Catalan at Heart

On Chris Brown.

2011-03-23T05:00:00.000-05:00

Remember this?

Kanye West gave a performance that will never be forgotten at the MTV Video Music Awards, but unfortunately for him, it had nothing to do with his music.

The rapper stormed on stage to unleash an astonishing rant during an acceptance speech by country starlet Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards last night.

The 19-year-old singer, who was collecting Best Female Video for You Belong To Me, was left humiliated as West snatched the microphone from her hands.

In an outlier to her authentic-as-astroturf albums, Swift had this to say:

I was standing on stage and I was really excited because I'd just won the award and then I was really excited because Kanye West was on stage. And then I wasn't excited anymore after that.

Surprisingly digestible words. Kanye certainly upstaged her, but given that it was at the MTV Video Music Awards and not the Nobel Prize ceremonies — which is to say, who gives a fuck? — Swift came across miffed an appropriately small level. If only the rhetoric of others was commensurate to hers.

Two giant tits Katy Perry went on twitter while still at the awards:

Fuck u Kanye. It's like you stepped on a kitten.

An interesting choice of words from Perry as, after hearing her fireworks song, I wondered if auto-tuning a screeching cat would also result in trivial pop music. Also, [insert Rebecca Black joke].

Speaking of awful artists, the mostly-upright sapient Pink also went on twitter:

Kanye West is the biggest piece of shit on earth. Quote me.

Will do, you reactionary, damaging-to-discourse hack.

From a Gawker post titled "Kanye West, You're a Dick.":

Honestly, Kayne, you look like an asshole. More so than usual. This poor girl had a moment to shine and, as is apparent by her reaction, you stole that and ruined what should have been a proud moment. That's mean and childish and you should be publicly shamed. Oh, wait. Your own fame guarantees that. Good.

So too did President Obama get in on the action. Although he was speaking off-the-record, ABC News employees — fortunately — broke protocol and tweeted the President's remark about Kanye:

Jackass.

Even President Carter had something to say, calling it "completely uncalled for". No, really, the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

Kanye West murdering 10,000 poor children

Via the aforementioned and anecdotal recall and cursory Google searches, one can reasonably say "basically the entire nation" had an overt bloodlust for Kanye after his heinous action. He, gasp, interrupted a teenage girl during an acceptance speech for an award with relevance less than that of, uh, No Mercy, or some other pop culture reference from over twenty years ago to show off some encyclopedic knowledge of obscure and utter nonsense. Kanye wasn't just skewered, filleted, poached, baked, broiled, boiled and diced up for this unchecked aggression on the biggest sacred cow in the United States — skinny, white teenage girls — oh no, he remained skewered, filleted, poached, baked, broiled, boiled and diced up for this unchecked aggression on a skinny, white teenage girl until his release of a sensational late-2010 album. And even then the album could barely be reviewed without mentioning this most egregious offense.

Why bring this up now?

Chris "Sorry about the window,
I thought it was a woman" Brown

That happened.

R&B singer Chris Brown stormed off the set of "Good Morning America" today after co-anchor Robin Roberts asked him about his domestic abuse incident with Rihanna.
[...]
Roberts asked Brown about the situation two more times; Brown seemed increasingly agitated as their conversation progressed. After the interview, Brown performed "Yeah 3x,"
[...]
Brown stormed off stage and went back to his dressing room. Then he came back down the hall, still backstage, and stopped upon seeing the person who produced the segment. Brown didn't have his shirt on.

The show's hair and makeup staff said they had called security because they heard loud noises coming from Brown's dressing room.

It was then discovered that a window had been smashed in Brown's dressing room. The thick glass was destroyed and strewn across the street below.

Bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment*, TMZ:

Robin Roberts asked Chris Brown if she could question him about the Rihanna incident BEFORE the live interview began on "GMA" this morning ... this according to sources connected to the production.

Sources tell TMZ ... Roberts insists both she and other "GMA" staff members spoke with Chris before the interview and asked if it would be OK to fire off "a few questions" about the Rihanna incident ... and Chris approved.

* -- The Insider is a really good film. What a random film reference to make!

That Rihanna Incident? From the warrant issued for Chris Brown:

Brown pulled the vehicle over on an unknown street, reached over [Rihanna] with his right hand, opened the car door and attempted to force her out. Brown was unable to force [Rihanna] out of the vehicle because she was wearing a seat belt. When he could not force her to exit, he took his right hand and shoved her head against the passenger window of the vehicle causing an approximate one inch raised circular contusion. [Rihanna] turned to face Brown and he punched her in the left eye with his right hand. He then drove away in the vehicle and continued to punch her in the face with his right hand while steering the vehicle with his left hand. The assualt caused [Rihanna's] mouth to fill with blood and blood to splatter all over her clothing and the interior of the vehicle. Brown looked at [Rihanna] and stated, "I'm going to beat the shit out of you when we get home! You wait and see!" [Rihanna] picked up her cellular telephone and called her personal assistant, [redacted]. [Redacted] did not answer the telephone but while her voicemail greeting was playing, [Rihanna] pretended to talk to her and stated, "I'm on my way home. Mare sure the cops are there when I get there." After [Rihanna] faked the call, Brown looked at her and stated, "You just did the stupidest thing ever! Now I'm really going to kill you!" Brown resumed punching [Rihanna] and she interlocked her fingers behind her head and brought her elbows forward to protect her face. She then bent over at the waist, placing her elbows and face near her lap in an attempt to protect her face and head from the barrage of punches being levied upon her by Brown. Brown continued to punch [Rihanna] on her left arm and hand causing her to suffer a contusion on her left triceps that was approximately two inches in diameter and numerous contusions on her left hand. [Rihanna] then attempted to send a text message to her other personal assistant, [redacted]. Brown snatched the cellular telephone out of her hand and threw it out of the window onto an unknown street.

Brown continued driving and [Rihanna] observed his cellular telephone sitting in his lap. She picked up the cellular telephone with her left hand and before she could make a call he placed her in a head lock with his right hand and continued to drive the vehicle with his left hand. Brown pulled [Rihanna] close to him and bit her on her left ear. She was able to feel the vehicle swerving from right to left as Brown sped away. He stopped the vehicle in front of [redacted] and [Rihanna] turned off the car, removed the key from the ignition and sat on it. Brown did not know what she did with the key and began punching her in the face and arms. He then placed her in a head lock positioning the front of her throat between his bicep and forearm. Brown began applying pressure to [Rihanna's] left and right carotid arteries causing her to be unable to breathe and she began to lose consciousness. She reached up with her left and began attempting to gouge his eyes in an attempt to free herself. Brown bit her left ring and middle fingers and then released her. While Brown continued to punch her, she turned around [and] placed her back against the passenger door. She brought her knees to her chest, placed her feet against Brown's body and began pushing him away. Brown continued to punch her on the legs and feet causing several contusions. [Rihanna] began screaming for help and Brown exited the vehicle and walked away. A resident in the neighborhood heard [Rihanna's] plea for help and called 911, causing a police response. An investigation was conducted and [Rihanna] was issued a Domestic Violence Emergency Protective Order (EPO).

That resulted in this:

Kanye West's shadow is tattooed with the face of Taylor Swift, a skinny, white teenage girl. Chris Brown, since savagely beating the living shit out of Rihanna, has toured, released two albums, performed a tribute to dead-molester Michael Jackson at the 2010 BET Awards, starred in an ensemble cast alongside ~~Hayden Christensen~~ Anakin Skywalker in Takers, and had a single hit number one on the the United States R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, a growing fanbase and a continuing record deal.

Without even addressing how a verbal undressing of a skinny, white teenage girl lingers in our society longer than Brown's repeated acts of violence upon Rihanna, just looking at it from what happened to Brown after his repeated acts of violence upon Rihanna, from that angle alone, his post-Good Morning America antics on Tuesday make sense. Here is a man who plead guilty to repeatedly assaulting Rihanna's face, neck, arms and legs and avoided jail time. Additionally, here is a man who has faced no long-term consequences for repeatedly assaulting Rihanna's face, neck, arms and legs. Should it be a shock then that after being asked about his repeated assault of Rihanna's face, neck, arms and legs that Brown threw a tantrum that would make even the most petulant and childish five-year-old wince?

Two things:

It is fitting the beyond petulant and childish Brown has to resort to the "but Billy's mom didn't ground him for jumping off the bridge!" defense. It is unfortunate, however, that Brown seems deluded enough to lack the ability to recognize wrongs discrete the actions of others.

The invocation of Charlie Sheen inspires intellectual gymnastics. As noted before, Sheen has committed numerous atrocities upon women in his past, but yet either in the interest of 'oh, look, a car crash' or 'hey, I wish my life was like Entourage and Charlie is sooo Vinnie Chase', a nonzero percent of the populous has come to celebrate the abusive, unstable individual that Sheen has devolved to. To dissect or understand Brown's angle is not an easy undertaking, as a mind sans nuance can be as unforgiving a script to decipher as hieroglyphics were before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Is he saying he should be celebrated? Is he saying because "they" are celebrated, he should get a pass for his savage beating of Rihanna? Is he over being remorseful about repeatedly assaulting Rihanna's face, neck, arms and legs, and that that is why he's sick of it being brought up? While pinpointing his intent is largely futile, it can be shown that — regardless of the potential candidates — it was both not worth making and embarrassing to even attempt.

Seeing how Kanye West was lampooned for a matter not lacking triviality and how the abusive fuck that is Chris Brown emerged from savagely beating Rihanna with a burgeoning career, the question must be asked: what if Chris Brown's then-girlfriend was Taylor Swift?

Romantic sacrifice.

2011-03-17T05:14:00.000-05:00

CBS/Turner signs 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with the NCAA for exclusive rights to the men's basketball tournament after the NCAA opts out of the final three years of an 11-year, $6 billion dollar contract.

ESPN signs 12-year, $1.86 billion deal with the Atlantic Coast Conference for exclusive rights to broadcast conference football and men's basketball games.

CBS signs 15-year, $800 million deal with the Southeastern Conference for football and basketball rights.

ESPN also signs 15-year, $2.25 billion deal with the SEC for sport broadcast rights — ultimately more than 5,500 televised events, including football games not already on CBS.

ESPN signs 20-year, $300 million deal with the University of Texas for sport broadcast rights, including at least one football game per year.

ESPN signs $125 million-a-year deal with the Bowl Championship Series for exclusive rights to the four most prestigious post season NCAA Division I Football post-season games and the "BCS National Championship Game".

Big Ten schools earn $22 million-a-year from television contracts, football bowl games and NCAA licensing.

The University of Georgia generated $52.5 million in football profits from 1 July, 2009 to 30 June, 2010.

A.J. Green, former Georgia football player and projected first-round pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, wore the number '8' on his jersey. Price of an "Authentic" Georgia football jersey, from the official NCAA merchandise store, adorned with the number '8': $150.00. Green's name, hysterically, is not across the back of the jersey because the NCAA believes that itself and schools should not profit off the name of amateur athletes. That even though they market them, that even though they sign billion-dollar contracts to showcase them on television where they are repeatedly called by name, they won't sell a jersey with an athlete's name on it in the name of keeping the sport 'pure'. In the name of upholding 'amateurism'.

So, on 8 September, 2010, in the name of maintaining the purity of collegiate athletics, the NCAA suspended Georgia football player A.J. Green four games for selling a game-worn bowl jersey for $1000.

the romantic ideal of amateur athletics : actual modern-day amateurism :: watching a sunset with your lover at the Eiffel Tower : a quickie in some filthy bathroom stall

Which is to say: unequivocal bullshit.

So the question to ask then, to tie this to matters at hand: is the pushed-by-the-right narrative that public-union employees must 'sacrifice for the job' as lacking of credible romanticism as the NCAA's demands are for the monetary celibacy of college athletes?

