The Crossed Pond

Tea Partiers are f’ing weird, man.

H/t: David Weigel

Can it just be said for the record that burning a pile of Quarans, and building a muslim community center in lower Manhattan, are not comparable acts?

Your Hand in Mine – Explosions in the Sky

In honor of the upcoming Civilization V release, I present these two posts pulled from the sacred halls of Fark:

Mr guy-down-the-street, what is the thought process that compelled you to spray paint “NOBAMA” on the plywood sides of a dilapidated 1980 pickup truck? Seriously, what was going through your head when you were holding the can of red spray paint? You’re clearly not trying to alter the beliefs of other people or engage in a meaningful debate. The action is infantile.

I urge anyone who is considering a similar action to forgo the expense of spray paint and instead attempt to directly engage the political world. Start a club. Join a group. Call your representative. Post infrequently on a blog. Run for something. Anything is better than a painting a stupid slogan on the back of a stationary pickup truck.

Assuming Rahm heads to Chicago, next in line for his position is a guy whose previous job was as…a lobbyist. For Fannie May.

That’s the best (and perhaps most charitable) way to think of big sports stadiums that, it seems, every major city, once every ten years, tries to sell to their voters. Sometimes, they raise taxes to build them. Sometimes they just chalk up massive debt. But always, always, they assure people that the economic revenue generated by their sports complexes will bring in money like a firehose brings water*.

That’s pretty much a bald-faced lie. And so, the best way to think of them is not the way they’re being sold to you – as revenue engines – but rather, as a city’s gift to itself. A prestige, luxury item.

And, of course, like all prestige luxury items, they’re fine as far as they go but it’s a bad idea to spend more than you can afford on them. The New York Times has a story on that today. New Jersey residents still owe $13 dollars per person on the old Giants stadium – which is now a parking lot. The NYT piece tells the story.

(*N.B. this is much the same with other big sporting(ish) complexes, like casinos or racetracks, which DO tend to bring in money, that money just doesn’t go to the cities that largely pay for them, and if they go tits up, they become government-subsidized casinos and racetracks or, in the, former casinos and racetracks the failure of which the government has to pick up the tab for).

In case you missed it yesterday, Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam for the Cordoba House, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times. Rearranged a bit (I do that sometimes, btw), money quote:

President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg both spoke out in support of our project. As I traveled overseas, I saw firsthand how their words and actions made a tremendous impact on the Muslim street and on Muslim leaders. It was striking: a Christian president and a Jewish mayor of New York supporting the rights of Muslims. Their statements sent a powerful message about what America stands for, and will be remembered as a milestone in improving American-Muslim relations.[...]

At Cordoba House, we envision shared space for community activities, like a swimming pool, classrooms and a play space for children. There will be separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths. The center will also include a multifaith memorial dedicated to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.[...]

I therefore call upon all Americans to rise to this challenge. Let us commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 by pausing to reflect and meditate and tone down the vitriol and rhetoric that serves only to strengthen the radicals and weaken our friends� belief in our values.

What a jerk! How dare he declare victory! Insensitive! 911warbalgarbleq,marew1!!!!

This has been a fun year to be a Toronto Blue Jays fan. This has also been a helluva fun year if you came into this season as one of the world’s only Jose Bautista fans.

I liked Bautista when I knew him in Pittsburgh, when I started following baseball again (I hadn’t since roughly the strike in the 90s). He was a decent back-of-the-lineup guy, and a decent utility defender, and I guess the reason I came to like him is, in those 2006-2008 years, he was one of the few guys that was actually a consistent presence (those were the years when Jason Bay, Xavier Nady, Nyjer Morgan, just kept getting plucked seemingly every few weeks). He was never a terrific hitter, but he had a great swing, and always seemed like a cool guy. Also, even though it was the Pirates, he seemed happy to be there. Perhaps that’s because nobody ever knew what to do with him – he, in fact, holds the record for being on the most major league rosters in a single season, five (Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Kansas City Royals, New York Mets, and the Pittsburgh Pirates), in his rookie year of 2004.

