Summer Memories

Ten years ago I went to visit my nephew at the summer camp in Colorado where I had spent ten summers -- 1976-1986 -- as a counselor and one summer -- 1964 -- as a camper. When I was there I took these pictures.

The Mummy Range, Rocky Mountain National Park

Longs Peak - 14,257 ft. I've climbed it twice.
The camp is an old family tradition. My mom went there when she was a girl, my bother and I went there, riding out west on the Denver Zephyr train from Chicago, and lots of cousins, nieces, and nephews also shared the magic of the mountains. I'm putting up these pictures in honor of the campers and staff at the camp who made such a powerful difference in my life and wish them the best the end of First Term and lots of fun plus in the mountains as Second Term starts, and also to share memories with my former campers and fellow counselors who are still in my life.

May the Code be with you!
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Sunday Reading

Beck U -- Leonard Pitts has fun with the "facts" of Glenn Beck's latest venture.

A scene from the near future:

Augustus Merryweather IV glanced up at the tapping on his office door. Harvey Carbunkle stood there in bow tie and shirt sleeves, smiling eagerly from behind horn-rimmed glasses. Augustus sighed. He hated this part of the job. It was never fun to let people go.

He waved the young man to a seat, spoke without preamble. ''Harvey, I'm afraid it's not working out.''

The eager face fell like a refrigerator from a moving truck. ''You're firing me?''

''I have no choice. Your work, well...it hasn't been up to the standard we expect for an editor at Merryweather Publishing. Frankly, I'm surprised. When I saw that you were a graduate of BU, I couldn't wait to hire you. Boston University turns out some great students.''

''I didn't go to Boston University,'' Harvey said.

''Baylor, then. Still a great school.''

''I didn't go to Baylor.''

''But your resume says you graduated BU.''

A proud smile. ''Yes, sir. That's Beck University.''

Augustus was confused. ''I've never heard of...''

''Beck University!'' said Harvey, the smile widening. ''You know, Glenn Beck? He has that show on CNN. Also, that novel, that other book, that radio program, that standup act, that line of athletic shoes and that cologne. He founded an online university back in 2010 so people could learn the real truth they don't get in your so-called 'universities.''' He made air quotes.

''So, when you rejected that Martin Luther King biography because it didn't mention how white conservatives started the civil rights movement...''

A sharp nod. ''I learned that at Beck U.''

''And when you told the author of that book on religion that 'pinko commie' is the preferred term for preachers who talk about social and economic justice...''

''Beck U.''

''And when you asked why there was no reference to Nazi death panels euthanizing children in that book on healthcare reform...''

''Yes, sir! Beck U.''

Augustus sank back into his chair. ''Beck me,'' he muttered.

More below the fold.

Six Months Later -- Jonathan Katz reports that the recovery from the earthquake in Haiti is not going well.

CORAIL-CESSELESSE, Haiti -- The sun was beating down on the rocky cactus plain when men with machetes came for Menmen Villase, nine months pregnant, shoved her onto her bulging stomach and sliced up the plastic tarp that sheltered her and her four children.

The family was one of thousands of earthquake homeless who had come to this Manhattan-sized stretch of disused sugarcane land between the sea and barren mountains north of Port-au-Prince, seeking refuge from overflowing camps in the city.

But this real estate is earmarked for building a new Haiti. Villase had walked into one of the fights over land, rooted in Haiti's history of slavery, occupation and upheaval, that have bedeviled recovery in the six months since the earthquake leveled much of the capital and killed as many as 300,000 people.

The government, already weak before the magnitude-7 quake and still hobbled by its aftermath, is trying to build anew in places like Corail-Cesselesse, a nearly empty swath of land that begins about 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the capital. But the effort is paralyzed by disorganization, bitter rivalries and private deals being struck behind its back.

Multiple families claim title to almost every scrap of real estate. Already one reconstruction official has been forced to step down for steering a public project to his company's private land at Corail-Cesselesse. Wealthy landowners vow the "new Haiti" will become yet another vast slum unless the government rebuilds on their terms.

Caught in the middle are the homeless, looking to grab a patch of ground from the thugs hired to keep them away. Even facing machetes, Villase had to be dragged from the tarp that was home for her and four children.

"I didn't want them to take the tent away," she recalled. "They said, 'We don't care. We can rip it up while you're inside.'"

The Stages of Management -- Helen Hunt takes on the role of a lifetime in Our Town.

THERE is precisely one word of dialogue in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” that reveals something personal about the play’s Stage Manager, a kind of all-knowing god of Americana who narrates the bittersweet story of small-town life, love and loss. The detail — another character refers to the Stage Manager as “sir” — is telling inasmuch as it underscores the authority that the Stage Manager must convey to deliver heartbreaking truths with full force. And, of course, “sir” confirms that the Stage Manager is a man.

Except when he’s not.

Last week the critically acclaimed Off Broadway production of “Our Town” rotated the Academy Award-wining actress Helen Hunt into the role of the Stage Manager, the fifth performer in the part since the Barrow Street Theater run began 17 months ago. She is also the first female Stage Manager there, and a rare high-profile entry for her sex in the 72-year history of the role, which has included performances by Frank Craven (in the Broadway premiere), Hal Holbrook, Henry Fonda and Paul Newman. Geraldine Fitzgerald is believed to have been the first female Stage Manager, in a production at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 1971.

