Onyx Lynx

• Chelsea Manning name change approved.

  "Hopefully today's name change, while so meaningful to me personally, can also raise awareness of the fact that we [transgender] people exist everywhere in America today, and that we must jump through hurdles every day just for being who we are," Manning said.

  From Al Jazeera America.
• Conservatives want us dead.

  Conservatives are willing to let poor and struggling people like Charlene Dill die because they believe poverty itself is a moral failure. Thus saving the Charlene Dills of the world is immoral.

  From Republic of T.

Gabriel García Márquez, writer.

Nice tusks.

Throwing coups d'etat since 1953, or why Ukraine is in for it.  Nicolas J.S. Davies, AlterNet, includes a bit of history, the escalating steps in regime change, and a list of coups, several of which surprised me.

(Yes, I do need to post more than once weekly.  Thanks.  Almost done with the tax stuff.)

Because science is just an opinion…  (Sarcasm off.  Spitting commences.)

• Via The Raw Story, apparently there is a movie narrated by Kate Mulgrew with a "geocentric universe" viewpoint.  It's bankrolled by an ultra-conservative.  'Nuff said.  [ETA:  Kate Mulgrew responds (It's Facebook, and I can see it though I don't have an account. Basically, she says:

  I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused. Kate Mulgrew")

  It turns out she was not the only person whose voice was misused; the physicist Lawrence Krauss also has a line in the trailer.]
• No More Mister Nice Blog's Yastreblyansky gets to the point:

  The difference now, because of Obama (and I know he really hates this, but it's true), is that when we call racism people believe it, and they believe it because it can't be rationalized away. The elephant in the room could be a hallucination, but not the dump it just took on your rug.

• Cerberus at Sadly, No! on the rediscovery by conservatives that young people have sex.

  There’s still a lot of work to be done. There’s a number of religious communities (you know, the one’s that are more conservative) that try and demonize safe sex and thus have proliferation of STDs and massive increases in unwanted pregnancies. And there’s all the fallout from the disastrous Abstinence-only education where a bunch of fucks like you demonized condoms and told kids that never having sex was the only way to stay safe. Also all the ways you’ve tried to undermine contraceptive access and sex education at every turn. In fact, I’m having a hard time imagining anyone to be less credible right now giving a lecture on safe sex.

• Drugs.  (Booman Tribune.)
• What, no rock 'n' roll?

NAFTA:  The bad news.

(Remember I mentioned Welcome to Pottersville 2 almost three weeks ago?  Regular posting now.)

Via james davis nicoll on dreamwidth, Guitar Center's problems and why we should be alarmed.

Music, you see, is about about way more than just money – it is about a crazy, primal, uncontrollable passion. Most people who have dedicated their lives to music realize that it is an irrational thing – a little unhealthy but strangely fulfilling. The “industry” is actually a culture built by men and women who obsess over the rich sound of analog synthesizers; the warm thud of Leo Fender’s Precision bass; the sublime beauty of the sunburst on a vintage Les Paul; the roar of a Marshall amplifier; the silky vocals behind Neumann tube microphones. Note the prevalence of family names in these company names – the real industry was built on the artistic endeavors of individual geniuses who acted out of pure inspiration, not banks. Financial return represents but a small fraction of the motivation behind the involvement of the vast majority of people in the musical instrument business.

Yet for Bain Capital and Ares Capital, it is 100% of the reason for their involvement – and that is not good enough for the rest of civilization.

Eric Garland goes into considerably more detail about the financial chicanery involved here.  Basically, it's the same playbook used in the mortgage industry.  Presumably 2008 is not too far down the memory hole...