So, I was glad when he went to Toronto, even though a lot of Toronto fans weren’t (they had just lost Scott Rolen at third base in a trade of questionable merit, and being the 8-hole for the Pittsburgh Pirates does not exactly scream All-Star potential)(for the record, I was also glad to see John Buck, coming from the 7 spot of the Kansas City Royals). He’s a guy that’s not had a lot of success, but stuck with it, even as he got constantly shuffled (the fact that he could play outfield or infield depending on need was the only reason he’s still in the majors. He was not a great prospect even as a prospect, and as a major leaguer, he was just a mediocre journeyman utility player, of the sort that pass through in relative obscurity all the time, retiring when the free agent market gets bad.

In any case, last year, Bautista had a middling season, hitting .235 with 13 home runs and 40 RBIs. But last September, he got on a lot of fans’ good sides. He adjusted his timing and his swing with the Jays’ new hitting coach, and last September had a flukey-looking display of power, leading the Jays in home runs, batting average, and RBIs in their last month of last season.

This year? He’s led the league in home runs almost since opening day. And he appears almost certain to break the club record for home runs – and before you laugh, the guys ahead of him right now on that list are Carlos Delgado, Jose Canseco, and George Bell.

� Bautista leads the majors with 43 home runs and ranks second to Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera with 103 RBIs. He’s obliterated his previous career highs of 16 homers and 53 RBIs with 25 games left to play.

� From the start of September 2009 through Toronto’s final game in August, Bautista hit 53 homers. During the past decade, only three other players went deep that often in one September-to-September calendar year. Alex Rodriguez launched 60 homers for Texas in 2001 and 2002, and Boston’s David Ortiz (58 homers) and Cleveland’s Travis Hafner (53) did it in 2005 and ‘06.

� According to hittrackeronline.com, which tracks and estimates the distance of home runs, Bautista leads the majors with 17 “no doubt” homers. That’s four more than Washington’s Adam Dunn and six more than the Yankees’ Mark Teixeira and Baltimore’s Luke Scott. Bautista is averaging an estimated 404.2 feet per long ball, and amazingly, all 43 of his homers have been to left-center field or straight pull shots to left.

Anyway, it’s been a little like, I expect, watching Zach Greinke’s season with the Royals last year. The most powerful bat in the majors this year is…a 29-year-old kid on the Toronto Blue Jays. Who wasn’t invited to the Home Run Derby.

Of course, unlike Greinke, and more like the Pirates during Bautista’s stay there, we probably won’t be able to keep him. But still. Been fun.

You may have heard that a Tea Party leader out in Montana made a very tasteless reference (actually, responded to a very tasteless reference) to gays, suggesting (actually responding to a suggestion) that gays ought to be strung up Matthew Shepard style, in the course of arguing that same sex marriage is a violation of his constitutional rights (somehow).

Anyway, worth passing on, because we do that sometimes, that the Montana Tea Party group sacked him immediately and released a statement expressing outrage and declaring “We continually make it known that we will not tolerate bigoted dialogue, behavior or messages at our functions, our meetings or within our ranks.” They were applauded by Montana Human Rights Network, which declared “We’re especially happy about the unequivocal statements that the tea party will not welcome this type of inflammatory, bigoted behavior into their party.”

Worth passing on another example showing that yes, there are bigots in the Tea Party, but also, the Tea Party does plenty of “condemning” them.

What a bizarre meeting. Also, a pivotal moment, perhaps, as Castro seeks to begin thinking about his global legacy, and desires to move from head of state to senior statesman.

Also, it ends with this awesome teaser:

There is a great deal more to report from this conversation, and from subsequent conversations, which I will do in posts to follow. But I will begin the next post on this subject by describing one of the stranger days I have experienced, a day which began with a simple question from Fidel: “Would you like to go to the aquarium with me to see the dolphin show?”

And stops his execution.

