These Things Always Come In Threes

Ken AshfordIn PassingLeave a Comment

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson…. you know how it goes.  Always in threes.

The problem is that it is sometimes hard to tell which deaths "count" for a morbid triad.

Fortunately, someone as appointed himself the Death Trilogy Commissioner, so we won't have to wonder anymore.

Also, in related news, someone else has appointed himself the world's leading internet evangelist and God, and informs us where Michael Jackson is now:

Pastor Bill Keller, founder of  LivePrayer.com, submits the following and is available for comment:

In all of the intense media coverage after the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson, the one thing that has driven me crazy has been hearing over and over, often by high profile Christians, that Michael is now at peace in Heaven. Really? I hear this same thing whenever a famous person dies, regardless what they believed during their life, as well as from people when a family member or close friend dies, again, regardless what they believed during their life.
 
If this is true, than what is the use of the Gospel? If this is true, why should anyone waste their time and effort telling people about Jesus? If this is true, than the death of Jesus on the cross was a meaningless exercise, his resurrection didn't need to occur, and people can believe whatever they want during this life and make it to Heaven. THAT MY FRIEND IS THE UNIVERSALISTIC LIE FROM HELL!!!
 
The fact is God made only ONE plan of salvation. There is only ONE way to everlasting life and that is faith in Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the Bible. There are NOT many roads that lead to God, only one, the Jesus road!!! You can't believe whatever you want and die and end up in Heaven. That is a lie from satan that is leading millions of souls to the flames of hell for all eternity. WHAT YOU BELIEVE DOES MATTER!!!
 
It is arguable that Michael Jackson was the most recognized person on the planet. Despite his vast fame and material possessions, Michael was bankrupt in the things that really matter in life, joy, peace, contentment, HOPE! Those things only comes through having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and living according to God's Word.
RELATED… Oh, Michael, you're weird even in death:
 
20090701_jackson_560x275 
Really?  Diana Ross?

SCOTUS Wonkery

Ken AshfordSupreme CourtLeave a Comment

Ignore the New York Times article which (somewhat misleadingly) headlines that SCOTUS shifted to the right this term.  While it's true, and also true that Kennedy (the swing vote) sided with "the right" more often than note, the "swing to the right" itself was negligible and doesn't mean anything.  That's because roughly 80 cases on diverse topics decided by nine different people don’t collectively produce clear themes. 

For those TRULY interested, it's better to look at the raw data at SCOTUSBlog, here.  I think the headline really is that the Supreme Court continued to be divided on idelogical grounds, with an unusual amount of 5-4 decisions (more so than any other time).  The fact that Kennedy (this year) went with the "right" on 11 of those decisions, and with the "left" on 4 of those decisions may simply be a factor of the types of cases on the docket, rather them some overarching trend to the right in general.

Better analysis here, too.

Sanford Follies

Ken AshfordSex ScandalsLeave a Comment

I did, at one point, express some sympathy for Mark Sanford, opining that his affair was "an affair of the heart".

But that sympathy has faded upon learning that:

  • taxpayers footed the bill for his Argentian rendez-vous (that's French for "fuckin'")

  • the piece of Argentian tail which he now refers to as his "soul mate" was one in a series of extramarital affairs

Again, this isn't so much about his private life.  He shouldn't resign because of the affairs pre se, as far as I am concerned.  But it crossed over into a public issue when he used public funds, when he made "family values" a centerpiece of his campaigns, and when he repeatedly lied to the people of South Carolina — even during his confession — about the affair(s).

I give him a week, tops.

60

Ken AshfordCongress, Election 2008Leave a Comment

With Coleman's concession, Al Franken finally becomes Senator Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota.

Finally.

First Read writes:

Most significantly, yesterday’s developments resulted in Democrats obtaining a filibuster-proof majority — 60 votes — in the Senate, and Dems want to have him seated by as early as Monday. Having 60 votes will shift the balance of power from the Republican Maine-iacs (Collins and Snowe) to the Joe Liebermans, Ben Nelsons, and Mary Landrieus, meaning that the upcoming fights over health care and energy will be on Democratic turf.

I largely agree with Franken on this.  The magic "60" doesn't necessarily mean anything.  No matter what the issue, there are always a few Democrats who vote with the majority of Republicans, and a few Republicans who vote with the majority of Democrats.  Obviously, Franken's presence makes getting to a filibuster-proof majority easier, but that's about it.

Besides, I think this notion of "60" being the magic number is borderline unconstitutional.  It has always been majority wins in the Senate, which means 50 was, and should be the magic number.  Parliamentary tricks should not be able to supercede constitutional requirements.

