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The Ledes

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Washington Post: “As a cargo ship the size of a skyscraper drifted dangerously close to a major Baltimore bridge that carried more than 30,000 cars a day, the crew of the Dali issued an urgent 'mayday,' hoping to avert disaster Tuesday. First responders sprang into action, shutting down most traffic on the four-lane Francis Scott Key Bridge just before the 95,000 gross-ton vessel plowed into a bridge piling at about 1:30 a.m., causing multiple sections of the span to bow and snap in a harrowing scene captured on video.... Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) hailed those who carried out the quick work as 'heroes' and said they saved lives, but the scale of the destruction was catastrophic and will probably have far-reaching impacts for the economy and travel on the East Coast for months to come.” ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times' live updates are here. CNN's live updates are here. ~~~

     ~~~ A Washington Post liveblog of developments is here: “Six people [-- bridge construction workers --] were presumed dead Tuesday evening, authorities announced as they shifted from a search and rescue operation to a recovery effort.... The governor declared a state of emergency, and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) announced that the city has deployed its emergency operations plan. Vessel traffic into and out of the Port of Baltimore was 'suspended until further notice.'”

The Wires
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The Ledes

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

** Washington Post: “A major bridge in Baltimore collapsed after being hit by a freighter Tuesday. Rescuers were searching for as many as 20 people believed to be in the water near the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a fire official said, after a large part of the structure snapped and fell into the Patapsco River. The Baltimore City Fire Department described it as a 'mass casualty incident' early Tuesday.... Wind, frigid temperatures and murky waters made rescue conditions difficult, said Kevin Cartwright, the fire department’s communications director. No rescues were immediately confirmed. It was not clear how many people were on the bridge when it fell. A Singapore-flagged vessel, the 948-foot Dali, crashed into the Key Bridge about 1:30 a.m. Eastern time, said Matthew West, a Coast Guard petty officer first class in Baltimore. Coast Guard assets were on their way to the scene, he said.” This is a liveblog. ~~~

     ~~~ CNN's live updates are here. ~~~

Public Service Announcement

The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705

The Hollywood Reporter has the full list of 2024 Oscar winners here.

Ryan Gosling performs "I'm Just Ken" at the Academy Awards: ~~~

Marie: If you don't like birthing stories, don't watch this video. But I thought it was pretty sweet -- and funny:

If you like Larry David, you may find this interview enjoyable:


Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Allison Hope comments in a CNN opinion piece:

~~~ Here's Chapman singing "Fast Car" at the Oakland Coliseum in December 1988. ~~~

~~~ Here's the full 2024 Grammy winner's list, via CBS.

He Shot the Messenger. Washington Post: “The Messenger is shutting down immediately, the news site’s founder told employees in an email Wednesday, marking the abrupt demise of one of the stranger and more expensive recent experiments in digital media. In his email, Jimmy Finkelstein said he was 'personally devastated' to announce that he had failed in a last-ditch effort to raise more money for the site, saying that he had been fundraising as recently as the night before. Finkelstein said the site, which launched last year with outsize ambitions and a mammoth $50 million budget, would close 'effective immediately.' The New York Times first reported the site’s closure late Wednesday afternoon, appearing to catch many staffers off-guard, including editor in chief Dan Wakeford. As employees read the news story, the internal work chat service Slack erupted in what one employee called 'pandemonium.'... Minutes later, as staffers read Finkelstein’s email, its message was underscored as they were forcibly logged out of their Slack accounts. Former Messenger reporter Jim LaPorta posted on social media that employees would not receive health care or severance.”

Washington Post: “The last known location of 'Portrait of Fräulein Lieser' by world-renowned Austrian artist Gustav Klimt was in Vienna in the mid-1920s. The vivid painting featuring a young woman was listed as property of a 'Mrs Lieser' — believed to be Henriette Lieser, who was deported and killed by the Nazis. The only remaining record of the work was a black and white photograph from 1925, around the time it was last exhibited, which was kept in the archives of the Austrian National Library. Now, almost 100 years later, this painting by one of the world’s most famous modernist artists is on display and up for sale — having been rediscovered in what the auction house has hailed as a sensational find.... It is unclear which member of the Lieser family is depicted in the piece[.]”