If you don’t know, this case has been one that a lot of people have been worked up over, considering it seems pretty likely that police flat-out fabricated a critical bit of evidence. But the reason I pass it on now is a bit of trivia, courtesy of the Liberty Papers, the veracity of which I can’t confirm.

Who is the only Governor to ever commute a death sentence in an election year, and win reelection?

Answer.

Bonus point: the guy whose sentence he commuted was undoubtedly a prolific and exceedingly guilty serial killer.

CNN reports that the average teacher pays about $300-$400 per annum in uncompensated out-of-pocket expenditures for classroom materials. A few individual teachers’ expenditures in these areas run into the thousands of dollars. My reaction to the story was, frankly, how is this news? The fact that some people in the blogosphere are reacting to the article with suprise suggests that yes, I guess it may be news after all.

I guess I had always expected that this sort of thing is part of the terrain of having a job. Scott Adams has written occasionally about the difficulty of obtaining reimbursement for workplace expenditures within the corporate environment.

Do the out-of-pocket figures listed for teachers seem to be unreasonable to you non-teachers out there? Has our false consciousness led to us being the victims of a collective billion-dollar swindle? Do we need to take to the streets?

Man sues federal government over Obamacare; claim it violates a host of constitutional amendments, including the 13th and 3rd amendments. The 13th amendment, remember, bans slavery, and the 3rd amendment bans the government from quartering soldiers in private homes. Obamacare is just like those two things, kinda.

I always thought the 3rd amendment should get more play. Good to see someone’s running that up the flagpole. Let’s call it the metaphorical amendment, and make a bunch of really pained analogies in front of the Supreme Court. “You know your honor, having the IRS reading over my shoulder as I get my pay stub is kind of like having a British redcoat sitting at my kitchen table while I’m trying to make breakfast…” Or the Supreme Court should just randomly choose, bingo-style, one case a session and require the lawyers on both sides argue it from a 3rd amendment perspective only. “This session’s case…ooh, abortion. Abortion. Tough drag.” “Well your honor, having a child I don’t want in my uterus is sort of like having an 18th century militia brigade I didn’t invite sleeping on cots in my dining room…”

Bonus: for some reason, dude decides to throw in that Obamacare violates his freedom of religion, since socialism is contrary to Christianity, which is news to me and, probably, Christ.

Bonus bonus: the plantiff is running for Attorney General in Nevada.

In other news that happened over the weekend, I have decided that Blowout Preventer would be an excellent name for a band. I am presently mulling over whether the ubiquitous variation “Massive Blowout Preventer” is better, although if you go that route you almost have to call yourself “Massive Yellow Blowout Preventer” or even “300 Ton Blowout Preventer”, the latter of which might be best, depending on genre.

A rare thing these days. But this memorandum essentially dismissing the White House line that “combat operations have ended in Iraq” as simply factually inaccurate, and instructing reporters and editors to ignore it entirely, is right on. I’ve never seen anything as stupid as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and the rest of the NBC folks gushing over the “historic moment” of precisely nothing happening but Obama feeding them a transparently BS bit of doublespeak and minimal stagecraft.

Non-scrubbed version here.

Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma

The Economist speculates on the potential decline of American universities, as they increasingly fail to provide quality undergraduate education at anything resembling a reasonable price.

There are, of course, a number of routes around this problem from the University’s perspective. For one, they could continue down the path of prioritizing the faculty’s research role, and thereby become primarily financed by government grants. But is that likely to work in an era of tighter and tighter budget constraints as entitlement programs gobble up a bigger and bigger portion of the pie?

The creation of a federal entitlement to a college education is another possible route to salvation, and one that is often bandied about under Democratic administrations. But again, even with the increased demand for such a service created by the necessity of a college degree as a means to gain employment, it’s hard to see the federal government as a long-term guarantor of income. If such a guarantee ever WERE to be offered, it would not be on the universities’ terms–no doubt there would be strings attached in the form of demands on tuition requirements and, more troublingly, instructional content.