UPDATE:  Kevin Drum agrees:

The corruption of the filibuster into a routine requirement for 60 votes in the Senate (an arguably unconstitutional evolution, IMHO) combined with the continuing presence of half a dozen non-liberals in the Democratic caucus combined with an almost iron self-discipline within the Republican caucus — well, all that combined means that liberals now have the illusion of control of Congress but not the reality.  In a way, it's almost the worst of all possible worlds.  Dem vs. Dem is now practically the only narrative that anyone will pay attention to, and since unanimous agreement is the only way for that narrative to play out well, this means it's almost always going to play out badly.

Still, that's a glass-half-empty point of view.  So let's be more positive: one more vote is one more vote. 

Also, TPM has a must-read about the gasket collectively thrown by the Murdoch media empire over the Frenken victory.  Of particular note is the bogus Wall Street Journal editorial, which "accuse[s) the Franken campaign of committing supposedly dirty maneuvers, without mentioning that the Coleman side was participating in the exact same activities just as fervently or even more so."  I also love this from the same editorial, printed without the slightest bit of irony:

The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact…. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

Um…. that "lesson" was learned in 2000, guys.  Too late to complain about it when it works against you.

Our Media

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept Media1 Comment

A 2012 presidential contender has an extramarital affair, bloody revolts in Iran, a military coup in Honduras, Congress considers bills which will fundamentally change health care as we know it, and there's movement on environmental cap-and-trade laws.

Yet:

Fully 93% of cable coverage studied on the Thursday and Friday following his death was about the King of Pop.

Yeah, I "covered" it a lot, too.  But I'm not a 24 hour news channel.

Also, the mainstream media has stupid ringtones:

Palin Profile

Ken AshfordElection 2012Leave a Comment

Vanity Fair has a whopper of an article on Sarah Palin, full of inside-the-McCain-campaign insight from those within the McCain camp (who, shall we say, are not Palin fans).  If the Vanity Fair piece is too long, you might enjoy these excerpts from USA Today:

On the campaign: "… (M)ost made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be."

On Palin's CBS interview: "By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the (Katie) Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman."

One Palin as a candidate: "I saw her as a raw talent (says one key McCain aide). Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better.”

On Palin's striking good looks: This "reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin’s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen."

On Palin's future: "(S)he has the good fortune to have traction within a political party that is bereft of strong leadership, and whose rank and file often demands qualities other than knowledge, experience, and an understanding that facts are, as John Adams said, stubborn things."

I, for one, would not mind seeing Palin stay on the political scene for the next election.  It'll be interesting to see how she pulls of a presidential campaign when so many "establishment" Republicans are against her.

Could Bachmann Wingnut Herself Out Of A Job?

Ken AshfordRepublicansLeave a Comment

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis raises an interesting point in its editorial bash of The World's Dumbest Politician ™, Michelle Bachmann:

At the very least, the census statements call Bachmann's strategic judgment into question. She may be setting in motion events that could substantially hurt her home state and potentially cost her the office she occupies.

The 2010 census will likely determine whether Minnesota loses one of its eight U.S. House seats; population determines seat allocation. Political experts agree that a few thousand people not filling out census forms may be all it takes for the state to lose a congressional advocate in the nation's capital. If Minnesota were to lose a congressional seat, Bachmann's district appears to be candidate for absorption.

That would be the ultimate irony.

Of course, if conservative wingnuts follow the advice of Bachmann and Glenn Beck and refuse to fill out the census for fear of some government conspiracy or something, the end result is that they won't be counted, which means they will have less representation when it comes time to apportion districts and set the number of representatives at the state and national level.

So… good.

Happy Birthday, Walkman

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

_45984503_scott_mum_226 Yup.  The Sony Walkman turns 30 years old this week.  Which is relatively young for something that's… well…. dead.

In this article, a 13-year-old turns in his iPod to spend a week with a Walkman.  Guess which one he ended up preferring?

My friends couldn't imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Bring Your Guns To Church

Ken AshfordGodstuff, Gun ControlLeave a Comment

I may not be a religious expert, but it seems to me that Jesus would not approve:

Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on “God, Guns, Gospel and Geometry.” And on Saturday night, he is inviting his congregation of 150 and others to wear or carry their firearms into the sanctuary to “celebrate our rights as Americans!” as a promotional flier for the “open carry celebration” puts it.

Good lord.  It never ceases to amaze how the most unChristian behavior gets co-opted and even celebrated by the Jesus freaks.  I mean, what would Jesus have said about guns?  Let's consult the original text, shall we?

[Mat 26:51-52] And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. And said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

There's also something in there about "Thou Shalt Not Kill" right?  Although zealots would have you believe there is an asterisk there which reads "*But killing in self-defense isn't 'killing', so have at it, y'all.  Yeeeee-hah!"