Are both notions heavy on saccharine and short on tangible merits? Is giving up individual rights in the name of public servitude essential? Is it necessary? Is becoming less an individual and more a spoke of the wheel of government service a demand a just society must make for economic and societal solvency?

I don't find it unreasonable to suggest or accept that inherent to public service is sacrifice. That when accommodating the 'greater good', an individual has obligations beyond themselves. This I find to be indisputable. But I don't believe collective bargaining to be some impassable landmine for adept, fair and budgeted public service. I don't find an inherent sacrifice within the professions to be justification for the trampling of the individual by a state or State. I don't find it reasonable to stampede for stampeding's sake.

Barring public unions from striking? Fair. Reasonable. Necessary for the maintaining of order and safety and structure of a society. A necessary sacrifice.

Barring public unions from collectively bargaining for matters other than capped wage increases? The eradication of negotiations for benefits? Rules of the workplace? Workplace safety? How can one view these achieved goals — for now — of Wisconsin Governor — for now — Scott Walker as anything but the continued nationwide assault on the middle class and the individual from those on the right? As anything but a match of the NCAA's unequivocal bullshit? Is Gov. Walker nuanced enough to understand granting public unions collective bargaining is not an opening of the state's reserves for the pillaging of public unions? That collective bargaining does not remove 'no' from a state's vocabulary when met with a wholly preposterous request?

There is a proper weight to the sacrifice asked of public-union employees and a proper use of that weight. But the proper use of that weight is not tying it around the legs of individuals and throwing them in the water, however ill-attributed to romanticism it may be.

Scott Fitzgerald actually said this stuff.

2011-03-12T16:01:00.001-06:00

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald had a few things to say:

Today, the most shameful 14 people in the state of Wisconsin are going to pat themselves on the back and smile for the cameras.

I know the Bucks have wildly underperformed their expectations this season, but is that enough to call their players 'shameful'? Shouldn't we — as fans, as people — withhold such rhetoric until a higher threshold of shame is crossed? Hell, Andrew Bogut rushed back from a catastrophic elbow injury just for a fast-becoming apathetic fanbase. Shameful is a low blow, Senator.

Subtracting Redd from the usual 15-man roster, however, is hysterical. Touché, salesman.

They're going to pretend they're heroes for taking a three week vacation.

Oh. He's talking about the Senate Democrats who left the state in an attempt to stop a totalitarian regime from ramming a bill through. Great.

It is an absolute insult to the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who are struggling to find a job, much less one they can run away from and go down to Illinois -- with pay.

Again with this? As noted time and time again, the Senate Democrats leaving the state to halt totalitarian progress is anything but insulting. Republicans continuing their attempts to pass this hackneyed, unreasoned fiction off as fact, though? That's insulting.

Their appearance at the Capitol today is in direct violation of the contempt order issued by the state Senate earlier this month, and it proves their absolute disregard for the institution of the Senate and the constitution they took an oath of office to serve.

Here is the contempt order. To say 'their appearance at the Capitol today is in direct violation of the contempt order' almost asks an acrobatic feat of mental exercise. Fitzgerald, if one grants him facilities of average intelligence, must be referring to finding no. 4, which offers that any missing Senate Democrat 'has violated and continues to violate a plain and positive duty of attendance at sessions of the State Senate.'

This rings hollow. At any point after missing the call to quorum on 3 March, the Senate Democrats were already in direct violation of this fueled-by-a-lack-of-nuance contempt order. To specifically state today's appearance and then qualify it as proof of 'their absolute disregard for the institution of the Senate and the constitution they took an oath of office to serve' reduces the aimed declaration to empty grandstanding needing a selective rendering for weight.

But the people of Wisconsin won't forget what they were really doing these past few weeks.

Opposing totalitarian rule? Anyone want to guess that? It's either that or Fitzgerald will regurgitate feckless talking points. It's definitely one or the other.

Sen. Tim Cullen refused to come back to save 1,500 jobs.

Feckless talking points it is.

Sen. Mark Miller refused to come back even to make sure his own staff were safe in the Capitol he abandoned.

Right, because the Capitol was such a dangerous place: military firing indiscriminately on citizens, fighter planes bombing groups of protesters, governments wanting to impose a no-fly zone overhead. Damn Mark Miller for refusing to come back to make sure his staff were safe.

Wait, that's Libya. What the hell is Fitzgerald talking about?

Sen. Fred Risser refused to come back out of respect for the institution and dignity of the state Senate.

Is that better or worse than refusing to come back to see if his staff were still alive?

Sen. Bob Jauch refused to come back even though our side was negotiating in good faith to try to find a reasonable compromise.

In good faith? Like the time you guys tried tricking Senate Democrats to come back? In good faith like that?

Sens. Jon Erpenbach, Chris Larson and Lena Taylor were all too happy to pat themselves on the back and smile for the cameras in Illinois, never mind their constituents here in Wisconsin.

At least they weren't cowards like Mark Miller, am I right?!

And Sens. Dave Hansen, Kathleen Vinehout, Tim Carpenter, Spencer Coggs, Jim Holperin, and Julie Lassa refused to come back to actually do the job they were elected to do.

PROTIP: When attempting to denigrate a group of individuals, either blast them all for the same thing OR do more than just partition them off and rephrase one frayed argument for each grouping. Because just separating a few of them with a recycled attack makes you look like a knob.

To the Senate Democrats: When you smile for the cameras today and pretend you're heroes, I hope you look at that beautiful Capitol building you insulted. And I hope you're embarrassed to call yourselves senators."

You want insulting? If only there was a video of the makeshift committee which stripped the "budget-repair bill" of fiscal policy so the Senate Republicans could then shove it through without a quorum. If only...

Straight Rights Watch: Indiana

2011-03-12T01:53:00.004-06:00

This week, on 'Adventures in Sexcrime'...

What are you up to, Indiana?

"The vast majority of both the Senate and House are pro-life legislators, and I think we truly represent Hoosier constituents," said Rep. Eric Turner, R-Marion, who authored House Bill 1210, the bill that would make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. Current state law bans it after the fetus is viable, which a doctor determines, generally around 24 weeks

That... hmm. That certainly doesn't justify an hour of programming on Lifetime. False alarm, thanks for reading, be sure to-

Oh. There's more?

Turner's measure also would require abortion providers to tell patients that abortion carries risks, including the possibility of breast cancer

What's wrong with that? Anyone seeking a medical procedure should receive all relevant information about their prospective procedure. If a woman incurs an additional risk of breast cancer by having an abortion, she should be told about it. And why wasn't this a law before? Was the American Cancer Society's lobbying arm in remission?

The largest, and probably the most reliable study on this topic was done during the 1990s in Denmark, a country with very detailed medical records on all its citizens. [...]After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found that induced abortion(s) had no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer.

Pssh. That's Denmark. In Europe right? How can you trust anything those socialists and practitioners of green energy have to say? The Republican legislators of the Great State of Indiana, obviously, would never attempt to enact legislation requiring women to be told they are increasing their risk of breast cancer by having an abortion if said risk did not exist.

Another large, prospective study was reported on by Harvard researchers in 2007. This study included more than 100,000 women who were between the ages of 29 and 46 at the start of the study in 1993. These women were followed until 2003. Again, because they were asked about childbirths and abortions at the start of the study, recall bias was unlikely to be a problem. After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors, the researchers found no link between either spontaneous or induced abortions and breast cancer.

Oh, Republican legislators would attempt to enact legislation requiring women to be told an outright fabrication. That's some delightful contempt for their constituents and their ability to do a Google fact-check.

Another bill, House Bill 1205, authored by Rep. Matt Ubelhor, R-Bloomfield, would have made Indiana the first state in the country to defund Planned Parenthood, according to the organization's records.

Indiana : America :: The first commenters on any article who merely post "First!" : The internet

Which is to say: assholes.

The bill, which would have cut off about $3 million in government funds to the organization because it provides abortions, got caught in the crossfire when Democrats walked out Feb. 21 and is essentially dead because it never moved far enough along in the process to survive the legislative stall.

Whew.

Ubelhor said he could bring it up again as early as next year, and he may encounter little resistance.

...what?

"There's virtually nothing to stop these now that there's a Republican majority in both houses and a Republican governor," said Robert Dion, political science professor at the University of Evansville.

Republicans : America :: The Party : Oceania

Step one: Allow health-care providers in Wisconsin to not cover contraception.
Step two: Force women in South Dakota to sit through three days of "counseling" about them pursuing something they shouldn't do.
Step three: Force women in Texas to be subjected to "government intrusion".
Step four: Lie to women in Indiana, telling them having an abortion will increase their risk of breast cancer.

[...]
The last step: All sex not done between married heterosexuals solely in the name of procreation becomes sexcrime.

Jeff Fitzgerald: 2 + 2 = 5

2011-03-10T14:45:00.000-06:00

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald today:

We ran on this. We were going to get the fiscal house in order. This is how we ran in our election. This is how we picked up 14 seats from you guys. The public spoke (in the elections). They said, ‘no more, no more. We want you to go to Madison and do what you say you’re going to do.’

Says PolitiFact:

But Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the bare-bones of his multi-faceted plans to sharply curb collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. We could find none either.

It maddens to no end how Republicans still push this debunked narrative. There is no other way around it, they've seen the polls: they have to know they are lying. They lived through their campaigns. They know the eradication of collective bargaining was not discussed. They have to know saying they ran on this is a logical facsimile to stating 2 + 2 = 5.

...right? That this is all done in the name of political manipulation. That this is all done in the name of gaining and imposing one's power. Walker, Scott Fitzgerald, Jeff Fitzgerald, Lazich, Werwie, et al: lying to perpetuate their own and their ideology's power. While a politician lying is hardly novel and rarely noteworthy, once a lie has been exposed, the public is generally saved from having it forced down their throats.

The repetition of and the refusal to stop this lie in the objective face of contradictory evidence does not just dishearten. It gobsmacks. It snakes its hand to the base of your cerebral core and squeezes until you ask and beg and plead and scream for mercy and reprieve and a semblance of sanity. It must be asked and considered whether Republicans believe the lie. Whether the lie is not symptomatic of politics-as-usual but axiomatic of an Orwellian nightmare.

The repetition suggests Orwellian nightmare. The heart hopes for mere lying. The enlightened mind weeps.

"This is a violation of law!"

2011-03-09T22:20:00.000-06:00

The Wisconsin State Senate passed a stripped-down version of Governor Scott Walker's "budget-repair bill" earlier tonight. Having had all budget-related elements expunged from the bill in an earlier, makeshift committee with only one Democrat present — Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca — the nineteen Senate Republicans were able to vote on Walker's bill as a non-budgetary action in the Senate does not require a successful quorum — what the Senate Democrats had been blocking with their escape from state troopers to Illinois.

And it wasn't even legal. Wisconsin law requires a twenty-four hour notice before a public body — like the aforementioned makeshift committee — can meet and only two hours were given. This breach of conduct weighed not on the Republican's minds for a second nor did the incredulous protests of Barca. "This is a violation of law! It's not a rule!"

Two hours after the committee met, without debate, the Republican Senators voted 18-1 in favor of Walker's bill. The dissenter was Dale Schultz. Voting for the bill:

Robert Cowles
Alberta Darling
Michael Ellis
Scott Fitzgerald
Pam Galloway
Glenn Grothman
Sheila Harsdorf
Randy Hopper
Dan Kapanke
Neal Kedzie
Frank Lasee
Mary Lazich
Joe Liebham
Terry Moulton
Luther Olsen
Leah Vukmir
Van Wanggaard
Rich Zipperer

Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate Majority Leader: "We simply cannot have democracy be held hostage because the minority wants to prove a point."

