Do the rich deserve their wealth?

Very cool graphic from the Economist shows that the US joins Canada (?) and Australia in thinking its rich deserve their wealth.  Greece, Russia, Turkey and Spain - less happy. Read the rest of this post...

Rush Limbaugh flunked out of college after just two semesters

The more you know.

Limbaugh graduated from high school in 1969 and enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University. He dropped out after two semesters and one summer after "he flunked everything," his mother said. "He just didn't seem interested in anything except radio."

Read the rest of this post...

Video: Doberman and kitten play, absolutely adorable

And God bless em, they didn't add any stupid music to go with the video.  This is one of the cutest things I've ever seen.  (Okay, it might not look that cute from the preview image! LOL Seriously, watch this, it's wonderful.)

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Unions demand Change.org worker rights policy

Yesterday Ryan Grim broke a story in HuffPost Hill that a number of labor unions, including "AFT, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, CWA, IBEW and the Steelworkers," had written a letter to Change.org, asking the company to have a clear policy about not working with organizations who advocated union busting. This followed a pressure campaign lead by the American Federation of Teachers to have Change.org stop working with the union-busting organizations Students First and Stand for Children.

I've received a copy of the unions' letter to Change.org Founder and CEO Ben Rattray. Of note is the unions' strong demand for a clear policy from Change regarding their stand on workers' rights:

An unequivocal public statement from you articulating Change.org’s position on collective bargaining, and on workers’ rights more generally, would go a long way toward clarifying what your brand represents.

The letter goes on:

As you know, leaders from a variety of labor unions and organizations over the past year have attempted to address with you the concerns we raise here. They and we are seeking clarification on how Change.org meshes two compelling objectives: remaining an open platform and (simultaneously) honoring your stated commitment to the public good over private corporate benefit. On a number of occasions, staff from unions that have raised this question with you have been assured that they should not worry about this issue, that contracts violating the spirit of your expressed goals were ending, and that Change.org was engaged in internal discussions about whom you would and would not work with in the future. Nevertheless, it appears that Change.org is entering into new contracts with groups that are not respectful of the right to collectively bargain or the benefits that flow from that right.
...
Organizations that weaken workers’ rights and facilitate the privatization of public services undermine the common good for private corporate benefit. Experience has shown that when these services upon which the public depends are opened to corporate interests, considerations of equal access, fairness and quality become much less important than profitability. We ask that you issue a response clarifying your position so that we can use your platform again and in good conscience recommend it to our brothers and sisters in labor and in the wider progressive community.

Last night Grim quoted a spokesperson for Change.org as saying, "As we've noted, Change.org is undertaking a company-wide process to evaluate and clarify our client policy." They also said that Change plans on reaching out to "thousands" of "stakeholders" for their input into what their policy should be. Hopefully this process is prompt.

Clearly unions representing workers affected by anti-teacher campaigns taking place on Change.org are not yet mollified by the response from them. Change.org has good, clear policies relating to other issue areas. The big hole is regarding workers' rights.

The answer to this problem is fairly obvious from a progressive standpoint, but apparently less clear-cut from a business standpoint. It isn't exactly news that corporate-funded organizations who are hell-bent on busting unions have a lot of money to spend, including on tools and advertisers like Change. Change.org's decision to stop working with Students First and Stand for Children is one that was undoubtedly a costly one, at least in so far as these organizations have lots of money from the Koch Brothers and the Walton family and others to spend. A broad, blanket policy to not work with union busters would surely foreclose business opportunities for Change.

The flip side, as the union presidents say in the letter, is that labor wants to be able to recommend other labor unions and progressive organizations use Change.org. Doing the right thing from a progressive standpoint should make clear to other liberals that they are a business worth doing work with.

Though the letter doesn't explicitly threaten a boycott of Change.org by labor and their allies, the implication is that these unions are prepared to use economic pressure strategies if the company doesn't enact a strongly progressive policy towards This may well serve to light a fire behind the already ongoing process to evaluate Change.org's client policy.

For me, the answer is pretty simple. Just as Change.org refuses to work with clients who are anti-gay, anti-immigrant, or anti-woman, they should make clear that they will not work with clients who are anti-worker. Read the rest of this post...

Is Fox News now a liability for the GOP?