While the current production was planning to accommodate its new Stage Manager either by rendering that “sir” as an inaudible mutter or dropping it altogether, Ms. Hunt was more preoccupied during rehearsals with the notion of authority the “sir” reflected — specifically, as she put it during a recent interview, “What authority do I have, or does any female actor or male actor have, to say what it means to be human?”

“I’ve answered the question for myself in moments in the play,” Ms. Hunt said over breakfast near her apartment on the Upper West Side. (She lives mostly in Los Angeles.) “Especially the moments when I interact with the two wife-mothers, Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs, and with Emily,” the doomed young bride who comes to grips with the frailties of life and relationships in the play.

Doonesbury -- Mail call.
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Short Takes

The cap is off in anticipation of a new one on Monday.

The Obama administration will make it easier for veterans to claim PTSD.

Enh -- The Russian spies get a tepid reception in Moscow.

Watch today's solar eclipse from the safety of your laptop.

Fidel Castro is still not dead.

The Tigers beat the Twins to keep their streak alive at five.
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My Life On A Plate

The University of Toledo celebrated its centennial in 1972, so the state honored it by using the school colors on the license plate that year.

TU, as it was known when I lived there, didn't get a lot of respect from my friends when I was growing up; it was known derisively as "Bancroft High" for the name of the street where it's located. But it really is a quality institution of higher learning with a widely-respected law school and courses in technology, and my mom is a proud alum, finishing her bachelor's degree after a brief interruption to get married, raise four kids, and become a major contributor to her community before going back to school.

I also took a class at TU when I was in high school. When I went off to SG in 1967, I switched from French to Spanish. When I returned to my old school a year later, they did not offer Spanish as a foreign language. The school made arrangements for me to spend three hours a week being tutored in Spanish II with a kindly professor whose name is lost in the mists of time.

The Mustang wore this plate in the spring of my freshman year at Miami, so it wore it around the streets of Coral Gables and Coconut Grove.

I agree with David Nicholson; this is a very nice combination of colors.
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Short Takes

The death toll in a bombing in Pakistan has passed 100.

The spy swap was in the works even before they were caught.

Obama goes into full campaign mode for Harry Reid.

BP is going to replace the containment cap for one that actually works.

A special legislative session to consider banning off-shore drilling could make life interesting for several Florida lawmakers.

Basketball fans go nuts for the new threesome in Miami.

The Tigers handled the Twins.
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Food For Thought

Photo by Balla Tamas.
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I Got Your Tenth Amendment Right Here

Now that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has been found, in part, to be unconstitutional because it violates the Tenth Amendment, it will be a lot of fun to see how the Tea Party folk and the professional gay-bashers like it when one of their own arguments -- states' rights -- is used to overturn a law that they support.

The arguments on the right are already starting to form; Judge Tauro overreached by using the Tenth Amendment to exclude federal interference in family values when it has been doing so since the New Deal. That's a discussion that will probably get a lot of play in the Starbucks around law schools, but to the Tenthers and the people on the street with the tea bags in their hats, their arguments will probably go something like this: "Gay people can't get married because... it's icky!" and they are sure that the Founding Fathers certainly never considered gay people when they crafted the Constitution. In addition, they just can't get their head around the concept of "equal rights under the law" as enshrined in the Fifth Amendment. But as the judge said in his ruling, an irrational prejudice does not constitute grounds for denying equal protection under the law, nor does it override the several states' rights to establish their own laws for the regulation of marriage. That basically leaves the Tea Partiers and bigots with a lot of irrational spluttering, which is just about all they can do anyway.

The Obama administration will have little choice but to appeal the ruling. Even though the president says he opposes the law, it is the duty of the Department of Justice to defend the laws on the books. But for now, it's a victory.
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The Fix Is In

Eric Alterman has an article in The Nation that argues that it's a lot harder to have a progressive presidency than one that is not.

But the truth, dear reader, is that it does not much matter who is right about what Barack Obama dreams of in his political imagination. Nor is it all that important whether Obama's team either did or didn't make major strategic errors in its first year of governance: in choosing to do healthcare before financial reform; in not holding out for a larger, more people-focused stimulus bill, in eschewing a carbon tax; or in failing to nationalize banks and break up those that are "too big to fail." Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us. Sure, presidents can pretty easily pass tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful corporations. They can start whatever wars they wish and wiretap whomever they want without warrants. They can order the torture of terrorist suspects, lie about it and see that their intelligence services destroy the evidence. But what they cannot do, even with supermajorities in both houses of Congress behind them, is pass the kind of transformative progressive legislation that Barack Obama promised in his 2008 presidential campaign.

I don't necessarily agree with everything in the article, but in one sense, he's right; it's a lot easier to hand out candy and dessert like big tax cuts and corporate welfare, perform knee-jerk acts of vengeance and spy-thriller antics against our perceived enemies, and point the finger of blame at the powerless and blame them for all our troubles than it is to actually solve the problems that caused them in the first place. And it's especially hard to change the system when we are plagued with a media and a political class of elected officials that have the short-term memory of a goldfish.
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Only Suckers Pay Their Mortgage

Here's an interesting bit of news.

The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

Gee, I guess all those tax cuts they got under President Bush just weren't enough.
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Short Takes

BP says they may have the gushing well capped by July 27.

Gov. Crist may call a special session of the Florida legislature to permanently ban off-shore drilling.