If the main source of revenue is going to be undergraduates, though, universities are going to start running up against real problems soon. The article goes into detail about some of the problems–the inefficient administrative culture and the preservation of a “salad days” approach to costs at a time when it really isn’t wise. I think that if I were them, I might be more concerned with the fact that my role as “gatekeeper” to knowledge was under assault from online universities and others who could offer the same credentials more cheaply. Ultimately, the free marketplace, and the spread of informational availability through non-centralized means, is going to mean good things for the educational consumer–but very bad things for educational institutions that don’t prepare for it.

A special moment in political corrections. The correct number, for the record: zero.

Policy agenda aside, there are some people too stupid to hold elective office. Of course, this is the state that also gave us Governor Evan Mecham.

It’s really not that complicated when you get down to it:

Roger Ebert’s new blog post is sort of unhinged. The centerpiece of the post is a call for Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, John McCain and others to all cosign a public statement declaring that Obama Is Not A Muslim. I kind of suspect that if they were to do so, most of the American left would accuse them of bringing up the issue, unprovoked, just to lodge the possibility further into the public consciousness. And to accuse them of implying that there’s something wrong with being a Muslim.

All that aside, the post does contain one very bold and intriguing prediction. I repost it here so that you will know, should it come to pass, that Ebert said it first…

The new issue of Vanity Fair mentions in its profile of Sarah Palin, as a casual aside, that Glenn Beck has booked the Dena’ina Center, the largest venue in Anchorage, for the date of September 11, 2010. What do you think that means? It could mean Beck simply wants to hold a rally in the home state of the woman who shared his podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous speech.

Beck says he chose that date without realizing its significance. But it cannot be a coincidence that he has chosen 9/11. Nor does it take special insight to connect that date with Palin’s many statements about the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the even more pointed “9/11 Mosque.” The association is obvious: “9/11″ feeds into “mosque” feeds into “Muslims” feeds into the misperception that Obama is a Muslim. Beck and Palin speak about “taking back America.” The buried message is that they will take it back from Muslims. This is a heartless misuse of the tragedy of 9/11 and its victims.

If Beck had planned to come to Anchorage on another date, it wouldn’t have excited much notice. But any meeting in Alaska on 9/11 without Palin also present will be anticlimactic. It’s too far to go not to feature her. The symbolic date of 9/11 invests this event with the inescapable possibility that he and Palin plan to announce their Presidential candidacy for 2012.

We post a lot about which animals are gathering on the horizon to feast on the innards of man and try to usurp our natural place on God’s throne. However, not all in the animal kingdom are our enemies.

Man’s Worst Friend, the stripey menace, tried to attack and kill a 9-year-old boy in Kent, Ohio. And they might have succeeded…had Pinky the Boxer dog not stepped in.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer participated in her first reelection debate last night (she gained office when Napolitano resigned to join the Obama administration).

It did not go well.

Here she is in her first introduction to Arizona voters as a candidate. In which she, right off the bat, forgets the entirety of her opening remarks.

Ah, the perils of public speaking.

I’d be inclined to feel bad for her, but she’s kind of a bitch.

I’ve been ambivalent about her reelection race. Now I’m rooting for a loss.

Senator Feinstein to chair the “No on Prop 19″ campaign.

Prop 19 being the proposition to legalize marijuana in the state.

Slate also has a review up of Meghan McCain’s new memoir.

Slate gets an exclusive look at 13 paintings done by prisoners at Gitmo.

Probably a good idea not to read too much into them, but interesting nonetheless.

The hostage taker at Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland is a…militant Malthusian?

Huh.

Detroit had a bad year, so they’re no longer playing meaningful games. So, at roster expansion time, they’ve decided to call up a fair share of perennial minor leaguers in their organization, including the most veteran professional player in the Tigers organization, Quebecois catcher Max St. Pierre, who has spent 14 years – 978 games – in the farm system, without a single big league at bat.

Welcome to The Show.