Mary Lazich: "Our Democrat senators not only ran away from the state, they ran away from their responsibility.

The Senate Republicans were not a separate branch of government but an extension of Walker's reach. A body without a discrete will. A body that took its marching orders from Walker and offered not resistance but absolute compliance. A body which shutdown debate before the originally scheduled vote. A body which did not consider a single Senate Democrat's amendment. A body which parroted Walker's false claim that the election was a referendum on the matter, that the eradication of collective bargaining was what he always said he was going to do. And the men and women of this body have the audacity to call Senate Democrats hostage takers. To call them enemies of democracy. That they ran away from their responsibilities. Which is scarier? That they're willing to say such things? Or that they could actually believe them?

There is nothing cowardly or childish in leaving the state to stop a totalitarian regime from railroading a punitive, middle class-assaulting, union-busting bill through. To do so is not emblematic of an opposition to democracy but a valiant recourse in democracy's name. To do so is not in contradiction to their responsibilities and oath but an upholding of them. A declaration of intolerance for the unjust.

Each and every one of these Republican Senators not named Dale Schultz are intellectual midgets unable to see above an ideological barrier or reach the pedals of honest thought. Each and every one of these eighteen men and women are unrepentant threats to democracy. Their names link to their contact pages. Let them hear it and don't stop — don't dare stop — until they are either recalled or ashamed of their actions.

Michigan thinks Walker isn't extreme enough.

2011-03-09T17:50:00.003-06:00

Let's see what Michigan is up to.

Legislation that would allow emergency financial managers to throw out union contracts and overrule elected officials in financially distressed municipalities and school districts was approved in the Senate today.

Remember how Obama was being lambasted for using 'czars'? Even though they had no power? And were just glorified advisors that took his positions in meetings and would report back with status updates and their own views? Remember that? And the outrage from Republicans? There's no way any Senate Republicans from Michigan voted for this measure. No way. That would be hypocritical beyond hysterics.

The measure passed 26-12 along party lines in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Le sigh.

Gretchen Whitmer, the Senate Minority Leader:

This bill represents bigger government, more bureaucrats, less accountability and less transparency. Where the heck is the [t]ea [p]arty now? We were sent to Lansing to create jobs, not dismantle them.

How dare the Senator question the tea party and their unimpeachable quest to reduce the size of government!

The legislation also would grant school district emergency financial managers such as Detroit Public Schools' Robert Bobb total authority over academics and the curriculum.

Of course it would. Why stop at just throwing out contracts and overruling elected officials? While we're at it, let's appoint an emergency financial manager who finds the cost of textbooks that cover evolution too high. "This isn't about evolution or creationism, even though evolution is a theory, not a fact," said Bob McJerkface, the school district emergency financial manager. "This is about balancing the budget."

"I wish we didn't have to put a bill like this forward" said Republican Sen. Patrick Colbeck of Canton.

If only you were in a position to do something about that, Patty. If you only you had won an election for some sort of public office in Michigan, you could've not voted for this measure.

An amendment defeated by Republicans today would have limited the salary of financial managers to the level of the governor's salary.
[...]
Sen. Phil Pavlov of St. Clair, the legislation's sponsor, said limiting the salary "would eliminate a lot of people" who might otherwise take an emergency financial manager position.

The governor's salary? $177,000. Dollars, not rupees. I wonder what Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has to say about this:

Michigan citizens need to think about what's best for everyone rather than just themselves if the state is to reinvent itself, Gov. Rick Snyder told the Michigan Association of Broadcasters on Wednesday.
[...]
"In our hearts, we know it's time for 'we' to happen," he said at the end of a half-hour speech. "By following through on that 'we' attitude, we'll have an exciting future."

Everyone needs to sacrifice. Except the rich. Make the rich happy, and they'll eventually make you happy. Down there. Wink wink. You follow me?

And for those of us who aren't masochists, Governor?

All this comes on the heels of Snyder's budget bill that aims to cut business taxes by almost $2 billion. $2,000,000,000, not $0.02. A plan that requires those making under $17,000 to pay 1.1% more of their income and those making over $355,000 to pay .1% more. .1%, not 10%. And he's going after collective bargaining rights, too.

Fear not, Wisconsinites: it could be worse. Fear not, Michiganders: you could live in North Korea.

Barcelona 3 - 1 Arsenal

2011-03-08T19:47:00.002-06:00

Shots on goal:

Barcelona - 19

Arsenal - 0

Possession:

Barcelona - 68%

Arsenal - 32%

Completed passes:

Barcelona: 738

Arsenal: 199

Has Lionel Messi:

Barcelona: Affirmative

Arsenal: Negative

Shake it off, Sergio All is well.

NASCAR sucks.

2011-03-08T00:01:00.001-06:00

At the Beijing Olympics, swimmer Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, the most ever by an athlete at a single Olympiad. But, since it's swimming, Phelps didn't swim as fast as he could eight different times, be it in a relay or shorter and longer distances. Oh no. Phelps swam forwards, backwards, in an elliptical balderdash and then whatever the hell the "front crawl" is, all at distances of either one hundred or two hundred meters in individual and relay races.

Also at the Beijing Olympics, sprinter Usain Bolt became the fastest human being that ever lived. He set the world-record in the 100-meter dash — while celebrating well before the finish line — and then won the 200-meter dash — besting Michael Johnson's thought to be untouchable world record. He then merely helped his Jamaican compatriots set the world record in the 4x100-meter relay.

Bolt — the fastest human being ever — was overshadowed, of course, by Phelps in the media. Bolt had three things going against him: Phelps being white, Phelps being American, swimming valuing different styles of strokes over fastest times.

Two brothers stand on a driveway and race to the end and back. The older brother wins. The younger brother says, "Bet you can't beat me running backwards!" The older brother then punches the younger brother in the face as hard as he can for suggesting such a patently stupid idea. While Bolt was no less than the pinnacle of human evolution, Phelps, in relation, was no more than a younger brother who successfully schemed up different ways to beat his older brother, albeit at a very high level of scheming.

Track and Field owns a quality that no other sports does: pure and total objectivity. The gun goes off, the runner crosses the finish line, that's it. No ball to be kicked or handed off or thrown, just a runner and a uniform track. And with that comes the prestige of a world record actually meaning that the accomplishing athlete was the first person to do that. That the accomplishing athlete redefined the limits of humanity's accomplishments. While it is without the nuance that one can see when Messi cuts in or when Rodgers threads a ball through the outstretched arms of the secondary into the hands of his own receiver who needs not to break stride, that objectivity is refreshing in a era where contradictory claims are routinely called facts.

NASCAR, meanwhile, is unbridled bullshit. There exist a few ways to put this: it's void of the romanticism of Track and Field, it's void of the active physical demands of literally every major sport in existence, it's humans pressing a gas pedal and steering a wheel of a vehicle traveling at high speeds around an oval or mostly-oval track. The g-force argument is the snake oil of sports debate: the drivers aren't creating the g-forces by their own physical exertion but by the intensity of the pressing of their foot on the gas pedal. If that is the threshold for a sport — experiencing and withstanding g-forces — then merely riding a roller coaster must join the sport fraternity.

To be the best in NASCAR, what does this even mean? While this question for football or basketball or American football can generally be solved on the field with an eye towards teams and their players and coaches, in NASCAR this question is answered more by mechanics and engineers than anyone resembling an athlete. LeBron James can carry a team of scrubs deep into the playoffs, but Matt Kenseth can't drive a decisively inferior car to victory without severe ineptitude from his opponents or outrageous luck. And yes, even though Lance Armstong — regardless of however many aggressive performance-enhancing drugs he's taking — would lose on a tricycle to top competition on their rides of choice, it is with his own energy commitment do the wheels spin, not the consumption of gasoline.

While Track and Field has that objective measuring stick for meaning, NASCAR has "umm, this car went faster than that other car under this specific set of conditions." There's something to be said for trying to set a drag racing world record — while perhaps not the best use of research and development, engineers are using human knowledge to further what's possible — where as there's nothing to be said for winning a NASCAR race — "oh, neat, look at how little this matters in the grand scope of anything". To what accomplishment does NASCAR strive for beyond the emittance of fossil fuels? Length in a period of time? Airplanes already have that bested.

The achievements of individuals and humanity comprise the backbone of Track and Field. NASCAR's aims are the inefficient consumption and wasting of resources — not just oil, but the time of engineers, mechanics, crew teams and the time of fans — in the name of nothing but the celebration of that needless gluttony. Would a manned mission to Mars not be a better celebration of human ingenuity than driving around a mile track 500 times? Where would that mission be with the labor and capital that's been poured into NASCAR in the last decade? Or the creation of a green energy infrastructure?

NASCAR is sans merit. A bastard lone of a point to make or a meaningful objective to fulfill. An undoubted embarrassment to any society claiming nuance or intelligence. A leech to progress, a celebration of ignorance.

And definitely not a sport.

On Wisconsin, part three.

2011-03-07T04:32:00.000-06:00

The conclusion of 'On Wisconsin'. Part one. Part two.

A narrative tossed about lately calls for public-union employees — namely teachers — to do their part. That the private sector is hurting, that jobs are being lost, that benefits are disappearing, that it is only fair for the hurt of the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression to now be shared by employees of the state by way of reduced benefits.

Purely and wholly on a basic level, this narrative makes sense. Perhaps it even qualifies as fair, given the unions agreeing to the monetary demands of Walker's budget repair bill. But beyond the level of discourse found at a kindergarten playground, the argument is specious at best and Ostrichian at worst.

Composite sketch of the typical Governor Walker supporter

It is 2008. The 11th of March. A Tuesday. On CNBC's Mad Money, host Jim Cramer is asked, "Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?" Cramer answers, "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear."

The same day on Wall Street, an unknown person makes a bet at odds of one-hundred-fifty-nine to one. The amount wagered: $1.7 million. The proposition: Bear Stearns will lose greater than half its value within nine days. Bear Stearns price per share: $62.97. Other than probably not being Jim Cramer, nothing is known about the mystery person.

On the 16th that month, a Sunday, after a catastrophic week, Bear Stearns sells itself to JP Morgan Chase for $2 a share. On Monday, the unknown person — having wagered $1.7 million this would happen not one week earlier at 159:1 odds — makes $270 million.

No bet exists at a craps table or a roulette table or a blackjack table or a baccarat table that has a 159:1 shot of paying off, yet this mystery man hits betting one of the world's largest financial institutions is going to crumble.

Back to that Tuesday, the 11th. Ben Bernake and Timothy Geitner call a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In attendance: Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase; Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs; James Gorman, Morgan Stanley; Richard Fuld, Lehman Brothers; John Thain, Merrill Lynch; Robert Rubin, Citigroup; Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone Group; several hedge-fund chiefs, like Kenneth Griffin from Citadel Investment Group.

As the obscenely-talented and always-incredible Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi notes and thoroughly examines in an exceptional read, the meeting "included virtually everyone who was anyone on Wall Street — except for Bear Stearns." But whatever did they talk about?

What's impossible to believe is the bullshit version that Geithner and Bernanke later told Congress. The month after Bear's collapse, both men testified before the Senate that they only learned how dire the firm's liquidity problems were on Thursday, March 13th — despite the fact that rumors of Bear's troubles had begun as early as that Monday and both men had met in person with every key player on Wall Street that Tuesday. This is a little like saying you spent the afternoon of September 12th, 2001, in the Oval Office, but didn't hear about the Twin Towers falling until September 14th.

[...]

Given the Fed's cloak of confidentiality, we simply don't know what happened at the meeting. But what we do know is that from the moment it ended, the run on Bear was on, and every major player on Wall Street with ties to Bear started pulling IV tubes out of the patient's arm.

[...]