Spy swap: Boris and Natasha and friends go home to Russia while ours come home.

Guilty: the verdict came down in the case of the Oakland, California, train station shooting.

The worst-kept secret in the history of professional sports.

Check out the Emmy nominations.

Tropical update: Tropical Depression Two soaks Texas.

The Tigers had the night off before going up against the Twins tonight.
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Friday Blogaround

How was your week? Here's the LC's look at it.

- A Blog Around The Clock: recommended reading.
- archy: forget Indiana Jones.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: why are the super-rich running for office?
- Bloggg: Ringo is 70.
- Dohiyi Mir: child prodigy.
- Echidne Of The Snakes: lemons/lemonade.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: fair redistricting?
- Left Is Right remembers when off-shore drilling in the Gulf was good.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web and the battle of the mutually exclusive boxes.
- rubber hose catches up on the news from Arizona.
- Scrutiny Hooligans welcomes a new hooligan, Shad.
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation: get well soon, Bryant.
- The Yellow Something Something: The Dems are selling out on Social Security.

Don't forget to vote in the Florida Netroots Awards (hint, hint). The first round ends on Saturday (hint, hint).
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Friday Catblogging Classic

Skitz and I are going to be hanging out together.

"Oh joy. Oh rapture."
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DOMA Goes Down in Massachusetts

From the New York Times:

A U.S. judge in Boston has ruled that a federal gay marriage ban is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro on Thursday ruled in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

The state had argued the law denied benefits such as Medicaid to gay married couples in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions have been legal since 2004.

Tauro agreed, and said the act forces Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.

The Justice Department argued the federal government has the right to set eligibility requirements for federal benefits -- including requiring that those benefits only go to couples in marriages between a man and a woman.

For those of us who have been wondering when this would become breathtakingly obvious to the court, it is a long-awaited ruling (PDF). The court ruled against DOMA based on violations of the Fifth and Tenth Amendments; that it violated equal protection as embodied in the Fifth, and overrode the rights of the states to establish their own laws.

The right wing will go into paroxysms of all kinds of batshittery, screaming about "activist judges," and, to be sure, this ruling will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, probably getting there at the same time as Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the case being decided in California on Prop 8.

As Melissa said in an e-mail, "Awesome. I can't believe it took this long to find a court to come the ridiculously obvious conclusion that it forces states to discriminate against their own citizens, even when they don't want to."

HT to Scott Madin.
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Question of the Day

What with the heat wave in the East and Midwest, my mom suggested this one:

Did you grow up in an air-conditioned house (or place of residency)?

It wasn't until 1972 that I had a place with central air. I was in college and lived in an apartment in Coconut Grove. Since then, it's been off and on; our place in Colorado didn't have it, nor did the house in Michigan, but we really didn't need it there. In New Mexico, the preferred cooling method is evaporative cooling, commonly known as a swamp cooler.

The house where I grew up in in Ohio was large with high ceilings; cooling it in the summer would have been expensive, and we didn't have that many summers where it was unbearably hot. We had a collection of fans, including the floor type that oscillated, an old hassock fan that made a droning sound that lulled me to sleep, and window fans. It wasn't until some time in the mid-1960's and I lived in a bedroom in the attic that we got a simple window air conditioner -- it was either on or off -- and a large Westinghouse unit that we mounted in the kitchen. Unlike Florida, where summer nighttime temperatures rarely drop more than a few degrees, Ohio summers cool off a bit after the sun goes down. Then we'd sit on the back porch under the slowly spinning blades of a ceiling fan, watch the lightning bugs, and listen to Tigers baseball on the radio.
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Supremacy

When the Obama administration filed suit against Arizona over the new immigration law, the thinking in some quarters was that they were doing it because of the obvious racial profiling and civil rights issues that have been the talking points of the bill since its inception. However, the Department of Justice didn't go that route. Instead, they are suing based on the supremacy clause in the Constitution that makes federal laws and treaties the supreme law of the land; no state or other legal entity can pass a law that supersedes them. Therefore SB 1070 is unconstitutional on the grounds that it is surpassing federal laws concerning immigration and, to a degree, international relations and treaties. Adam Serwer explains why the DOJ went that way as opposed to the civil rights track.

The first is that the DoJ is challenging the law before it has been enforced, which means they'd have to prove that there is no way the law could be enforced in a nondiscriminatory fashion, and they'd have to do it without any real-world examples. "[DoJ lawyers] would have to prove that it was impossible to enforce the statute without discrimination," Rodriguez said. "You have to show that in no application would this law be constitutional."

The second issue is that in order to show a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, you'd have to prove an intent to discriminate. The legal threshold for proving intentional racial discrimination is very high."If you wanted to make an equal protection claim, you'd have to show an intent to discriminate on the basis of race, and that's exceedingly difficult to show as a legal matter," Rodriguez says. For one thing, Rodriguez explains, "you'd have to show the intent of the legislators to discriminate" in passing the law. Even with the incendiary rhetoric of Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, the provision in the bill nominally prohibiting racial profiling would again make such a challenge a tough sell without concrete examples of discrimination. That said, if the DoJ's challenge fails, those kinds of lawsuits are likely to follow.

Basically, there's no point in going after the law on discrimination and civil rights grounds since the law isn't in effect yet and the DOJ already has enough ammunition with the constitutional issue. In fact, a racial profiling argument would probably make the case harder to win since the law nominally forbids it.