Since its launch in 1996, Fox News has provided the Republican party with an unrivaled propaganda machine. Fox News was the principal engine of the Republican echo chamber giving endless coverage to GOP smears and wing-nut conspiracy theories which the establishment media would then report as if they were credible. Without Fox News there would have been no Tea Party, no Swiftboat liars and no President George W. Bush.

Fox News is now the dominant force within the GOP. When Murdoch says jump, Republican politicians are forced to ask 'how high'. Practically the entire GOP base relies on Fox as their principal source for news. When David Frum observed that "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox,” he was fired from his position at the AEI two days later.

But even as Fox consolidates its grip on power within the GOP the Fox News echo chamber of old is broken. The establishment media no longer consider a story news because the Murdoch press is giving it saturation coverage. It now takes a Congressional committee investigation and a spurious contempt vote to gain the fleeting attention of the mainstream media.

The Fox News of old served as a conduit for GOP misinformation to the public at large. It is still a conduit for misinformation but now the GOP is on the receiving end. It is not just Romney who is out of touch with the real world, his entire campaign team has spent the past decade in the alternative universe of Fox News.

How else could Team Romney have built their campaign strategy on the assumption that Barack Obama does not know how to respond to smears and derisive insults? Romney has spent over a year and a hundred million dollars fighting against the Obama that only exists in the mind of Fox News viewers: The weak guy who would apologize and offer Romney a hug, not the real Obama who responded with the 'Firms' ad in less than 24 hours.

What people have been explaining as the 'bitch slap' theory of politics has turned out to be no more than intelligent people acting on false information.  They assumed that the smears and lies that work so well on Fox would work in a campaign. If Romney had really been following the bitch-slap theory he would have thought that demanding an apology gives the appearance of weakness. Instead Romney blinked and after months of attack ads that were transparently unfair, demanded an apology for an attack nobody else thought unfair.

There is no question that Fox News was a powerful asset for the GOP for its first ten years, it is hard to see it as any sort of benefit to the party today. Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: Romney campaign accuses Obama, on the record, of not being American

I guess that's one way to try to change the topic from your refusal to come clean on your tax returns, and on why you told the FEC one thing, and the SEC another, about your time at Bain, when it's a felony to lie to either.

We've been wondering for a few days what bombshell the Romney campaign would drop - what outrageous comment they could come up with - that could shift the media's attention away from Mitt Romney refusing to come clean on his taxes.  But this pandering to birtherism is a pretty good sign that the Romney campaign is desperate to change the story, at any cost. Read the rest of this post...

Romney outsourced US Olympic uniforms to Burmese dictatorship in 2002

Nice.  There was a controversy last week when it was discovered that the US Olympic Team had its uniforms made in China. Oddly, Mitt Romney refused to pile on. Now we know why. From HuffPo:

Torchbearers, too, were shocked to see the “Made in Burma (Myanmar)” label on their tracksuits. "When I looked at the label for the uniform, I went nuts,” said 2002 torchbearer Susan Bonfield in an interview with the Guardian. “When you are sending work representing the U.S. to a military dictatorship, I have an issue with that."

More than 10,000 runners wore the uniforms, which are pictured on the Daily Kos, while carrying the Olympic torch to the Winter Games.

Perhaps most embarrassing, after receiving emailed protests from more than 1,000 activists, the media relations department at the Salt Lake Organizing Committee confused Burma and Myanmar as two separate countries.

"The torch relay clothes were NOT made in Burma. They were manufactured in Myanmar," the organizing committee responded. "In fact they were made in the exact same factory that produces clothes for GAP, North Face and other major clothing labels."

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Pepper-spray cop John Pike still on payroll at UC Davis

Remember him?

UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike

Wow. From Conor Friedersdort at the Atlantic we learn that the UC Davis cop who pepper-sprayed the peacefully protesting students last fall, at point blank range while they were simply sitting down, is still on the university payroll.

Late Monday, I called UC Davis to follow up on the case. To my chagrin, though not to my surprise, Lt. Pike remains on paid leave. The internal affairs process is "a lot more inexorable than anyone realized at the time," a university spokesman told me. "I don't know when that's going to get resolved."

Think about that for a minute.

This incident happened 8 months ago! In five months time, two independent bodies managed to complete an exhaustive investigation into every aspect of the incident. Yet even after an additional three months, the internal affairs process - the investigation, the hearings, and perhaps the appeals - is still not completed for one single individual, whose actions are on videotape.

