Just let it die

“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,”

-Michelle Bachmann on Fox News-

John Wayne, I never really liked him; not as an actor and particularly not as something he attempted to portray off the stage: a patriot. No, the only uniform he ever wore came from the costume department at Republic Studios, the folks who got him his 2A draft status during WW II because it would have meant lost profits had he followed so many actors into the military.

But of course by the time the Vietnam war became a tragi-comic opera, he was a Hollywood soldier of long standing, fond of telling many of us we weren't real Americans because we didn't quite see the glory of the whole thing.

So leave it to Michelle Bachmann to claim she's channeling his "spirit" -- whatever that might be. Whether that consists of telling us we're not real Americans because we dare to measure the age of things or don't accept the Biblical nonsense about the "waters" above and below the Earth I don't know, but there are few things that amuse me more than the trolls, public and private, who present their limitations and disabilities and delusions as their strength. Haven't we all had people tell us ungrammatically how stupid we are and spell stupid wrong? Petty irony it is indeed, but then such little moments of irony may provide the most satisfaction one can expect in our kind of times. It costs too much to care any more.

So should we laugh at Michelle for confusing Winterset, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne (nee Marion Morrison) with Waterloo, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne Gacy who strangled little boys and buried them in his crawl space? The entire pandemonium of journalists, bloggers and blowhards has been going at it since yesterday morning. Go ahead and join in, but I'm beyond laughter or tears for that matter. When it comes to giving a shit, I don't. I'm all out of givadamn and I'm not shopping for more. As I said, it just costs too much these days.

But that I burn much more in boiling sweat

See that white tent, just past the SUV that photobombed me? That's a fireworks tent set up in a parking lot.. It's got balloons, one sad little "Fireworks!" banner (that's the orange thing off to the right), no air conditioning, and a cheap plastic roof (whatever they're making cheap tents out of these days).

The person behind the plain wood counter in the tent is smoking. I didn't go in to look. They just always are.

We live in a desert. The temperature is going to be in the high nineties all week.

See that sign in the building beyond it? Looks like a number one? That's the logo for Page One Books, the largest locally-owned bookstore in Albuquerque. Which happens to be 30 yards away from the fireworks tent.

Because people are stupid.
___________

I'm not a big fan of fireworks, as it turns out.

The Wallow Fire, the largest wildfire in Arizona history, spread into New Mexico around the Luna, NM area. As of today, it's 80% contained.

Los Alamos was evacuated because of wildfires today. The fires have, in fact, crossed over into the boundaries of the Los Alamos nuclear lab, if you're curious; that's called the Las Conchas fire, and as of today, it's eaten about 45,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest, and as I write this, it is zero percent contained.

The 346 Fire in Belen, NM (named after the Highway 346 Bridge, currently its northern boundary) is a mere 150-acre fire; it's destroyed 3 houses and several outbuildings, and is threatening about 150-200 more. Earlier today, they suspected that they'll have it contained by Wednesday. Of course, they weren't taking into account the 25 mph winds (with 40 mph gusts) that are kicking up.

The Horseshoe 2 fire in southeast Arizona never made it to the New Mexico border. It destroyed 223 thousand acres, but is now considered contained, as of Saturday. Crews will be downgrading to a Type 3 team Wednesday, if nothing goes wrong.

The Pacheco fire, north of Santa Fe, has only destroyed about ten thousand acres. It's been going a week and a half, and it's currently about 10% contained.

State law in New Mexico prevents them from implementing a ban on fireworks, even during one of the worst fire seasons ever.

Oh, and in case you missed it, next Monday is the Fourth of July.

Politics, Presidents and Marriage Equality -- a View from the Jurassic

The president attended an LGBT fundraiser in New York this Thursday, and of course that visit came in the middle of the now-successful push to legalize marriage equality in that state. Many LGBT people (and indeed anyone who supports the same rights for all citizens) have for some time now expressed frustration with the president's irksome, if politically astute, repetitions that he is "evolving" on the issue of marriage equality.* (Read full post after the jump....)

