When The Law Is An Ass

From The New Statesman:

The second kind of civil disobedience, which is the one that I wish to consider, is its employment with a view to causing a change in the law or in public policy. In this aspect, it is a means of propaganda, and there are those who consider that it is an undesirable kind. Many, however, of whom I am one, think it to be now necessary.

Many people hold that law-breaking can never be justified in a democracy, though they concede that under any other form of government it may be a duty. The victorious governments, after the Second World War, reprobated, and even punished, Germans for not breaking the law when the law commanded atrocious actions. I do not see any logic which will prove either that a democratic government cannot command atrocious actions or that, if it does, it is wrong to disobey its commands.

It's a bit dense and wordy and even a little passive, but the guy makes a point worth remembering.

Perception Drives Outcome

Above all - never admit you were wrong.

Ain't It Kinda Funny

The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a "story" today telling us we've spent almost 600,000 Virginia Taxpayer Dollars on lawyers' fees in the littlest big-ass scandal we've seen in a while involving Governor Bob McDonnell - ol' Vaginal Bob his-own-bad-self.

Virginia taxpayers are on the hook for more than $570,000 in legal bills in connection to a criminal case involving a former Executive Mansion chef and related gifts investigation of Gov. Bob McDonnell.

The story dutifully reports the doin's and goin's-on at the AG's office - mentioning the Virginia Attorney General's Office a good half-dozen times in a 300 word story without once actually using the name of Ken Cuccinelli, so I'm just saying it strikes me as being a little peculiar since The Kooch happens to be the current AG for The Commonwealth of Virginia; and he happens to have crapped out in his campaign to be Governor, partly because of his connection to Vaginal Bob; and he happens to be actively fund-raising for a Republican candidate who's locked in a recount battle to settle last week's election, and seems to be a totally ethics-averse coin-operated politician who makes a habit out of wearing his ass for a hat.

Well, OK - and plus also too, I'm saying: Librul bias in the mainstream media my dyin' ass.  How could one "newspaper" make it any more obvious that it's in the pocket of one particular political party?

Is it really just too much to ask that you guys do your fuckin' jobs?

Today's Question

Why is it called stealing when your WiFi is trespassing in my fucking house?

Today's Toon

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Told Ya

About a month ago, when ObamaCare was launched, and it was becoming clear the software was malfunctioning, I posted this:

But after a coupla weeks (of oops; and uh-oh; and fuck - again!?!) isn't it time for somebody to suggest that the wingnuts are jamming and/or hacking the site just to make it all look worse than it actually is?

And now this:

Roberta Stempfley highlighted one successful attack that is designed to deny access to the website called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is designed to make a network unavailable to intended users, generally through a concerted effort to disrupt service such as repeatedly accessing the servers, saturating them with more traffic than the website is designed to handle.

I'm a prescient little fuck, ain't I?

No. I'm not.
(Altho' you could make a pretty good case that I'm the typically self-absorbed self-referencing blogger puke, and all I'm trying to do here is get a little attention, but nobody doesn't know that about bloggers; and if you know me at all, then you sure as fuck know that about me when I'm wearing my blogger suit)

Anyway, it just always follows - "the blame game" is an important step in this process.  And I'm not making the same old point about "everybody does it".  Look, guys - there are forces at work in the universe (strong force, weak force, electromagnetism and gravity) that govern our physical existence. Well, there are forces at work in politics too, and Cover Your Ass is the big one; big enough in most cases to be the only one that matters to Congress Critters, especially when it comes to the absolute necessity of raising enough money to get your sorry ass re-elected in spite of your obvious and numerous shortcomings.

So here we are again, at a Fail Point, and it seems like we're less concerned about unfucking the fuckup than we are about nailing the fuckup to somebody's forehead.

Of course, the story about the fuckup is what gets the eyeballs for The Bloglodytes and The Press Poodles.  And beyond the story about the fuckup is the story about the fight over the fuckup.  And the fight is what Corporate Media sells us.  Never mind what they're fighting about (that's just a buncha boring policy wonk shit), the fight itself is what delivers the viewers to the advertisers.

Virginia Voting

Here's what The Virginia Board of Elections posted on their website as of yesterday(?)

With all 2,558 precincts reported, Herring has the lead by .00741% (164 votes).

If your girlfriend could shave it this close, you'd be in jail right now.

Official Certification doesn't get here until Nov 25th, but this is a crucial step.  The "margin of victory" is small enough to trigger an automatic recount if the loser wants it, but generally, whoever's in the lead at this point has the edge.

I just worry because The Kooch hasn't said officially much of anything about a recount, but he is actively helping Obenshain raise money for the coming fight.  If they follow the pattern, the Repubs will be looking for ways (whatever they can pretend the law allows for) to nullify the Provisionals and as many Absentees as possible - especially in Fairfax and Richmond precincts.  And Cuccinelli has a great deal of influence and insider advantage as the sitting AG.

This has great potential to be some even-uglier-than-usual politics, but as bloody and gruesome as it gets, it's important not to turn away.  We need to see this.

