B12 Solipsism

Trent Franks belongs in another century, like the 12th CE, somewhere where we don’t have to listen to his ridiculous racist assertions.

Rep. Trent Franks (R) of Arizona has long been one of Congress’s most embarrassing members. But this week, the right-wing lawmaker may have reached a new depth.

Franks was speaking with blogger Mike Stark about civility and the public discourse. Unprompted, the congressman started reflecting on the African-American community, and his belief that African Americans may have been better off under slavery than in a legal system that allows legal abortions.

“[I]n this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say ‘How brave were they? What was the matter with them? You know, I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.’ And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul.

“And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

Franks added that he can sometimes say things that are “intemperate,” but added, “I don’t want to hide from the truth.”

[Click to continue reading The Washington Monthly]

Yeah, well, Congressman, your facts are erroneous, and you are a embarrassment to your party, and state, and country. Wonder what the racial composition of Arizona’s second district is? Seems like there would be some black voters in Phoenix suburbs, no?

Salon reports:

Discussing civility and outrageous language, Franks wandered into a tangent in which he wound up declaring that “far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.” Where, exactly, did he get that idea? Because, as he also explained, “half of all black children are aborted.” (The Centers for Disease Control, which compiles abortion statistics, actually estimates that 33 percent of pregnancies end in abortion for black women.)

Abortion-rights opponents like to compare abortion and slavery; the Dred Scott vs. Sandford case is often seen on the right as the 19th century equivalent of Roe v. Wade. Still, the comments caught the attention of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“To compare the horrors and inhumane treatment of millions of African Americans during slavery as a better way of life for African Americans today is beyond repulsive,” said Stephanie Young, a DCCC spokeswoman. “In 2010, during the 2nd year of our first African American president, it is astonishing that a thought such as this would come to mind, let alone be shared. The next time Congressman Franks wants to make assumptions about what policies are ‘best’ for the African American community, he should keep them to himself.”

[Click to continue reading GOP's Trent Franks: Abortion worse than slavery for blacks - War Room - Salon.com]

I’ve been laughing at this for hours. Some stupid Republicans, with their lack of clear thinking, cost themselves a spot on a Republican central committee. Apparently, jumping parties in a primary is actually illegal in Ohio, but its one of those laws that are difficult to prosecute.

Remember way back in 2008, during the big primary, when Rush Limbaugh was telling Republican voters in Ohio and Texas to switch to a Democratic registration just so they could vote for Hillary and screw up the primary? People listened and obeyed, and now it looks like it could be coming back to haunt them:

Victoria Robertson has been an avowed Republican for decades, working tirelessly for conservative candidates and causes.

That is until a typo by a pollworker changed her party affiliation, elections officials say. Now she can’t even run for re-election to the GOP central committee.

“You’re a Democrat as we speak until the primary, and that cannot be changed until you get the right box checked,” Butler County Board of Elections Chairman Tom Ellis told her at a board meeting Wednesday, Feb. 24 — the deadline to certify the May primary ballot.

…Robertson was one of seven candidates for Republican central committee who were disqualified for pulling Democratic ballots in the 2008 primary. She was the only one to contest it, officials said.

Now let me pretend I am a lawyer making some closing arguments. In these closing arguments I want to present all the facts again. Here they are in nice bullet point form:

• Butler County, Ohio has a population of 332,000
• Butler County is a very red county, voting for McCain over Obama in 2008 by 61%-38%
• In 2008 Butler County made national attention when people proudly proclaimed their obedience to Rush stating that they did exactly what he asked for.
• In 2010, the next election cycle, 7 Republicans have been disqualified from running for voting Democratic in the 2008 primary
• In 2010 0 Democrats have had this problem.

.
Coincidence? Sure, it could be, and unicorns could also roam the earth.

[Click to continue reading This Is What Happens When You Listen To Limbaugh | Crooks and Liars]

As Nelson Muntz might say, Ha! Ha!