All of these tactics were elements that had often been seen in a kind of scam known as a "bear raid" that small-scale stock manipulators had been using against smaller companies for years. But the most damning thing the attack on Bear had in common with these earlier manipulations was the employment of a type of counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling. From the moment the confidential meeting at the Fed ended on March 11th, Bear became the target of this ostensibly illegal practice — and the companies widely rumored to be behind the assault were in that room.

Before 1973, if you wanted to trade stock, the actual stock certificate had to physically be moved from buyer to seller as part of the transaction. This, of course, was a cumbersome requirement, leading to the creation of the Depository Trust Company, an actual "holding" company that houses, for all intents and purposes, each physical stock certificate. With the DTC now a central hub to manage and record all sales — removing the chaotic and cumbersome practice of ferrying around the certificate from firm to firm — market activity took off something fierce.

In these unencumbered times, short selling — a bet against a stock, like the "Don't Pass" bet on a Craps table against the shooter — became the equivalent of vampire fiction written in terrible prose aimed at teenage girls. Which is to say: popular. An entirely legal practice, short selling entails borrowing and then immediately selling an amount of stock, and within or at the end of an agreed period of time, the borrower must then buy back the number of shares he sold to return to the loaning party.

So if you short 10 shares of 'Bluth Real Estate' for $10, and 'Bluth Real Estate' drops to $7, you clear 30 bucks: the $70 from your purchase of the $7 a share stock subtracted from the $100 from your selling of the borrowed stock. If the stock goes up instead of down, you're buying back for more than your original sell, and you lose money.

Naked short selling, however, is a bag of just awful awfulness: the short seller only must make an attempt in good-faith to "locate" the stock. In this era of lax regulations — "lol, regulation kills business lol" — a good faith attempt to locate a stock can result in being given not stock but an IOU for the stock if, among other things, the broker has already dispatched the stock elsewhere. And even if the shares of the IOU are never delivered — resulting in a "fail to deliver" — the short sell is allowed to go through "naked" of the stock.

That's right: the legal selling of shares of stock that don't actually exist. And each counterfeit share depresses the value of the actual real shares.

And — as Taibbi explains — far, far worse:

Here's how naked short selling works: Imagine you travel to a small foreign island on vacation. Instead of going to an exchange office in your hotel to turn your dollars into Island Rubles, the country instead gives you a small printing press and makes you a deal: Print as many Island Rubles as you like, then on the way out of the country you can settle your account. So you take your printing press, print out gigantic quantities of Rubles and start buying goods and services. Before long, the cash you’ve churned out floods the market, and the currency's value plummets. Do this long enough and you'll crack the currency entirely; the loaf of bread that cost the equivalent of one American dollar the day you arrived now costs less than a cent.

With prices completely depressed, you keep printing money and buy everything of value — homes, cars, priceless works of art. You then load it all into a cargo ship and head home. On the way out of the country, you have to settle your account with the currency office. But the Island Rubles you printed are now worthless, so it takes just a handful of U.S. dollars to settle your debt. Arriving home with your cargo ship, you sell all the island riches you bought at a discount and make a fortune.

This is the basic outline for how to seize the assets of a publicly traded company using counterfeit stock. What naked short-sellers do is sell large quantities of stock they don't actually have, flooding the market with “phantom" shares that, just like those Island Rubles, depress a company’s share price by making the shares less scarce and therefore less valuable.

Back to Tuesday, the 11th of March. 201,768 shares of Bear Stearns had failed to deliver. Through the 12th, 1.2 million. By the close on Friday, over 2 million. After the market opened the following Monday, 13.7 million. On that Friday:

[Then-Treasury secretary Hank] Paulson wouldn't stay up another night worrying about Bear Stearns, he reportedly told [Bear CEO, Alan] Schwartz. Bear had until Sunday night to find a buyer or it could go fuck itself.

Bear was out of options. Over the course of that weekend, the firm opened its books to JPMorgan, the only realistic potential buyer. But upon seeing all the "shit" on Bear's books, as one source privy to the negotiations put it — including great gobs of toxic investments in the sub-prime markets — JPMorgan hedged. It wouldn't do the deal, it announced, unless it got two things: a huge bargain on the sale price, and a lot of public money to wipe out the "shit."

So the Fed — on whose New York board sits JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon— immediately agreed to accommodate the new buyers, forking over $29billion in public funds to buy up the yucky parts of Bear. Paulson, meanwhile, took care of the bargain issue, putting the government's gun to Schwartz’s head and telling him he had to sell low. Really low.

That really low number becomes the aforementioned $2 a share. $2 a share after closing on Friday at $30. $29 billion in public funds to cover toxic investments and finish off what the naked shorting started.

And then they did the same thing to Lehman Brothers. But don't worry, everything is all okay now:

The commission did repeal the preposterous "market maker" loophole on September 18th, 2008, forbidding market makers from selling phantom shares. But that same day, the SEC also introduced a comical agreement called "Rule 10b-21," which makes it illegal for an Evil Hedge Fund to lie to a Prime Broker about where he borrowed his stock. Basically, this new rule formally exempted Wall Street's biggest players from any blame for naked short-selling, putting it all on the backs of their short-seller clients. Which was good news for firms like Goldman Sachs, which only a year earlier had been fined $2 million for repeatedly turning a blind eye to clients engaged in illegal short-selling. Instead of tracking down the murderers of Bear and Lehman, the SEC simply eliminated the law against aiding and abetting murder. "The new rule just exempted the Prime Brokers from legal responsibility," says a financial player who attended closed-door discussions about the regulation. "It's a joke."

This problem isn't limited to stocks. The commodities market, where you've "got 12 paper barrels [of oil] trading for every physical barrel." The mortgages market, "just like in the stock market, where short-sellers delivered IOUs instead of real shares, traders of mortgage-backed securities sometimes conclude deals by transferring "lost-note affidavits" — basically a "my dog ate the mortgage" note — instead of the actual mortgage." The bond market where "practice of selling bonds without delivering them is so rampant it has even infected the market for U.S. Treasury notes. [...] In a single week last July, some $250 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds were sold and not delivered."

400 Americans hold more money and assets — wealth — than the entire combined lower half of the country. The subprime mortgage crisis that tanked the world’s economy has fueled and grown the divide. The subprime mortgage crisis: where cutting regulation — “lol, regulation hurts business lol” — led to banks giving out high risk mortgages where 80% were of the adjustable-rate variety that eventually reset to higher interest rates that couldn't be paid, resulting in soaring delinquencies, all the while Wall Street, wise to what was going to happen, got these mortgages wrapped into securities and had the purely toxic securities highly rated so they could pawn off the securities leaving the buyers of those securities — states, pension funds, just trivial bodies, really — to be tits-up on the ground while they — those on Wall Street — were left standing and rich.

And the funny thing is, the pension funds for Wisconsin state employees dodged this mess. They dodged those toxic securities. The pension funds are some of the few healthy assets the state has left. "Has" used loosely because, as Forbes points out, the pension fund gets its money from deferred payments to the employees, not directly from tax dollars:

If the Wisconsin governor and state legislature were to be honest, they would correctly frame this issue. They are not, in fact, asking state employees to make a larger contribution to their pension and benefits programs as that would not be possible- the employees are already paying 100% of the contributions.

What they are actually asking is that the employees take a pay cut.

All of this is why this whole "asking the public-union employees to make a sacrifice" is such total and complete fucking bullshit, and to call it anything other than total and complete fucking bullshit would be diminishing just how fucking bullshit it is. On the surface, using the kindergarten playground logic, yes, maybe they should ~~lose some benefits~~ take a pay cut. That it's only fair for Wisconsin public-employee unions to suffer like the rest of the country.

But it is total fucking bullshit to ask this of them and not of the Sons-of-Bitches who robbed this country blind. Did previous governor administrations, legislatures, local governments and municipalities perhaps give public employees too generous of deals? Sure. Did previous governor administrations and legislatures use gimmicks and one-time federal money to push back debt into the upcoming $3.6 billion shortfall? Undoubtedly. Is Scott Walker right to want to shrink the government to help fix this shortfall? Absolutely. Is he going about it the complete wrong way? As sure as tomorrow is to come, yes. Is asking public-employee unions to make sacrifices in any way, shape or form reasonable? Hell no.

Is doing so akin to a "Favre fan" eschewing logic and not supporting Ted Thompson? Is doing so akin to using the hollow-of-fact, full-of-frothing-at-the-mouth-rhetoric those Favre fans used that Walker has now co-opted? Is doing so akin to putting one's head in the sand about the Sons-of-Bitches who ran this country into the fucking ground? The Sons-of-Bitches who bankrupted so much of the private sector? Who ruined pension funds, both public and private? Who decimated states? Who threw the entire world into a near-collapse in the name of greed?

Yes.

Straight Rights Watch: Texas

2011-03-05T05:30:00.000-06:00

This is beginning to get ridiculous.

Women seeking an abortion would have to first get an ultrasound under a measure approved on Thursday by the Texas House of Representatives.

The proposal, the first significant bill considered by the House this year, was designated by Republican Governor Rick Perry as an emergency priority. A similar measure has already been approved by the state Senate.

An emergency priority, Governor? Your state has a $30 billion dollar deficit and forcing women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound is an emergency priority? Is the next emergency priority new tetherballs for playgrounds or did you already get to that one?

"Anytime you abort a human life, that's probably the most tragic procedure that could ever be performed," [the bill's author, Republican state Rep. Sid] Miller said. "If we can save human lives, that is an emergency."

Let's put aside all arguments about when consciousness or human life actually begins. Okay. Here, Sid stops just short of calling a woman who elects to have an abortion a murderer because he knows that anyone who knows the definition of "murder" would say to themselves after reading that, "Oh, he's equating one having an abortion to murdering someone." You know what that is, ladies and gentlemen? Tact. This isn't his first tread-on-the-rights-of-women rodeo.

Also, Texas has put to death 466 people since 1982. But don't worry, 95% of them were guilty.

"We want to make sure that they're fully informed, that they understand the medical consequences, the psychological consequences and everything involved in the procedure," said Miller.

Sid Miller believes it to be true that women have abortions for laughs. For a story to tell over cocktails.

INT. TRENDY BAR -- NIGHT

The rich mahogany of the wall flourishes brilliantly in the light reflecting from the wall-to-wall mirror behind the bar. Gorgeous men and women are sprinkled about, dressed in form-fitting attire, probably swapping stories about how much sex they had in high school. Those bastards.

Two women are seated next to each other on stools- BLONDE and BRUNETTE:

BLONDE
I finally got that well-deserved promotion today. You're looking at the new regional buyer!

BRUNETTE
Congrats! I finally got that abortion today I always wanted!

From a stool, next to them:

TUCKER MAX FAN
Did it match your shoes?
(a really insecure laugh to hide how much he hates women because of their rejecting of his advances, and how this in turn makes him hate himself, resulting in him being a boorish knob also requiring himself to laugh because no one else will)
No, but really, do you date me?

BRUNETTE
I'm not offended because we as women don't take abortions seriously. So yes, I do date you!

Now, I know what you're going to say: that the above is an exaggeration, that blondes are never worthy of a well-deserving promotion. In response to you I say this: grow up, child. Grow up.

Opponents said that the requirement would traumatize women already in a difficult situation.

Opponents? More like accomplices to murder, right Sid?

During debate on the House floor, bill opponent Rep. Carol Alvarado held up a trans-vaginal probe used for sonograms early in pregnancy to illustrate what she called a "very intrusive process."

"This is not the jelly on the belly that most of you think," said Alvarado, a Houston Democrat. "This is government intrusion at its best."

Her actually saying "government intrusion at its best" on the House floor is beyond exceptional.

Democrats tried unsuccessfully to add a series of amendments to the bill. One of those said that if the woman decided not to go through with the abortion, the state would have to pay for the college education for the child.