This made me laugh though:

Mr. Pagano said the church’s insurance company, which he would not identify, had canceled the church’s policy for the day on Saturday and told him that it would cancel the policy for good at the end of the year. If he cannot find insurance for Saturday, people will not be allowed in openly carrying their guns.

Heh.

P.S. and FYI: http://www.godnotguns.org/…. also this:

"The indiscriminate distribution of guns is an offense against God and humanity," he said. "Our gun-flooded society has turned weapons into idols, and the worship of idols must be recognized for what it is – blasphemy."

Amen.

Keeping Secrets

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

It's kind of amazing that nobody knew that New York Times reporter David Rohde had been kidnapped by the Taliban on November 10, and remained in their custody for several months.  Well, the New York Times and the government knew of course, but they (rightly) decided to keep the information quiet.  They figured that publicity would add to Rohde's value as a hostage and impede efforts to free or rescue him.

What I find remarkable is thatthe kidnapping managed (for the most part) to remain a secret on the Internet.  Now that Rohde is free, a few bloggers with connections to mainstream media have now reported that they knew, but they agreed to keep it hush-hush.

The New York Times has an interesting side story about battle at Wikipedia, the open source news and information encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and how the main editors struggled to keep the Rohde information off Wikipedia:

A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia’s page on Mr. Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping.

Even so, details of his capture cropped up time and again, however briefly, showing how difficult it is to keep anything off the Internet — even a sentence or two about a person who is not especially famous.

The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given.

“We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”

***

On Nov. 13, news of the kidnapping was posted and deleted four times within four hours, before an administrator blocked any more changes for three days. On Nov. 16, it was blocked again, for two weeks.

“We didn’t want it to look unusual in some fashion that would draw speculation, so we would protect it for three days, or up to a month, which is pretty normal,” Mr. Wales said. He added, “Weeks would go by before there was a problem.”

On Feb. 10 and 11, two users added the kidnapping information several times to Mr. Rohde’s page, only to see it removed each time, and they attached some heated notes to their additions. “We can do this months,” one said.

To their credit, they were successful.  Which speaks well, I guess, of the information highway.  It's not quite the free-for-all one might think, and occasionally, people stop and do the right thing.

Ricci Case Overturned

Ken AshfordSupreme CourtLeave a Comment

The US Supreme Court overturned the Second Circuit in the Ricci case, aka the "white firefighters case", this morning.  The court held that it was wrong for the Town of New Haven to deny promotions to white firefighters after it appeared that the firefighters' exam was racially biased.  The outcome was 5-4 along predictable lines: Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito in the majority, with Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer dissenting.  Kennedy, of course, was the swing.

The case probably would have gone unnoticed but for the fact that (a) Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor was an appellate judge on the lower case and (b) the case involved "reverse discrimination" against whites.

Conservatives are predictably crowing about the case — how it shows (apparently) that Sotomayor is anti-white or some such nonsense, and how the Supreme Court has now "slapped" her down.  The Judicial Confirmation Network, for example, writes:

"Frank Ricci finally got his day in court, despite the judging of Sonia Sotomayor, which all nine Justices of U.S. Supreme Court have now confirmed was in error.

"Usually, poor performance in any profession is not rewarded with the highest job offer in the entire profession.

"What Judge Sotomayor did in Ricci was the equivalent of a pilot error resulting in a bad plane crash. And now the pilot is being offered to fly Air Force One."

Of course, this is just bullshit.  First of all, as I said, "all nine justices" of the Supreme Court did not vote to overturn.  It was 5-4. [UPDATE:  Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh lies about that final tally and the court's holding, stating, "The court found that she was indeed a racist… a nine-zip decision"]

Secondly, one of the plaintiffs that "Sotomayor" ruled against (the "white" firefighters) was latino, just like Sotomayor. 

Finally, Sotomayor merely joined the Second Circuit opinion, which was unanimously held by a panel of the Second Circuit – a panel that included a Republican judge.  In fact, the Second Circuit didn't even write an opinion at all, save a brief sentence or two saying that they agreed with the opinion of the lower court.

And actually, when you do the actual tally, 11 out of the 21 federal judges to rule on Ricci ruled as Sotomayor did. 

What layman don't understand, and what hacks often exploit, is the fact that the legal issues in any Supreme Court case are vague and reside in some gray area.  That's why the Supreme Court addresses them.  So it is incorrect that Sotomayor is a "bad judge" who got the law "wrong".  In fact, it looks like Sotomayor and her collegaues were following precedent as it existed at the time.  And today, the Supreme Court came along and changed that precedent.

And FWIW, John Roberts was on the Court of Appeals in Hamden v. Rumsfeld.  That was overturned by the Supreme Court 5-3, after Roberts was named for Chief Justice of the highest court.  Where was the outcry then about what a terrible judge Roberts was?

The SCOTUS opinion is available here (PDF).