The defenders of the bill say that Arizona had no choice but to pass the bill because, in their words, the federal government wasn't doing the job of controlling immigration and that crime was rampant in Arizona because of the hordes of criminals pouring over the border. That's not necessarily true -- the Obama administration has increased the number of agents -- and crime is actually down in Arizona. Effective enforcement of a law should not be a measure of whether or not the foundation of the law is right or wrong, especially since the Republicans have stated that even if President Obama and the Democrats came up with a revision to the immigration laws, they wouldn't cooperate with its progress through Congress. After all, what's more important; immigration policy or election-year politics?

This argument also points out the situational ethics of states' rights versus the federal laws: it all depends on which side you're on in a particular issue that determines whether or not you're in favor of the Supremacy clause. For instance, the argument against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was that the federal government had no business telling people in Georgia or New Hampshire who could or could not go to public schools. But when Terri Schiavo was lying in a vegetative state in a nursing home in Florida, right-to-lifers were perfectly content to have the United States Congress step in and pass laws superseding the will of the state or her husband.
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Hoops Hoopla

It looks like the Miami Heat will score the triple.

Tipoff will be at 9 p.m. Thursday.

Then, and only then, might Miami Heat fans get the official jump on one of the most seismic shifts in the history of the NBA.

That is when Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James has blocked out a one-hour special on ESPN to announce his free-agency decision.

That same cable network is reporting early Thursday morning that "all indications" are James will join the Heat.

A source familiar with the Heat's chances told the Sun Sentinel the team knows James "still has interest" but that management is not necessarily completely confident that it is the favorite. That, however, also could be the team erring on the side of caution, with such a potentially franchise-changing moment at hand.

A jump to the Heat would mean James could leave as much as $30 million on the table from what he could receive by remaining in Cleveland. The lack of a state income tax in Florida would offset some of that loss.

The Heat emphatically denied a report that it sent a team plane Wednesday to James and denied the James had met Wednesday night or early Thursday with Heat officials.

According to ESPN, "All indications are that LeBron James is leaning toward signing with the Miami Heat Thursday night, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation."

In the report, Chris Broussard of ESPN The Magazine said, "Barring a late change of heart, sources say James has decided to join fellow All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to form a potential NBA powerhouse."

There are also rumors floating around the South Florida blogosphere that Mr. James has made an offer on a house in Coral Gables (right up the road a piece from me).

I guess that takes the suspense out of the hour-long special planned for tonight in which the announcement of Mr. James's choice would be made.
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Recess Time

President Obama appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid via a recess appointment knowing full well that the Republicans would have held up the appointment and filibustered him to death because that's what they do.

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said the “recess appointment” was needed to carry out the new health care law. The law calls for huge changes in the two programs, which together insure nearly one-third of all Americans.

Mr. Pfeiffer said the president would appoint Dr. Berwick on Wednesday. Mr. Obama decided to act because “many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.

As a recess appointee, Dr. Berwick will have all the powers of a permanent appointee. But under the Constitution, his appointment will expire at the end of the next session of Congress, in late 2011.

Cue the right-wing freakout, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling it "truly outrageous." How dare the president deny Mr. McConnell all that face time on TV? How dare the president use a power that is granted him by the Constitution? Doesn't he know that using recess appointments is a privilege only granted to Republicans? After all, President Bush did it 171 times, including John Bolton as UN ambassador.

It's like these people have completely wiped their memory of anything that happened before January 20, 2009.
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What Would Jesus Carry?

In Louisiana, you can now add weaponry to your Sunday-go-to-meeting ensemble.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law one of the more controversial bills from the recent legislative session, one allowing guns to be carried into houses of worship.

Including the "gun-in-church" bill, House Bill 1272 by Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, Jindal has signed into law 940 of the 1,067 bills the Legislature sent him, vetoed 12, and used his pen to line-item spending measures in four different budget bills.

Burns' bill would authorize persons who qualified to carry concealed weapons having passed the training and background checks to bring them to churches, mosques, synagogues or other houses of worship as part of a security force.

As Melissa points out, the recent history of guns and churches has been that of religious conservatives going to churches and shooting people who held political views they didn't like.

This says much more about our nation's pathological obsession with guns than it does about security.
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The Heat Is On

To quote the line from 1776, it's hot as hell in Philadelphia.

Temperatures peaked at 102 at 3:54 p.m. at Philadelphia International Airport, breaking the record of 98 set in 1999. It also hit 102 in Trenton and Atlantic City. Sporadic winds made it feel alternately like a convection oven or dragon's breath.

An excessive heat warning for the region remains in effect until 8 p.m. Wednesday, when the record of 98, set in 1994, is also expected to fall.

Which brings to mind a question: where are all the climate-change deniers that were mocking Al Gore when the Eastern Seaboard was buried under a couple of blizzards last winter?

A blizzard doesn't disprove climate change any more than a heat wave proves it. That's the difference between climate and weather. But don't bother trying to explain it to the whack-jobs; it's still Obama's fault for not stopping the oil leak yet.
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Morning Whiner

Markos Moulitsas, the keeper of Daily Kos, has been banned from MSNBC because he hurt Joe Scarborough's feelings.

According to Markos, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin emailed him this explanation: "I'm hoping this will be only temporary and that the situation can be resolved in a mature fashion, but until then I just don't know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time."