FAUX NEWS ON YOUR SIDE!

The media outlet of the right that is all about economic growth did their bit to help destroy the plans of a hard working entrepreneur to expand his business and may, in fact, bring about his eventual demise.

Fox Network’s Arnold Diaz, a reporter whose reports titled "Shame, Shame, Shame" are aimed at uncovering deceptive business practices that harm consumers, was named in the lawsuit filed by Matthew Prince.

And what harmful deception was Mr Prince visiting upon the good and unsuspecting people of Long Island, NY that the intrepid Diaz managed to expose? (At great personal risk I’m sure)

It’s all about ICE CREAM!!!! Seems Mr Prince has a chain of ice cream stores called D'Lites Emporium. He recently opened 3 new stores in Long Island and had plans for further expansion – that is until Arnold Diaz came to the rescue.

D’Lites claims their ice cream is low in sodium, sugar, fat, and carbohydrates but Diaz had lab findings that proved the ice cream was more unhealthy than it claimed….

But there’s a catch: Prince contends that the laboratory tested unfrozen, concentrated ice cream mix, which does not reflect the frozen, aerated, relatively diluted product served to the customer. He says the laboratory used by Diaz's team conceded the point, and issued a supplemental report that agreed with D'Lites' own nutritional claims.

Of course, in true Fox fashion: The lawsuit names parent company News Corp and FOX 5, alleging the makers of the broadcast knowingly ignored the laboratory's corrected verdict for the sake of good television.
A spokeswoman for Fox 5, who responded to Reuters' request to News Corp for comment, disputed Prince's claim. "FOX 5 stands by Arnold Diaz's story," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

Mr Prince may get his day in court, some day, after all the legal wrangling and stonewalling that FOX can afford to do. But it probably won’t come soon enough to undo the damage they have done to this man’s business or his reputation. He says that as a result of the broadcast hundreds of customers have stayed away and that his business expansion plans have been derailed.
The full story is HERE.

A crashing Boortz

Radio talk-show host Neal Boortz picked up a little press last week, and now he's complaining about it. So this week, he gave a big ol' non-apology. I'm going to reprint a big chunk of it here (interesting punctuation issues and all) to be sure I'm not taking him out of context.

As examples we'll use the Huffington post, a well known leftist website, and another named ournewsnow.com, a website with the slogan "The revolution will not be televised; whatever in the world that means, that titled their little bit about me thusly: "Atlanta Talk Show Host Codes Race Killings." Both of these websites printed the following quote from me:

"This town is starting to look like a garbage heap. And we got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta.

Well ... that wasn't exactly all I said. Here's the part they left off:

"We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city."

These websites, you see, wanted to portray me as having called for people to simply get guns and start killing blacks. They didn't include the beginning of my comments where I referenced two violent carjackings in Atlanta, nor did they see fit to include that part of my statement that related to self defense. No surprise. If you have an agenda to push, you do whatever editing is necessary to keep your message on point...

OK, so there's his basic message, or so he claims. It's all right to kill somebody, if you think they're robbing you. You know, basic libertarian, Second Amendment stuff. This isn't a healthy trend (ask Bernie Goetz), but I digress.)

Now Boortz takes a while complaining about his treatment by the "liberal media," until we get to this.

(Ed) Shultz picked up on my comments from Media Matters and then ... before he played it on his MSNBC show ... he did a little creative editing. My comments related to self defense, but Schultz, like other critics, needed to get the self defense aspect out of the way so that he could portray me as, in his words, as "reckless, stupid and racist" and to tell his audience that I had "advocated murder in the streets of Atlanta." You can't say that I was advocating murder if it's clear that I'm talking about defending yourself from a carjacker --- so that part was taken out. Here, again, is what I said:

You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta. "We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city."

See? That makes it all better.

He follows that with more whining about how badly he's mistreated by the "liberal media," and he'd like an apology. And he's not a racist, but he doesn't care if you call him one.

And then he says this.

Here's a nasty little secret for you. Pretty much every time the Atlanta media reports a violent crime in the city; whether it's a rape, an assault, a shooting, a carjacking or the murder of three people who worked in a car wash that doubles as a rap music recording studio, (no kidding this happened last week), one of the first thoughts that will cross most people's minds is that the perpetrators were young black males. I'm sure this is the case in most other large urban areas. Sometimes these initial impressions will be false, but not that often. Are these thoughts racist? Do these first impressions occur because of some deeply held belief that young black males are genetically predisposed to commit crimes? Hardly. These initial impressions are brought about by recognition of the fact that young black males are engaged in criminal activity in numbers way out of proportion to their percentage of the population - a recognition that there is a culture of crime and violence in the urban community. Yes, I can give you some statistics. You might not like them, but they're there for you to develop on your own, if you care to, using FBI crime data.

See? He's not racist! Everybody is, and he's just saying it for them!

And then he abuses statistics for a while, to show that most crime is committed by blacks and hispanics. Now, it would be rude of me to point out that these are the same statistics used by Klansmen to show that they aren't racist, they're only protecting their own kind!

And burning crosses (but that's just a hobby).

Instead, I'm just going to ponder the statistics he didn't use. The one from the Atlanta police, that shows that crime in Atlanta has been dropping steadily. In fact, crime in all of Georgia has been dropping for the last 30 years (a few indicators spiked in the early 90s, probably due to the influence of Vanilla Ice).

What other statistics does he ignore? Well, how about the fact that two-thirds of the population of Atlanta is black. So, just off the top of my head, I'd say that there's a good chance that two-thirds of the criminals are black. But that's just me.

And the rest of his statistics are equally idiotic. They're debunked or explained on a regular basis, but they're still quoted. By racists, who refuse to admit that their statistics are crap.

Nor is this the first time Boortz showed his racist side (and again, nice long quotes to let you get everything in context).

So, yeah, I think I'm more than happy to label him as a useless, bigoted fucknozzle, and racist to his evil little core.

The Significance of the Walmart Decision

A Facebook friend asked for input from lawyers about the Walmart v. Dukes opinion recently issued by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). I'm still recovering from a series of 14 and 15 hour days as our state legislature rushed (for no apparent reason) to end the session by June 18. Except, it's not really ended, just on recess until July 13 (more on this topic on another day). My response to his inquiry is below. Nothing fancy. My brain is muffled in cotton.

There were two major questions for SCOTUS to address in this case.

First Question: I concur that the 9-0 vote on the procedural question, certifying the plaintiffs as a class, is not an issue. The group was far too large and lacking in commonality to certify as a class. The proposed class was too broad; it would have included every female Wal-Mart employee since late 1998, and it's a stretch to assume that they were all victims of gender bias.

Second Question: However, SCOTUS split 5-4 on the question of sending the case back to the trial court to determine whether it could proceed in a narrower form. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of the minority on the latter question, warned that the Wal-Mart ruling would leave legitimate bias cases “at the starting gate.” Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan all dissented from the majority on this second question. Ginsburg wrote the dissent.

Justice Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, significantly restricts the rules defined by Congress for class-action lawsuits. Scalia argued that plaintiffs can gain a court’s certification of a class to pursue job-discrimination claims only if they can show “some glue holding the alleged reasons for all these decisions together.”

In other words, they must show that they are likely to win their case, to meet the “glue” test, a term that Scalia leaves undefined. What does it mean? How will it be determined that the "glue" test has been met? It appears that alleged victims of discrimination will, in the future, have to meet this test before they even will be allowed to certify as a class. It appears from the opinion that if discrimination is alleged in a wide enough variety of employment categories and locations, the plaintiffs cannot make a showing of commonality,without such a showing, they can't be certified as a class.

The other legal analyses of this case that I've read conclude that such a standard makes the cost and difficulty of bringing a class-action suit virtually prohibitive. So the Wal-Mart employees who want to continue to pursue their case will have to sue the company individually, if they can afford to do so. Or they can give up. This is what all the concern is about, not the decision that there were too many members and not enough commonality to certify them as a class.

