Onyx Lynx

If you think of "sin" as a sidewalk peppered with bird droppings, it becomes clear that:

• You can try to avoid stepping in it, but sooner or later you will;
• You will look funny while you are contorting yourself trying to avoid the droppings;
• While it is natural and organic and fertilizing and not deliberate on the part of the bird, excrement still stinks up your shoes.

Happy New Year. Time to crash.

R. J. Eskow at AlterNet on "What America Would Look Like If Libertarians Got Their Way."  With examples.

It's not just about legalizing drugs.

Voting restriction bills have racial causes.  From Talking Points Memo (TPM)

Two University of Massachusetts Boston academics -- Keith G. Bentele, an assistant professor of Sociology, and Erin O'Brien, an associate professor of Political Science -- recently published a paper looking at the proposal and passage of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006 to 2011. In the paper, titled "Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies," the authors conclude that restrictive voter measures are connected to both partisan and racial factors.

[…]

What about the great Republican specter of voter fraud?

"If you want to be extraordinarily generous, you could say allegations of voter fraud may have been a very, very small contributing factor," Bentele said, speaking more generally about voter restriction efforts. "But in general, these partisan and racial effects seem to be really, really strongly associated with this outcome."

Abstract of the paper.

Have I mentioned that I'm reading Albion's Seed?  Because *gobsmack city*.

Drug-resistant bacteria on chickens.  What, where, why.

(No, food poisoning is not a new way to get high.  Au contraire.  But if you enjoy vomiting and diarrhea and you can't afford booze or catching the flu, here's a way to get really sick.)

• Joan Fontaine, actress
• Tom Laughlin, actor/writer/director

(Also, the last post was 2301.  I just can't keep up.  And Zandar is taking a break.)

Procrastination, mostly.  Shall we begin?

• Spocko on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  Getting his Perot on for a good cause.
• Apparently conservatives gave in to their urge to exhibit their tushes on the occasion of Nelson Mandela's death:  Republic of T has examples.  Especially when misapprehending normal behavior.   Jesse Curtis riffs off Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay on the uses of violence and non-violence.
• And by the way, racism is not "over."
• As for Santa and Jesus…let me see…St. Nicholas was an Anatolian Greek; not too many blond blue-eyed guys in that group; someone posted a possible reconstruction of the saint's face, and I will post the link later. here we go. He would have been "dark for purposes of whiteness," as Avedon used to say.  Jesus, of course, was Jewish, and Jews have only been considered "white" since the middle of the last century.  Ms. Kelly probably also went to Casablanca for the waters.  (Depictions of Santa have tended to pink him up; depictions of Jesus tend to both lighten his skin and hair.  Depictions are not accurate.  Got that?)

Peter O'Toole, actor.





(has it really been a week and a half?)

 Nelson Mandela.  Statesman.  Prisoner, liberator, president of South Africa, worker for peace and justice.  In a nutshell, one of the Great Ones.

It's a Love song.

• World News Connection to be shut down New Year's Eve.  Via Mercury Rising, which also said:

   "Open source news/intel, like open source computer code, is far less susceptible to manipulation and corruption. Guess that’s why the Open Source Center has to be done away with."

  Uh-huh.
  

• Just three stitches cost $2,229.11? Sealing a wound with skin glue, for $1,696? This is a national disgrace. In all of the haranguing about healthcare, little attention has been paid to the actual cost of simple procedures like this. When Republicans go on TV and tell everyone that we do have universal healthcare — at emergency rooms — and you see hospitals turning their ERs into “profit centers,” you’ve gotta wonder what the hell is going on. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times: where there’s shit there’s always flies.

  Southern Beale. Yes, it is now cheaper to check into the Ritz and have the doctor come to you.
• Mills River Progressive links to a .pdf of how corporate espionage, um, interacts with non-profits, activists, and an AlterNet summary of tactics used.  And tracking "authentication" has still not been derailed.
• Zandar Versus The Stupid flushes Peggy Noonan and remarks:

  A president who stakes his entire reputation on a complex scheme gone awry? And who never rides herd on the people who were supposed to make sure it went right?
  
  Hmmm, let me think....
  
  That 8-year selective amnesia about the guy before Obama is a funny thing.

• Shakesville's Melissa McEwan deconstructs a conservative's inability to understand choice and society (no, I shouldn't say that.  They understand choice if it's what they think everyone should choose, and they understand society as something where they make the rules.  They also seem to think [I use the term "think* advisedly] that tax money is supposed to support private schools, apparently having missed the word "private.").
  
  Why do I think that none of the conservatives who write that kind of swill have ever been in the armed forces or even served on a jury?

 Chip's a Grand Master!  Chip's a Grand Master!!

The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, at the one-or-is-it-two-month mark, seems to be working. Via Republic of T.

As in California, Obamacare is working in Kentucky for precisely the people it was intended to help. In places like Breathitt County, with a per-capita income of about $15,000 per year, it’s working for Americans who were unable to afford private health insurance and were previously ineligible for Medicaid.

Health care reform is working as envisioned in Kentucky for two reasons. The state opted to set up its own health insurance exchange, and Gov. Steve Beshear (D) stood alone among Southern governors when he signed on to the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare. Kentuckians who apply for health insurance under the new law simply have to choose from a wide array of plans available either through the state’s exchange or its expanded Medicaid program.

If, as Republicans continue to claim, Obamacare “doesn’t work,” then it shouldn’t work anywhere. If it can work in states as different as California [and Kentucky], then it can work anywhere.

Apparently the Republican reaction in California is to run a fake website.  They still got nuthin'.