bills, and it offers public health benefits. So when you hear all these dire predictions from restaurant owners and industry groups, take them for what they are: ideological arguments from low-wage employers who just don't want to treat their workers any better.

• Why the Voting Rights Act is necessary:

  The Supreme Court will hear arguments against it later this month in Shelby County vs. Holder. At issue is whether section 5, which requires states with a long history of voting discrimination to pre-clear election law changes with the justice department, is unconstitutional because it unfairly discriminates against those states based on ancient history. The entire argument hinges on the notion that much progress has been made and these states will not enact discriminatory voting laws once section 5 is repealed.

  Isn't that what the financiers said about all those Depression-era banking and investment rules? Because we've already seen that failure mode.  The Voting Rights Act is not a dead letter.  Those states will most certainly do so if they can.

Amanda Marcotte:

Since they can manage to get through the day without picking their noses, masturbating in public, and being mauled by animals and/or the cops because of their stated inability to read social cues or understand when and where sexual behavior is appropriate, I am forced to conclude they’re lying when they claim they can’t interact decently when it comes to women.

There's a list of failing-to-get-non-verbal-cues behavior included for the dense.

• Terrance Heath (whom you should be reading religiously; he does research) examines Republican discomfort with President Obama:  Part I.  Part II.  Part III.  Part IV.  (I waited until the series was complete.)  The source of that discomfort is obvious, but these articles clarify the issues for anyone not a Republican.
• Jesse Curtis reviews a book about the building of the transcontinental railroads.
  

  The transcontinentals gave birth to the modern corporate lobby and the symbiotic nexus between big business and an activist federal government. After the rise of the railroads, it became impossible to maintain the fiction that the economy was not fundamentally political, for better or worse. The men who ran the transcontinentals transformed America not because they were ruthlessly competent but in spite of the fact that they were not.

  So there, Dagny Taggart.

• Cookie Jill at skippy highlighted an article from AlterNet and threw in this graphic.
  
  As you probably don't know, three card monte is legal because it is not a game of chance.
• At Naked Capitalism, Philip Pilkington analyzes the scam that is "Austrian economics" and the gold market.  (Double-underscored links are ads.  You know that, right?)  A sample:

  [Izabella] Kaminska wrote that were it not for the central banks the gold market would be largely dead because Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) had begun piling out in 2010 – probably moving toward equities at that time. I would tend to agree with this analysis to some extent, but I’d also point to the growth in the ‘Bar & Coin Investment’ component in those years. This is the precisely the component of the industry that is supported by the Austrian School and the fear industry. As we can see it began to grow substantially in 2011, although again (and rather ironically given the ideology of these people) it would not have been sufficient to hold up the price without central bank intervention.

  There are illustrative graphs and charts.
  

A note:  No nation on this Earth has buzz-droids (see Revenge of the Sith's early scenes) or targetable programmable killer robots.  Nobody outside of the movie industry, the comic book industry, organized crime, and freeway drivers even thinks stuff like that would be a good idea (all right, the drivers, and that is as good a reason as any not to go there).  As the mayor and police of Philadelphia, PA discovered back in 1985, bombing one house can have consequences.  [ESFTA:  The neighborhood was still suffering 25 years later.  Stuff Went Wrong.  Via Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.]

Further note:  It is known that Stalin had Trotsky whacked even though the latter was not on Soviet soil.  It has been suspected that the KGB murdered dissident Russians in foreign countries.  Is this a path the U.S. wants to take?  Because it doesn't end well.

Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the fishy legal legs (ow!) of the "White Paper" setting forth the Administration's rationale.

Joan Walsh at Salon (reblogged at AlterNet) examines why there is not more outrage on the "left."

Jurassicpork is outraged.

Comrade Misfit calls out the un-Constitutionality of this policy.

Arthur Silber is vindicated, since he thought Petraeus' resignation and resultant "scandal" was a put-up job.  [EEFTA:  Further reflections on the Murder Program.]

ETA:  Anna van Z of Mills River Progressive cites Glenn Greenwald's article in the Guardian extensively.  She also says:

Okay, what? "If they are believed to be..." Believed by WHOM?? Based on WHAT EVIDENCE?? Who determines what "an associated force" means? Or is the concept of evidence just another quaint anachronism, like the Bill of Rights? A hallmark of democracy is due process, and the rights afforded the accused. If we don't have that for American citizens - every citizen - then we don't have a democracy.

EFTA: Jesse Curtis calls it on the relative lack of outrage.

Also, lest we've forgotten:  What's up with Guantanamo?

North Carolina.  Where the legislators are cowards and weasels.  No, wait; that's an insult to weasels.

South Carolina.  Where cost-cutting probably led to compromised data.

That's it.  I'm taking to drink.  (All right, not really.  Two-Buck Chuck is now Two-Fifty Chuck.)

The Pulp-o-Mizer generates a pulp magazine cover based on your inputs.

Remember fear of automation?  It's baaa-a-ack.

The problem is not automation, but greedy CEOs who pay themselves gigantic, disproportionate sums and follow the dangerous and misguided principle of "maximizing shareholder value” to distribute profits to themselves, often caring little whether the company even survives 10 years down the road. What’s it to them? They’ll have their pay packages and can move on. The perverse misuse corporate profits is the real culprit, not Rosie the Robot.

There are flaws in the argument, naturally, one of which is that corporate honchos are short-sighted like Mr. Magoo.

Skeleton is remains of Richard III.

...just drawn that way.

Belated posting of the Blogroll Amnesty Weekend Day because it seems that several of the possibilities are on my Archives blogroll section.

(Explanation of Blogroll Amnesty Day for the unwary.)

Probably not smaller, but added to the 'roll this year:

• Better Than Salt Money (Yes, there are earlier extant versions.  They now link to this.)
• Fukushima Diary (knock-on effects of that big earthquake in Japan)
• Walk On (serious Christian applies principles to life and changes--thought-provoking in the best sense of the word)
• Forgotten New York (what it says)
• Faith and Fear in Flushing (there needs to be more baseball; the politics is getting too thick)

Welcome to the circus, and watch out for the elephants.

with the usual results.

Economic badness foretold.

"This Is The Reason We Can't Have Nice Things."  From Sadly, No!'s HTML Mencken.

As a good Moloch-worshiping, gay abortion-having, Muslim-appeasing Liberal Fascist, I hate crapitalism’s fetish for specialization.

Also, Elvis and long-gone blogs.

Mr. LaPierre on firearms in schools.  (Full statement here.)

Whistling with innocent look.

Edward I. Koch, Mayor of New York City.

(My mother and I met him once on the street.  He and Mom exchanged pleasantries.  Afterward, I commented that he had looked a lot like Mayor Koch but was too tall.  Um, no; Ed Koch was in real life 6 foot something.  Also, Mom had met him before.)