Impressive Work, Perry
He really is dumber than Bush, isn’t he? Bush at least had the sense to surround himself with people who had a clue how to make plausible sounding bullshit statements.
January 17, 2012 8:13 pm
Tags: They hate us for our freedumb · Posted in: Election 2012
68 Comments
Fire Walker Chronicles: A Million Reasons To Say No
Democrats in Wisconsin needed about 540,000 signatures in 60 days to trigger a recall election for Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Today was the deadline, and they posted a seven figure number.
Democrats and organizers filed petitions Tuesday afternoon with more than a million signatures as they sought to force a recall election against Gov. Scott Walker – a massive number that seems to cement a historic recall election against him for later this year.It would mark the first such gubernatorial recall in state history and would be only the third gubernatorial recall election in U.S. history. Organizers Tuesday also handed in 845,000 signatures against Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch as well as petitions against four GOP state senators including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau.
The sheer number of signatures being filed against Walker – nearly as many as the total votes cast for the governor in November 2010 and almost twice as many as those needed to trigger a recall election – ensure the election will be held, said officials with the state Democratic Party and United Wisconsin, the group that launched the Walker recall.
“It is beyond legal challenge,” said Ryan Lawler, vice chairman of United Wisconsin.
On, Wisconsin! And that’s got to make the Kochs nervous, as they spent millions defending Walker only to see the recall effort succeed mightily…possibly because of their involvement.
This fight is just beginning.
January 17, 2012 5:50 pm
Posted in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Election 2012, Kochsuckers, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It
114 Comments
Well Yes. Nancy Pelosi Is Indeed The Bees Knees…
...for being able to uncork lines like these:
“This crowd that they have there, it’s not exactly what you would call the first string of the Republican Party,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said during an interview hosted by Politico. “I think that they can do better than that.” (h/t GOS)
Testify!
The once and future Speaker called the current field the “third tier,” which sounds about right, if perhaps a little generous. (I’m not sure they make it past low-A ball, myself, and for some, the ceiling might be the Cape Cod League.)
But what I really like is the way she can speak instantly recognizable truth whose sharp edges do or should twirl the intestines of our GOPster friends like spaghetti on Pavarotti’s tines:
“If the far right thought that Romney could win, they might be more enthusiastic about him,” she said. “But they question what he stands for, and they don’t think he’s going to win, so what’s the sell?”
Heh.
I do love me some fine Nancy Smash.
Image: Thomas Eakins, Baseball Players Practicing, 1875.
January 17, 2012 4:10 pm
Posted in: NANCY SMASH!, Republican Stupidity, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
131 Comments
Just a Common Man
If the Republicans were able to frenchify Kerry simply because his wife was loaded, the Democrats should be able to have all sorts of fun with this clown:
Under new pressure to release his tax returns, Mitt Romney on Tuesday acknowledged that he pays an effective tax rate of about 15 percent because so much of his fortune comes from past investments.“It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Mr. Romney said. “Because my last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, or rather than earned annual income.”
The vast majority of the income Mr. Romney reported over 12 months in 2010 and ‘11 was dividends from investments, capital gains on mutual funds and his post-retirement share of profits and investment returns from Bain Capital, the firm he once led. And Mr. Romney also noted that he made hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking engagements.
“I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away,” Mr. Romney told reporters after an event here. “And then I get speakers’ fees from time to time, but not very much.”
Financial disclosure forms that candidates are required to file annually shows that Mr. Romney earned $374,327.62 in speakers’ fees from February of 2010 to February of 2011, at an average of $41,592 per speech. President Obama paid an effective federal tax rate of just over 26 percent on his 2010 returns, the most recent available.
At the White House Tuesday, the president’s spokesman said Mr. Romney’s acknowledgement that he pays 15 percent reveals a basic unfairness in the tax code that Mr. Obama is concerned about.
“This only illuminates what he believes is an issue, which is that everybody who’s working hard ought to pay their fair share,” said the spokesman, Jay Carney. “That includes millionaires who might be paying an effective tax rate of 15 percent when folks making $50,000 or $75,000 or $100,000 a year are paying much more.”
The thing that kills me about Mittens is how little common sense he has. If he’d just released the damn tax statements, he’d get killed in the press for a few days, but they’d move on to something else. Someone would say Michelle has a fat ass or that Obama hangs out with terrorists and they’d be off in a new direction. Instead, he’s just dribbling this stuff out there, and the sharks smell blood and want more. And trying to downplay it with the old “oh those millions I’m making the past few years is just the shit I have left over from when I was working,” yeah, that’s some smart thinking and is going to resonate at the VFW. Especially after he told everyone he was “unemployed.”