Hey, Phil, resolving this in a mature fashion would be not blacklisting someone because of a schoolyard spat via Twitter.

Realizing this will screw whatever chances I have of ever appearing on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough is an incredibly thin-skinned bully who hasn't got the class to ignore a snarky tweet but go running to your boss to complain. Grow the hell up.
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Short Takes

Cuba has agreed to release 52 political prisoners. This in spite of the fact that Cuba claims they don't have any political prisoners.

A NATO air strike accidentally killed Afghan troops.

A 5.4 earthquake rattled southern California.

Two people are missing after a boat collision on the Delaware River in Philadelphia.

"Climategate" was a crock: a British panel exonerates the scientists accused of manipulating data.

Speaking of weather, it's still hot in the Northeast.

Tropical update: Tropical Depression Two heads for the Texas/Mexico border area, and there's another one right behind it.

The Tigers beat the Orioles 4-2 and complete the sweep.
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Irony of the Day

Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI) vetoed the civil union bill with this bit of logic:

It would be a mistake to allow a decision of this magnitude to be made by one individual or a small group of elected officials.

So this one person decided against the will of the state legislature.

Um, what?
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Carole King & James Taylor

I heard them interviewed on NPR this afternoon on the way home and had a "driveway moment." They were part of my life when I was seventeen, and still are.


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How Dare You Publish What I Said

The latest twist in the Sharron Angle saga is that now that she's actually the GOP nominee for the Senate from Nevada, she doesn't want anyone to know what her positions were when she was just a state official and no one was paying any attention to her and her views on issues. But Harry Reid's campaign was paying attention and they did a lot of CTRL+Print Screen before she got the nod and now they're sharing it with us.

That has not pleased Ms. Angle.

[T]he Angle campaign sent [the Reid campaign] a cease-and-desist letter, claiming misuse of copyrighted materials in the reposting of the old website -- which was, of course, being posted for the purposes of ridiculing Angle. The Reid campaign has in fact taken down the site, rerouting visitors to another website that goes after Angle's positions, "Sharron's Underground Bunker."

Now the Reid campaign has made a few modifications to the site and put it back up. Check it out here.

Most of it is boilerplate right-wing Tea Party/John Birch Society stuff with the usual bullet points about lowering taxes, the holiness of the Second Amendment, getting us out of the UN, deporting illegal immigrants, and limited government unless you have a uterus or want to marry your same-sex partner. She lists her endorsements by the usual tin-foil hat brigades of cranky white people -- Phyllis Schlafly, the Minutemen, the NRA, the Nevada chapter of the Ignorant Tightass Club, and the Church of I Hate You -- and so on. In this climate, it's pretty tame lunacy.

What I think is odd is that if she really believes all of this stuff, why is she trying to hide it from the voters of Nevada? Is she somehow ashamed of them? Why? Does she think that she can't get elected on such bedrock values? After all, you'd think that if that's what she stands for, she would stand by them. By going after the Reid campaign with threats of lawsuits and such only draws attention to them and makes her look like like an idiot.
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How Rich

The latest trend in electoral campaigns is the super-rich running as an outsider. We're seeing it here in Florida with Rick Scott, a conservative who made a pile by running Columbia/HCA healthcare -- and dodging fraud charges -- running for governor, and Jeff Greene, another billionaire with some questionable dealings in his past, running in the Democratic primary for the Senate. Elsewhere we have Carly Fiorina, who was once the CEO of HP, running for the Senate in California along side Meg Whitman, who used to be the president of e-Bay, trying to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger. They're all over the place, including Wisconsin, where Sen. Russ Feingold, perhaps the most outspoken liberal in the United States Senate, has to run ads touting his conservative endorsements in his race to win re-election against Ron Johnson, who is -- you guessed it -- rolling in it and with the backing of the Tea Party.

Hey, this is America and anyone with enough lungpower and connections can run for any office they want. But it's interesting to see not only are the super-rich getting involved in politics, they're doing their best to try to portray themselves as just like you and me. Of course, they're not. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, "The rich are different from you and me." To which Ernest Hemingway is said to have retorted, "Yes, they have more money." (The retort is a misquote, but it still rings true.) The idea of a rich person running for office -- usually for the first time -- as an outsider and just plain folks is one of those paradoxes that makes politics in America the maddeningly fascinating game that it has come to be.

Americans have a love/hate relationship with the wealthy. We admire them for their enterprise and their drive to accumulate massive sums of money, perhaps envisioning that somehow, some way, it could happen to us, and yet we hate them for their palatial homes and fancy boats and cars and $1,000 bottles of wine. We think that they have the secrets of success and we want it for ourselves, and yet we sneer at anything about them that hints at elitism, and love seeing them acting like one of us, which explains the booming business in celebrity gossip ("Look! Brad Pitt buys food at a grocery store!") That's why the super-rich running for office go to such pains to portray themselves as ordinary folks. That's why Sarah Palin can talk about being a hockey mom and going huntin' and trappin' and collect $100,000 and fly first class to deliver the talk about being just like you. That's why Rick Scott and Jeff Greene go around Florida trying to make it look like they're out there for the little guy, creating jobs and getting to work for us. They'll do anything to show that while they're rich, they're not elitists. Elitism is a charge that only works in the third person; we're rich, and that's great, but they are elites. Boo hiss. (Steve M. has a primer on the difference between being rich and being elitist.)

