Wisconsin's first chance to fight back

Pro-Republican astroturf groups, led by the Koch brothers, will spend an estimated two million dollars this week for next Tuesday's State Supreme Court election.



Wisconsin Democrats are asking everyone supporting them to spread this video as far as possible.

Is it something in the water?

You know, when I think of Indiana, a little neon sign in my head never immediately started blinking "small-minded idiots" before now.

I mean, yeah, despite the name of your state, you fucked over the Native Americans living there, with various groups of Europeans alternately arming rival tribes so that they could pretty much wipe each other out before you pushed them off their land. But we were doing that all over the country, right?

Indiana has big chunks of the history we learned in school (well, you know, those of us who learned things in school, anyway): splitting off from the Northwest Territory, Tecumseh, the War of 1812, George Rogers Clark, William Henry Harrison - you can't avoid Indiana if you're studying the history of this country.

But it's weird. You, as a state, have this weird love of taking control of people's bodies away from them. It's like some kind of weird compulsion: "You are cattle! You will breed when and where we tell you! Und Indiana vill grow strong!!"

I mean, crap! What the hell is wrong with you people?

In 1907, Governor Frank Hanly, a good Republican, made Indiana the first state to practice eugenics when he signed the Compulsory Sterilization Law “to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.”

The next governor, who was apparently less of a fan of fascism, stopped it two years later, and the law was found unconstitutional when it finally made it to the Indiana Supreme Court 14 years later! (the wheels of "justice" don't exactly spin quickly in the Hoosier state).

This flourishing of freedom and American values apparently made the people of Indiana cranky, because six years later, they pushed through an almost identical bill, which applied to "inmates of state institutions, who are insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded, and epileptic, and who by the laws of heredity are the probable potential parents of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted." A law which stayed in effect in Indiana until 1974.

Despite their efforts to breed die Herrenrasse clear up to the Disco Era, Dan Quayle was still born in Indianapolis. Which tells you just how effective these policies actually are.

And now they're at it again. Republicans in Indiana have introduced a bill to make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. And when state Rep. Gail Riecken (D-Of Course) introduced an amendment to exempt "women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm," it was voted down 42 to 54.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your baby is going to kill you? Tough shit. Hope you got a will." Interesting definition of Right to Life.

Apparently, according to state Rep. Eric Turner (R-Fuck You), this amendment would give women a "giant loophole" and they would just lie about getting raped. Or, presumably, dying.

(So, Eric Turner is a big supporter of incestuous families - I wonder what that says about his home life?)

I mean, there's really no excuse for this. Indiana ranks as the thirteenth smartest state, which... you know... top third, right? Good solid B average. And you've got Notre Dame... OK, admittedly a bad choice, being a Catholic university and all. But there's still Purdue! You've got education in your state! Why are you trying to go back to the dark ages?

But more than that, why is it that crazy people tend to rise to the top in Indiana? I mean, Michael Jackson, who single-handedly set out to destroy pop music forever, was born and raised in Gary, Indiana.

John Dillinger, gangster, bank robber, and legendary cocksman, was born in Indianapolis. Ten years later and 50 miles southwest, Jimmy Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, and we still don't know where that fucker ended up.

There's just something about Indiana that makes crazy people end up getting into positions of power.

Like Carlos F. Lam, the Indiana prosecutor who ended up resigning after his advice to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became public: Lam suggested Walker should fake an attack on himself to "discredit the unions." (To his credit, how was he to know that Walker had already discarded that idea because it might have backfired on him?)

And then, just because Indiana lawmakers hadn't embarrassed themselves enough, we get to find out about Ms. Bei Bei Shuai.

The facts of this case are heartbreaking. On December 23, 2010, Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman who was suffering from a major depressive disorder, attempted to take her own life. Friends found her in time and persuaded her to get help. Six days later, Shuai underwent cesarean surgery and delivered a premature newborn girl who, tragically, died four days later.

On March 14, 2011, Shuai was arrested, jailed, and charged with murder and attempted feticide...

The state is misconstruing the criminal laws in this case in such a way that any pregnant woman could be prosecuted for doing (or attempting) anything that may put her health at risk, regardless of the outcome of her pregnancy.

That's right: according to the ways the laws are being applied here, the state of Indiana believes that any pregnant woman who smokes or lives with a smoker, who works long hours on her feet, who is overweight, who doesn't exercise, or who fails to get regular prenatal care, is a felon.