Some additional reading January 28th from 18:37 to 21:45:

• Hands-on with the Apple iPad – it does make sense :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko – The display is gorgeous — crisp, with strong color but lots of subtlety. A pro photographer friend with a best-selling photobook series told me he thought it was good enough to use as a commercial presentation portfolio
• iPad About « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry – I have always thought Hans Christian Andersen should have written a companion piece to the Emperor’s New Clothes, in which everyone points at the Emperor shouting, in a Nelson from the Simpson’s voice, “Ha ha! He’s naked.” And then a lone child pipes up, ‘No. He’s actually wearing a really fine suit of clothes.” And they all clap hands to their foreheads as they realise they have been duped into something worse than the confidence trick, they have fallen for what E. M. Forster called the lack of confidence trick. How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”. I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire.
• Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – Justice Alito's conduct and the Court's credibility – There's a reason that Supreme Court Justices — along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff — never applaud or otherwise express any reaction at a State of the Union address. It's vital — both as a matter of perception and reality — that those institutions remain apolitical, separate and detached from partisan wars. The Court's pronouncements on (and resolutions of) the most inflammatory and passionate political disputes retain legitimacy only if they possess a credible claim to being objectively grounded in law and the Constitution, not political considerations. The Court's credibility in this regard has — justifiably — declined substantially over the past decade, beginning with Bush v. Gore (where 5 conservative Justices issued a ruling ensuring the election of a Republican President), followed by countless 5-4 decisions in which conservative Justices rule in a way that promotes GOP political beliefs, while the more "liberal" Justices do to the reverse

Yet another Republican family values freaky-deac(on).

One of Ensign’s roommates, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was described by Hampton as being particularly vocal about the importance of cash contributions to “make these folks whole.” Coburn denies this, although he won’t say exactly what advice he gave to his erring colleague. Coburn told Roll Call that he talked to Ensign as a “physician and as an ordained deacon” and that he will therefore have the right to keep mum even if he’s dragged into court or a Senate committee hearing.

This makes me sort of hope that some kind of investigation takes place just so Coburn, who’s an obstetrician, can explain how exactly doctor-patient confidentiality figures into this.

…

We hardly need to point out that Ensign was one of the people who demanded that President Bill Clinton resign over the Lewinsky affair, that he votes against financing for education and contraception services to combat teenage pregnancy and that he supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In the world of politics, hypocrisy is a hard market to corner, but lately the Republicans have been making a Microsoft-like effort to do it.

Both of the Hamptons lost their jobs, and Doug was shuttled off to a Las Vegas-based airline, run by a friend of Ensign’s, where he is now vice president of government affairs. Unappeased, he hired a lawyer to demand that Ensign make financial amends for “evil and completely unjustifiable acts by one of our country’s top leaders.” He also tried to leak the story of the affair to Fox News, apparently under the theory that out of all the media, Fox would be most excited by the opportunity to humiliate a powerful conservative Republican senator.

[Click to continue reading Gail Collins - What Happened in Vegas - NYTimes.com]

Also, the payoff was a very precise number of dollars: $96,000, or as The Washington Monthly puts it:

$96,000 is a lot of money. Interestingly, it is precisely the amount you can give as a gift without having to report it to the IRS, multiplied by eight: one gift of $12,000 from each parent to Ensign’s lover, her husband, and two of their children. I wonder what the IRS will make of that? I certainly hope that neither of the parents has made use of their children’s money, or done anything else to suggest that this was all one big gift split up to avoid paying gift tax, or (more likely) having to report the gift. It’s bad enough asking your parents to cough up $96,000 to cover up your indiscretions; asking them to violate the tax code and risk prison is a whole lot worse.

[Click to continue reading: The Washington Monthly - O, What A Tangled Web We Weave]

Strange concept that, neatly avoiding investigation by the IRS by having your parents pay off your mistress, and her family. Hope there wasn’t any money laundering going on.

