Because it's National Grammar Day.
I'm not observing it because both my grammars are deceased.
Not Good Representatives For Their Cause
It seems to me that if you are registered lobbyist for an organization that hopes to end domestic violence, it's probably a bad idea to kill your husband.
Also, if you are a state senator — a married man with children — and you vote against every gay rights measure that comes before you (including SSM), it's probably not a good idea to get arrested for DUI after leaving a gay nightclub with a male companion.
RNC Calls Its Own Donors “Reactionary” and “Ego-Driven”
That's probably not a good way to endear yourself to your party's donors.
In an unforced error, a Powerpoint presentation about fundraising was left behind at a $2,500-a-head retreat in Boca Grande, Florida, held on February 18. The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers.
Politico describes it:
In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.
The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.
"What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate…?" it asks.
The answer: "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”
What's most embarrassing are two pages.
First, this:
Here, it describes small donors (ones who engage in "visceral giving") as driven by "fear" and "reactionary". This, of course, is true, but it's not something the RNC ought to be saying out loud. And it attributes large donors to the party as being "ego-driven". Again, not too flattering.
And then, of course, there's this page, which looks like it came from a third grade Republican group:
Remember: this isn't some Tea bagger protesting sign. This is the RNC — the Republican Party. Politico continues:
The RNC reacted with alarm to a question about it Wednesday, emailing major donors to warn them of a reporter’s question, and distancing Steele from its contents.
“The document was used for a fundraising presentation Chairman Steele did not attend, nor had he seen the document,” RNC Communications Director Doug Heye said in an email. “Fundraising documents are often controversial.
“Obviously, the Chairman disagrees with the language and finds the use of such imagery to be unacceptable. It will not be used by the Republican National Committee – in any capacity – in the future,” Heye said.
Too late. The damage appears to have been done — when we peak behind the curtain, the Republican National Committee has no respect for its own supporters, and fully admits that it has little more than cheap and baseless fear-mongering to offer.
DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse said in a statement, "If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today…. It's no wonder the RNC reacted with alarm when they learned the American people would see this presentation. This revealing document proves what the Republican party has long denied. But now, by their own admission, the express strategy of the Republican party is not to offer new ideas, but 'fear.' Republicans can no longer deny that they are peddling fear when they are literally selling it as their path back to power."
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Death Of A Blogger
The great Jon Swift has died.
Swift was a mock-conservative who declared that he received his news through unbiased sources like Rush Limbaugh. Of the economic downturn, Swift wrote:
“At a time when Wall Street executives are being forced to give up their private planes, limousines, bathroom renovations and multimillion dollar bonuses, the idea that a homeless man has been allowed to hold on to his cellphone while others are making sacrifices is more than we can take.”
The writer behind Swift was Al Weisel. He stopped blogging for no apparent reason almost a year ago. (Ironically, his last post was about the death of a fellow blogger)
And now, sadly, Al Weisel himself has died, as reported by his mother in a comment on Swift's blog:
Al was on his way to his father’s funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke.
I obviously didn’t know Al personally, but his writing was superlative. He was doing Colbert long before Colbert was doing it — the sort of satire his cognomen’s namesake would have heartily approved.
Burger Dominance
This map (click to embiggen) shows the controlled territories of the eight largest burger chains in America.
The first thing you'll note is the stranglehold that Sonic has over Texas and Oklahoma.
But that's just because of the way the map is color-coded. When you realize that McDonald's is in black, you see how they pretty much hold the rest of the country in control.
I Got Your “Alice In Wonderland” Right Here
Yup, the entire film… right here:
It's only eight minutes long (the original was 12 minutes). Oh, and it's over 100 years old, restored lovingly by the British Film Institute (who put back in the original's coloration).
But it's free. Enjoy. Some background:
At 800ft, Alice in Wonderland was the longest film yet produced in Britain, running about 12 minutes. Its unusual length meant that it was not suitable for all film showings, where a variety of short subjects was considered ideal, so all the scenes were sold individually. A showman need only buy and show a single sequence, such as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, not the whole film, which was less a self-contained story than an illustration of key moments from the book.
In 1903, there were two directors working at the Hepworth studio in Walton-on-Thames, Cecil Hepworth himself and Percy Stow. Hepworth was responsible for the studio's non-fiction films, while Stow made all the fiction films. This was such a large production that the two men worked together.