CNN: “Jon Stewart is heading back to 'The Daily Show.' The comedian, who during his 16-year run as host of the Comedy Central program established it as an entertainment and cultural force, will return to host the show each week on Mondays starting February 12, Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios announced Wednesday. Stewart, who returns as the 2024 presidential election season heats up, will also executive produce the show and work with a rotating line-up of comedians who will helm the program the rest of the week, Tuesdays through Thursdays.”

~~~ Marie: I don't know if this podcast will update automatically, or if I have to do it manually. In any event, both you and I can find the latest update of the published episodes here. The episodes begin with ads, but you can fast-forward through them.

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Sunday
Oct052014

The Commentariat -- October 6, 2014

Internal links, defunct tweet & related text removed.

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd.

Evan McMurry of AlterNet, in Salon: "Since Edmund Burke conservatism has been the defense of the distressed elite disguised as populism. [Ayn] Rand was a perfect iteration of this. Born into wealth in St. Petersburg, she formed an early sense of disenfranchisement when her father's chemistry shop was seized by the Soviets and her family was plunked into the proletariat.... Burke had the Jacobins; Rand had the Democrats. The philosophy she forged was a counterattack on behalf of an aristocracy she thought threatened, first by Lenin, later by LBJ.... Almost seventy years after she first became involved in the American political process, Rand has finally made it into the halls of power. She has the extreme right wing to thank.... Paul Ryan (R-WI) ... has labored the hardest to legitimize Rand ... [in furtherance of] his strategy to preserve the conservative elite.... Thanks to the Supreme Court, it's also now a legal theory of corporate personhood that includes religious rights, showing just how far Rand's theory of wealth as morality has spread."

Economist Jeff Madrick in the New York Times: "Starting in the 1970s..., under the influence of free-market enthusiasts like Milton Friedman, economists urged further removal of barriers to trade and capital flows, hoping to turn the world into one highly efficient market, unobstructed by government. The results were often disastrous.... Every free-trade agreement should come with a plan to strengthen the social safety net, through job training, help for displaced workers, and longer-term and higher unemployment benefits. Free-trade deals must also be accompanied by policies to stimulate growth through infrastructure investments, subsidies for clean energy and, perhaps, other industries, as well as loans to small businesses, and even wage subsidies."

Paul Krugman: If Republicans take control of the Senate, they'll be able to "impose their will on the Congressional Budget Office, heretofore a nonpartisan referee on policy proposals. As a result, we may soon find ourselves in deep voodoo.... Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is dropping broad hints that after the election he and his colleagues will ... try to push the budget office into adopting 'dynamic scoring,' that is, assuming a big economic payoff from tax cuts."

MEANWHILE, Fred Hiatt -- Washington Post editorial-page editor & deficit-hawk extraordinaire, the same guy who saw fit to run an op-ed suggesting that Obama-hater & scary wingnut Allen West be appointed to run the Secret Service & "protect" the President & his family -- has written a column chastising President Obama for falsely declaring "victory over the deficit" because the deficit will rise again, beginning a few years after Obama leaves office. Hiatt is right about this, assuming the Congress does not make the tax structure more progressive, & especially if Republicans take charge & make the tax code even more regressive, as they are wont to do, god bless the "jobs-creators."

Cops as Capitalists. John Oliver follows up on a three-part Washington Post investigation titled "Stop & Seize." Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, which I linked here at time of publication. Thanks to Victoria D. for the link to the Oliver video:


Supremes Finally End Long Summer Vacation
. During which we learned that Ruth Ginsburg doesn't think Obama can appoint anybody as great as she is & Nino Scalia believes the framers wanted everybody to go to church. ...

... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday returns to work to face a rich and varied docket, including cases on First Amendment rights in the digital age, religious freedom behind bars and the status of Jerusalem.... In the coming weeks, the justices will most likely agree to decide whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, a question they ducked in 2013. They will also soon consider whether to hear a fresh and potent challenge to the Affordable Care Act, which barely survived its last encounter with the court in 2012." ...

... Ben Goad of the Hill lists five cases to watch. ...

... Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: The federal government filed a brief late Friday urging the Supremes not to get involved in the latest ObummerCare challenge until the full D.C. Appeals Court has reheard Halbig v. Burwell, a case in which the full court set aside a three-judge panel decision favoring the plaintiffs. ...

... Garrett Epps of the Atlantic, who can make the mundane exciting, on the case of Heien v. North Carolina, which is being argued before the Supreme Court today. The question: is there a "Barney Fife Loophole" to the 4th Amendment; that is, if an officer pulls over someone for what turns out not to be unlawful, can the "poisonous fruit" found as a result of that stop be used against the driver or vehicle occupants?North Carolina law requires only that a vehicle have one "stop lamp." The cop pulled the vehicle over because one of two brake lights didn't work. He'd been following the car because he thought the driver looked "suspicious." That is, the driver's name was Vasquez. ...

... ** UPDATE. Mark Sherman of the AP: "The Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions. The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in those states. Couples in six other states should be able to get married in short order." ...

     ... Adam Liptak: "The move was a major surprise and suggests that the justices are not going to intercede in the wave of decisions in favor of same-sex marriage at least until a federal appeals court upholds a state ban." ...

     ... CW: It takes only four justices to agree to hear a case; i.e., issue a writ of certiorari. This means that at least two, count'em two, of the conservative justices voted against hearing each of these cases. This makes me think Anthony Kennedy told his buddies he would decide against state gay marriage bans.

Driftglass reviews the Sunday shows. Ferinstance, "Peggy Noonan expressed her fluttery, merlot-glazed concern that something untoward may be happening to her friend's maid's health insurance." ...

... David of Crooks & Liars: Republican party chair Prince Rebus explains to Tuck Chodd that Republicans -- the deregulation party -- regulated most of Texas's abortion-providing clinics out of business because the party believes "women deserve compassion, respect, counselling." Also, taxpayer-funded abortions. (The clinics don't get "taxpayer funds" for providing abortions, but never mind.) Also ""Obamacare, jobs, the economy, Keystone pipeline." Yeah.

Sean McElwee in Salon on "Why the GOP hates U.S. history." Because, um, facts. Worth reading, if only for McElwee's inclusion of this astonishing citation:

Slavery Was Swell. No free workers enjoyed a comparable social security system from birth until death.... Masters ... encouraged the family unit which basically remained intact.... Slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many other ever tried to escape.... In summary, the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well. -- Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism, an actual book

... David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Miles O'Brien, the science correspondent for PBS Newshour, lamented on Sunday that he was embarrassed at some of the coverage of Ebola on Fox News that had a 'racial component,' and seemed intended to scare viewers." CW: "Racial component," you say? Oh, come now: "... Fox News host Andrea Tantaros ... had warned viewers that West Africans might come to the U.S. infected with Ebola, and then go to a 'witch doctor' instead of the hospital." Includes video. ...

... Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Sunday cast doubt on concerns that undocumented immigrants will cross the southern border into the United States with Ebola or that terrorists will use the disease as a weapon. Lawmakers, candidates and pundits have expressed concern that the disease will enter the U.S. either from immigrants or due to terrorism, prompting 'Fox News Sunday- host Chris Wallace to ask Fauci about potential threats." ...

... CW: I am pretty sure if you vote for members of the party of the African-American President, they will make sure you get Ebola & die. Oh, wait. It was the Republican-led House that cut hundreds of millions from the CDC & NIH budgets. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post (October 1): The CDC's "current budget, in fact, is nearly $600 million lower than it was in 2010" the year Republicans won the House.... And a memo the CDC released on sequestration highlighted a number of areas that would suffer with less funding. At the top of the list: 'Reduced ability to ensure global disease protection.'"

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Steve M.: "I'll save you the trouble of reading Mark Halperin's 2,228-word article [titled "The Truth about Jeb Bush's Presidential Ambitions"] addressing the question of whether Jeb Bush will really run for president in 2016: Um, Halperin's not sure.... Wow, thanks, Mark! I'll definitely keep returning to the new Bloomberg Politics site if it continues to deliver breaking news like this! ... Halperin's claiming insider knowledge when he hasn't even bothered to Google the relevant polls. But he's being exactly what you'd expect him to be: a cheerleader for the pre-Tea Party GOP establishment."

Senate Races

Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "The fight for control of the Senate is stable and tight, with Republicans maintaining the inside track to a majority in the latest round of data from the New York Times/CBS News/YouGov online panel of more than 100,000 respondents."

Extreme GOTV, Alaska Edition. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) is running "an expensive, sophisticated political field operation that reaches into tiny villages along rivers and in mountain ranges throughout the vast Last Frontier. The Begich ground game -- which the senator and his campaign detailed for the first time to The Washington Post -- is on a scale far beyond anything that has been tried here before."

News Ledes

Guardian: "Three neuroscientists, including a married couple from Norway, have won the 2014 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of the brain's internal GPS. Their work, which collectively spans four decades, revealed the existence of nerve cells that build up a map of the space around us and then track our progress as we move around." Norwegians May-Britt & Edvard Moser shared the prize with John O'Keefe, a U.S.-British citizen.

Guardian: "Warships from the rival Koreas exchanged warning shots after a North Korean ship briefly violated the disputed western sea boundary, the South has announced. The shots were fired into the sea and there were no reports of injuries or damage on either side, a defence official said."

Washington Post: "President Obama said Monday the U.S. government would increase passenger screenings in the United States and Africa to detect the Ebola virus, even as he resisted calls to impose a ban on those traveling from the three countries most affected by the outbreak."

Guardian: "A nurse in Spain has tested positive for the Ebola virus after treating a patient repatriated to Madrid from Sierra Leone, the country's health authorities said on Monday. The nurse is thought to be the first person to have contracted the virus outside west Africa."

Guardian: "... Hong Kong democracy protests ... dwindled [today] and exhaustion began to set in. Schools reopened and government employees returned to work - one or two wearing yellow ribbons, a symbol of support for the movement - as the number of demonstrators dropped to the hundreds. At its peak, the movement saw more than 100,000 people take to the streets of the city."

Reader Comments (15)

Bloomberg News has an unsettling interactive graphic re the WHO and HOW of voters will likely vote in the upcoming elections. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2014-who-votes-in-midterms/

Speaking of HOW, there's a trademark war going on about this little word. "If the Word ‘How’ Is Trademarked, Does This Headline Need a ™ ? Chobani and Dov Seidman Wrestle Over Use of ‘How’ Trademark

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/business/chobani-and-dov-seidman-wrestle-over-use-of-how-trademark.html

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterMAG

@MAG: I didn't read the NYT article in full, but generally speaking, you can't trademark a commonly-used word or phrase. That's why companies routinely misspell common words; the misspellings can be TM'ed; e. g., the "Infiniti." Fox "News"'s attempt to TM "fair & balanced" was laughed out of court (in an episode starring Al Franken).

So, no, you can't trademark "How" or even "How matters," IMO. This sounds like a bullshit lawsuit, brought to bring attention to whoever that guy is who brought it.

Marie

October 6, 2014 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

@Marie Let me echo the word of 'foul-mouthed' Joe Biden, "bullshit" is exactly my take on the HOW lawsuit.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterMAG

Six degrees of separation: reading the posts about the upcoming Supreme Court (possible) docket in the context of how horribly destructive said Court has been to individual rights of late put me in mind of a quote from a movie trailer some years back, "Be Afraid. Be very afraid." Googled and found it was from a 1986 non-classic, The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum. Which reminded me that John Oliver did a superb piece on Civil Forfeiture last night which culminated in a terrifically funny series of skits starring...Jeff Goldblum. Whew.
Here's a clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
Civil Forfeiture - in the hands of some police - is a cover for grand larceny it turns out. Wherein the perp is the cop.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterVictoria D.

With or without attribution (I don't remember) in my high school graduation speech I quoted Ayn Rand, something to the effect that we should all behave in the name of the best within us. I thought it a nice idea then and still do.

Within a few years, I better understood that the Randian impulse presented at great length in "Atlas Shrugged," which I had just devoured, especially taken I suspect by Dagny Taggart's randy behavior, was much better described as the worst within us.

Reading today's, indeed most day's, RC summaries of what Republicans are up to only confirms that opinion. Let's see: economic policies that codify greed and selfishness, any number of ideological excuses for an aggressive absence of compassion, arrant racism, and a constricted worldview that excludes any possible lessons that might be learned by consulting fact or experience (like the many times proven non-existent link between low taxes and economic health).

Nothing new in the list of behaviors, I know.

But the grim polling news makes me wonder once again if appealing to the worst within us might be the surest perennial path to power.

It's clearly the one enthusiastically embraced by Republicans, and it appears they may win.

Despite the wonderful weather here, a Monday morning tinged blue.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

I caught a bit of one of the Sunday shows by accident. I wasn't turned immediately into stone because it wasn't Upchuck Todd and his band of gorgons.

But it wasn't much better. Over on CBS, Bob Schieffer was entertaining the possibility that, no matter what the experts say, ebola will kill us all even before those slimy ISIS murderers hiding under the bed can slit our throats.

But first he needed a target, the point of the view of those untrustworthy scientists and experts who have all conspired to keep the truth from us, which is that Obama is using his undercover operatives in Africa to send ebola-stricken victims to the US to kill off his enemies.

So we hear from Anthony Fauci. Not a guy off the street, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, has been batting back a flurry of idiotic curveballs thrown his way by right-wing loons.

On Fox, Fauci, taking the sort of tone you take with the senile or the very young, patiently explained to Chris Wallace that, no one is trying to sneak ebola over the Mexican border (what a brilliant move by Wallace--he gets a fear mongering three-fer by invoking murderous terrorists, sneaky Mexican immigrants, and a deadly virus that will kill all real Americans, leaving only Democrats alive to gleefully pick through the rubble) because, as a bioterror tool, ebola is highly inefficient, needing direct physical contact with infected bodily fluids to spread.

On CBS, he was presented with the "concerns" of Very Important People like Bobby Jindal who wants to close off the country and have everyone board up their houses and not come out for three years, and from Li'l Randy who wants everyone to start worrying about how long we'll all last once "thousands of infected soldiers" start returning from Africa. Also, Bob was worried that a whole roomful of people could be infected instantly if an ebola patient sneezed.

Fucking hell, why not worry about Martians pouring gallons of ebola into our water supplies?

"First of all" he began, clearly exasperated, "that person would have to sneeze directly into your face." And then ejected fluids would have to get into your mouth, or nose, or eyes. "How often" he asked, Worrying Bob, trying mightily to stifle the snark, "does someone sneeze right into your face?"

Then he went through, once more, the protection protocols put in place to keep health workers safe. Finally, in response to the bullshit being put forward by Republican bedwetters, he declared that all that bullshit about hordes of infected troop ships landing on our borders and closing the country off from international travel is patent nonsense.

His actual words, he being a gentleman, were that such thinking was not legitimate.

Schieffer hustled the expert off the set as quickly as possible to get back to good old fear mongering, supplied, gratefully, by Kevin McCarthy, the new House Majority Leader who, having just heard one of the world's experts on the subject, went on to dismiss him out of hand and to back up the bullshit of his wingnut brethren because "we don't know what we're dealing with" and "you can't be too careful".

Or too afraid.

A guy who has spent the better part of his life studying things like ebola says this is nowhere near as frightening as the Party of Stupid wants it to be, but a leader of that party then comes on and advocates for more, and increased, stupidity.

These people are way beyond irresponsible. This is some criminal shit. And to top it off, we now have other Republican Imbeciles demanding that people with ebola be taken out and shot. Seriously.

Criminal. That's what it is. And the media is helping them. Not once did Schieffer say anything like "But isn't this all a bunch of bullshit?" No. What he did, and what they all do, is to ask non-expert, professional fear mongers what they think about a deadly virus. WTF did you think they were going to say, Bob? "We've got it under control?" "Don't worry?" It's like asking Karl Rove what he thought of Nate Silver's predictions during the last presidential rodeo, which made him look a fool and caused a memorable meltdown live on Faux TV.

(Hint, it would be like the idiot reporter who once asked legendary Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda his opinion on the performance of Dave Kingman, who had mercilessly battered Dodger pitching that night. The point is, questions like these are stupid. If you don't know what the guy is going to say, then you haven't been paying attention.)