Of course the reality is that if you're rich in America, you're not an outsider. You worked the system, you know the people in power in places where knowing them helped you get rich. There's nothing wrong with that; that's how America is supposed to work. But let's not kid ourselves; no one running for office who is financing their own campaign with the couple of million bucks of loose change that fell out of their pockets can truly call themselves an outsider no matter how many beat-up pick-up trucks they drive or how many ads they film talking to farmers or ranchers or people of color. The only reason that it works is because they know that the people watching the ads are all thinking, "Hey, that could be me" in the same way they think that wearing Calvin Klein underwear will turn them into a well-muscled hunk or eating NutriSystem will turn them into a skinny runway model. And it works.
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A Step Closer to Havana

A bill that would lift a lot of the travel restrictions and the tourism ban on Cuba is slowly making its way through Congress.

The bill is being pushed by business and agriculture groups that have long argued that the Cold War-era sanctions against Cuba should be lifted, but it is opposed by an influential anti-communist lobby, which is against Cuba's ruling Castro family.

But at a time when the Obama administration is fighting to boost U.S. exports, supporters of the bill argue that they have their best chance yet to reopen a country famous for its white sand and hand-rolled cigars, featured in American pop culture from "I Love Lucy" to the "Godfather" films.

The sanctions have been in place since 1959, when communist leader Fidel Castro took over the country and nationalized the holdings of U.S. investors, and they became entrenched in U.S. foreign policy three years later, when Castro tried to import Soviet nuclear weapons.

A bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee last week would repeal a broad travel ban on Americans visiting the island -- leaving the broader sanctions in place but taking a major step toward weakening them. It also would loosen rules that allow food sales to the country.

Such efforts have come before, and there is no guarantee of success this time. The bill narrowly passed the Agriculture Committee, 25 to 20, and must clear the House Financial Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee before a floor vote is possible.

The opposition to the bill will come from the usual suspects; the hardliners here in Miami who think that the Castro brothers are going to break any day now. They've been saying that since 1959 and we're still waiting. As a matter of fact, the dictatorship in Cuba has used the embargo to cement their grip on power. It gives them their excuse to continue their cruel austerity measures and clamp down on human rights; it's all because of the evil Yanqui imperialists to the north. The longer the embargo lasts, the longer the Castros have their justification to stay in power.

But just imagine what would happen if all of a sudden planeloads of American tourists started showing up at the beaches and the hotels and the restaurants, wandering the streets of Havana or the smaller towns or going out to Hemingway's farm. Today the Cuban minders can keep an eye on the occasional American visitor with the special visa or the Cuban-American returning to visit Tia Conchita and treating each of them as a potential spy or mischief-maker. But they would be overwhelmed by hundreds of tourists flooding in with cameras and laptops and iPods and cash. There's no way the Cubans could control all of them and prevent them from infecting the average Cuban with capitalism and Lady Gaga. The worst threat to the Cuban regime isn't the stealthy James Bond-type spy sneaking in on a visa cooked up by the CIA; it's Fred and Ethel from Bloomington, Indiana, with their Margaritaville shirts and Visa cards.
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Here's A Tip

Here's a another great idea for economic recovery from a Republican: cut wages.

Tom Emmer, the GOP-endorsed candidate for governor, told reporters at the Eagle Street Grille in St. Paul on Monday that the minimum wage for service workers who earn tips should be cut. Some waiters and bartenders, he noted, can earn as much as $100,000 a year, which he said is unfair to the employers that hire them.

“With the tips that they get to take home, they are some people earning over $100,000 a year. More than the very people providing the jobs and investing not only their life savings but their families’ future,” Emmer said.

Speaking as someone who worked for several years as a waiter and many years in the hospitality business (not to mention being in a profession -- theatre -- that provides a good deal of the people who work in food service), I can safely say I have never met anyone who made over $100,000 in a year waiting tables or tending bar. In most states, food service people are exempt from earning the minimum wage, which means they have to hustle tips and depend on the largess of their customers to even get up to minimum wage. Minnesota is one of the few states that requires restaurants and bars pay minimum wage, and Mr. Emmer thinks that's an unfair burden on business.

Not only did Mr. Emmer just lose the vote of anybody who hangs a tray in Minnesota, it's a wonder that he made it out of the Eagle Street Grille without getting a pot of hot coffee down his back.
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Short Takes

The heat is still on up in the Northeast.

President Obama and Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu make nice.

The Justice Department is suing Arizona over the immigration law.

Charges are filed against the soldier who leaked the tapes of a deadly helicopter attack in 2007.

Oil is seeping into Lake Pontchartrain.

Queen Elizabeth II placed a wreath at Ground Zero.

Tropical update: this low pressure system is stirring up some waves.

The Tigers beat the Orioles 7-5.
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Back to Work

A nice three-day weekend that included a 4th of July party, fireworks with the neighbors, and power-washing the back patio is over and I'm heading back to the office... the new one. That means changing routines after all those years; going to a new building, finding a closer place to park, and poking through the boxes to find the projects I was working on before all the packing began last week.

It also means getting used to a new desk, learning new habits (the phone is over there, now, not where it used to be), and finding out where they stored the copier paper.

It should take a week or so.

Oh, by the way, I found the scissors that went missing in the middle of packing on Thursday. I had already packed them.
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The Coalition of the Cruel

When it comes to answering the question as to why the jobless benefits bill keeps getting filibustered by the GOP, Paul Krugman doesn't mince words.