We need a new word for this crime. I'd like to suggest "Indianacide."

So, we're opposed to big government. Unless we're allowed to use it to monitor every action of every pregnant woman in the state? Is that how this works?

But hey, say what you want about Indiana, at least the trains run on time, right?

How to Annoy Sean Duffy (And Why You Should Annoy Him)

By Octopus

Who is Sean Duffy, you ask? He is a GOP representative from Polk County, Wisconsin, who cannot make ends meet on his meager salary of $174,000 per year. Yet, he supports cutting salaries and benefits of public service employees along the lines of what his governor, Scott Walker, has proposed (story here).



What do public service employees earn in the cheapskate state of Wisconsin? According to this source, an average teacher earns $48,743, which ranks 24th in the nation. How do teacher salaries compare in other states?

Indiana - $46,640 (national rank 25)

Michigan $52,300 (rank 12)

Missouri - $42,750 (rank 43)

New Jersey - $61,830 (rank 4)

Ohio - $51,343 (rank 14)

So Sean Duffy cannot make ends meet on $174,000; but wants to cut salaries and benefits of employees earning LESS THAN A THIRD of what he earns. Astonishing! Now you know why Sean Duffy and the GOP are trying to suppress this video:

GOP Demands Videotape Pulled From The Internet

And the Republicans are playing hardball. The GOP contacted this website hosting service, Blip.TV, claiming copyright infringement. You can see page 1 of the complaint here and page 2 here - the usual intimidation tactics. A spokesperson for Duffy called Democratic criticism of this videotape “a misleading attack.”  I call it "newsworthy" in the public interest.

More than an embarrassment, the GOP does not want you to know what hypocritical scoundrels they are, and the best way to annoy Sean Duffy is to post copies of this video on the Internet. So please feel free to steal the video along with my commentary and go viral.  It will annoy the hell out of them.  My closing thought for today:

Suppression = Oppression.

Newtie needs help

Newt Gingrich has recently received a lot of flak for the complete reversal of his position on Libya within a three-week period. But I don’t think that the problem is entirely that Newtie is a venal, lying, opportunistic load of horse manure in an expensive suit. I think that he’s sick, and he needs to find a doctor right away.

Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich has always stood in stark repudiation of every action he has ever taken. He had been in the House of Representatives for fifteen years when he wrote the "Contract On With America that demanded twelve-year term limits on members of Congress; and in the course of his remaining five years in Congress. led impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for having an affair, while he was actively cheating on his wife.

The man who served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer surgery is now trumpeting the importance of "traditional marriage"; the man who was just quoted as saying "If you don't start with values, the rest of it doesn't matter," was the first Speaker of the House ever disciplined for ethics violations (for which he was fined $300,000).

But more recently, on February 22, he went on Fox & Friends to say:

I wish the administration — the Obama administration was as enthusiastic about democracy in ... as it was in Egypt, which was our ally.

Qadhafi’s been our enemy for years. This is an opportunity to replace that dictatorship, and I think the United States ought to be firmly on the side of the Libyan people in replacing this administration.“

When asked by Greta van Susteren on March 7, “what would you do about Libya?” he said:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening... We don’t need to have NATO, who frankly, won’t bring much to the fight. We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.

But when Obama did exactly that, on March 23, Newt went on the Today Show to say:

I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

So, not a complete reversal. He still wouldn’t have used the Europeans.

He’s offered several explanations for this, and they all contradict each other, too. On Twitter, for example:


So maybe he would use the Europeans, after all.

And then he went on Facebook to explain:

On March 3rd, President Obama said publicly that “it’s time for Gadaffi to go.”

Prior to this statement, there were options to be indirect and subtle to achieve this result without United States military forces. I made this point on The Today Show this morning, saying “I would not have intervened…there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi…I would not have used American and European forces.”

The president, however, took those options off the table with his public statement.

So, no Europeans again, but now no Americans either. And now the president shouldn’t have opposed Qaddaffi.

At first, I thought that it was possible that there were no contradiction: Newt has always had one primary, overriding concern in all this. He is firmly opposed to whatever Obama does.

But now, it turns out that this is some kind of mental aberration in Gingrich’s brain: he has to contradict himself on every subject, and those contradictions are coming closer and closer together. On Sunday, this twice-divorced Catholic went to an evangelical Protestant church to explain that:

"I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

He didn’t bother to explain where we would find these radical atheist Islamists, but I’m sure it made sense to him at the time.