A few interesting links collected July 6th through July 7th:

• Sarah Palin Speaks to ABC News – ABC News – Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the “department of law” would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

  “I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out,” she said.

  There is no “Department of Law” at the White House.

• 

• Where in the World Are the Federal Trade Commissioners? | Mother Jones – Since President George W. Bush appointed Kovacic to a Republican slot in 2006, he has averaged nearly 100 days of foreign travel a year. So far in 2009, he has been abroad for more than 60 days. (He spent the end of June in Taiwan, Rome, and London, and celebrated July 4th in China at a conference on competition law.)

  All this jetting about appears somewhat out of sync with the commission’s largely domestic role. The FTC’s wide-ranging mandate includes everything from enforcing used car sales regulations to ensuring that clothing manufacturers properly instruct consumers whether or not to put their shirts in the dryer. It runs the “do not call” registry to keep telemarketers at bay and cracks down on bogus weight loss cures. The agency also shares responsibility with the Justice Department for overseeing mergers and acquisitions of big companies and enforcing antitrust laws.

• 

• Retro Comedy: The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time – “What do murder, pedophilia, suicide and a baby tiger have in common? They have all been used to sell stuff in these amazingly disturbing vintage ads!

  These are real, untouched advertisements from the good old days. It doesn’t matter if it’s lovely ladies or adorable clowns, somehow these old-time ad wizards found ways to traumatize us while pedaling everyday products.”

  Some of these I’ve seen before, but some were new-to-me

A few interesting links collected June 23rd through June 24th:

• Governor Sanford’s Disturbingly Adult E-Mails – "As naughty erotic missives go, Mark Sanford’s exchanges with “Maria” read like what your passionless 11th grade English teacher wrote in his half-completed novel. At some point, the lovers have an hours-long coffee where they talk about Thoreau while it rains outside. "

  including:
  "I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details"

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews – "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

  The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots, Deceptibots and Otherbots is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.

• Daley's Nephew Brings More Questions of Clout – Chicagoist – "The city pays the most per square foot for a branch library in Chinatown — more even than it pays for downtown office space.
  The city has three leases with landlords who are clients of the insurance brokerage run by the mayor's brother, Cook County Commissioner John Daley.
  Two of the city's landlords have hired the law firm of Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) — in one case to win a cut in their real estate taxes on property leased to the city."

A few interesting links collected April 9th through April 12th:

• Technic News » Can the Statusphere Save Journalism? – Recently, I enjoyed a refreshing and invigorating dinner with Walt Mossberg. While we casually discussed our most current endeavors and experiences, the discussion shifted to deep conversation about the future of journalism in the era of socialized media with one simple question, “are newspapers worth saving?”

  photo by swanksalot

• Gapers Block : Mechanics : Chicago Politics – The Erosion of Daley and the Coward Defense – The excuse we always hear (off the record of course) from Aldermen, community groups, think tanks, and the rest, is that taking on the Mayor is just too darn scary. He’s too powerful. But what makes him powerful, like all bullies, is the constant refusal of anybody to stand up to him. And of course, it isn’t fear: its convenience. That whole “…but he’s our sonofabitch” mentality. We saw how well that worked with Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein.
• Washington Post Reporter Says It’s Not His Job to Check the Accuracy of People He’s Quoting – talk about stenography to the powerful. Why would anyone read the Washington Post with this sort of attitude towards politicians? Can just read press releases at the Senator’s website for all the good Paul Kane does.

  Pathetic. and this quote makes me laugh, perhaps not in the way Mr. Kane intends:
  Someone tell Media Matters to get over themselves and their overblown ego of righteousness.

A few interesting links collected March 28th through March 29th:

• The Washington Independent » After the Laughter, Grim GOP Numbers – While reporters hooted at the comically simplistic charts and lack of details in the House Republican leadership’s budget plan, the green eyeshade types at Citizen’s for Tax Justice crunched the numbers (PDF). They conclude that a quarter of all households, most of them poor, would pay more taxes under the GOP plan, while the richest one percent would pay $100,000 less.