That Warren Woman

Not long ago, Scott Brown was busy losing his Senate seat and decided his best course of action was to say stupidly offensive things about Elizabeth Warren as he tried to turn Adolescent Mocking into a viable campaign strategy.

Any time one side decides to concentrate on their opponent's status or comportment or  "tone" - you know their policy argument's a total loser.

From Pam Martens at Wall Street On Parade:

Senator Warren said to the audience: “Who would have thought five years ago, after we witnessed firsthand the dangers of an overly concentrated financial system, that the Too Big to Fail problem would only have gotten worse? There are many who say, ‘Sure, Too Big to Fail isn’t over yet, but Congress should wait to act further because the agencies still have to issue a bunch of Dodd-Frank’s required rules.’ True, there are rules left to be written, but that’s because the agencies have missed more than 60 percent of Dodd-Frank’s rulemaking deadlines. I don’t understand the logic. Since when does Congress set deadlines, watch regulators miss most of them, and then take that failure as a reason not to act? I thought that if the regulators failed, it was time for Congress to step in. That’s what oversight means. And that’s certainly a principle that would have served our country well prior to the crisis.”

Warren makes way too much sense - she must be destroyed.

Virginia Voting (one more)

2 questions:

1) Is Kenny the Kooch ever gonna make the phone call to Terry McAuliffe?  Or is it something he can't do if he expects the sweet Wingnut Welfare gig that high-profile Repub losers get?

2) How long before somebody breaks up the circle jerk the Press Poodles are enjoying so much regarding Chris Christie?

Just wonderin'.

Virginia Voting 2013

First off, Mark Herring released the standard "I-Think-I-Won-This-Thing" statement that's de rigueur for this stuff - somebody has to claim the prize, and that puts pressure on the other guy to concede; and the other guy will demand a recount; and we'll all still be here doing the same thing for another month.  But it's important to have the numbers edge on the first pass because recounts generally don't change the outcome (Florida 2000 not withstanding, of course).

The main thing I wanna point up here is this:  After a week of scouring thru the precinct reports and digging up one or two machines that hadn't been included in the first count, and then sorting out the provisional votes, and and and - after adding up more than 2 million votes, Herring's ahead by a whopping 163. So if you're somebody who blows off the chance to vote because you're walkin' around thinking your vote doesn't matter (and I say this with love and charity in my heart) - go blow yourself; you're an idiot.

Secondly, here's a map looking at vote distribution by county and incorporated city areas, which is the map Repubs love to see because it seems to show "the real Virginia" should've gotten its way, and that "them damned yankee-lovin' city-livin' DemocRats are stealin' our heritage and denyin' us our god-given rights" (to live at the mercy of corporate whim, but never mind all that).  Anyway, here's that map:

And here's a Cartographic look at what the numbers and the distribution really mean:

Again with love and charity in my heart: Demographics, dumbass.  Get some.

hat tip = Blue Virginia

Schools Matter

So what happens if we don't slap a nation-wide school system with all the crap we've been dumping on our public schools?

Schools Matter takes a look at it - and finds that the DoD schools were exempted from NCLB etc etc etc, and gosh:

So what do we see as a result at the DoDEA schools (see earlier post here) after all these years of living without corporate charter schools, teacher evaluation based on test scores, value-added assessment, corporate missionaries for TFA, AYP, Reading First, scripted parrot lessons, DIBELs, segregation based on test scores, corporate tutoring, venture philanthropy, required testing to graduate or be promoted to the next grade, total compliance classroom, test and punish, test prep, withdrawal of funds from those who need it most, rewarding schools that don't need it, nervous breakdowns, vomiting students, nosebleeds, suicides by principals, school children dying from toothaches as billions are spent on testing, and on and on....How have the DoDEA schools survived without all this?

This first group includes the schools that have been scoring better than the National Average:

Then we have the bunch in the middle where there's no appreciable difference between these schools and the Nation Average:

And lastly, here's the group lagging farthest behind the National Average:

Did ya happen to notice where the DoD schools happened to rank in all o' dat?

Almost forgot - isn't a school operated by the Department of Defense very much the epitome of a "Government School"?  And since those Gubmint Skools are doing just fine without all that massive boondoggle, can we drop the bullshit now?

Today's Pix

Battle Of The Brands

One of Lee Camp's Moment of Clarity videos on YouTube

Today's Best Blog Headline

From Wonkette:

THAT NORTH DAKOTA NAZI-TOWN GUY IS A LITTLE BIT BLACK, SO IT IS TRUE THAT BLACK PEOPLE ARE THE REAL RACISTS

It's not quite the greatest post ever, but I don't care - the headline makes it worth looking.

Today's Quote

(via Charlie Pierce)

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.

In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.

In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.

In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed.

It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.  --James Madison, 1793.

You Know Somebody's Thinking It

It's just bound to be the next big thing in marketing.