In my legal opinion, the Supreme Court has increased the difficulty of seeking redress for illegal discrimination by employers through the use of class action lawsuits.

The entire opinion, including the dissenting opinion on the second question may be found at: Walmart v. Dukes.

What you could've said, but didn't.

So, it's amazing the number of places I live in the country. 11 different states today alone. I got my list from here, of the first eleven people from the House of Representatives to step on their metaphorical (and Weiner's pictorial) dicks.

Their latest trick, by the way, is to demand your nine-digit zip code, but that's not hard to get around. Look up a map of their Congressional district on Google (I like these, but that's just me), find a business in whatever city is completely inside that district. That gives you an address and phone number, and if you don't already have the full Zip+4, look it up.

Dear (insert Congresscritter here)

You made at least one major misstep in the last two weeks.

Would you please stop and think for a second, and ask yourself why the Republicans have managed to build up their power base for the last two decades? It's actually not hard to figure out: message discipline and solidarity. The Republicans work together.

Now, Anthony Weiner had his little scandal, and what did you do? You called on him to resign. Think about that for a second. What are you going to do if he's replaced by a Republican?

Please point out to me what laws Anthony Weiner broke. Or which women he had sex with? You can wave your hands around and say "Well, it was a distraction" all you want, but you know what? Now he's resigned. And it's still a distraction.

If he was going to resign in embarrassment, he would have done that anyway. If you needed to tell him how you felt, you could have closed the door and told him in private. Do you really think that standing in front of a microphone and telling the world how you felt did a damned thing? Really?

Anybody who might have been swayed by your declaration of "family values" (or whatever that was) wasn't going to vote for you anyway.

If you wanted to say nothing, you could have gone with something like this:

"This is a distraction. I have better things to talk about."

"Weiner did something stupid. I think his voters should be allowed to decide how they feel about it."

If you wanted to say nothing and still get some airtime for it, you could have made a slightly stronger statement, maybe something with an edge to it.

"Weiner's penis doesn't reach into my district."

"This is between him and his wife. Come back to me when Weiner commits a crime, OK?"

Or maybe you could have made a point out of the whole situation.

"I feel sorry for his wife, but I don't see what this has to do with the Republicans trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare."

"Have you asked Senator Vitter his opinion? You didn't? Well, when you do, follow it up by asking if he's embarrassed to say things like that."

"It's interesting that this comes up when the Congressman was trying to investigate the conflict of interest case of a Supreme Court justice. I also think it's interesting that you'd fall for this obvious distraction. Do you chase little toys on a string, too? Are you distracted by shiny objects?"

"Any chance we can get back to a subject that matters? No? OK, how about this? I'll worry about a sex scandal when the Republicans stop hiring hookers and paying off husbands."

Or you could even have made an entire comedy act out of it.

"Are you still on Weiner's penis? Really? Why are you so interested in another man's crotch? Are you proud of the work you're doing? When you go home at the end of the day and your wife asks 'What did you do today, dear?' do you respond with 'Well, I was all over a congressman's johnson! I reached right in there, and I groped around, but I didn't really find anything new today. Nothing juicy, anyway.' What does your editor say about this fixation of yours? Is he a supporter? 'I want more penis! We need 24-hour coverage of Anthony Weiner's crotch! This is big! Really big! I want to work this story until it explodes!' Do you have any questions about something important, or can you not think of anything today except penises?"

You know what this really would have taken on your part? A little courage. That's all. You could have stood up to the forces trying to tear apart our country, instead of turning around and attacking the people on your own side.

To put it more bluntly, Anthony Weiner showed the world that he has balls. What did you show?

Father's Day

Things change, everyone gets older. You start to wonder how many more father's days will pass while you still have a father to spend it with. It's good then, to see how some things never change; things like the bitter, miserable, vicious lies that spew from the GOP. Take the current Elmer Fudd of the Party, John McCain, the tortured war hero who didn't have the courage to stand up to the party's support of torture. Take John, who is making this Father's Day so much happier by blaming the Arizona wildfires on illegal immigrants rather than on the drought.