Nor is there any word about when they'll be complete.

Someone, whether it's the university or its police department, needs to explain why this review isn't over and why this man is still on the university payroll. Two independent studies had enough time to reach a conclusion, but the Mayberry cops at UC Davis couldn't?

This is why cops get a bad rap, at least in part.  When one of their own do something wrong, it sure seems to take hell and high water to get anything done about it - and I know that personally, from a lot of work I did in DC on these issues. Read the rest of this post...

New freaky laser will scan EVERYONE in airports from 164 feet away

I'm going to bring these to your attention without much comment for now, but will have more to say later. Needless to say, reading this should tell you we've entered a new phase.

First, from Gizmodo (via the excellent Steve Hynd, and The Agonist):

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it. ...

Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.

....it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people....

Back in 2008, a team at George Washington University developed a similar laser spectrometer using a different process. It could sense drug metabolites in urine in less than a second, trace amounts of explosive residue on a dollar bill, and even certain chemical changes happening in a plant leaf....

In other words, these portable, incredibly precise molecular-level scanning devices will be cascading lasers across your body as you walk from the bathroom to the soda machine at the airport and instantly reporting and storing a detailed breakdown of your person, in search of certain "molecular tags".

Read it all — I dare you.

You could (read: "will") be scanned for drug molecules on your person at the airport from 150 feet away. That's a game-changer in the invasive Spook Wars, I would think.

The small, inconspicuous machine is attached to a computer running a program that will show the information in real time, from trace amounts of cocaine on your dollar bills to gunpowder residue on your shoes. Forget trying to sneak a bottle of water past security—they will be able to tell what you had for breakfast in an instant while you're walking down the hallway.

And guess what? It's likely not even safe (again, the excellent Steve Hynd via Twitter):

How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA

A new model of the way the THz waves interact with DNA explains how the damage is done and why evidence has been so hard to gather

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes, paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. ...

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. ... Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.

It took the Vietnam War to mobilize the 60s generation, to personalize the risk beyond the theoretical, and create a revolution with critical mass.

Do not underestimate how important critical mass for the Counter-Culture that created modern American life. (And never forget, by the way, that every Hippie-hating Republican openly has sex with his girlfriend without public shame. Only the radicals and Beats did that in the 50s. You would think these Young Libertarians would at least say Thanks to the enemies they so eagerly emulate.)

Now the drug-moralizers have the ultimate weapon — long-range molecular scanners and a no-permission-needed fear atmosphere. It only starts at the airport. With this weapon on the streets of America, another generation will be at personal risk of jail on a tired cop's whim.

By my calculation (carry the two) 2013 is just around the corner.

Game-changer, say I — both ways.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius

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So Romney's campaign IS about Mormonism

The NYT reports that for prominent Mormons who are bankrolling Mitt Romney's campaign, their support of Romney is about his being a Mormon, and more generally, about helping promote Mormonism in America and across the world.

But this election isn't about Romney's Mormonism, really.

[R]ecords show that roughly two dozen members of Mormon families provided nearly $8 million of the financing for the “super PAC” working to elect Mr. Romney, Restore Our Future, putting them in league with its Wall Street, real estate and energy donors. Prominent Mormons including the JetBlue founder David G. Neeleman and the Credit Suisse chief executive Eric Varvel are on his finance team.

But several of these donors say that their giving has nothing to do with their business interests. And while that is a common refrain among major financial supporters of both parties, in this case the candidacy they are backing represents something bigger as it draws new attention to their religion.

“I think for Mormons, particularly for prominent ones who already feel widely accepted and admired individually, this feels like a chance to also see their church, which they love, accepted and admired institutionally,” said Richard Eyre, a Mormon and a best-selling author who lives in Utah and is a friend of the Romneys.

Bill Marriott, of Marriott fame, explains further about how this election is not about Mitt Romney's Mormonism.

But Bill Marriott, whose family built a single A&W Root Beer stand into one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, said it was not lost on him that Mr. Romney’s pending nomination is a major moment for his fellow Mormons.

“It is a great story, and we want the world to know about our religion,” said Mr. Marriott..."

We want the world to know about your religion too. Read the rest of this post...