A New One For Me

Schools Matter:

This space explores issues in public education policy, and it advocates for a commitment to and a re-examination of the democratic purposes of schools. If there is some urgency in the message, it is due to the current reform efforts that are based on a radical re-invention of education, now spearheaded by a psychometric blitzkrieg of "metastasizing testing" aimed at dismantling a public education system that took almost 200 years to build. JH August, 2005

I'll tell y'all up front that I don't know how to "fix the schools".  But we've been trying this melange of Charter Schools and Magnet Schools and For-Profit-Public-Private and Casino-Style-High-Stakes-Testing etc etc for something like the last 20 years or so, and I think it's time to admit that practically every attempt to shoehorn the operations of a Public School System into the Standard Business Model has failed.

I guess I should clarify what I think has failed - these attempts are not making for better students or for better teachers, and they're not making for a better work force, and they're sure as shit not making any given community better.  It is, however working beautifully when it comes to making some well-connected "entrepreneurs" quite comfortably wealthy.  Don't you have to wonder why Neil Bush suddenly discovered his long-dorment passion for Student Testing and Assessment right about the same time his brother was busily sliming No Child Left Behind thru congress?

See, it kinda works like this here:  When you make the endeavor about The Public Good, then you build in an incentive to do good things for The Public.  When you make the endeavor about Profit, then you build in the incentive for Rentiers to take profit.

(I can't believe anybody has to say it out loud like that, but fuck me, there it is)

Anyway, schools need a lot of help in a lot of ways, but a lot of the ways we've been "helping" them is straight up shameful.  Let's try something else.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Please, Not Hillary

I'll have a really hard time supporting Hillary Clinton if when she runs in 2016.  I just have this thing against 'legacies'.  I don't think you should get special consideration for admission to any school just because you're the child of an alum.  You shouldn't have the professional skids greased for you in any way just because your parents were 'important' - or because your husband preceded you in office (even tho' having a famous/popular husband may be the only way you get the respect you've earned by your own worthy accomplishments).

There's no earthly reason Paris Hilton should command anything close to national attention for anything she does.  There's equally no reason to believe Meghan McCain would be some kind of leading light in the GOP Youth Brigade if it wasn't for her daddy's name and her mommy's money.  Luke Russert should be running the cash register at the Dollar Store while he works part time as an assistant to the deputy senior intern at some local AM station in Pokacuzzin West Virginia, where he gets to read the farm report whenever the regular guy is too hungover.

Here's my thing:  no more Kennedys and no more Rockefellers and no more Pauls and no more Bushes and no more Clintons.  No lagacies.

"Unfortunately", Hillary's credentials are nothing short of amazing.  Plus, I can't see anybody on the Repub side who could get thru the primaries and still have anything in his platform worth voting for.  So I may have to make an exception.

But then along comes Elizabeth Warren:

We’re three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee. Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating her like she already resides in the White House. The New York Times has its own dedicated Clinton correspondent, whose job it is to chronicle everything from Hillary’s summer accommodations (“CLINTONS FIND A NEW PLACE TO VACATION IN THE HAMPTONS”) to her distinct style of buckraking (“IN CLINTON FUNDRAISING, EXPECT A FULL EMBRACE”). There is a feature-length Hillary biopic in the works, and a well-funded super PAC—“Ready for Hillary”—bent on easing her way into the race. And then there is Clinton herself, who sounds increasingly candidential. Since leaving the State Department, Clinton has already delivered meaty, headline-grabbing orations on voting rights and Syria.

Yet for all the astrophysical force of these developments, anyone who lived through 2008 knows that inevitable candidates have a way of becoming distinctly evitable. With the Clintons’ penchant for melodrama and their checkered cast of hangers-on—one shudders to consider the embarrassments that will attend the Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia—Clinton-era nostalgia is always a news cycle away from curdling into Clinton fatigue. Sometimes, all it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back.

I hope Warren stays right where she is tho'.  I want her to be a thorn in their sides for a very long time.

And I think it sucks that the political firmament has become so dull that practically any bright spot at all looks like a fucking supernova to us.

This Point Of Pale Light

Some Things Don't Get Better

Just a tasty tidbit - a little reminder that we still have to figure out what to do about the political and economic disasters heading our way, now that we've pissed away practically every chance we had at being able to do anything about the actual causes of the coming disasters.

And in case you've been wondering about "the cooling period" or the "warming pause" over the last several years?   Well, it appears the ocean's been doing its job; soaking up the kajillions of calories or BTUs or whatever you like to call all that "missing" heat, only to deliver it right back to us in the form of a typhoon that pushes a 20-foot tidal surge with winds gusting 170 mph.

Isn't it the least bit puzzling that we have a "once-in-a-lifetime storm" every few years now?

Nature bats last, dumbass.

TACLOBAN, Philippines (AP) -- As many as 10,000 people are believed dead in one Philippine city alone after one of the worst storms ever recorded unleashed ferocious winds and giant waves that washed away homes and schools. Corpses hung from tree branches and were scattered along sidewalks and among flattened buildings, while looters raided grocery stores and gas stations in search of food, fuel and water.

Officials projected the death toll could climb even higher when emergency crews reach areas cut off by flooding and landslides. Even in the disaster-prone Philippines, which regularly contends with earthquakes, volcanoes and tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the deadliest natural disaster on record.