The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.

By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.

By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits. A sample remark: “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn’t pay as much. We’ve put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry.”

Now, I don’t have the impression that unemployed Americans are spoiled; desperate seems more like it. One doubts, however, that any amount of evidence could change Ms. Angle’s view of the world — and there are, unfortunately, a lot of people in our political class just like her.

But there are also, one hopes, at least a few political players who are honestly misinformed about what unemployment benefits do — who believe, for example, that Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, was making sense when he declared that extending benefits would make unemployment worse, because “continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Of course the Republicans are doing this because they see it as the way to prevent the economy from picking up or lessening the pain. That's a no-brainer, and the GOP has been very transparent about it. The fact that they would inflict cruelty intentionally is not a real big surprise either; they don't believe in being nice. That's wimpy, and the GOP is nothing if not butch and tough... at least until those mean old Democrats hurt their feelings.

The explanation for the clueless is that people like Sharron Angle and the people who agree with her have probably never lived without a safety net. I'll go out on a limb here and say that Sharron Angle has never had to worry about where her next meal is coming from or whether or not she would be able to pay her bills or choose between paying for groceries or healthcare.

The same goes for Sen. Kyl and his statement about unemployment being a disincentive. Chances are he's never been out of a job in his life. Good for him. But it also means he doesn't know the desperation and the gnawing feeling of doom when there's no jobs, no prospects, and your future looks bleak. Getting a small subsistence from unemployment insurance doesn't exactly brighten your day and convince you that all will be well if you just hang out on the couch and watch The History Channel. And it's not like there are lots of jobs out there, anyway.

When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would have been otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn’t booming — again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work — but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.

The GOP will continue to block extending the benefits. They say they're trying not to add to the deficit, which, for those of us who watched the Bush administration take the Clinton surplus and dive head first into the red ink of tax cuts for the rich and the war in Iraq, is a gob-smacking reason, but that's the one that gets them on Hardball. The real reason is that they want to do anything they can to ensure that the Obama administration fails, and this is just their way of doing their part. They really don't care about the deficit -- they never have -- and they really don't care about the unemployed because when you're out of work, you can't give money to the GOP.
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Kicking In

Here comes the healthcare law.

The first stage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is expected to provide coverage to about 1 million uninsured Americans by next year, according to government estimates.

That's a small share of the uninsured, but in a shaky economy, experts say it's notable.

Many others — more than 100 million people — are getting new benefits that improve their existing coverage.

Overall costs appear modest at this point, split among taxpayers, employers and individuals who directly benefit, although the biggest part of the health care expansion is still four years away.

That would explain this:

Although they’ve called repeatedly for repeal of the Democrats’ new health reform law, some senior Senate Republicans have not endorsed a bill that would actually do it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), GOP Conference Chair Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Conference Vice Chair Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) have all argued that the reforms — passed in March without Republican support — will hike costs and erode services, and therefore should be scrapped. Yet they haven’t signed on to their party’s repeal proposal.

That's because they haven't figured out a way to go to voters and sell repealing the law without making it sound like they're either owned by the insurance companies or that they're just doing it for political reasons.
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Here's An Idea

Kevin D. Williamson at the NRO Corner has a suggestion for the RNC.

Re: Steele and the RNC: Allow me to chime in with my usual observation on this subject: This is a job for Sarah Palin. Palin would be a much better RNC chairman than presidential candidate or freelance kingmaker. She'd raise tons of money and help recruit good candidates, i.e., she'd excel at doing the things Steele should have been doing instead of appointing himself Republican pundit-at-large.

A Chairman Palin would help set the right tone for the Republican party without having to get herself entangled in the minutiae of policy-development, which has not been her forte.

In other words, she's a real crowd-pleaser; just don't expect her to bring any smarts to the table because, as we all know, she's no good at that.

I like it; it will be non-stop hilarity. I say go for it.
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Short Takes

They're having a heat wave -- New York, the Eastern Seaboard, and even Toronto are hitting 100F and lots of humidity. (No, it never gets that hot in Miami. Never has.)

BP is still selling oil to the Defense Department.

They're still testing the giant oil skimmer in the Gulf.

Parts of South Florida got record-setting rain. (It missed my neighborhood.)

Miami's Bicentennial Park is being cleaned up in advance of the new museum gets underway.

Tropical update: There are two systems worth paying attention to; one in the Gulf and one in the Caribbean.

The Tigers clobbered the Orioles and regained the lead in the AL Central.
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The America He Grew Up In

Last week House Minority Leader John Boehner said that the Democrats were "snuffing out the America I grew up in." Seeing as how he grew up in the 1950's -- a time of segregation, Red scares, "duck and cover", Jim Crow, and institutionalized misogyny, it was thought that he might want to revise his view. Perhaps he'd rather have grown up in a time when political parties aspired to greater and better things; a more just and equal society, an unfettered global economy, and -- perhaps -- lower taxes for the rich since the maximum rate in 1959 was 87%.

There was a party at the time that did aspire to those goals and more, including fair labor laws, equal pay for women, immigration, clean water, and preserving natural resources.

We shall ever build anew, that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.

We believe that basic to governmental integrity are unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government. We shall continue our insistence on honesty as an indispensable requirement of public service. We shall continue to root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.

We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.

[...]

We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.

[...]

The spirit of our people is the strength of our nation.