I stand corrected: that's beyond exceptional.

Another, which also would have applied to cases in which the woman decided not to have the abortion, would have allowed women to get a court order to require the father of the child to get a vasectomy.

Well that's just madness.

Eighteen states regulate the provision of ultrasound by abortion providers, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

I stand corrected again: that's madness.

State Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, who serves as the House Democratic leader quickly issued a press release expressing her displeasure. "I am deeply disappointed that the Legislature is wasting precious time playing politics with the most personal of decisions rather than dealing with real and challenging issues affecting the state such as the $27 billion budget shortfall, job creation, and the economy," she said.

My bad, only a $27 billion shortfall, not $30 billion. This changes everything.

Step one: Allow health-care providers in Wisconsin to not cover contraception.
Step two: Force women in South Dakota to sit through three days of "counseling" about them pursuing something they shouldn't do.
Step three: Force women in Texas to be subjected to "government intrusion".
[...]
The last step: All sex not done between married heterosexuals solely in the name of procreation becomes sexcrime.

Fun at the polls.

2011-03-05T00:01:00.000-06:00

Public-Policy-Polling

Side with Governor Walker or the public employee unions:
Walker: 47%
Unions: 51%

Side with Governor Walker or the Senate Democrats:
Walker: 47%
Democrats: 52%

Walker's approval rating:
Approve: 46%
Disapprove: 52%

On public employee rights:
Fewer: 41%
Same: 44%
More: 11%

On public-unions having a right to collective bargaining:
Should not: 37%
Should: 57%

----------------------------------

Rasmussen Reports

Support among those asked about weakening collective bargaining rights:
Walker: 41%
Unions: 56%

Support among those asked about the state budget:
Walker: 44%
Senate Democrats: 52%

On weakening collective bargaining rights:
Favour: 39%
Oppose: 52%

Walker's approval rating:
Strongly Approve: 34%
Somewhat Approve: 9%
Somewhat Disapprove: 9%
Strongly Disapprove: 48%
----------------------------------

The Franklin Center (a conservative organization founded by a former Republican operative)

On whether public-unions should have collective bargaining powers:
No: 32%
Yes: 56%
----------------------------------

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (a poll sponsored by the AFL-CIO)

Walker's approval rating:
Strongly Approve: 31%
Somewhat Approve: 10%
Somewhat Disapprove: 8%
Strongly Disapprove: 43%

On the agenda of Walker and Senate Republicans:

Strongly Approve: 28%

Somewhat Approve: 15%

Somewhat Disapprove: 12%

Strongly Disapprove: 39%

On respondent's political identity:

Liberal: 15%

Moderate: 38%

Conservative: 40%

----------------------------------

NBC/Wall Street Journal

On eliminating collective bargaining rights to deal with a state budget:
Acceptable: 33%
Unacceptable: 62%
(American Public)
----------------------------------

Wisconsin gubernatorial election, 2010
Walker: 52%
Barrett: 46%

Yes, Governor, you really ran on ~~busting unions~~ stripping public-unions of collective bargaining, didn’t you?

Straight Rights Watch: South Dakota

2011-03-04T18:30:00.002-06:00

The Straight Rights Watch is back! Today, let's look to South Dakota:

South Dakota's governor said Thursday that he'll likely sign off on new abortion guidelines that would be some of the strictest in the country, requiring women to wait 72 hours before they could go through with the procedure and to submit to counseling about why they shouldn't.

[...]

But the 72-hour wait would be the longest in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

That can't be right. "Submit to counseling about why they shouldn't"? They're going to make it a law to tell a woman that she shouldn't be doing this? And forcing them to sit through that for an unprecedented three days?

Under the new guidelines, a woman would have to undergo counseling at one of several state-approved "pregnancy help centers," all of which seek to persuade women not to have abortions. No other state has such a requirement, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota. And only a doctor who has met personally with a woman and determined she's seeking an abortion voluntarily could schedule the procedures.

Hey, you there. The abortion you've decided on? You shouldn't have it. Sure, if you really want it, you are technically legally allowed to have the procedure, but for the next three days we're going to tell you that you shouldn't have it done. Just so we're clear, if you get this done, you're doing something you shouldn't do. Oh, no, we're not passing judgment on you for doing something you shouldn't do by telling you for three days not to do it while you're in an emotional and potentially tumultuous time of your life. Good heavens no. Simply, we just want to make sure you know that what you want to have done is something you shouldn't do. It's clear you haven't actually thought this procedure through, because if you had, why would you be seeking an abortion? No one wants to have an abortion, yet here you are. Had you thought this through, you'd know they shouldn't be done. So let's just tap on the breaks and pick out baby names, alright? Christian for a boy, and Mary for a girl? How does that sound?

Daugaard said he believes women should receive more time and counseling before having an abortion.

"I think these decisions are certainly very important decisions. A decision of this significance warrants that," the governor said.

Does the Governor believe women just wake up and say, "Hey, I'm going to have an abortion today!" and then skip to Planned Parenthood in their best sundress while whistling showtunes? That going to the abortion clinic is at the beginning of the process?

Step one: Allow health-care providers in Wisconsin to not cover contraception.
Step two: Force women in South Dakota to sit through three days of "counseling" about them pursuing something they shouldn't do.
[...]
The last step: All sex not done between married heterosexuals solely in the name of procreation becomes sexcrime.

It appears Blackwhite is contagious.

2011-03-04T04:00:00.002-06:00

Republicans* said and did some really absurd and scary things yesterday.

Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate Majority Leader:

We simply cannot have democracy be held hostage because the minority wants to prove a point.

That's right, Scott Fitzgerald. It is holding democracy hostage that the Senate Democrats are doing by staying in Illinois. Because what your fellow Senate Republicans did—rubber-stamping a bill from the Governor's office with a nary a thought to what was in the bill, refusing to support any Democrat's amendment, refusing to submit any of your own amendments unless the Governor asked and voting to block any amendments from even being offered--is democratic. Being an extension of the Governor's office as members of a separate branch of the government is democratic and the Senate Democrats leaving the state is not.

Scott, if the point of leaving the state was to show that you and your fellow Senate Republicans weren't acting in the interests of democracy, that's a point worth proving. Because, perhaps, you might become ashamed of your actions and change your minds. Given that you and your fellow Senate Republicans are still able to register actual figures and facts and all.

Wait, what's this? You guys found the Senate Democrats to be in contempt? And...

Along with the finding of contempt came an order that law enforcement detain Democrats and bring them to the Senate chambers.

This can't be right. We need more:

The Senate voted in the morning that absent Democrats would be in contempt of a Senate rule requiring attendance if they did not return by 4 p.m. When they didn't return, the Senate reconvened and Fitzgerald signed for each missing senator an "order to detain (in the nature of a warrant to arrest and deliver)."

So, Scotty, not only do you and your cohorts find them in contempt for attempting to stop a totalitarian regime from crashing an iron fist through public-unions, but you yourself sign an order to arrest and deliver the Senators? And that's legal?!

The state constitution says lawmakers can be compelled to attend legislative sessions but does not spell out how that can be done. But the constitution also says legislators can be arrested only for crimes, treason or breach of the peace.

"The Wisconsin Senate has absolutely no authority to order any of its members arrested or taken into custody in order to compel their attendance," said a legal memo from attorneys Lester Pines and Susan Crawford.

Oh, it's not legal. That makes sense, totalitarian regimes aren't known for staunchly respecting laws.

Fitzgerald said that Republicans were initially "nervous" about taking such a step, but that Democrats have created a "constitutional crisis."

"This is not about a budget-repair bill or about politics," Fitzgerald said. "This is much bigger than that, and the minority party has forced our hand. . . . They're insulting the very fabric of our representative democracy."

There's a show I like watching: The Ricky Gervais Show. It takes conversations between Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and a roundheaded buffoon named Karl Pilkington and animates them. Reading what Scotty just said reminded me of this exchange from the show:

Merchant, reading excerpts from Karl's Diary: "A mate sent me a story on email about a bloke in China who has this weird illness that means he can't have his picture taken."

[Gervais goes into hysterics]

Merchant: That's not the weird bit. "If he tries his body doesn't appear in the photo. "

Gervais: Don't talk shit!

Merchant: "He has had group pictures taken and everyone appeared apart from him."

Gervais: Don't talk shit, that's bollocks!

Merchant: "The story had a picture next to it of a family photo and it said he was stood at the back but you couldn't see him."

Gervais: Right, he wasn't in the picture.

Pilkington: He was in the picture.

Gervais: No, he wasn't in the picture.

Pilkington: They done loads of tests and stuff on him.

Gervais: No there's--I haven't done loads of tests. This is bollocks. There's no way this is scientifically possible. What, he's wanted. Yeah, now he's wanted, just a white bit of paper up on the police wall. Have you seen this man? What man? If you see him tell us. You're talking shit.

~~Scott Fitzgerald~~ Karl Pilkington, don't talk shit.

Wisconsin State Senator Karl Pilkington

Pilkington didn't have anything else to say, did he? Oh, he did? Oh, it's just as awful?

[Pilkington] said citizens who see absent Democrats in Wisconsin could report them to police.

Once they return, Democrats would be able to challenge the contempt finding. But Fitzgerald also said that even after Democrats return, Republicans would consider possible discipline for them, such as reprimanding them, censuring them or expelling them from the Senate.

Well that's just great. Turn citizens into Junior Spies so the Senate Democrats can become unpersons. Terrific.

* -- except for Senator Dale Schultz of Richland Center. He actually gives a shit about democracy.

Straight Rights Watch: Wisconsin

2011-03-03T00:01:00.002-06:00

Dan Savage—author of the nationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column "Savage Love", founder of the "It Gets Better" project created in response to bullied LGBT youth committing suicide, architect of the Rick Santorum Google bomb "Spreading Santorum"(potentially NSFW) and all around good guy—reintroduces the "Straight Rights Watch" in his latest column.

Straight Rights Watch, you ask?

We used to have a regular feature at Savage Love called “Straight Rights Watch.” It lapsed when the Democrats took the House in 2006 and political attacks on the sexual freedoms of straight people decreased. But the GOP is back in charge of the House and state houses across the country, and attacks on the sexual freedoms of heterosexuals—attempts to ban abortion, restrict access to birth control, destroy Planned Parenthood (which doesn’t just serve straight people), even make it legal to kill abortion providers (!!!)—are back, and so, sadly, is Straight Rights Watch.

That's all fine and good, but why bring this up for Wisconsin, you ask?

Gov. Scott Walker wants to again give insurance companies discretion over whether they will cover contraception.

His budget, released Tuesday, proposes the elimination of a recently passed law that requires insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to also include coverage for prescription birth control. Walker’s budget summary says the requirement is an “unacceptable government mandate on employers with moral objections to these services,” and that it “increases the cost of health insurance for all payers.”

Oh. That's why.

The Capital Times asked Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie for data that backs up the governor’s claim that the contraceptive equity law increases the cost of health insurance for all payers. Werwie responded, but the link he provided to a portion of the governor's budget gives no further information on that point.

That's our Wormtongue! "When asked if A is true, the subject directed the questioner to read A again." Brilliant! By doing that, one can justify literally anything able to be put into any means of communication—that could come in handy for Governor Walker's spokesman! But, absent any given evidence, I suppose he could still be proven correct by other sources... right?

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, however, cites statistics from The National Business Group on Health, an organization representing more than 160 large national and multi-national employers, which estimates that failing to provide contraception coverage actually costs employers 15 to 17 percent more than providing it.

Nah, he's just dropping more disinformation on the public. At least he's consistent.

Even with the recursive logic and the potential burdens and problems, I don't see that much of a problem here: the pull out method -- or "pulling out", or, as Arrested Development fans call it, "The Gob Bluth special" -- works as well as any other pregnancy prevention solution. But I will say this:

If the Koch Brothers own Trojan, I'm going to riot.