January 17, 2012 3:31 pm
Posted in: Election 2012
173 Comments
Only the elites insult the working adults who pick up after us
I didn’t watch the debate. I did want to point something out, though, because I think it goes to how conservatives devalue the work that certain adults do:
“New York City pays their janitors an absurd amount of money because of the union. You could take one janitor and hire 30-some kids to work in the school for the price of one janitor, and those 30 kids would be a lot less likely to drop out. They would actually have money in their pocket. They’d learn to show up for work. They could do light janitorial duty. They could work in the cafeteria. They could work in the front office. They could work in the library. They’d be getting money, which is a good thing if you’re poor. Only the elites despise earning money.”
While it’s certainly interesting that opposing child labor laws is now a mainstream position on the Right and among conservative news personalities, I hear something else entirely in Gingrich’s statement than the pundits and politicians heard. Newt Gingrich told us all last night that nine year olds can replace the grown men and women who currently do these jobs. Newt Gingrich believes janitors and cafeteria workers and people who work in school libraries and offices can and should be replaced by children.
That’s how much respect Gingrich has for the work that these people do.
Third grader = adult working class person. The children are paid less per worker unit, hence it’s thirty kids to one adult, sure, but Gingrich believes children can do these job as well as the adults who currently do them, because that’s what he said.
Personally, I think any random janitor is worth more than Newt Gingrich in terms of adding value to society so I’d like to leave the nine year olds out of it and just do a straight comparison between adults: adult janitor compared with adult conservative blowhard/grifter. Personally, I would bet my mortgage payment that Newt Gingrich would be physically and temperamentally unable to complete one full 8 hour day as a school janitor. But Newt Gingrich believes that janitors are overpaid and that children can replace adult janitors, so let’s conduct one of those thought experiments that conservatives love so much, and see if any other adult workers can and should be replaced by children.
Could nine year olds replace the adults who cleaned up after that gathering of political and media luminaries last night? Working adults did that, after all. After the political and media celebrities left that room, real live adult janitors came in and cleaned up after them. Why didn’t Newt Gingrich suggest that the people who cleaned up after him last night be replaced by children?
What about Gingrich’s staff? How much do they make? Can children do their work as well as they can? Why or why not? Newt Gingrich has been paid an absurd amount of money for lobbying since he left Congress in disgrace. Could a nine year old replace Newt Gingrich? How hard could Newt Gingrich’s “job” be, after all? A lot of lavish meals, ass-kissing, and bloviating, right? We could employ a hell of a lot of nine year olds on the absurd amount of money Gingrich is paid.
Maybe we can discuss that at the next debate. Move off the value of janitors, as measured in so many “child units”, and measure the value of Republican gargoyles. How many nine year olds = Newt Gingrich? 100? One? Will the conservative base applaud that calculation? What about the people in the audience who cheered? Can a third grader replace them at work? Why or why not?
Hey Newt: only the elites like you denigrate and demean the work that (certain) adults do, by claiming that work can and should be done by children.
Oh, and if you’re interested, the working adults Gingrich wants to replace with children make 38,000 dollars a year. Much, much less than any of the conservative leaders on that stage, or the media celebrities who appeared with them.
The Department of Education said the people Gingrich appears to be talking about actually have the title of “cleaners,” and are paid about $38,000 annually after two years on the job.
January 17, 2012 2:36 pm
Posted in: Flash Mob of Hate
141 Comments
The Uses of the Past: Science/Science Writing Talk
Blogger’s note: The annual Science Online conference/unconference is going live this Thursday in scenic Research Triangle, NC. I’ve been going since the second meeting, way back in 2008 (I think…), and this year I will be moderating a couple of sessions. One of them is called “The Uses of the Past,” jointly led (or unled) by Eric Michael Johnson, who studies at the University of British Columbia while writing the excellent Primate Diaries blog at ScientificAmerican.com. What follows is the email exchange within which we discussed first thoughts about history, writing and research in anticipation of this session. Which is another way of saying: this is kind of off the main track of this blog—so keep on going if you want another one of those back-of-the-book bits I sometimes post, and pass by in silence if you prefer your snark undiluted.
_______________________________________________________________
I’ve always found that the best way to tackle a complicated story – in science or anything else, for that matter – is to think historically. But even if I’m right in seeing a historical approach as an essential tool for writers, that’s not obviously true, however well (or not) it may work for me. Science news is or ought to be new; science itself, some argue, is devoted to the task of relentlessly replacing older, less complete, sometimes simply wrong results with present-tense, more comprehensive, and right (or right-er) findings.