America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.

Government must have a heart as well as a head.

Courage in principle, cooperation in practice make freedom positive.

[...]

Business and Economic Policy

We shall continue to advocate the maintenance and expansion of a strong, efficient, privately-owned and operated and soundly financed system of transportation that will serve all of the needs of our Nation under Federal regulatory policies that will enable each carrier to realize its inherent economic advantages and its full competitive capabilities.

[...]

Labor

...[C]ontinue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will:

Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers;

Continue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;

Strengthen and improve the Federal-State Employment Service and improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;

Protect by law, the assets of employee welfare and benefit plans so that workers who are the beneficiaries can be assured of their rightful benefits;

Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;

Clarify and strengthen the eight-hour laws for the benefit of workers who are subject to federal wage standards on Federal and Federally-assisted construction, and maintain and continue the vigorous administration of the Federal prevailing minimum wage law for public supply contracts;

Extend the protection of the Federal minimum wage laws to as many more workers as is possible and practicable;

Continue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;

Provide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment;

...[P]rotect more effectively the rights of labor unions, management, the individual worker, and the public. The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy...

[...]

Health, Education and Welfare

...[T]he physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people is as important as their economic health. It will continue to support this conviction with vigorous action.

[...]

...[L]eadership has enlarged Federal assistance for construction of hospitals, emphasizing low-cost care of chronic diseases and the special problems of older persons, and increased Federal aid for medical care of the needy.

We have asked the largest increase in research funds ever sought in one year to intensify attacks on cancer, mental illness, heart disease and other dread diseases.

We demand once again, [...], Federal assistance to help build facilities to train more physicians and scientists.

We have encouraged a notable expansion and improvement of voluntary health insurance, and urge that reinsurance and pooling arrangements be authorized to speed this progress.

We have strengthened the Food and Drug Administration, and we have increased the vocational rehabilitation program to enable a larger number of the disabled to return to satisfying activity.

We have supported measures that have made more housing available than ever before in history, reduced urban slums in local-federal partnership, stimulated record home ownership, and authorized additional low-rent public housing.

We initiated the first flood insurance program in history under Government sponsorship in cooperation with private enterprise.

We shall continue to seek extension and perfection of a sound social security system.

[...]

Immigration

...[S]upports an immigration policy which is in keeping with the traditions of America in providing a haven for oppressed peoples, and which is based on equality of treatment, freedom from implications of discrimination between racial, nationality and religious groups, and flexible enough to conform to changing needs and conditions.

We believe that such a policy serves our self-interest, reflects our responsibility for world leadership and develops maximum cooperation with other nations in resolving problems in this area.

[...]

Recreation, parks and wildlife.

We favor a comprehensive study of the effect upon wildlife of the drainage of our wetlands.

We subscribe to the general objectives of groups seeking to guard the beauty of our land and to promote clean, attractive surroundings throughout America.

We recognize the need for maintaining isolated wilderness areas to provide opportunity for future generations...

If this platform was presented today, I daresay Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and John Boehner would pronounce it as liberal pablum and leftist Armageddon. Ironically, it is the Republican Platform of 1956. In other words, it's from the America he grew up in.

And the Republicans won in 1956.

HT to Misty.
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Nothing New

The reason I haven't posted anything prior to now about RNC Chairman Michael Steele's comment about the war in Afghanistan -- "this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in" -- is because this sort of thing is something I've come to expect from the GOP. It just another day in Paradise for the party that has spent the last eighteen months going completely batshit crazy over the election of Barack Obama. This is what happens when they don't get their way: serial temper tantrums and paroxysms of racist dog-whistles and not-so-subtle calls for violence and armed insurrection.

Michael Steele will probably keep his job. The RNC can't fire him because if they do, they will have to admit that he is incompetent, that he has been the entire time he's held the job, and the only reason they hired him in the first place is because they wanted to join in the me-tooism of putting a black man in a position of power in their party. And besides, compared to some of the things some of the other members of the party have said, from Sarah Palin to Michele Bachman to John Boehner to Joe Barton, his claim that Afghanistan was a war of President Obama's choosing isn't that far off from Rudy Giuliani's claim that there were no terror attacks in the United States under the administration of George W. Bush.

Now they expect us to take them seriously as a political party in the November mid-terms. They have a fresh new crop waiting in the wings: Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, J.D. Hayworth, Rick Barber; the list goes on and on of the reality-challenged moments yet to come. Chances are they will actually win some elections. Nothing new.
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Fifth of July

It's not just a day; it's also a play by Lanford Wilson.


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Day Off

Yesterday was the 4th of July with all the fun and celebration, but today is the official day off from work for me, so I'm hanging around the house and enjoying the time off. Blogging will be light and variable today.

I had planned to pressure-clean the back patio, but if the weather maintains the pattern it had over the weekend -- scattered rain and thundershowers -- I'll put it off until later.
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Short Takes

Poland gets a new president.

A 4th of July parade turned deadly after horses stampede in Iowa.

It was a wet holiday in South Florida with rain and thunderstorms in the area.

BP wants its partners to share the cost of the clean-up.

Florida beaches drew crowds in spite of fears of the oil spill.

Pile-On: GOP Senators jump all over Michael Steele's latest comments.

Tropical update: a couple of disturbances are brewing; one near the Louisiana coast, and another down southwest of Cuba.

The Tigers lost to the Mariners.
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