Governor Charlie Sheen

2011-03-02T23:09:00.004-06:00

On 22 September, 2003, Two and a Half Men debuted on CBS. The Chuck Lorre-created, Charlie Sheen-starring comedy pulled in over fifteen million viewers its first season and since has generated enough revenue to justify paying Emilio Estevez's brother $1.8 million per episode. While I haven't the first clue how much china white one could snort up for that scratch, Two and a Half Men now finds itself on indefinite hiatus because Charlie Sheen does.

Cue Sinatra's rendition of "It Was a Very Good Year":

8 February 2010 -- Charged with felony menacing, third-degree assault and criminal mischief, stemming from a 25 December 2009 arrest for domestic assault upon his then wife, Brooke Mueller. Charlie, per police documents, told his wife, "You better be in fear. If you tell anybody, I'll kill you. I have ex-police I can hire who know how to get the job done and they won't leave any trace." Happy Christmas!

23 February -- Enters rehab. A "preventative measure".

10 March -- Charlie's reps tell news outlets he is set to return to Two and a Half Men the next week.

18 May -- Signs 2 year agreement with CBS for $1.8 million. I would love to see CBS' internal risk analysis on that. Those reports have to exist, right? Godspeed to an intern to get them to WikiLeaks. Godspeed.

26 October -- Trashes a suite to the tune of seven grand at The Plaza Hotel in New York after a night of debauchery and cocaine with a porn star-cum-escort. When the police arrived, the escort was screaming inside a locked closet and "was fearing for her life and was naked" while a "drugged up and naked" Sheen was, ahem, "searching" for his cellphone and wallet. The police, thankfully, only brought Charlie to a hospital.

1 November -- Files for divorce from Mueller, citing "irreconcilable differences". What, that she was alive? All jokes aside, probably for the best this happened before Thanksgiving.

26, 27 January 2011 -- Has a briefcase full of cocaine(probably not safe for work) delivered to his house during "officially 24 hours of drinking!"(ditto) with two porn stars and is rushed to the hospital at 07:00 on the 27th. No big.

24 February -- Goes on The Alex Jones Show and talks madness, Lorre, Vatican assassins, trolls, F-18s and warlocks amongst other infallibly sane talking points. Like calling Alcoholics Anonymous a "bootleg cult". Like he cured his addiction "with his mind" and that he has a 100% success rate in said matters. Like that he is "not Thomas Jefferson. He was a pussy! But I dare anyone to debate me on things." Like claiming he embarrassed Lorre "in front of his children and the world by healing at a pace that his un-evolved mind cannot process." Later the same day, CBS cancels production on this season's remaining episodes of Two and a Half Men. Separate incidents, undoubtedly.

27 February -- Says to his ex-wife, "I will cut your head off, put it in a box and send it to your mom!"

28 February -- Says on ABC's Good Morning America, "What’s not to love? Especially when you see how I party. It was epic. The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards just look like droopy-eyed armless children." Also comments that he's bored now with cocaine. Says on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, when asked if he's hit women, “I have not, no. No, women are not to be hit. They’re to be hugged and caressed, you know?" Umm:

He shot Kelly Preston. (imdb)

He hit a UCLA co-ed in the back of the head after she refused to sleep with him. (people)

He flung Brittany Ashland to the ground, which split open her lip and would require 7 stitches. (e!)

He held a knife to the throat of his wife Brooke Mueller. (daily mail)

He threatened to kill Denise Richards and Capri Anderson. (people, nydn)

Objectively, Charlie Sheen is a lying and delusional madman.

And so is Scott Walker.

10 February 2011 -- Says his budget repair bill "is not a shock. The shock would be if we didn't go forward with this." Says PolitiFact: "But Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the bare-bones of his multi-faceted plans to sharply curb collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. We could find none either."

17 February -- Says his request of state workers is "modest".

17 February, again -- Shows a cavalier disregard for nuance and says, "their [the Senate Democrats] actions by leaving the state and hiding from voting are disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of public employees who showed up to work today and the millions of taxpayers they represent."

18 February -- Talking about civil protections, says, "Those fully remain intact. Civil service does not get altered by the modest changes we’re talking about here. Collective bargaining is fully intact." Yes, he actually said "collective bargaining is fully intact". No, he doesn't have the excuse of being on cocaine for why he said that.

19 February -- After a solid of week of saying his budget repair bill isn't about busting unions, he turns down a union offer agreeing to the financial aspects of the bill with the lone caveat their collective bargaining right aren't removed.

23 February -- Is prank called by Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast pretending to be David Koch. On the call, on tape, he admits to viewing himself as Reagan figure, to considering planting agent provocateurs amongst the protesters, to planning to trick Senate Democrats into coming back to the state and to viewing his "not about union busting" as part of "something big" nationally in states that are attempting similar maneuvers.

23 February, again -- Has his spokesman say, "Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse." Yes, the call where Walker admits to considering planting agent provocateurs.

24 February -- Says, "I'll always be willing to cooperate and communicate with the Democrats, but that has to happen at the state Capitol in Madison." He says this not two days after admitting on tape to wanting to trick the Senate Democrats into coming back so he can meet hold a quorum against their will.

1 March -- Holds a budget address and says, "Democracy does not just expect differences, it demands them. It’s the manner in which we discuss and resolve those differences that leads to bold solutions and innovative reforms. [...]Passion and civility can go hand-in-hand and that’s what’s on display here in Wisconsin." Yes, still ignoring that he considered planting agent provocateurs. He also calls for the end of accounting gimmicks while saying Senate Democrats would have to get back that day so he can refinance some state debt into the next biennial. He also keeps pushing that Senate Democrats aren't doing their jobs, showing nuance still escapes his grasp.

Charlie Sheen is a lying and delusional madman with abusive tendencies towards women. Scott Walker is a lying and delusional madman with abusive tendencies towards Wisconsin. Charlie Sheen is the Scott Walker of celebrities and Scott Walker is the Charlie Sheen of governors. And while Charlie and Scott are "winning", we all lose.

Wisconsin's war on Bart Simpson.

2011-03-02T16:11:00.001-06:00

Also, my rug was stolen.

The rug was in the car?

No, it was here.

Oh, separate incidents?

-----------------

I'm introducing a bill that makes prank calling illegal in Wisconsin.

Because your show pony made embarrassing, inflammatory, delusional and unethical remarks to a Buffalo Beast blogger who pretended to be David Koch?

No.

Oh, separate incidents?

This is not progress.

2011-03-01T22:45:00.020-06:00

Way to go, Georgia. Way to go.

Georgia is the latest state to propose legislation that questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the U.S., joining 10 other states who have measures that want more proof before his name is put on the 2012 ballot.

Seriously. Congratulations on an active attempt to confirm the stereotypes of your state and the south. I'm going to pop a bottle of Bollinger Grande Année 1990 and party in your honour. No, really, you've earned it.

The 10 other states with pending bills include: Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Connecticut, Indiana, Nebraska, Tennessee and Maine. The measure has failed this year in Montana.

Let's see. Governor Walker, a hero of the tea party*, is trying to spar with President Obama in the media, there are Republican majorities in both the Senate and Assembly and those Senate Republicans have a Voter ID bill on the floor.. Wisconsin, obviously, won't soon be in line to join Georgia and the other ten states. Nope, that won't be happening.

* -- I refuse to capitalize 'tea party'. Never before, not now, not ever.

Scott Walker is a foul individual.

2011-03-01T18:00:00.000-06:00

Walker gave a speech today, you might have heard about it.

Democracy does not just expect differences, it demands them. It’s the manner in which we discuss and resolve those differences that leads to bold solutions and innovative reforms. I ask that we continue to be mindful of our differences – as well our similarities – in the coming days, weeks and months. Above all, let us not lose sight of the fact that we were each elected to represent the people of this state by participating in our democratic process.

I applaud the State Assembly and those in the State Senate who are here today for not losing sight of that.

When suggested the idea of placing agent provocateurs amid the protesters, Walker responded: "We thought about that. The problem with - my only gut reaction to that would be right now is that the lawmakers I've talked to have just completely had it with them. The public is not really fond of this. My only fear is if there's a ruckus caused that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems." Certainly bold and innovative, I'll grant him that.

And you have to love the dig at the Senate Democrats. The same dig he and those on the right are pushing, that the Senate Democrats aren't doing their job. Apparently it was too much to ask for Walker to find nuance in a time of great political turmoil.

Over the past few weeks, a great deal of attention has been focused on Wisconsin. That’s ok because freedom thrives each time there is a passionate debate in our society. Passion and civility can go hand-in-hand and that’s what’s on display here in Wisconsin.

Only because your politrick of planting troublemakers scared you into thinking you might receive more pressure "to settle", Governor. You jerk.

I have been asked a lot over the past week about what happens next. Well, I’m an optimist.

I'm sorry. Optimist, not jerk.

You see, for six weeks we worked together to pass bill after bill to show that Wisconsin is open for business. Most of our legislation received bipartisan support. It is my belief that we will soon get back to that type of cooperation in the Capitol.

Governor, you admitted on tape to a plan to trick Senate Democrats into coming back to the Capitol. And while my inner-child appreciates your attempted Looney Tuning, I humbly offer that it is not 'cooperation' you want in the Capitol but 'coersion'. When the unions agree to the demands of your budget bill with the lone condition of keeping their collective bargaining rights, and you then spit in their faces, that doesn't say a lot for cooperation, does it?

We need the savings in the budget repair bill because Wisconsin faces a $3.6 billion deficit. Too many politicians have failed to tell the truth about our financial crisis. They left Wisconsinites in the dark about the extent of our fiscal problems. The facts are clear: Wisconsin is broke and it’s time to start paying our bills today – so our kids are not stuck with even bigger bills tomorrow.

This... is right. As I noted earlier today, an atomic bomb has gone off in the state.

I have often repeated references to our state’s constitutional lesson, that it is only through frugality and moderation in government that we will see freedom and prosperity for our people.

The second half of that lesson: bust unions in an attempt to Ronald Reagan one's self.

Gone are the segregated fund raids, illegal transfers, and accounting gimmicks.

Gimmicks? Like your setting today as a deadline for Senate Democrats to come back to push $150 million of debt into the next biennial? Gimmicks like that, Governor?

As we decrease spending, we also increase flexibility so local government and state government have the tools to deal with reduced revenue. It’s true we are reducing aid to local government by just over one and a quarter billion dollars, but we are providing almost $1.5 billion in savings through our budget repair bill. If the 14 Senate democrats do not come home, their local communities will be forced to manage these reductions in aid without the benefit of the tools provided in the repair bill. On the other hand, if the Senate democrats do come home, local units of government overall will actually see a net increase in revenue plus savings of more than $150 million.

First: I find it cute he calls it "our" budget repair bill when the Senate and Assembly Republicans have done as much to the heart of the bill as I have. It's his bill. You want to be Ronald Reagan and you can't own up to your own bill?

Second: Hey! Guys! The 14 Senate Democrats are not doing their jobs! They are costing you $1.5 billion in savings! They are doing this to you and no one else is to blame. Certainly not me, the Governor, who turned down the offer from the unions to accept the fiscal demands of "our" budget bill. It's their fault and they are godless communists.

While maintaining services for our most vulnerable, we must also refocus those services and find efficiencies where possible. That will mean asking some individuals to pay modest co-pays and premiums

'maintaining', 'refocus', 'find': words I'm not sure the Governor knows the meaning of. You think Medicaid costs are out of control? Fine. But don't lipstick that pig. Address us with the candor you addressed the man you thought was David Koch. You horse's ass.