Thinking about this, I put together a panel on the Uses of the Past that was held at last year’s World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha, Qatar. The panelists – Deborah Blum, Jo Marchant, Reto Schneider and Holly Tucker led a discussion that was lively and very supportive of the history-is-useful position (not to mention valuable in itself). But the conversation was far from complete.
So we’re going to do it again, this time at Science Online 2012. (You can follow all the fun by tracking what will be in a few days a tsunami on Twitter, tagged as #scio12). This is an “unconference,” which means that I and my co-moderator, Eric Michael Johnson will each present what amounts to a prompt – really a goad – for the audience/participants to run away with. As Eric and I have discussed this session, one thing has stood out: where I’ve thought of the term “uses of the past” as a challenge to writers about science for the public, an opening into approaches that will make their work better, Eric has been thinking about the importance of historical thinking to the practice of science itself – what working scientists could gain from deeper engagement not just with the anecdotes of history, but with a historian’s habits of mind. So just to get everyone’s juices flowing, Eric and I thought we’d try to exchange some views. Think of this as a bloggy approach to that old form, the epistolary novel, in which we try to think about the ways in which engagement with the past may matter across fields right on the leading edge of the here and now.
So: if, dear reader, you’re intrigued thus far, read on. Read the rest of this post »
January 17, 2012 10:30 am
Posted in: Books, KULCHA!, Science and Technology
39 Comments
Call me, call me anytime
Today would be a great day to get on the phone and let your Senators know that they should think hard before they vote for SOPA/PIPA.
I would throw in a bunch of links to information about the bills, but I’m blogging fm the iPad and that is a pain in the ass. If people could post useful links in the comments that would be great.
Find your Congresscritter here.
Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Guide for first-timers here.
January 17, 2012 9:44 am
Posted in: Domestic Affairs, somebody should do something
28 Comments
Stupocalypse Now
Apparently Presidential campaign coverage needed a fresh injection of dumb:
Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users’ private status messages and comments. While that may alarm some people, Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts.
Rather, every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population.
In addition to the uselessness of this information, I have to laugh at the notion that privacy is insured because no Facebook employee is reading from the firehose of personal data being sent to Politico. That’s like your bank saying there’s no issue with sending your credit card info to the National Enquirer, because they’re not looking at it first.
January 17, 2012 8:48 am
Posted in: Our Failed Media Experiment
81 Comments
Do-Nothing Congress
Even the conservative Washington Times agrees (via OTB):
It’s official: Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills — fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947.Furthermore, an analysis by The Washington Times of the scope of such activities as time spent in debate, number of conference reports produced and votes taken on the House and Senate floors found that Congress set a record for legislative futility by accomplishing less in 2011 than any other year in history.
When you’re the worst in modern history, the campaign ads write themselves.
January 17, 2012 8:13 am
Posted in: Election 2012
52 Comments
Paint it Black
Wikipedia is shutting down all English language sites starting tomorrow at midnight DC time to protest SOPA and PIPA, the Senate version of the SOPA act. Though SOPA has been withdrawn, PIPA could still get a floor vote in the Senate on the 24th. And even though the DNS blacklist provision has been removed from both bills, there are still a number of ugly remnants, as explained by the EFF.
If you want a concrete example of why Wikipedia is reacting so forcefully to this legislation, which would essentially shut down a site if it hosted content that the rights holder asserted violated copyright, look at this picture I used in a post on Sunday. It’s a scan from a 1944 issue of Life Magazine that is still under copyright. As you can see if you follow the link, Wikipedia has an elaborate rationale explaining why the use of that picture is fair use, and those reasons sound compelling to me. If they weren’t compelling to Time/Warner, the copyright holder, Time/Warner could issue a DMCA takedown notice and Wikipedia would have to remove the offending content. As long as Wikipedia isn’t making money from the use of the copyrighted material, is unaware of the infringement, and responds to the takedown notice, they can’t be held liable for the infringement. In other words, sites like Wikipedia have “safe harbor” under current copyright law, but they face the threat of complete shutdown under the proposed new law, if they’re a foreign site. That’s what’s so radical about this change, and why it’s provoked this response by Wikipedia.
By the way, thanks to the 1998 extension of the length of copyright, Time/Warner will be able to have rights to that image until at least 2039. Copyright extension plus SOPA/PIPA shows how far we’ve come from the original purpose of copyright, which was to give authors rights over their creations during their lifetime to spur creativity.
January 17, 2012 7:12 am
Posted in: Science and Technology
32 Comments
Non-debate open thread
Blue loves catch only in so far as he can get a hold of the ball and burrow a comfortable bed in the snow with it. If you get close you hear a growl that sounds like it’s coming from somewhere underground. Not that it means anything; Blue is about the sweetest animal I have ever met, but it seems to work on Max. Once in a while, though, with persistence even a marshmallow like Max can win the day. Turn the audio down if you don’t like church bells.
