Slow going...

I've just started a new job. Posting will suffer for a bit until I get the kinks worked out of my schedule.

Hmmm....

Image from Thinkprogress.org.

Dog bites, 34. Lightening strikes, 29. Terrorism deaths, 15. Maybe we should start winding down that national security apparatus, don't you think?

Booze at work!

Yay! Get slammahed bud! Apparently today is National Duck out of Work for a Drink Day! Allright!

Ooo a ooo!

If only he were the frontrunner...

Check out this: The Insanity of Running as a Sane GOP Candidate from Steve Kornacki at Salon. 'Tis a fine read. An excerpt:

Ever since Barack Obama was elected, a siege mentality has gripped the GOP. Even Republicans who agree with him on some level are apt to shrug off Huntsman's calls for intraparty soul-searching: There'll be time for that fight after we get the socialist out of the White House, not before.

If only he wasn't describing the prevailing beltway groupthink.

Rockn'roll weekend.

Tilt thine cups!

Give this a readsky: "The Fumes of Wine Doth Rise" from The Awl.

n this edition of John Dunton's "Athenian Mercury," which, as the first advice column in English, was once the go-to source for wisdom for many a muddled 17th-century Londoner, the city's citizenry writes in with booze-related questions. Why red eyes? Double vision? How does God feel about it all? Why can you scare a drunk man straight? And why, above all, does drinking unfit you for the, ahem, “combats of Venus”?

For certain elements of early modern England, drinking was subversive. Marika Keblusek (whose article “Wine for Comfort” provides a fascinating overview of exiled literary boozehounds around the time of the English Civil War) describes drinking as “an integral part of friendship, conviviality and mirth.” Drinking to a friend's health represented a real effort, especially among exiled Royalists, to symbolically unify a once-vibrant drinking group that had since parted ways. Drinking someone's health could constitute an act of Royalist resistance against the Parliamentarians, who had won the Civil War (and yes, banned toasts).

In 17th-century London, knowing what someone drank and with whom could offer a rough indication of their politics. For the first half of the century, wine-drinking correlated to Royalists and Cavaliers, whose wine-flushed cheeks were “as starred as the skies.” Beer-drinking and teetotalling were more typical of Parliamentarians (also called, delightfully, Roundheads).

Depressing journalism builds character!

Check out "Generation Fucked" from AdBusters. Worth a read.

Bwaahahahaha! I was right all along! Embrace the red http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwave of change!

Take a gander at this: Nouriel Roubini posits: "Maybe Karl Marx was right?"

So Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right in arguing that globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct (though his view that socialism would be better has proved wrong). Firms are cutting jobs because there is not enough final demand. But cutting jobs reduces labor income, increases inequality, and reduces final demand.

Forget the bit about socialism not being better. Come on, sounds good, eh?

Interesting! Jungles! Ruins!

From the New Yorker, this is a truly incantatory account of several party's searches for a lost city in the Amazon: The Lost City of Z.

The expedition expected to find little more than bones—yet even discovering those would have been a revelation. When he vanished, Fawcett and his party had been trying to uncover a lost civilization hidden in the Amazon, which Fawcett had named, simply, the City of Z. In the next seven decades, scores of explorers had tried and failed to retrace Fawcett’s path. Some nearly died of starvation, while others retreated in the face of tribes that attacked with poisoned arrows. Then there were those adventurers who had gone to find Fawcett and, instead, disappeared along with him, swallowed by the same forests in the Mato Grosso region which travellers had long ago christened the “green hell.”

It is good, long and proper journalism. Excellent.

Riffage.

Off to the races!

From McClatchy:

Obama does have an advantage over several potential Republican rivals:

• He leads Romney 46-41, a 5-point lead.
• He leads Pawlenty 49-36, a 13-point lead.
• He leads Bachmann 52-35, a 17-point lead.
• He leads Perry 52-33, a 19-point lead.

A key reason for Perry being the weakest opponent is that he's weakest among independents.

I deplore the whole elections as a horse race thing as much as anyone, but in truth, I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I blame my political addiction to Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign trail '72. And you know, I don't really mind. It's a fine book, quite possibly the best political reporting ever written.

Things to read

Digby brings us a very effective illustration of the shift rightward and the moving of the political goalposts in this country over the last two decades. Link.

The Good Old Days

by digby

Who said this?

I'm sure you've been watching this mess in Washington.

I'd like you to know how I feel about it.

I haven't voted for one of these lousy budget packages for years and I won't vote for this one.

It would raise taxes on the wrong people.

Unlike some folks around here I think everyone should pay their fair share. Including the rich.

We need to protect our seniors from Medicare cuts too.

I don't care if the President or Congressional leaders twist my arm. I won't support any deal that isn't a fair deal for the working families.

That was Mitch McConnell 20 years ago. That's right, boys and girls, that used to be the way Republicans talked in this country. The reason there used to be bipartisanship is because they used to agree with Democrats on some of those basic values and they don't anymore. In fact, a lot of Democrats don't believe it anymore.

There really isn't a better illustration of just how far the Republican Party has moved to the right in the last 20 years. I've watched it happen, and it's still startling. People who would reject such commonplace political bromides as "everyone should pay their fair share" can't be said to be in the mainstream. And yet they are dominating American politics.

She's right. I wonder if this shift rightward is do to anything so much as right wing hate radio and Fox news...

Brains for breakfast, brains for brunch!

Wow! Sense from Megyn Kelly!

Fox is usually suspicious, Ailes/Koch bullshit. But recently, they let Megyn Kelly speak truth! Shock! Awe! Kelly explains the absurdity of US maternity leave policy, from ThinkProgress:

Fox News' Megyn Kelly Gets it Right: "The United States Is In the Dark Ages When it Comes to Maternity Leave."

Kelly is spot-on. As the Project on Global Working families found during a survey of 173 countries, the U.S. is in some bad company when it comes to paid maternity leave:

Out of 173 countries studied, 169 countries offer guaranteed leave with income to women in connection with childbirth; 98 of these countries offer 14 or more weeks paid leave. Although in a number of countries many women work in the informal sector, where these government guarantees do not always apply, the fact remains that the U.S. guarantees no paid leave for mothers in any segment of the work force, leaving it in the company of only 3 other nations: Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.

The U.S. hasn’t required paid maternity leave even though such leave results in “a decrease of complications and recovery time for the mother and [a decrease in] the risk of allergies, obesity, and sudden infant death syndrome for the child.” So it seems that even a Fox News host can be sensible when personally faced with the implications of government policy.

Never thought I'd see the day, but apparently Fox is worth watching occasionally. Who'da Thought?