Newtie needs a doctor before it’s too late. Before he accidentally says that he's happy to be alive, and his brain simply shuts down in stolid opposition to this idea.

The Kill Team

By Capt. Fogg

One of the objections I've voiced, regarding the use of private mercenaries rather than our military is that when US soldiers commit such gruesome offenses, pictures of which Rolling Stone and Der Spiegel have just published, there are sometimes consequences. When mercenaries do, as Blackwater did in Iraq, there seldom are and we tend not to hear about them.

The photos taken in Afghanistan, where we're engaged once again in winning the "hearts and minds" of the population by slaughtering their children and playing like ghouls with their mutilated bodies, are horrifying and it's small consolation that at least some of the drug crazed bastards who did it will face serious but barely adequate punishment -- but at least it's punishment.

Perhaps you've never seen what someone looks like after being hit by a rocket fired from above. It's pretty hard to tell whether the grizzly pile of bones and guts was an innocent bystander or a "terrorist" but the sight is far more terrifying when we see American soldiers wetting their knives in the blood, cutting fingers from dead kids' hands for trophies, displaying severed heads of "savages" and planting guns on innocent bodies to justify their having been slaughtered and mutilated and displayed on the side of the road -- to win hearts and minds, of course.

The men of Bravo company, we're told, had been considering "bagging Haji's" for a while it seems and eventually the blood lust won out. Stupidly, they took photos and kept souvenirs. I've decided not to show the photos. If you choose to click on the Rolling Stone link, please be sure you aren't the sensitive type, but you can avoid projectile vomiting and read about it on Raw Story.

There's no happy ending and the occupation of Afghanistan and the constant civilian casualties continue, but as a small degree of justice, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock who is seen posing with a dead boy, deliberately murdered for sport, has been sentenced to 24 years. Calvin Gibbs, a squad leader in the same Platoon , along with five other soldiers, pleaded guilty last week to lesser crimes in exchange for their testimony.

Who will pass judgment on us? Who will forgive us?

Banzai patriotism

By Capt. Fogg

There are all kinds of patriotism, some real, some pretended. With some countries it's mostly about supporting wars. It's been that way in most of my lifetime, with a few exceptions. With some people it's all about flags and pins and ceremonies. I'm straining to think of a time when it was seen as a reason to support a government you didn't vote for and I have to look back over 65 years ago to find a time when patriotism extended to making economic sacrifices in times of crisis, for the good of the country; for the good of the people. To me, Patriotism may once have meant something more than overgrown and somewhat pugnacious pride and militaristic ritual and it may once not have smelled so much of covert self-interest, but there are outside examples.

If it had been an American nuclear power plant destroyed by a natural event or anything of that magnitude, like a war, or flood or ecological disaster for example, I'd not expect to hear the party of big business or the mega-corporations that pay virtually no taxes anyway offer to suspend another round of corporate tax cuts. Yet that's what seems to be happening in Japan. The Japan Business Federation is a powerful corporate lobby -- sort of like the GOP. Its chairman, Hiromasa Yonekura says he will not stand in the government's way if it backs away from a proposed corporate tax cut.

"I don't mind if the government skips cutting the corporate tax rate," said Yonekura, who is also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical . "Instead I want the government to move swiftly in its recovery efforts."

I don't think I have to waste much space comparing Japan to the country that stood behind tax cuts and against paying off the enormous costs of war by taxing those who made the most money from it -- and challenged the patriotism of anyone who suggested it wasn't a good idea because tax cuts never have and never will pay for themselves -- so I won't.

Earth Hour - another Sunday sermon

By Capt. Fogg

"The amount of power that's saved during that time is not really what it's about,"

I would imagine so, since it's quite an insignificant amount.

"What it is meant to be about is showing what can happen when people come together."

Is the explanation of the hour-long turning off of lights on monuments and many countries around the world given by Earth Hour co-founder and executive director Andy Ridley. In other words it's a feel-good gesture that lets people who prefer making gestures to making a difference, like the countless other "awareness raising" parties of all sorts.

Mass delusion, witch hunts, lynch mobs and riots, of course are other examples of what can happen when people come together. I think we need much more and much different solutions.

Might I suggest that working together toward a purpose is what we need and that such things require objectivity, education and a lot of money. Since most of the rapid increase in power consumption around the world is both the cause and effect of raising the standard of living of the suffering poor, it all sounds a bit smug for the haves of the world to be having a parade of Liberal virtue by perhaps not driving the Hummer for an hour or turning off some lights and partying in the dark. It's the kind of smugness that one sees in those swooning over some imaginary romantic and bucolic world where everyone farms with manure and mules and the bugs, crows and fungus don't eat two thirds of the crops. A world where people somehow find something "seasonal and local" and "organic" and not "processed" even in in the desert and tundra and the mountains instead of the often fatal malnutrition and disease our ancestors suffered until Clarence Birdseye, mechanical refrigeration and the steam locomotive saved us from goiters, pellagra, scurvy, hunger and a diet of boiled turnips every winter.

In the real world, billions would starve in short order without the technology that scares us so much, but maybe that wouldn't count because they'd be in Africa and places like that where we wouldn't have to smell it or catch Cholera and we'd have like soooo much fun raising awareness about it by having gala parties where the servants would pass around empty Hors d'œuvre trays for an hour.

It's not that I'm against making some sacrifices or investing in public transportation or supplementing fossil fuel burning with wind and geothermal and hydroelectric power -- or even the newer, smaller, cheaper and safer nuclear plants now on the drawing boards -- quite the opposite. I'm all for heavy investment in research and development -- and paying for it with public revenue because private investment for such long range goals just doesn't happen on it's own. For an example, look at how much of today's digital world is the direct result of the tax and spend space program of the 50's and 60's.

No, what irks me is the neo-Luddite loathing for technology: the very technology we need to save us from Malthusian doom. It's usually the product of some scientific outcast publishing a alarmist book and convincing a lot of simpering young and uneducated celebrities that nature isn't a Hobbesean nightmare, that everything we improve our lives with from electric light to refrigeration to cell phones is going to bring that nature crashing down -- killing the bees with mysterious "cell phone rays" for instance and filling the world with unspecified "toxins" and radioactive vapours.

It's people like Bill Maher telling us our food is killing us even as we live longer and longer -- that we wouldn't have disease to cure if only we didn't eat corn products. It's celebrity scientists like Woody Harrelson telling us telling us not to cook our food. It's charlatans with their magnetic bracelets "tuned to natural frequencies" and pieces of magic duct tape that suck the "toxins" from our feet. It's the ancient and universal practice of blaming everything, every disease, disaster and disorder on witches, made new again.

This kind of "awareness" doesn't need raising, what needs raising is technology: understanding of it, awareness of it, investment in it -- the skill and will in developing and applying it. Please consider our hirsute relatives with thumbs on their feet and remember that it's the ability to produce and utilize energy that stands between us and squalor, privation and the nasty, brutish, disease filled, parasite ridden and short lives we used to share with the animals.

The great circle of stupid

By Capt. Fogg

"An appeals court has ruled that anyone involved in an extramarital affair can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison."

Or so says the Eagle Forum run by Rod Parsley, President and Founder of World Harvest Church in Ohio. Actually it's more likely that Judge William Murphy of the Michigan Court of Appeals was indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdem in order to mock the obvious venality of the prosecution -- and in this case, the absurdity of the Michigan law is apparent without much reduction.

It's all about one Lloyd Waltonen who gave a cocktail waitress prescription drugs in exchange for sex and was charged with criminal sexual conduct, a felony, although the sex was consensual.

Of course those charges were dismissed, but on appeal The Michigan Attorney General, Mike Cox (I'm not making that up) in an effort to ruin Waltonen's life in any way he could, dredged up some statute stating that any sexual activity committed during the same time as a felony constitutes criminal sexual conduct. Since adultery is a felony in Michigan, (I'm not making this up) he technically could get life in prison for consensual sex, although that's never happened and never likely will unless of course we allow demented parasitic vermin like Parsley to get involved with the judicial process. (More on that later)

So what was apparently a disgusted judge trying to make a fool of the hypocritical and hyperventilating Mr. Cox, (who as you would expect of a moralizing Republican, has admitted to an adulterous and hence felonious relationship himself,) might as well have a target tattooed on his forehead.

All of this staged display of irony of course, has escaped not only the resident and hairy-palmed hand of God at The Center For Moral Clarity, the World Harvest Church and the Eagle Forum, but Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell's nominee for the Alaska Judiciary Council, Don Haase of Valdez. Haase, (he pronounces it Haze, but we won't go there this time) loves the idea of arresting people for obeying his religious laws, and why, you might ask? Premarital sex should be outlawed because it could "cause violence" and "spread disease," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. To his credit, he's either not quite as crazy as Parsley or perhaps less credit worthy, he's just trying to sound sane long enough to be confirmed, because while he doesn't claim that adultery or pre-marital sex should be a felony, he thinks it should be a crime.

Haase of course is a past president of Eagle Forum Alaska, a blog that advocates for what it calls conservative principles much like those of Medieval Europe. So we've come as close to full circle as we can while talking about idiots and madmen with no regard for freedom or the US constitution. We've come full circle from a secular liberal democracy and the counsel of intelligent and reasonable men as well.

Connect the dots

So, let me see if I've got this straight. 100 years ago today, in lower Manhattan, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 people (a third of the people working in the building) who couldn't escape a ten-story factory because the owners, in an effort to prevent theft, had locked the exit doors.

Because there were no unions to protect their rights or ensure workplace safety, the employees who died were often underage, worked twelve to sixteen hour days, six days a week, and earned less than $2 a day.

Out of that two dollars, they had to pay the owners for the needles, thread and electricity they needed to do their jobs. And they could be fired for any reason, including missing a day of work or talking to the person working next to them. Or joining a union.

In fact, unions were under assault. Literally: with clubs, knives, guns and dogs - until a quarter of a century later, when the Wagner Act was passed, supporting unions and collective bargaining.

Oh, and 15 years before the fire, the National Guard was sent into the Homestead Steel Works to break up a strike by steelworkers. Just so you know.

But, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. That was 100 years ago today. Happy Birthday.

One hundred days ago today, a fire in a Bangladesh sweatshop killed dozens of people and injured over a hundred more. To prevent theft, the doors had been padlocked shut by the owners,

That was, as I said, 100 days ago today.

The workers in Bangladesh are among the lowest-paid in the world, and frequently die because of workplace safety, which isn't enforced by anyone. Like, say, a union.

This was one of two manufacturing plants run by the Hameem Group, who makes clothing for the Gap, Wrangler, JC Penney, Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Osh Kosh B'Gosh.

Oshkosh B'Gosh. Founded in 1895 - three years after the Homestead Steel Strike. In Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Last month in Wisconsin (85 miles southwest of Oshkosh), Governor Scott Walker was mobilizing the Wisconsin National Guard, in case unions protested his attempts to destroy collective bargaining rights. In the course of the next few weeks, that same Governor Walker, outraged because striking workers were occupying his Imperial Palace the Wisconsin State Capital Building, had doors locked and windows bolted shut to keep strikers from getting food.

Initial reports that the windows were welded shut proved to be merely rumors. There are, however, pictures of the new bolts preventing the windows from opening.

So, locking people inside a building with a sporadic record of safety inspections. Because he's trying to bust unions.

Quick test: what have we learned in the last century?
A. Jack.
B. Shit.

The Sound and the Fury

by Capt. Fogg

I'd just signed clear with 5N7M in Nigeria and my spectrum scope showed a big pileup on 20 meters in the area reserved for extra class phone operation, so I tuned in expecting some rare DX station everyone was trying to work. I wish I hadn't. I didn't hear dozens of stations shouting their call letters trying to be heard on the other side of the planet, what I heard is what passes for political discussion these days.

"Well whaddaya think of a president who thinks he's a dictator and ignores the constitution"

"you mean Bush?"

"No, I mean Oh-Bah-Ma! Thinks he can declare war all by himself. At least with Bush both times he got permission from congress -- this guy thinks he's a DICTATOR"

"Ahhhh, come on. . ."

"That's an impeachable offense! That's Treason!"

Of course I'm editing here. There were too many voices stepping on each other to include it all or even to call it a discussion, but that's American politics in all its unsound and furious ignorance.

Actually the War Powers Act requires that the president notify congress within 48 hours, which of course was exactly what happened. Whether or not that will filter down to the terminally Foxed and all those so desperate to portray Obama as everything Bush was and worse, I don't know, but where there's a will to hate, there's always a way to hate. As much as facts might contradict the idiot rage, they have as much a chance to bust the pileup as a 2 Watt QRP rig with a Buddipole.