The film required an unusual amount of planning for its day. Hepworth was insistent that the images stay faithful to the drawings of Sir John Tenniel, the original illustrator of Lewis Carroll's story, and so before filming could begin, a large number of costumes had to be made, including several dozen playing card costumes, and flats painted to Tenniel's original designs. The film was made on the small wooden stage in the garden of the villa housing Hepworth's company, with exteriors shot in the lavish gardens of Mount Felix, a local estate which until recently had been owned by the son of Thomas Cook the travel agent.
Alice was played by Mabel Clark, who as well as acting also ran errands and acted as a kind of studio secretary. There were no professional actors at the studio, so all of the staff pitched in and played parts. Hepworth played the frog footman and his wife played the White Rabbit and the Queen. The film also featured an early appearance by the family dog, Blair, who would become famous as the star of Rescued by Rover (1905).
Suck it, Depp.
How The Christian Nation Looks Out For Women
A case study from Bristol, Virginia:
Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top.
“Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.”
***
“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”
It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:
“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”
Uh, yes. Yes we can say that. This is nothing more than the old "she-was-asking-for-it" blame-the-victim mentality.
For the sake of argumnet, let's buy the premise that men lust "in their heats" after women generally, especially good-looking women, especially good-looking women in tight-fitting clothes. Hey, I'm a guy — I'll cop to that plea.
But here's the thing: I don't go around raping them. I, along with 99.9% of other men, have this thing called "restraint" and "morality".
And what if, for some reason, I chose to abandon those things and rape some of these women I, however fleetingly, "lust" after? Well, that the point — it's a choice. A choice that I made. The victim? Not her fault, regardless of what she might be wearing.
I can't believe we are even having this discussion in the 21st century.
These pious misogynistic Neanderthals need to be stoned. And I don't mean in a good way; I mean, in the biblical sense.
Roger Ebert Finds His Voice
Cancer has devastated film critic Roger Ebert's lower jaw and rendered him speechless. This has not stopped him from speaking out on the issues of the day and ironically, as pointed out in this much-praised Esquire article, Ebert is becoming a spokesman for the political left, mainly through his Tweets.
He has been able to vocalize through the use of a computer — the kind of robotic speech used by Stephen Hawking. But amazingly, a tech company in Scotland has been able to synthesize Ebert's voice, drawing from his old TV shows and DVD recordings. Watch it in action:
Bunning Finally Decides To Stop Holding Unemployed People Hostage
The suffering of hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans eased last night as Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) finally stopped blocking legislation temporarily extending unemployment and COBRA benefits, which stopped on Sunday. The New York Times reports:
It came after Mr. Bunning’s fellow Republicans began to air their own concerns about how the Senate blockade had the potential to damage their political brand while also having a direct impact on their constituents.
While Democrats hailed the progress, they also said Mr. Bunning’s decision to delay the aid had caused serious disruptions in federal programs and could create bureaucratic problems as people try to reclaim their federal aid.
“Sometimes just because we have the power to do things, we ought to think twice before we use that power,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
The final vote to pass the bill was 78-19, a rather extraordinary margin, suggesting that Republicans were not pleased with Bunning's ongoing charade.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
First of all, a trailer… for a book?
Okay, I'll swing with it, especially for this book (from the same author as Pride and Predjudice and Zombies)
Aftereffects of the Chilean Earthquake
Make no mistake — the Chilean earthquake was massive. It was over 500 times stronger than the eathquake that hit Haiti — the salient difference being that it hit out in the ocean, near — but not in 00 a region that has earthquake preparedness (building codes, etc).
How massive was the Chilean quake?
Well, it threw the Earth off its axis.
By about 3 inches. Making the day about 1.26 microseconds shorter (1 microsecond = 1 millionth of a second).
Still, it's not as bad as the 2004 earthquake that created the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. That shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds.
Congress Rules!
I hate all the gibberish about parliamentary proceedings, but I think it comes down to this:
If the minority party can use the filibuster to do an end-run around the majority-wins rules of Congress, then the majority party is well within its rights to do an end-run around the filibuster by using "reconcilliation".
That's it. That's all I have to say. Rules are rules. If one party can use the rules to their advantage, why can't the other party?
UPDATE: David Frum has an interesting piece on why Congress is so fucked up today. it starts…
At the end of his career, former House Speaker Tip O’Neill was asked how Congress had changed between the 1950s and 1980s. O’Neill answered: “The people are better. The results are worse.”
Watching last week’s health summit, you see what O’Neill meant. The conversation was intelligent, civil, well-informed. It also predictably achieved nothing. How could it? Deals are never reached in front of the television camera.
Take this quiz. Name the most important legislation enacted in the 30 years between 1950 and 1980.