Just as we reform our entitlement programs for the 21st century, we must also reform our education system. Clearly, we have to produce graduates who are able to compete - not only with their peers from Chicago or Des Moines - but also from Shanghai or Sydney.

China is evil. Glenn beck told me so.

And we must do so while we balance a $3.6 billion deficit. That is why -- even as we reduce school aids – overall we give schools across the state the tools to make up for those reductions with even greater savings through the budget repair bill.

Again, this is why it is so vitally important for the Senate democrats to come back and do their jobs. If they do not, our schools face massive layoffs of teachers. However, if they do come back, overall savings for schools across the state will outweigh reductions, ultimately allowing schools to put more money in the classroom.

IT IS THE FAULT OF THE SENATE DEMOCRATS AND NO ONE ELSE. WHY CAN'T YOU LIBERALS SEE THIS? All I'm trying to do is cut vast sums of dollars from the funding of schools and giving those schools the tools necessary to cut programs. Programs like Advanced Placement courses, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, nurses, alternative and at-risk education, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. All I'm doing is ~~trying to make the children of the state too dumb to grow up and realize I'm full of shit~~ giving schools the tools necessary to cut programs.

In addition, we will expand choice and charter programs to insure that every kid gets a great education – no matter what zip code they live in. We lift the cap on the number of students eligible to participate in the Milwaukee parental choice program and phase out the income eligibility limits

Translation: a lot of schools are going to be savagely beaten by what is about to happen so we have to make an attempt for a few parents to get their kids out of those schools so the protests in Madison don't expand and extend to other cities.

May God richly bless you and your family. And may God continue to bless the great State of Wisconsin.

Because he sure as hell won't.

On Wisconsin, part two.

2011-03-01T05:00:00.001-06:00

Part one can be found here.

1904. New York City. A burgeoning metropolis beginning to stand upright and not just walk, but run. To sprint. Feeling lactic acid immigrating to its tissues. On the twenty-second of April, a wealthy textile importer and his painter wife have their first child. The boy is named Julius.

Julius grows up in circumstances approaching dreams: a house with three original paintings from Van Gogh sprinkled between pieces from Picasso and Vuillard, studying at the Ethical Culture Society School which remains to this day a bastion of progressive thought, a father with a keen interest in schools who serves also as a member of the Society of Ethical Culture, a mother openly encouraging Julius and his younger brother to be eager with their interests and to try new things and to be inquisitive.

Julius finishes the third and fourth grades in the same school year and eventually skips the eighth grade entirely. He enjoys French and English literature as well as mineralogy. With his interest shifted to chemistry, he graduates early, set to attend Harvard. But on a summer vacation in Europe, while prospecting out of a want and curiosity, Julius becomes sick. A disease. Colitis. His family brings him to the southwest of America, to New Mexico. He recovers and, in the process, falls in love with the region and horseback riding.

Julius enters Harvard a year "late" at 18. In his first year, he is allowed graduate standing in physics where a course on thermodynamics piques a considerable interest with regards to experimental physics. Taking six courses each semester, he completes undergrad in three years and graduates summa cum laude. Upon being accepted for postgraduate work at Christ's College, Cambridge, Julius asks the professor from his course in thermodynamics, Percy Bridgman, to write him a letter of recommendation to the Cavendish Laboratory. In the letter, Bridgman notes Julius' interests in physics extend more to the theoretical than the experimental.

Life abroad is not entirely peaches and cream for Julius. He places an apple saturated with noxious chemicals on the desk of tutor. While the tutor doesn't eat it, the troubled Julius is reprimanded with psychiatrist sessions in London. Later, in Paris, while venting his frustrations to a friend about the state of experimental physics, Julius snaps and attempts to strangle the friend. The attack is warded off, but Julius' stability is questioned.

Needing a change of scenery and a environment more specific to his theoretical pursuits, Julius transfers to the University of Göttingen, a world leader in theoretical physics. Under Max Born, Julius flourishes. He overwhelms discussions and seminars with an ecstatic tenacity and intense aptitude. The professor who administers the oral exam for his degree, James Franck, reportedly says: "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me."

Julius went on to apply his considerable gifts to the fields of general relativity, spectroscopy, quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics, among others. His work successfully predicted later discoveries like the neutron, the meson and the neutron star.

On 16 July, 1945, Julius finds himself back in his beloved southwest and, at the local time of 05:49:25, he witnesses a sight never before seen in human history. A sight of radiating light superior to that from the sun at noon across the still-night sky, illuminating the valleys and mountains and flatlands. A light with flashes of purple and a searing, unrelenting edge. Julius is J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Manhattan Project, and he is witness to the first ever weapons test of an atomic bomb.

After the euphoria of the moment passes, Kenneth Bainbridge turns to Oppenheimer.

"Now we are all sons of bitches," Bainbridge says.

Wisconsin owns a $3.6 billion shortfall for the upcoming biennial budget. Which is to say, in the bookkeeping of Wisconsin, an atomic bomb has gone off. While the number itself is an abstract, a looming specter, the devastating blast will be a wielded scythe amputating local, state and school programs or altogether lopping their heads off. Two years of programs underfunded or ended. How does one get that time back after? How does a student receive the education lost from two years of swollen class sizes? This romantic notion of "sucking it up" or "doing more with less"? The state is on fire and even when the towering flames from the inferno of the atomic debt are put out, the lingering radiation will be a parasitic companion latched on with a death grip that even when pried off the marks of its clutches will still be seen.

To say a lot of vitriol has spread airborne through the populous recently would be at best apt and at worst an understatement. In many pro-Walker circles, public employees -- namely teachers -- are demonized as leeches to a corrupt system. That their benefits are a drain on the state and the budget repair bill is the infallible plug or at least a sufficient amount of random hair. That while perhaps they are not responsible for the crisis, they share enough of the blame to justify the gladiator arena howling. That because they are suffering and making sacrifices, so too should the public-union employees to say nothing of the tangible contempt for unions in general. In the opposing circles, exasperated masses have taken to the streets of Madison and the corridors of the Capitol in protest, screaming and chanting their lungs empty and razor blades into their throats. Others start blogs.

The union supporters have their Son of a Bitch: Scott Walker.

The loyal subjects of the Walker-regime have their Sons of Bitches: public unions.

But who is the real Son of a Bitch? Who are the real Sons of Bitches? The answer will not come from who screams the loudest or who has the more clever quip or who has more numbers on their side; two and two is four, regardless of the number of people screaming five.

Governor Walker, for all of his disinformation, doublethink and dishonest discourse, has been in office for mere months. It can't be him. Even on the national scale, the battle being waged on unions, he's just a link in the chain rather than the Reagan figure he has delusions of. He is but a facade of a larger problem. A punching bag, albeit one that is a great deal of fun to punch.

The public-unions? It is ridiculous to assert them as anything other than a manufactured outlet for right-wing rage. To vilify them for accepting terms of contracts from collective bargaining, and then to willingly concede those terms for the ability continue collective bargaining, is seven shades of disingenuous.

Governor Walker is a half-wit attempting damage, public-unions are the right's Emmanuel Goldstein and the Son of a Bitch lies elsewhere. That elsewhere comes next.

Wormtongue is at it again.

2011-02-28T16:24:00.003-06:00

The February wind bites the back of your neck like a feral beast scrounging on the carcass and bones of caught prey. Upturning the collar of your jacket or the throwing on of your scarf only makes you all the more aware of the acute burning on your cheeks. As sure as noon follows morning and midnight follows dusk, as sure as the motivated legion of protesters in Madison are to stay committed to a cause battling a totalitarian regime, as sure as the sun rising each day...

...so too is Cullen Werwie prone to talk out of his arse.

AP file photo of Cullen Werwie addressing Wisconsin citizens.

Another day, another episode of ~~Governor Scott Walker's spokesman~~ Womtongue spraying a contemptuous diarrhea across public discourse:

Senate Democrats claimed they fled the state to slow down the process so the public had enough time to learn about the budget repair bill. If that was their true intention, they have been successful.

Wormtongue is right. Giving the public enough time to digest the bill was the Senate Democrats' lone, true intention. It certainly was not an attempt to engage The Godwalker and Senate Republicans in any meaningful discourse or negotiations. That'd be silly. The Senate Democrats just wanted people to know about the bill, nothing more, nothing less.

Now they have one day to return to work before the state loses out on the chance to refinance debt, saving taxpayers $165 million this fiscal year. Failure to return to work and cast their votes will lead to more painful and aggressive spending cuts in the very near future.

"Saving taxpayers $165 million this fiscal year." That's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it might be "deferring $165 million of taxpayer payments to the next biennial". A more accurate way of putting it might be "a quick fix deferring $165 million of taxpayers payments to the next biennial, such a type of fix The Godwalker has routinely criticized past administrations and legislators for, a quick fix that just pushes payments back to a later date instead of actually addressing the problem". A more concise way of putting it might be "durr, durr, doublethink, evil Democrats".

This is the Senate Democrats’ 24 hour notice.

That must be nice. After an attempt to railroad a bill through without any resemblance of negotiations in good faith, after The Godwalker admits to wanting to trick Senate Democrats into coming back, after The Godwalker admits to considering planting agent provocateurs amongst the protesters, after the Senate Republicans make amending the bill before a vote impossible, after all of this, Wormtongue gets to give notice to Senate Democrats to come back. That the resulting "painful and aggressive spending cuts" will be on their heads and not on The Godwalker or his Republican lackeys. It is nothing short of envious one should be of Wormtongue. The ability to perform the mental gymnastics to be able to say such a thing--let alone think it--cannot be easy to achieve.

On Wisconsin, part one.

2011-02-28T06:10:00.005-06:00

This week, Catalan at Heart presents 'On Wisconsin', a multi-part look at the budgetary imbroglio Wisconsin finds itself in. By tracing the who, the how, the why and everything between, we will offer a seemingly tangential, always empirical and ultimately definitive look on the crisis. With snark.

As far as Wisconsin political theatre goes, the drama from fourteen Senate Democrats refusing a call to quorum and escaping to Illinois to avoid a sure-to-lose vote on Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill" is without precedent. While the resulting schism is not starved for analogues to earlier affairs -- race relations, the original turmoil over unions, Bush/Kerry, Laverne and Shirley ending -- the connectedness of today's society has artificially amplified the fervor to a new critical mass.

While feasible to have avoided or compartmentalized earlier affairs, one click of the mouse or opening of a vibrating phone or button press of a remote control assaults one with instant news and faster commentary. With tweets and status alerts and wall postings now the stuff of nightmares, a relentless force hunting and chasing regardless of the speed undertaken to get away or the tactics performed to elude its clutches.

But as far as Wisconsin in general goes, one need not look far to find commensurate histrionics. Only only needs to look to Green Bay. To look at Brett Favre and Ted Thompson.

A summary:

1992 -- Green Bay Packers general manager Ron Wolf hires Ted Thompson to serve as the assistant director of pro personnel.

1993 -- Thompson is promoted to director of pro personnel.

1997 -- Thompson is promoted to director of player personnel.

2000 -- Former Packers head coach Mike Holmgren, now the Seattle Seahawks head coach and general manager, hires Thompson to serve as vice president of football operations. Duties include but are not limited to: heading the scouting department, running the team's draft boards.

2005 -- Thompson is brought back to replace Mike Sherman as Packers general manager.

2005/2006 Season -- The Seahawks, with the players Thompson scouted and graded, make the Super Bowl. Holmgren: "Once Ted Thompson came on board and we settled down a little bit, we started making good decisions."

30/01/2006 -- Brett Favre -- noted prima donna, womanizer and then-Packers quarterback -- is noncommittal to returning the following season. Says Favre: "If I had to pick right now and make a decision, I'd say I'm not coming back."

25/04/06 -- Favre decides to return.