The vid shows nicely how cloudy dusk light on snow gives my white balance fits.
January 16, 2012 11:30 pm
Posted in: Dog Blogging, Open Thread
43 Comments
Don’t believe the hope
A vaccine could help fight 90 percent of known cancers? Crazy talk. Everyone knows that vaccines cause psoriasis, phlegmatic imbalance and wanton thoughts. The notion that a vaccine could possibly reach one of the holy grails of modern biology would vindicate an idea that has circulated for years is just what they want you to think.
January 16, 2012 11:19 pm
Posted in: Science and Technology
53 Comments
Time for another Debate post…
Somehow, listening to the wingnut debate from the inmate state reminded me of this:
I’m listening on the radio and it sounds like there is a maximum concentration of asshole on the stage and in the audience. I don’t think the last ass whooping took. Where is Uncle Billy when you need him…
Perhaps it’s time for another Open Thread.
Cheers
January 16, 2012 10:17 pm
Posted in: Assholes, Election 2012
165 Comments
The full Somerby
I find it harder and harder not to sympathize with Robespierre these days (h/t commenter hitchhiker):
[T]he food on the plane is crucial. Like the army, the press travels on its stomach and in this regard, Gore was no match for Bush. Gore wanted the snacks to be environmentally and nutritionally correct, but somehow granola bars ended up giving way to Fruit Roll-Ups and the sandwiches came wrapped and looked long past their sell-by date. On a lucky day, someone would remember to buy supermarket doughnuts. By contrast, a typical day of food on Air Bush (going from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to Newark to East Brunswick to Austin) consisted of five meals with access to a sixth, if you count grazing at a cocktail buffet. Breakfast one was French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and fruit, followed by a midmorning breakfast of spinach and tomato omelets. Lunch one was grilled chicken and beef with mashed potatoes, and lunch two was mushrooms stuffed with crab, shrimp kebabs, and pizza. There were Dove Bars and designer water on demand . . . but lobster wasn’t what Al Gore lacked. It was a candidate comfortable with himself.
January 16, 2012 9:21 pm
Posted in: We Are All Baader-Meinhof Now
56 Comments
Open Thread: GOP Debate, Myrtle Beach
(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)
At this point, I guess Newt the Destroyer and across-the-field injuries is the most entertainment we can hope for. Fox News is responsible for this one, two full hours live (well, life-like) from the South Carolina vacation spot, starting at 9pm. Not gonna try livestreaming from Darth Ailes’ site, which keeps crashing my desktop, but fortunately Richard Adams and his fellows at the Guardian will be liveblogging:
... There’s two vital questions at stake in tonight’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina – well, three if you count “Another debate?” as a question. The first is: Can Mitt Romney be stopped from winning the GOP presidential nomination? And the second is: Which one of the remaining losers on stage tonight is going to stop him?
One hates to (as the British say) micturate on your french fries, but the answer to the first is “no” and to the second is “duh”.
Should Romney win the South Carolina primary next Saturday – and the latest polling suggests he will – then that effectively ends the GOP contest. The only way that story line is going to change is if Romney doesn’t win the South Carolina primary, and probably the only way that will happen is if he is figuratively disemboweled by his debate rivals, namely Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Rick Perry.
That’s why tonight’s debate – and the following debate on Thursday, also in South Carolina – are so important for the shrinking “anyone but Romney” segment of the Republican party….
***********
9.43pm: Asked why he hasn’t released his tax records, Mitt Romney basically says “I’ll do that when I’m the nominee”
.... and after the Board has signed the contract spelling out the details of Willard’s golden parachute, should he fail to achieve Leadership in his new postion…
***********
WIN:
Old Dan and Little Ann – January 16, 2012 | 10:19 pm
The Hope of the World needs MORE GUNS! – Shorter Willard
***********
LOL:
Brett Smiley at NYMag’s Daily Intel:
Responding to a question about gun rights in Fox News’ Republican debate, Mitt Romney feigned an interest in hunting. It was an uncomfortable moment. Romney said that he’s not a great hunter but he’s happy to go when he’s invited. Are you out there, Mr. Cheney?
***********
Richard Adams, again:
Oh, Fox News has a Twitter gadget showing if viewers liked or disliked candidate’s answers. Looks like everyone thinks Mitt Romney is an evasive charlatan. This probably makes him a more attractive candidate.
January 16, 2012 8:48 pm
Posted in: Election 2012, Open Thread, Republican Stupidity
195 Comments