But he has substantial evidence, which he will, no doubt, reveal eventually, or not reveal or simply forget about after the wildfire of hate has got beyond control. Remember when Mexicans were bringing leprosy across the border? Many will long remember Lou Dobbs' accusations but not the lack of evidence and perhaps the wildfire libel will stick long after McCain's slide into dementia becomes all too obvious.

Well thanks John, for all you do and for reminding us of Republican fathers long gone like Joe McCarthy with their vaporous claims of "evidence" and I'm sure your legacy will stink long after you're gone.

Memes from the Wingnuts

A very common attitude among the right-wing websites is a dismissive attitude about anyone who points out when the economy went to hell - "Oh, you can't stop blaming Bush, can you?" The term "all Bush's fault" is often used as a perjorative to indicate someone is blindly liberal, and is particularly common in the comments.

This is a meme they've been trying to push since January 21, 2010: scorn for anyone who suggests that Bush might have been involved in tanking the economy. Even though Bush isn't particularly popular among conservatives, it's difficult for them to let go.

After a decade (or more) of upper echelon conservatism pushing for a united front (even against all logic), it's hard to break ranks and argue against core positions. So they continue to make excuses and avert their eyes.

It's all about core positions: if Bush was wrong about the tax cuts for the rich, then the tax cuts should end. But if tax cuts created jobs, Bush would have had record low unemployment, instead of hemorrhaging jobs. If deregulation was a good idea, then the free market would fix itself, instead of collapsing.

To admit Bush was wrong, conservatives have to admit they were wrong. So, instead, the idea is treated with scorn, in the hopes that it will go away.

But sadly for them, it hasn't worked:

...the American public isn’t blaming Obama for the current economy, with more than six in 10 respondents still saying he inherited the country’s economic problems from his Oval Office predecessor.

Also, while a combined 47 percent believe George W. Bush and his administration are "solely responsible" or "mainly responsible" for the current economy, just 34 percent in the poll say the same of Obama and his administration.

It's very sad. All that work, for nothing.

Meanwhile, this dates back to the inauguration, but it fits.

War or not a War

"If it looks like a war, it's a war"

said Dennis Kucinich to CNN, but he's wrong. Many things look like wars and many things have been sold to us as wars that aren't wars. Johnson's War on Poverty? The war on Drugs? calling it a war doesn't make it so nor does saying it is when it isn't. The 1968 Democratic convention looked and smelled like a war -- maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

Of course invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 finally gives the dogs something to bark about and they've been looking for impeachment arguments since election day, but is the current hoopla about our support of NATO actions in Syria based on concern for the law or another congressional burlesque show attempt to overturn an election they lost for good reason?

It looks like a war to the Republicans too but then, Birth of a Nation looks like history to them. Reagan's invasion of Granada and Bush's invasion of Panama looked pretty much like wars as well, but although both those presidents did report to Congress under the War Powers Resolution they did so without citing section 4(a)(1) which would require approval to continue after 60 days. In both cases hostilities ceased before the 60 day period even though troops remained in Panama and the question was deemed moot.

The question then hinges on whether American forces and personnel are still involved in hostilities 60 days after the initial air strikes and are still substantially in harms way. Obama argues that they are not, that they are only providing support for an embargo. His opponents disagree, but then they disagree with his presence in office and everything he says or does even when it mirrors their own sentiments. Scandal has been cried more often than Wolf, but while I tend to see the argument in similar light as the White House does, I Wish he could have done what Bush did by taking action when Congress was out of session, but not having had that option, I wish he would simply remove this issue from the spotlight and allow Congress to have their way. If nothing else it would take my Representative Tom "Looney" Rooney off the soapbox and out of my inbox for a while.

I think NATO can do without us and if this is so important to the Arab League, they can use some of that firepower we sold them.