Can you imagine Edward R. Murrow, or Walter Cronkite setting aside time for liars to lie and idiots to spread idiocy, unchecked?

P.S. When you think about it, not a single one of these assholes is offering a plan. Saying "close the borders" and "kill all ebola patients" are not serious plans. They're not any kind of plans. The only thing they're doing is spreading fear and anxiety, the better to try to blame the president for an outbreak on the other side of the world. No mention is made that the only state it was missed in was run by another Republican anti-science fear monger.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@Akhilleus. Thanks for the Lasorda clip. "Jesus Christ," that was one "fuckin'" answer. "Shit!"

Marie

October 6, 2014 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

@Ken Winkes. Yeah, we don't know everything when we're 18. I've been thinking about silly schoolbooks a lot in recent years, especially because I went to grade- and high-school at a time & place when & where our history textbooks were "patriotic glosses" of actual American history. I recall that I was not dumb enough to believe that the Civil War was about states' rights & not about slavery. But I also recall that I was dumb enough to believe that the U.S. "had never started a war," another premise of our fine, scholarly, assigned reading material. Mr. Koos, my 11th-grade history teacher, informed us that was bullshit, though he used some more appropriate terminology. And I argued with him. I just couldn't believe all those books we'd been reading were full of lies.

Then I went to college & found out Mr. Koos was right.

The trouble is, a lot of kids don't get to hear a second opinion, much less factual accounts. If they remember any of what they learned in high school, they remember a fluff of nostalgic, "exceptional" claptrap.

I'm mighty impressed with the Colorado high-school students who stood up to the school board that wanted to bowdlerize their textbooks; I don't know that I would have understood what the board was up to.

Although some of history is about naturally-occurring events & responses to them, most of history is about aggression & oppression. And it isn't always the other guy who's done the agressing & oppressing.

Somewhere in those history lessons -- and as I understand it, this is what the AP courses are attempting to do -- must be a few lessons on analyzing what happened & why, & assigning responsibility. If kids can't learn to figure out who's mostly right & who's mostly wrong with 20-20 hindsight, we can't be surprised that they grow up not knowing how to analyze current events.

Marie

October 6, 2014 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Ken and Marie,

Back in high school, many of us sold our textbooks, a kind of textbook black market, to members of the next class if the same textbooks were being used. Mostly they were.

At the end of my junior year, my history textbook was hotly pursued on the school's black market, mostly because it had gotten out that I had peppered the thing with commentary, especially, word balloons that suggested a, shall we say, alternate history. I thought I was going to make a killing, but the principal's office caught wind of my editorial tendencies and the book was confiscated. I don't think they minded my humorous prodding and poking of the received wisdom as much as they cast a jaundiced eye at my challenging, even in such a silly fashion, their authority to teach us what they thought we should know, not what we might want to know.

I don't think it was conspiratorial--the nuns weren't nearly that organized, at least along those lines--certainly not nearly as conspiratorial as things are now in some parts of the country, but I do think they saw education as a one way street. They spoke, we listened, and regurgitated. A few teachers were more enlightened and encouraged debate in class, but they were the outsiders.

My humorous annotations in that book were done both to amuse myself and to give a kick to what I saw as a somewhat, as Marie puts it, glossy affair full of American Exceptionalism. This was, after all, 1971. The idea of questioning authority had begun seeping down to the high school level. And it's not as if I had all the answers, but I was feeling like we weren't getting the whole story, especially considering what was going on out in the streets in the early 70's. One side said one thing, other sides said different things. They couldn't all be right, could they? After all, our history textbooks promoted heroes and villains. Could there be some truth in all those experiences? And wouldn't it be a good thing to consider them all in turn and in context?

I probably wouldn't have put it quite like that in 1971, but I think the kids in Colorado are sensing something similar to what some of us felt way back when. They don't want to waste their time with bullshit fed to them by wingnut history mills designed to curtail curiosity and churn out obedient little Teabag Patriots.

Good luck to them. And if, eventually, they have those wingnut textbooks forced on them, I'll be happy to send them all a fine line sharpie with which to annotate each page of parroted patriotic pablum.

Maybe they'll make a killing.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

We've noted in the past the trouble conservatives have with rock and roll and with comedy. We'll leave aside their troubles with the economy, war and peace, education, governance, facts, common sense, and truth.

I've been sent a link to that hye-LAR-ious teabag card, Dana Loesch, who, last I heard, was pushing the story of an "eyewitness" named "Josie" who wasn't actually there at the time a cop in Ferguson shot and killed a young black kid for WWB, but knew every sordid white supremacist detail.

This amazing account seemed to line up perfectly with the wishful thinking being spun by the right, ie, Michael Brown (horrible, gigantic, scary nee-groe, whose little fingera are deadly weapons) attacked nice, white, right-as-rain,polite Officer Wilson (did we say he was white, too?) who, fearing for his life was forced to shoot Brown 124 times. The last 122 shots occurring after Brown was dead. Hey, you can never tell with those blah people. Don't they practice voodoo?

Anyway, after that comedy coup, it appears Dana has decided to let us all in on the laugh-riot that is feminism. Her latest outrage? Some women took issue with a recent Jeopardy show that asked "what women want" (little black dress? new vacuum cleaner? better nail polish?).

But I don't want to steal her thunder. Here she has her own Jeopardy! show with too-funny categories like "Rape or "Rape'" (get it?), "Islam or Hobby Lobby" (because there are only two sides to any issue: the wingnut way and the way, way, wrong way), and "Fat or "full-bodied'"

She even does a nudge-nudge, wink-wink at the fact that all the contestants on her "feminist" Jeopardy! are men. Because isn't that just too, too funny? Those feminists, they just can't take a joke!

But better put a phone book on your lap. This is a knee slapper to beat all, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for any collateral damage. Especially for all you women folk out there who don't get out that often.

And if you don't think it's funny, just remember, it's being promoted by funnyman Glenn Beck!

Laugh? I thought I'd die.

Dana sticks it to those pain in the ass feminists.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

And speaking of funny wingnuts, I noticed on yesterday's RC that Don Young (R-Douchebag), red-blooded he-man grizzly bear rassler from Alaska, will kill anyone who touches him, he being a stone-cold trained military killer from way back.

Doesn't this constitute a kind of confession to the crime of murder? So who exactly did he kill for the capital crime of touching his royal person? Is there a body buried in the tundra somewhere or secreted under the floorboards of the Republican coat room in the capital? And if not, is he just a lying sack of teabag shit?

Maybe he's both!

That Republican Party, they sure do Americans proud, doncha think? I am 1000% positive this is the kind of guy the founders hoped would come along one day.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

We are well and truly cooked. We're done. Fini. Kaput. Todd Kincannon cinched it for me.

As to the court? I take no comfort with marriage equality. They're just makin' nice so they can point to their 'balanced' opinions when they reverse Roe and kill ACA.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterHaley Simon

Peculiar
Michael Bloomberg receives an honorary knighthood
"The 72-year-old was knighted in honour of his "prodigious entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavours...".

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29508785

American and knighthood go together- how? <scratching head>
If his philanthropy benefited Brits, doesn't that tarnish his US
citizenship?
Or maybe he is feathering his British nest as he sees this country sliding away.
mae finch

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered Commentermae finch

"Ruth Ginsburg doesn't think Obama can appoint anybody as great as she is...." Her remarks created quie a bit of snark, even from me. But she was right, of course.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

Let see, America is seriously concerned about a disease that has killed more than three thousand people in Africa but somehow manages to ignore the fact that more than 700,000 Americans are infected every year in our hospitals and about 1 in 10 are killed. Yes we have a lot to worry about but it is not Ebola.
and BTW, the major cause of those deaths is the fact that we live in a world that promotes the lives of bacteria, not people. By giving antibiotics to animals we help bacteria to survive. And my best memory on the subject was that I wrote a chapter in a medical school textbook that included a note that evidence was appearing that the animal antibiotic world might seriously endanger humans.
The book was published in 1974.

October 6, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterMarvin Schwalb
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