Overwhelming isn’t it? Civil rights. Voting rights. Interstate highways. Medicare. Medicaid. The deregulation of the airlines, natural gas, trucking, rail and oil. The immigration act of 1965. Clean Air, Clean Water, and the Endangered Species Acts. Supplemental Security Income in 1974. I could fill the whole screen.
Now … the next 30 years.
There’s the Reagan tax cuts of course. Deregulation of the savings & loans in 1982. The Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Welfare reform in 1995. Medicare Part D. What else?
Leave aside whether you are liberal or conservative, whether you approve the measures mentioned above or disapprove. It’s hard to dispute: Congress just got a lot more done in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s than in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
Why?
You hear many grand, sweeping explanations. Let’s try just one simple one.
Congress in the first period was controlled by a handful of committee chairmen, who owed their positions to seniority. The committees did their work in secret. Bills written in committee typically could not be amended on the floor of Congress. The institution was authoritarian, hierarchical, opaque. And stuff passed.
In the mid-1970s, Congress underwent a revolution. The power of the committee chairmen was broken. The number of subcommittees proliferated. The committees met in public. Amendments multiplied. Congress become more open, more egalitarian, more responsive. And stuff ceased to pass.
Again and again, today’s gridlock can be traced to yesterday’s reform.
He goes on to discuss the filibuster…
Is the filibuster grinding Congress to a halt? Before the 1970s, filibusters were both very rare and very difficult. But when Congress took action to make filibusters easier to break, it inadvertently made them easier to use. Back in the 1950s, a filibuster would bring the entire Senate to a halt, as the filibustering Senator talked and talked and talked.
A filibuster was both spectacularly visible and personally exhausting: it exacted a high price from the filibustering senator. Then Congress took action to make filibusters easier to break, requiring only 60 votes instead of 67. But that same deal made them much easier to start. No need to speechify all night; no colleagues enraged that the filibustering senator has paralyzed the chamber.
Today, a filibustering senator need only notify the majority leader of his intention. The filibustered legislation is sidetracked until 60 votes are found to enact it, while other business continues as normal. The price of the filibuster has been drastically cut. No surprise we get more of them.
…as well as campaign fundraising, and the influence of lobbyists, among other things. but his meta-point seems to be that the reason things happened in the 50's, 60's, and 70's is because legislation happened behind closed doors. In effect, openness and transparency has killed the ability of Congress to get things done.
Kevin Drum agrees, but offers a much simpler explanation:
The era between 1950 and 1980 was an essentially liberal one. That applies to the 60s and 70s pretty obviously, but even the 50s, underneath McCarthyism and the man in the gray flannel suit, was defined mainly by consolidation of the New Deal. Eisenhower wasn't called a New Republican for nothing.
The succeeding 30 years, famously, were primarily conservative. And that makes a fundamental difference. Liberals, by nature, want to change things. They want to pass big stuff. Conservatives, by nature, want to conserve. They want to prevent change. Occasionally this takes the form of rolling back liberal programs (tax cuts, welfare reform), but rolling back progress is hard and rare. For the most part, conservatism takes the form of not undertaking big legislative changes. So it's hardly any surprise that a conservative era is marked by lack of seminal congressional actions.
In other words, despite the fact that Obama is president, we are hardly in a liberal era.
How’s Your Facebook Inbox Looking?
Apparently, there was a "glitch" last night:
Last night, in an embarrassing glitch for Facebook that raises questions about privacy on the site, some users of the social-networking service began getting hundreds of personal messages that weren’t intended for them.
***
A Facebook spokeswoman emailed the following response to Digits: “During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time. Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and are working to get everything back in its rightful place. While they fix the issue, affected users will not be able to access the site.” The company said it was still investigating the problem and could not immediately respond to specific questions about the glitch.
It is unclear how many Facebook users have been affected by the problem, but several Twitter users reported the glitch. A user with the handle seantanu wrote “Some bug: Facebook messages intended for others delivered to me today. 71 and counting,” and colleen02127 wondered if her problem was a “facebook fail”. Silicon Alley Insider reported on the glitch last night and said it appeared to be affecting people who joined Facebook soon after the service started.
After 38 Years, Carly Simon Finally Reveals Who She Was Singing About in “You’re So Vain”
Not Warren Beatty.
Not Mick Jagger.
It's (gay) rock producer David Geffen. Carly was annoyed with him (at the time) because he was promoting Joni Mitchell harder than he was promoting her.
Well, that was hardly worth the wait.