• 

• TidBITS Media Creation: iMovie ‘09 8.0.1 Update Brings More than Just Bug Fixes – “I understand that Apple isn’t creating its products for writers, and it can (and does) change features whenever it wants. The updates here are great for iMovie users. But since the development teams must keep internal lists of what’s changed anyway, is it really so hard to spend an hour and turn those into useful release notes?”

  Amen to that. Maybe make a preference toggled in Software Update: terse details as the default, but have the ability to set a preference and get more detailed release notes. Please Apple, it shouldn’t be so difficult to say what’s new.

• 

• Mady Comfort – Biography – Mady (or Mattie) Comfort was a jazz and lounge singer, dancer, and model. She was married to bassist Joe Comfort, who worked with Lionel Hampton and Nat King Cole, and who played on many of the Frank Sinatra/Nelson Riddle Capitol recordings. Gene Santoro, in his biography of Charlie Mingus (Myself When I Am Real), says that she was also a girlfriend of Duke Ellington, and that she is the “Satin Doll” about whom Ellington, Strayhorn, and Mercer wrote the song “Satin Doll.”

  Also sang the hell out of a Nat King Cole song, I’d Rather Have The Blues (aka Blues From A Kiss Me Deadly) in the 1956 noir film, “Kiss Me Deadly”“. Whoa.

A few interesting links collected January 29th through January 30th:

• Zero – "I would imagine the crude calculus is something like this. In 1993-94 the GOP minority relentlessly sought to obstruct a new president’s legislative agenda and were rewarded with a big electoral win in 1994. In 2001-2002 the Democratic minority relentlessly sought to compromise with a new president’s legislative agenda and were rewarded with a big electoral defeat in 2002. Simplistic lesson is that there’s no upside to cooperation.

  The lesson I would hope the administration learns here is this: He needs to spend less time seeking political cover to mitigate the downside to possible policy failure, and more time trying to implement the best policies he can."

• The Fifty Most Loathsome People of 2008 – "After promising that he was “not going to go to…the Republican convention, and spend my time attacking Barack Obama,” Lieberman went to the Republican convention and attacked Barack Obama. But that was just the beginning of his descent into a self-dug hole of betrayal that should have proved inescapable. Lieberman thought it was “a good question” to ask if Obama was a Marxist. He campaigned not just with McCain, but with Palin and down-ticket Republicans, another thing he said he wouldn’t do. But the most loathsome trait Lieberman exhibits is that most loathsome of all: Smearing dissent as treasonous."

A few interesting links collected January 25th through January 26th:

• How to Replace a Sky in Photoshop – “Got an image that is great, except for that lifeless dull sky? Learn how to replace the sky in an image using Photoshop in this tutorial.”
• Op-Ed Columnist – Will Obama Save Liberalism? – NYTimes.com – “This is William Kristol’s last column.” Awesome news.

• 

• Blog-Sothoth: netflixed What Times Is It There – Sounds awesome. Added to my Netflix queue.”What Time is it There? is a quiet masterpiece–and literally quiet, because there is about ten minutes of dialogue in a two-hour film. If you need traditional plot in your flicks, avoid this one like the plague. It moves like an ethereal dream.”
• Media Matters – Goldberg publishes badly doctored version of Rose/Brokaw interview as purported evidence of Brokaw’s bias – Bernie Goldberg is just a hack, talentless, bitter hack. “In another house-of-cards example of purported media infatuation with President Obama offered by Bernard Goldberg in his new book, Goldberg echoes Rush Limbaugh by printing badly doctored “snippets” of an interview between Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw. Goldberg’s doctored transcript of the interview falsely suggests, among other things, that Brokaw expressed the view that “there’s a lot about [Obama] we don’t know,” when, in fact, Brokaw attributed that assertion to “conservative commentators” and that comments Brokaw and Rose made about their lack of familiarity with the candidates applied only to Obama when, in fact, they were referring to Sen. John McCain as well.”