12/11/06 -- Packers head coach Mike McCarthy publicly states his wanting for Favre to return but also not wanting Favre to waffle on the decision. Seems reasonable enough, the NFL is a multi-billion dollar business, after all.

02/02/2007 -- Favre commits to returning to the Packers.

04/03/2008 -- Favre retires. His last throw: an interception in overtime in the NFC Championship game.

25/04/08 -- On 'Late Night with David Letterman', Favre says, "I mean it was never a clear-cut decision. I can't expect people to understand. I think people have all faced decisions at times where you never know."

11/07/08 -- Favre requests an unconditional release from the Packers. Official press release from the Packers: "The balls on this asshole."

14/07/08 -- Favre tells Republican State Television he wants to continue his playing career not in Green Bay but elsewhere.

07/08/08 -- Thompson trades Favre to the New York Jets after Favre rescinds his retirement. Packers fans are sharply divided:

Some appreciate Thompson's approach to building through the draft and locking players coming up for contracts in-place before said players hit the market. This approach -- the one which got Seattle to a Super Bowl, the one which built the Patriots a dynasty -- values smart-drafting to score cheap players in a salary cap league and also generally punting free agency -- an often-times bidding war on sometimes expensive, experienced players who may not be more than negligibly better than incoming rookies from the draft, unless a free agent is a generational talent that can be had for a fair contract, a la Charles Woodson -- or an asset who will outperform the dollars given to him.

Others cry foul on Favre's behalf -- for some their boyhood hero, for others the man they wish they could've been, for others the wanted-father-of-not-as-of-yet-conceived-children -- claiming he was railroaded out of town by a megalomaniac in Thompson, an evil sorcerer who didn't spend big money on free agents to make the team better in the short term. Because, damn the future, there is no time like the present! They largely declare themselves to be "Favre fans" -- not "Packer fans" -- and openly root for the monstrosity constructed by Thompson to lose.

11/02/2009 -- After the Jets miss the playoffs -- a disastrous end to a promising season -- Favre retires again.

28/04/09 -- Favre is granted an unconditional release. "No intention of returning to football," says Favre.

15/06/09 -- Favre admits to interest in playing again. Says his intention "isn't to create controversy".

17/07/09 -- With the Minnesota Vikings in pursuit of Favre -- one of two teams he originally wished to go to upon coming back from his first retirement -- Favre imposes a 30 July deadline on himself for deciding whether to return again.

28/07/09 -- Favre says he won't end his second retirement.

18/08/09 -- Favre ends his second retirement and signs with the Vikings.

03/08/2010 -- Per media reports, Favre tells the Vikings (hilariously close to the start of a presumed-to-be second season with the team) that he won't be returning.

04/08/10 -- Favre denies the sourced-reports.

16/08/10 -- Longtime friend and current-teammate Ryan Longwell, along with Jared Allen and Steve Hutchinson, fly on the owner of the Vikings' private jet to meet Favre in Mississippi. They do this to try, in person, to convince Favre to come back for another season. The season that not two weeks earlier he denied reports saying he wasn't coming back to play for.

17/08/10 -- Favre joins his teammates on the plane, coming back for what presumably is his last season.

06/02/2011 -- The Packers win the Super Bowl after overcoming fifteen players being lost for the season on injured-reserve, a testament to the calculated moves of Thompson to build depth in previous drafts and through shrewd in-season pickups off the scrap heap. Favre's successor, Aaron Rodgers, was brilliant leading up to and throughout the playoffs and earns Super Bowl MVP.

07/02/11 -- Some Favre fans finally admit they were wrong. Hysterically, most just pretend the whole thing never happened and use images of Aaron Rodgers holding the MVP trophy as their Facebook profile picture.

During the Packers' civil war, one side stuck with a commitment to Thompson's process. To a methodology void of brash rhetoric and orgiastic decrees. The other side fabricated stories of Thompson's ineptitude (how dare he not trade for Randy Moss even though Moss wouldn't make the concessions for Green Bay that he would for the Patriots) and outright omitted salient points (like saying no overtures were made by the Packers to stop him from retiring the first time) and blamed all subsequent problems of the Packers on Ted Thompson or Favre no longer being on the team, regardless of either's proximity to the actual root cause.

It is in the Orwellian manipulation of Favre fans that non-tangential parallels can be drawn to now. How one side staunchly tries to uphold the democratic process. How that side stops a bill from a totalitarian entrance into law. Of how the other side's figurehead routinely lies or has a henchman do it for him. Of how that side's supporters vehemently attack the other with a disregard for nuance and objectivity. Of how those on the side of the Democrats now are brothers to those on the side of Thompson then. Of how those on the side of Governor Walker now are accomplices to the two-faced scheming of Favre then.

This is not, however, to ascribe blame for the budget shortfall to one side or the other. That comes later, and one would be wise to keep in mind the teachings of Ted Thompson of not mortgaging the future for the now until then.

On progress, continued.

2011-02-25T17:35:00.007-06:00

The Godwalker, from Thursday:

I'll always be willing to cooperate and communicate with the Democrats, but that has to happen at the state Capitol in Madison.

Today, by means of a voice vote, Senate Republicans summarily prevented any potential amendments to The Godwalker's bill from even being introduced, let alone voted on. The same Senate Republicans who take their marching orders from The Godwalker. It is with melancholy one observes 'always' apparently means 'one day' to The Godwalker.

But what must be noted is that the Senate Republican's don't wholly take their orders from The Godwalker: a lone Republican Senator, Dale Schultz of Richland Center, wrote a compromise amendment to the bill. While the compromise increased the salary-and-benefit concessions being asked of the public-union employees, it did preserve their collective bargaining rights.

Schultz, however, with no public support from the rest of his peers, failed to introduce his amendment on Friday, saying, "With the minority party gone, bipartisanship is certainly unattainable."

But compare that to what Senator Mary Lazich of New Berlin had to say: "Our Democrat senators not only ran away from the state, they ran away from their responsibility."

While Lazich shows an uncompromising, celebratory lack-of-nuance of ignorance-is-bliss fashion, Schultz shows at least a personal willingness to not be party to a bill railroaded into law totalitarian-style. While he must quip about the Senate Democrats being out of state, it's as a qualifier to bipartisanship being unattainable, not as a standalone smear. While The Godwalker displays overt contempt for our intelligence by claiming a willingness to cooperate and communicate and while the rest of the Senate Republicans are content to march in lock-step to the whims of a man who fancies himself doing work akin to the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, Schultz presents a message that perhaps the fourteen Senate Democrats won't be alone upon their return. Maybe not publicly, maybe not in a vote, but in the backroom of Wisconsin politics, Senate Democrats are now one step closer to success.

Schultz joins the 4 Republicans--of those who voted, one must hysterically note again--who broke from party ranks during the early Friday morning state Assembly vote. Of what was strictly a party-line vote not even a week ago, tangible gains can now be seen.

On... progress?

2011-02-25T05:01:00.005-06:00

Here's the thing: The Godwalker's bill was always going to pass the state Assembly. After a grueling 61-hours of debate that started Tuesday afternoon, the bill's passing just after 1 a.m. on Friday morning was an inescapable eventuality. With an Assembly of 60 Republicans, 38 Democrats and a lone Independent, not even a U.S. Army Psy-Ops team could have swung the vote enough to prevent its passing. While the vote was 51-17, four Republicans broke party ranks, siding with each Democrat who voted. Siding with each Democrat who voted, it is noted, because 28 total lawmakers did not.

28 didn't vote? On a state bill that dominated national airwaves and the blogosphere much of the week? What happened?

Legislative chaos and a rushed vote happened, the result of Republicans exercising a rarely used rule to suspend debate. This nuclear option demands 15 members to second it, but:

Assembly Chief Clerk Patrick Fuller said afterward he was not sure whether that had occurred, saying he had heard the order to start a vote on the final passage of the bill and had done so.
Later Rep. Kelda Helen Roys (D-Madison) said, "We never imagined they would do it as they did, not even properly using the nuclear option."

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said Democrats would "explore every option" in deciding whether or not to challenge the vote.

To recap: Assembly Republicans have better than a 3:2 advantage of their opposition and they can't even get the vote done proper. The Titanic gleefully greets another member of the 'foul up of a colossal magnitude' club.

The Assembly Democrats obviously took this well:

Democrats erupted after the vote, throwing papers and what appeared to be a drink in the air. They denounced the move to cut off debate, questioning for the second time in the night whether the proper procedure had been followed.

"Shame! Shame! Shame!" Democrats shouted in the faces of Republicans as the GOP lawmakers quietly filed off the floor and a police officer stood between opposing lawmakers.

"Cowards all! You’re all cowards," yelled Rep. Brett Hulsey (D-Madison) as another Democrat tried to calm him down.

The Godwalker will, with the tact of the proverbial bull in a china store, frame this passing later today as a democratically-elected body doing their democratic jobs and go on to note how much he hopes the Senate Democrats will end their tomfoolery in Rockford or Chicago--not Madison--and come home to do theirs. To come home and do their jobs to prevent the needless laying off of thousands of state employees. That they are directly and wholly accountable for public employees potentially being laid off. That this is only about balancing the budget and nothing else. Governor Walker will say this because intellectual honesty is not a goal he strives for, and to expect anything else from him now would be a shining beacon on one's insanity.

But this is not to say the situation is void of hope or to say progress is an uncrossable Rubicon. Four Republicans--who voted, one must hysterically have to add--broke rank and sided with the Democrats unanimously opposed to the bill. The four Republicans: Dean Kaufert, Neenah; Lee Nerison, Westby; Richard Spanbauer, Oshkosh; Travis Tranel, Cuba City. To laud these legislators as heroes is too much, but in the face of a bill with bantam hope of being stopped and in the face of an objectively deceitful, dishonest and disingenuous Governor's office, these four Republicans have stood tall to prove that this day is not yet over. That light can still reach them. That the black hole of propaganda and disinformation pushed by the Governor's office and regurgitated by Senate Republicans cannot yet trap the truth. That the Senate Democrats are not undertaking a Sisyphean endeavor. Not yet. Not damn yet.

On contempt for our intelligence.

2011-02-24T21:35:00.010-06:00

The Godwalker's been ~~unequivocally talking shit again~~ making public statements today:

I'd do almost anything to avoid laying people off. We need to avoid those layoffs for the good of those workers.

You see, The Godwalker is more than willing--and one might dare say benevolent--to do anything to avoid layoffs except for the small, "modest" matter of excising the collective bargaining language from the bill that's a self-admitted part of a nationwide plan to marginalize unions. He'd do anything but accept the concessions he's asked for from the unions for the good of the unions. After proposing a bill which removes collective bargaining and reduces benefits for those workers, The Godwalker wants to avoid these layoffs for the good of those workers. That makes sense.

Also today:

I'll always be willing to cooperate and communicate with the Democrats, but that has to happen at the state Capitol in Madison.

I am gobsmacked at the audacity it takes to say that after saying this yesterday:

An interesting idea that was brought up to me this morning by my chief of staff, we won’t do it until tomorrow is putting out an appeal to the Democrat leader that I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the Assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders — talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn — but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly. They can recess it to come back in the room to talk to me, but they all have to go back there. The reason is — we’re verifying it this afternoon — but legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have a quorum because they started out that way. So we’re double checking that. If you heard that I was going to talk to them, that would be the only reason why.

Does he think he can get away with saying he'd be willing to cooperate and communicate because of semantics? That 'compromising' is not the actual, letter-for-letter word that 'cooperate' or 'communicate' is? Not two days after he's on tape discussing tricking the Senate Democrats to come back--a story that received national attention to say nothing of an ample, local spotlight--and he's willing to actually say he'll "always be willing'?

Tomorrow, undoubtedly, The Godwalker will claim two and two make five.