Think the Republicans, if they regain Congress, are going to begin moving towards a Ryan-style overhaul of our nation’s finances and make sure that we begin doing the things necessary to throw some reigns on our spending and deficits? Well, if so, one of the chief leaders of the charge would be Pat Toomey. Toomey, remember, was the President of the Club for Growth when it came up big, and his chops for austerity, one would expect, would be second to none. Indeed, an unwillingness to engage in real spending restraint is what he largely challenged Specter on in 2004. So if ANYBODY would be unwilling to demagogue on entitlements, you’d think it would be Pat Toomey.

Which is why I was surprised when I saw this ad last night:

Now admittedly, the ad isn’t from the Toomey campaign. It is instead from something called Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies which, lacking a simple “About” page, struck me as an empty shell/funnel 527. Which, indeed it is, as a sister organization to American Crossroads which, if you’ll remember, is the organization that Karl Rove and Ed Gillsepie started for donors disenchanted with the RNC under Michael Steele but still looking to give money to national Republican efforts.

So, this is essentially a major ad buy on behalf of the Toomey campaign by national Republican leadership.

This is part of a larger trend within the GOP to cast themselves as Medicare’s best friend (see here and here and here and here). Seeing it dispatched on behalf of Pat Toomey though is a bad sign. We already know that national security, defense, and foreign policy are off-limits for spending restraint, and taxes are not just off limits full stop but must be reduced, but I think it’s safe to say, increasingly, that the battle over Medicare may well be over. It, too, is apparently not only beyond discussion (the single biggest spending-suck in the budget), but Republicans will try to bite the head off anyone who proposes cuts to it (in this case, the single most significant cost reduction measure in Obamacare and its major peon to fiscal responsibility). Not just guys like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, mind, but guys like Pat freakin’ Toomey. There are still a few who seem willing to have that fight – notably Paul Ryan and Rand Paul – but by and large, entitlement spending increasingly looks off the table. Indeed, the GOP are now running on their allegiance to it.

In some ways, this whole Tea Party insurgency is a great thing for the GOP. But it’s also a one step forward two steps back sort of thing. They can make Pat Toomey a general election frontrunner, but of course once he is, he runs on scaring seniors into thinking Democrats are out to cut them from the government teat.

I remember when the Jose Padilla case first got notice, Adam (who is a Brit) saying something to the effect of “if you had told me ten years ago that in America it would be considered generally politically acceptable to grab an American citizen from an airport and detain them indefinitely without charges, I’d not have believed it.”

I sort of feel the same way about the case of Anwar Awlaki. Awlaki is the American citizen, living in Yemen, whom the Obama administration has more or less aid they plan to kill on sight. The ACLU, among others, are trying to represent them, but found a bit of a Kafkaesque legal boondoggle – apparently, you have to seek from the government a license to then defend an American citizen from being killed by said government. The ACLU found they could not attain such a license in the case of Awlaki, although finally the Treasury Department (the granter of said licenses) caved.

In any event, the ACLU has posted one of the briefs they are filing, on behalf of the father (for obvious reasons, they don’t want to name Awlaki as plaintiff, lest he be compelling to come to court and testify, likely resulting in his, you know, murder). It reads, in part:

The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights protected by the Constitution and by international law. Outside the context of armed conflict, the intentional killing of a civilian without prior judicial process is unlawful except in the narrowest and most extraordinary circumstances.

The United States is not at war with Yemen, or within it. Nonetheless, U.S. government officials have disclosed the government�s intention to kill U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, who is believed to be located there, without charge, trial, or conviction. . . .

Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit the use of lethal force against civilians except as a last resort to prevent concrete, specific, and imminent threats that are likely to cause death or serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which individuals are added to “kill lists” after secret bureaucratic processes and remain on the lists even in the absence of any reason to believe that they pose a threat of imminent harm goes far beyond what the Constitution and international law permit.

That the government has kept secret the standards under which it targets U.S. citizens for death independently violates the Constitution: U.S. citizens have a right to know what conduct may subject them to execution at the hands of their own government.

Seriously, read the whole thing, word for word, and marvel that this is the United States of America we are talking about here.

More from the ACLU, if you lack the background: