Category: Monday Wake Up Call

Monday Wake Up Call – May 18, 2015

The Amtrak accident in Philadelphia came hours before the House Appropriations Committee was due to meet to debate a transportation bill. Amtrak is a for-profit entity, but its board is appointed by the president, and it is entirely funded by the government, receiving roughly $1.4 billion a year in subsidies. It operates in the red, losing $227 million a year.

Congress has been considering tightening the purse-strings. The Senate has been slow to approve $7.8 billion in Amtrak funding that has been passed by the House. Much of the money would go to prop up sagging rails and refurbish rolling stock.

But John Boehner said discussing Amtrak funding in the wake of the crash was “stupid”. Boehner noted that the crash was caused by the train going too fast, not bad infrastructure. Republicans prefer to attack the national train system because only Democrats ride trains, not good truck driving folks. We should invest in modern high-speed trains to zip Americans around the country. We could also invest in a better safety infrastructure so that train wrecks don’t happen if they are the fault of the engineer or conductor. Instead, the rail industry and its Republican friends are pushing for the reduction of train crews on freight trains, which could cause more crashes.

Sadly, the Goldilocks Moment (when it’s “just right”) to discuss practical responses to a tragedy can be discerned only by Mr. Boehner. Yesterday was too early, and politicized the tragedy by pointing out how Republican policies and governance set the stage for eight people to be killed. At some point, John Boehner will tell us it’s now “too late” to get any legislation in the hopper.

Amtrak has received $45 billion in subsidies from the 1970’s to the present. That’s about one year’s taxpayer support for big oil. Democrats should absolutely push for greater Amtrak funding in the wake of the crash.

Don’t expect Boehner or any Republican to take any real heat for opposing this, but it makes their moral position on these issues completely clear.

Time to wake up America! Infrastructure upgrading is not anti-American. For your morning wake up call, here is the Veery Thrush, also called the Wilson’s Thrush:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

The Antarctic’s Larsen “B” and “C” ice shelf’s are going away by 2020. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that the “B” shelf is now “approaching demise.” NASA adds that the ice shelf “is likely to disintegrate completely before the end of the decade.” But, global warming is a hoax…

A 10-year-old oil leak where an offshore platform toppled during a hurricane could continue spilling crude into the Gulf of Mexico for a century or more if left unchecked. No, it isn’t the BP leak. Taylor Energy Company owned the platform and has played down the extent and environmental impact of the leak. The Coast Guard provided a leak estimate that is about 20 times greater than one provided by the company. Quelle surprise! An American company tries to minimize its responsibilities.

A New Zealand company called Touchpoint Group is building a robot that will be angry all the time. The idea is to let angry customers speak to a machine instead of human call center agents. The robot will collect the data to better serve you with bullshit responses.

Inequality Watch: Scientists find alarming deterioration in DNA of the urban poor. Well, if you lived a life of constant worry over money and how you would pay your bills, raise your kids with enough food, clothing and self-respect, your DNA might deteriorate too!!!

Raul Castro says that Pope Francis may get him to return to religion. Mr. Castro said: “I will resume praying and turn to the Church again if the Pope continues in this vein.” This Pope may really be the Rightologist!

Here is an extra wake-up for you this spring morning. Unclear how this pose happened, but it is relaxing:

Frog

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 11, 2015

Peter, a new reader to the Wrongologist asks: “Is there a Rightologist?” Wrongo has no idea. His first thought was maybe the Pope qualifies, because infallibility. Few people know that Pope Francis wrote a book in 1998 about Cuba called “Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro” that was a collection of observations between the two leaders on the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba. Popes have been pushing to end Cuba’s isolation for decades. Among them were Pope Benedict, who visited Cuba in 2012, and John Paul II, who visited in 1998 along with then-Archbishop Bergoglio.

And today, we know that Pope Francis had a key role in the diplomatic thaw between the US and Cuba. It was the right move. So, the Pope can be the Rightologist.

For today’s Wake-up, here is the Tocororo, the national bird of Cuba. It is found only in Cuba, is rare, and few Cubans have seen it:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

North Korea said Saturday that it had successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine. If true, this would be a game-changer in North Asia. It would pose a new challenge to the US and South Korea and Japan, since submarine-launched missiles are much harder to detect and intercept, and these countries are very close to each other.

We don’t know jack about Joe: Joe is General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps and Obama’s nominee to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He’s only been the top officer of the Marines since October. Before that he was commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan for 18 months, not a lot of time in grade, but Obama likes him.

China has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia to sell it Chinese drones. Saudi is buying the Wing Loong medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, called the Pterodactyl I. Chinese media have indicated that the drone has a wide variety of military applications, including “precision strikes and long-duration, long-distance reconnaissance.” Some say it is a knock-off of our Predator. Isn’t Saudi Arabia supposed to recycle petrodollars into US military hardware, or wouldn’t we sell our drones to them?

For the past 15 years, the Pentagon has used a $90 billion slush fund to keep certain defense spending “off budget”. It’s called the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund. Remarkably, the $90 billion in the OCO account for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 exceeds the budget of every federal department and agency, except for the Defense Department. Last September, the Defense Department tried to use $2 billion of OCO funds to pay for eight F-35’s.

Skeletal evidence from the last 30k years suggests that our brains have become smaller. Scientific American says that that our brains have shrunk by an amount equivalent to a tennis ball, for two reasons. First we have smaller bodies, so the brain would naturally be smaller. Apparently, SA has never been in Indiana. Second, we now store and process information externally, like in the cloud. Your tennis ball is in a data storage facility somewhere in the NSA’s data center in Bluffdale, Utah. This explains why we can’t paint like the cavemen anymore.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) reminded us that God “wrote the Constitution”. He told Matt Hagee:

I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government…When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution…

Despite those like Mr. DeLay and Minister Hagee, who would have us believe that America is only a nation for Christians, we’ve somehow managed to keep religion out of our government. Perhaps it’s the recognition of what theocracy does to places like Pakistan, Iran, and Somalia.

Couldn’t be respect for the Constitution, written the way George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison intended.

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 4, 2015

The 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon passed unnoticed by this blogger last week.

Wrongo was drafted in 1966. He was on orders for Vietnam twice, but managed to spend most of his service time in West Germany, running a nuclear missile unit. He lost many friends in Vietnam, but was home, and out of the service in time for most of the big protest marches of the 1970’s. By 1974-75, no one in the States truly expected a “victory”. The debate was, according to Richard Nixon, how to achieve “peace with honor.”

For Nixon, that meant selling America on the premise of “protecting the troops as they withdraw,” or, “securing the release of POW’s”, which Nixon used to extend the war for years.

Since the 1970’s there has been a meme among conservatives that the reason we lost in Vietnam was a lack of national will, brought on by liberals and the war protesters. We still hear this today from a few career military, and many Republican chicken hawks. But, the idea that the primary reason we lost Vietnam was a liberal stab in America’s back is ridiculous, when you realize that Nixon stretched out the war for 6 years beyond the announcement of his “secret plan” to end it.

And if you remember how rapidly the South Vietnamese regime collapsed when it was no longer being propped up by the US military, you know their argument falls apart.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan are all places where our boys bled on foreign soil. All are places where our money was recycled to our war profiteers, and where we left behind no ability to bring about the “democratic” way of life that some of us had wished for them.

War profiteering for private corporations, socialized losses for the people. US soldiers dead or maimed for life. This is the legacy of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And do Chicken Hawks care about taking care of our veterans after the fact, here at home? They do not. Their mantra is cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes on the war profiteers. Cut social programs, because how can a war profiteer (including those in Congress) possibly make any money off a government-run non-profit social program?

Wake up America, time to throw the Chicken Hawks out of office! Today’s wake up song is “There’s A Wall in Washington” by Iris DeMent:

Sample Lyrics:
A boy, he traveled from far away
to walk the path ’til he finds that name
He reaches his hand up and traces each letter
He stares at the name of his unknown father
His heart is young and it’s filled with pain
in anger he cries out
‘Who is to blame for this wall in Washington
that’s made of cold black granite?
Why is my father’s name etched here in it
On this wall in Washington?’

Your Monday Hot Links:

Czech libertarians received 200,000 applications for citizenship of Liberland, a seven-square-mile microstate established between Serbia and Croatia. The economy will be based on a digital cryptocurrency. Libertarian paradise. What could go wrong?

Reuters says that China will crack down on strippers who perform at rural funerals. Apparently, the Ministry of Culture is taking aim at performances which corrupt “social morals”. Strippers at funerals?

Statues of Snowden, Manning and Assange were unveiled in Berlin. All are considered heroes on the German political left for leaking US intelligence documents. The life-size statues will be going on a world tour, since they have fewer travel restrictions than the real people.

Want to carry a gun in your pants without risk of becoming a gelding? Try Thunderware, a holster designed to give you security while you pack heat near your meat. Is it pants stuffing? Is this for the guy who want you to think he has more down there than he really has? You be the judge. Gun fanatics bristle when people say that their attachment to guns is very phallic, yet they market Thunderware with a straight face.

Audi has announced that it is making synthetic diesel fuel from just water and carbon dioxide. In a bid to put an end to our fossil fuel crisis, Audi’s experimental diesel fuel is made from air and water. Called “e-diesel,” it has less sulfur and fossil-based oils, so it is more environmentally friendly. Audi claims an overall energy efficiency of around 70%. Sounds too good to be true and so far, they can only make 42 gallons/day. Invest at your own risk. If you have an Audi vehicle take a look at this VW service Melbourne as the provider also specialises in the same for Audis.

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 20, 2015

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), is the guy that beat Eric Cantor in a Republican primary and then won Cantor’s seat in Congress in what was a huge 2014 electoral shocker, since Cantor was House Majority Leader at the time, and outspent Brat 40-1. Well, TPM reports that Mr. Brat said on a radio show that Obamacare was moving America away from a free market system and making the country more like North Korea. He went on to contrast North and South Korea:

Look at every country in the world…Look at North Korea and South Korea. It’s the same culture, it’s the same people, look at a map at night…one of the countries is not lit, there’s no lights, and the bottom free-market country, all Koreans, is lit up. See you make your bet on which country you want to be, right? You want to go free market.

Sadly for Mr. Brat, South Korea has a compulsory national health care system.

Brat makes Cantor seem like Einstein. It’s important to know that Mr. Brat was a professor of economics at Randolph–Macon College where he taught business ethics, among other courses. Earlier, he said that Obamacare would cost the country $2 Trillion, a statement that PolitiFact says is false.

There’s really nothing to do but laugh in Mr. Brat’s face. Today, a middle-school level of seriousness is all that the Republican Party is up for, with their racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, religious hypocrisy, moralism, and warmongering. By far their most dangerous characteristic is their juvenile and uninformed thinking. The sabotage of political discourse seems to be the only thing that matters to them.

So, in light of the Brat, rather than start your day with a head-banging tune designed to wake him up, Wrongo wants to try bringing you into the week in a kinder, gentler way. So for the next few weeks at least, we will start with: Your Monday moment of Zen.

Today we feature a Hermit Thrush, the state bird of Vermont. Walt Whitman made the hermit thrush a symbol of the American voice in his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”. Here is a singing Hermit Thrush:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9vHS6JdHog

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can watch and hear the Hermit Thrush here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

National Guard troops referred to Ferguson protesters as ‘enemy forces’, emails show. Documents detailing the military mission divided the crowds that the National Guard would be likely to encounter into “friendly forces” and “enemy forces” – the latter apparently including the protesters.

Cirque du Soleil is in advanced talks with two private equity groups to sell a majority stake. Cirque du Soleil has been working with Goldman Sachs since last year to find a strategic partner. The valuation looks to be between $1.5 and $2.0 billion. Guess who is about to jump the shark?

These gorgeous maps of the moon were put together at the request of NASA using data captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). All named features larger than 53 miles (85 km) in diameter or length were included.

Iowa chiropractor loses license after sexual contact while performing exorcisms on several patients. “My back hurts,” so, he prescribes treatment in the form of an exorcism, which followed some sexy time.

Investors want to build a multi-tier mall at the Grand Canyon. They want to construct a retail complex based around a tram that planners are calling the Escalade, which will stretch from the rim down to the floor, providing easy access to both a fragile ecosystem and sacred place to Native Americans.

Roommates stab each other in iPhone versus Android debate. Two roommates in Tulsa, Oklahoma took the usual geek argument to the next level, stabbing each other with broken beer bottles. When the police arrived, they found the roommates had been drinking and arguing about smartphones.

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 13, 2015

Today’s Wake Up is for the House Judiciary Committee, who last month cleared a bill to the House floor that if passed, would grant asylum to families who want to home school their children, while it would restrict current levels of asylum-granting to children fleeing violence in Central America. The committee vote was 21-12.

Think Progress reports that this provision of the bill grants asylum for up to 500 individuals fleeing home school persecution in countries where home schooling is illegal (Germany is one). The bill refers to people who home school as a “particular social group” and indicates that a person is eligible for asylum if he/she is:

Deemed to have been persecuted for failure or refusal to comply with any law or regulation that prevents the exercise of the individual right of that person to direct the upbringing and education of a child of that person.

This provision seems to put homeschoolers ahead of others seeking asylum who experience much more dire circumstances. The bill also includes provisions to limit asylum claims generally, prohibiting:

• Unaccompanied alien children, like the ones who crossed the southern US border last year, from applying for asylum if “such child may be removed to a safe third country”
• Increasing the number of full-time immigration judges and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers

In addition it raises the information standard for those children who try to prove that they would be threatened if they were deported back to their home country.

So, the Republican Party is saying that home-schooling is a priority for asylum, ahead of murder, rape, or child abuse. They say that the denial of the right to home-school is persecution, while most lawyers would say it is religious discrimination, a bad thing, but not a reason to let homeschoolers into the US.

Today, applicants must prove that they would face persecution, torture, or even death if they were returned to their native countries. Out of 3,996 asylum requests from Mexico, only 38 were granted.

So sure, homeschoolers, just cut to the head of the line.

This is the state of the Republican Party: Escaping from drug cartels makes you a moocher. Escaping from the tyranny of public education makes you noble.

Or, as Thoroughly Republican Jesus might say: “That which you did for the Home Schooled, you did for me.” Forced to learn about evolution? You’ve got asylum. Forced into prostitution or drug-muling? You better be able to prove it, kiddo.

So, wake up Republicans! To help with that, and in honor of yesterday’s Masters golf tournament, listen to The Texas Tornados doing “A Little Bit is Better Than Nada” from the movie, “Tin Cup“:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8H_ESwrWg

For those of you who read the Wrongologist in email, the song is here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

The avocado is ‘transgender’ and has overnight sex changes, a botanist has discovered. Soon, the “avocado-phobic” brigade will be all over this! Apparently, eating avocados does not make you bi-sexual.

The Onion has a list of The Pros and Cons of body-cams for police. The #1 pro? Provides accurate record of where the cop was when he turned off the body-cam.

Muck Rock reports that Homeland Security can download your PC’s hard drive when you enter the US. Based upon the opinion of any US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer, your device can be searched and its contents read. With approval of a supervisor, the device can be seized, its contents copied in full, or both. This is despite the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Because, terrorism.

Huge oil find near London’s Gatwick airport hypes stock of tiny company. The BBC says it could be as much as 100 billion barrels. The North Sea field has produced 40+ billion barrels over the past 40 years.

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 30, 2015

Today’s wake up is for the science deniers. Gallup conducted a poll that correlates political ideology, education level and acceptance of the consensus of scientists about climate change. 74% of Republicans with a college degree say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, while the opposite is true among well-educated Democrats, only 15% of whom think the risks of climate change is exaggerated. More education apparently will not mitigate the partisan divide on global warming.

The same seems true with evolution. Here is a snippet of an article by James Krupa, Professor of Evolution at the University of Kentucky:

…one of the most misused words today is…theory. Many incorrectly see theory as the opposite of fact. The National Academy of Sciences provides concise definitions of these critical words: A fact is a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it; a theory is a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence generating testable and falsifiable predictions.

So “theories” and “facts” co-exist by definition. Krupa quotes the late Stephen Jay Gould:

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.

The public acceptance of evolution in the US is the 2nd lowest of 34 developed countries, just ahead of Turkey. Half of Americans reject some aspect of evolution, so it must be a steep uphill climb in states like Kentucky to fight against the power of fundamentalism.

Why does this have to be a battle of faith(s)? Among the religious groups that support the teaching of evolution are the Episcopal Church, Lutheran World Federation, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, United Unitarian Universalists, Roman Catholic Church, and the American Jewish Congress.

In fact, 77% of all American Christians belong to a denomination that supports the teaching of evolution. The question that should be asked is: “Why can’t evolution and faith in God co-exist”? Why can’t the physical body spring from one source of life, and the soul from another?

So, wake up deniers! Today is Eric Clapton’s 70th birthday. This wake up is from the movie, “The Last Waltz”, celebrating the career of The Band, directed by Martin Scorsese. You must see this movie. Here is “Further On Up The Road“, first recorded by Bobby “Blue” Bland. That’s Levon Helm on drums and Robbie Robertson on guitar along with EC:

Your Monday Hot Links:

Willie Nelson will be offering his own brand of weed. The legendary pot smoker is trying to get out ahead of big business in those states where pot is legal with “Willie’s Reserve”.

Prospect Magazine is out with its annual list of the top 50 world thinkers. Any list like this is always good for a laugh, and this year, Prospect doesn’t disappoint: They have Russell Brand at #4 on their list.

Amazon is now requiring warehouse employees to sign a non-compete agreement. The requirement extends even to seasonal workers. The agreements can last for up to 18 months. But, seasonal workers can be employed by Amazon for as few as three months. That’s a hell of a trade-off.

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews. The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the UK, which publishes 277 peer-reviewed journals. In a sad commentary on scientific scholarship, there is a blog that tracks scholarly paper retractions called Retraction Watch.

A scientific team in Myanmar rediscovered a bird previously thought to be extinct. The bird is Jerdon’s babbler, and had not been seen in Myanmar since July 1941. The team found the bird on 30 May 2014. Jerdon’s babbler is not to be confused with Boehner’s babbler, which is immortal.

5 years after its launch, there are 5 things that Americans still don’t understand about Obamacare.

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 23, 2015

Wrongo traversed the Panama Canal last Wednesday night. Here is a photo of Panama’s Miraflores Locks (Pacific side) taken from our ship at 7:00pm:

DSCN3420

Ownership of the canal was transferred by the US to Panama in 1999. At the time, there was real concern whether the Panamanians would be up to the task of managing the canal. It turns out that they were:

• The Canal’s income has increased from US$769 million in 2000, the first year under Panamanian control, to US$1.4 billion in 2006
• The number of accidents has gone down from an average of 28 per year in the late-1990s to 12 accidents in 2005

There is a $5+ billion canal expansion program underway that will allow post-Panamax ships to traverse the canal. Post-Panamax vessels are projected to represent 62% of total container ship capacity by 2030. These ships can carry more than twice the amount of cargo (12,500 TEUs or 20-foot containers) compared to today’s Panamax ships that hold no more than 4,800 TEU. Bigger ships and more cargo can result in economic windfall for Panama.

All this brought to mind the costs (and how we pay) for modernizing infrastructure in the US. Early in 2016, Panama will start sending these huge ships through the Canal to US East Coast ports. US harbor size limits where these largest container ships can dock. A port is considered “post-Panamax ready” if it has a channel depth of 50 feet, sufficient channel width and turning basin, and larger dock/crane compatibility.

Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore have spent the funds to accommodate these super carriers, and will be ready when the canal is ready, but New Jersey and Pennsylvania are still trying to get there. Consider NJ, where, at high tide, 151 feet of empty air lies between the waters of the Kill Van Kull and the deck of the Bayonne Bridge. The Kill, a narrow tidal strait between Staten Island, NY and Bayonne, NJ, is one of the busiest shipping channels in the country. When the Bayonne Bridge opened, in 1931, 151 feet easily accommodated the world’s largest vessels. But the new ships won’t fit, so, the roadway will be elevated 64 feet, to 215 feet, more than enough to let these big ships pass underneath. The five-year Bayonne Bridge project costs $1.3 billion. Its estimated completion date has been pushed back to 2017.

By contrast, the entire canal expansion project will cost Panama $5.25 billion, and the return in increased canal transit fees will go to the citizens of Panama.

But in NJ, there will be no return from bigger cargo vessels for the taxpayers, or for the Port Authority of NY & NJ. Why? In January, 2014, NJ Gov. Chris Christie (R), signed a bill that ended the collection of any cargo facility charge by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The charge was imposed on cargo facility users, ocean and rail carriers and marine terminal operators. The old fee was $4.95 for 20-foot containers, $9.90 for 40-containers, and $1.11 per unit for vehicle cargo. The new bill was bi-partisan, as State Sen. Bob Gordon, (D-Bergen) said:

By imposing a tax on ocean carriers, the Authority has driven up the cost of doing business locally and driven freight to other ports along the East Coast…

So, not only will the taxpayers of NY & NJ pay for allowing Post-Panamax ships under the Bayonne Bridge, no ocean-going vessel will have ANY stake in paying the costs of that bridge expansion.

And for NJ, it gets worse: it didn’t have the money to rebuild the Goethals Bridge, which would cost just one year’s worth of toll revenue. Instead, it set up a private financing, pitched to the public as the region’s largest public-private partnership. For the Goethals Bridge, (ironically, named for the Army General who built the Panama Canal for Teddy Roosevelt), the private firms who took part in the financing get a share of the increased tolls paid by cars, buses and trucks crossing the bridge for a 35-year period.

So, today’s wake-up is for politicians who think no fees will make their port competitive, and who favor “Public-Private Partnership” financing of infrastructure projects. And since we can see light at the end of the igloo here in the Northeast, here is U2 with “Beautiful Day”:

Sample lyrics:
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There’s no room
No space to rent in this town

You’re out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you’re not movin’ anywhere

You thought you’d found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 9, 2015

Today’s Wake Up is for a few people and their terrible ideas. Sadly, they reflect the current state of our nation. The Selma march to Montgomery was about voting rights, voting rights that became codified into law in The Voting Rights Act of 1965. This photo taken during the march to Montgomery on March 25, 1965 shows a young black man in white face making the point about what it took to be a voter in Alabama in the 1960’s:
Selma Vote Charles Fentress Jr., The Louisville Courier-Journal

But, despite all of our progress, open (and covert) hostility to civil rights and minorities are still with us, even at the Selma commemoration. You have to look no further than South Carolina’s black GOP Sen. Tim Scott for proof. Sen. Scott (R-SC), was an honorary co-chairman of the Selma trip. He is the only African-American Republican in the Senate. He said voting rights and the commemoration of Selma should be “de-coupled”:

The issue of voting rights legislation and the issue of Selma, we ought to have an experience that brings people together and not make it into a political conversation…

We should “de-couple” civil rights from the struggle that necessitated it? He wants warm and fuzzy, because that’s the only way some lawmakers can stay busy disenfranchising whole groups of Americans, and still smile when they attend the commemoration of the Selma march.

Taken to its limit, what Sen. Scott wants us to do is to now pretend Selma isn’t about voting, because that means the Voting Rights Act was unnecessary. And that makes the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Shelby County (Alabama) vs. Holder, which effectively gutted the main provisions of the Voting Rights Act, the right way to look at the state of voting rights in America today. Sadly, that’s all wrong.

An example of overt hostility was shown by a billboard, within sight of Mr. Obama and the Edmund Pettus Bridge where he spoke on Saturday. The billboard depicts KKK founder and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest with the Confederate Flag in its background:

Selma Billboard

It is hard to see, but under the image of Forrest is his motto: “Keep the Skeer on ‘Em.”

Indeed. This brings home to us again the William Faulkner quote, “The past is not dead; it is not even past”. In fact, it is all too present. Time to wake up, America!

Here is Barenaked Ladies doing “Brian Wilson”. Many know that Wilson, the key singer-songwriter of the Beach Boys, had a nervous breakdown in the mid-1960’s at the height of the group’s fame. He later took to his bed for 3 years. Wilson had a psychiatrist, Dr. Eugene Landy, who took advantage of him and his money, and is mentioned in the Ladies’ song.

America, you are now “lying’ in bed just like Brian Wilson did”. Republicans are your Dr. Landy. Wilson said that he cured himself by trucking in sand to his house for inspiration. America, get your sand! Here is “Brian Wilson”:

Interestingly, Wilson later covered the song in 2000, on his album, “Live at Roxy Theater”.

Your Monday Hot Links:

Lockheed Martin claims it now has the ability to generate cheap energy from nuclear fusion with little waste or global warming. Lockheed calls this “Compact Fusion” and says it can build a reactor small enough to fit on a truck that could provide enough power for a city of up to 100,000 people. Invest at your own risk.

A Google research team is developing a model to measure the trustworthiness of a web page, rather than how many hits it gets. The system, not yet live, would count the number of incorrect facts within a page. The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the Internet. Facts that the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings. Searching for web sites based on their truthiness? We’ll see.

A cyber-attack in late December involved a smart refrigerator. C/NET reported that 100,000 devices sent upwards of 750,000 spam emails. Consumers have virtually no way to detect or fix infections when they do occur. So, your fridge could have spam two ways…

Like humans, apes make irrational economic decisions. New research suggests that choice biases, such as loss aversion, might be evolutionarily ancient. Oh, and they found that male apes were much more susceptible to bad decisions than were female apes. It’s not your fault, its evolution that’s to blame when you buy an RV without telling your wife.

New York’s Lincoln Center paid the heirs of Avery Fisher $15 million so they could name Avery Fisher Hall after David Geffen. Fisher’s family had threatened to sue if his name was removed, so Lincoln Center, looking to raise $500 million, really wanted to take Geffen up on a $100 million donation in return for naming rights. So, they paid up, and now there’s going to be a David Geffen Hall in New York.

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Monday Wake Up Call – February 23, 2015

Welcome to Monday. The Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right are heading back to the Northeast.

Today, the world needs to wake up to the threat posed by outsourcing military operations to private armies whose allegiance is only to the highest bidder. The American Conservative warns in an article by Kelley Vlahos, called “A Blackwater World Order”, that the Pentagon’s dependence on contractors has created a new era of warfare in which several newly founded private military companies are meeting the demand of an exploding global market for armed conflict.

The article describes the book, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order, by Sean McFate, a former Army paratrooper who later worked for outsourcer and defense contractor DynCorp, in Africa. In the book, McFate says that warfare is shifting from global dominance by nation-states to a “polycentric” military environment in which states now compete with transnational corporations, regional and ethnic interests, and terror organizations in the chess game of international power. McFate argues that new access to professional private arms has ended the traditional monopoly on force by the large states, and has brought about the dawn of a new era of armed conflict.

Are we sure these groups won’t go rogue? Who can control the mercenaries? What if a truly wealthy oligarch fields his own mercenary army to seize control of a country? It wouldn’t be for the first time.

Lots of questions, but very few answers.

Here is your Wake Up tune of the day. The National’s “Fake Empire”, from their 2008 album “Boxer”.

A fun fact about “Fake Empire” is that it was used in a 2012 Romney political video made by the group, Ohio University Students for Romney. Apparently, nobody told them that the same song was used by Obama in a 2008 ad. The National asked the Romney people to take it down, saying:

Our music was used without our permission in this ad. The song you’re using was written about the same backward, con game policies Romney is proposing.

Judge for yourself. Here is “Fake Empire”:

Sample Lyrics:
Turn the light out say goodnight, no thinking for a little while
Let’s not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We’re half-awake in a fake empire
We’re half-awake in a fake empire

Monday’s hot links:

Chinese city says air pollution is due to bacon: Dazhou, a city located in the northeastern corner of Sichuan province, has suffered from especially “severe air pollution” since earlier this month, and officials say the main cause is the smoking of bacon by local residents. China consumes half of the world’s pork every year. Insert your own joke here.

MIT has a list of breakthrough technologies for 2015. Invest at your own risk.

New data for 2013 reveals that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation. Here is a handy table from the report:
FireShot Screen Capture #037 - 'States with Weak Gun Laws and Higher Gun Ownership Lead Nation in Gun Deaths, New Data for 2013 Confirms (1_29_

You can see where your state ranks here.

Now, get up, get dressed, and get going.

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Monday Wake-Up Call – February 16, 2015

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” − Alvin Toffler

Today’s wake-up call is for Americans who can’t unlearn that trickle-down doesn’t work, and that voting in politicians who espouse it will prolong the nation’s agony. Do people know that the new GOP House began passing a series of deficit-hiking tax cuts that will primarily help the rich at the expense of everybody else?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (which writes tax legislation), wants to make some previous tax breaks permanent. From HuffPo:

The House voted 272 to 142 to make permanent a number of temporary provisions that are aimed at helping businesses earning up to $2 million. The main cut, which would add $77 billion to deficits over 10 years, allows businesses to immediately write off new equipment purchases up to $500,000. Temporary versions of the measure have been passed about a dozen times before, generally as economic stimulus measures.

The GOP then passed a second tax cut, aimed at giving bigger tax breaks for charitable giving. Ryan wants even more tax cuts that would add another $300 billion to the deficit. Those may reach the House floor later this month.

Here’s the Republican strategy: Slice the elephant and eat it a bite at a time. Pass small pieces of tax legislation while ignoring the deficit impact, then when their corporate and wealthy individual patrons are taken care of, remind everyone that the deficit is the biggest, baddest enemy the economy has. Then propose budget cuts that hit the working poor and the middle class. Ryan’s current strategy can be seen here: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If you dare try to make these things that we all agree on that need to stay in the tax code permanent, it’s ‘You’re not paying for it; it’s a budget buster; you’re being irresponsible; you’re jeopardizing tax reform.’ Process, process, process…Here’s the problem. What we’re trying to do here, we’re trying to grow the economy. We’re trying to get people back to work.

That meme will end soon. It will be replaced with: “growth is being stifled by the deficit”.

The NYT’s Upshot notes that a number of Republican governors are proposing tax increases — and in every case, the tax hike would fall most heavily on those with lower incomes, while they propose simultaneous tax cuts for business and/or the wealthy. Krugman analyzes it thusly:

If you look for an overarching theme for overall conservative policy these past four decades…It has been about making the tax-and-transfer system harsher on the poor and easier on the rich. In short, class warfare.

Class warfare. These folks keep bottling snake oil and voters keep buying it. Lowering income taxes on the wealthy doesn’t create jobs. Why would it? The focus of the GOP on cutting income taxes is solely intended to protect the rich.

Wrongo has run businesses for 35+ years and never saw taxes as an impediment. Taxes are paid out of profits, not revenue, and paying taxes means you are running a profitable business. Cutting taxes for small business can be a disincentive: Why should the owners expand the business when their net is greater, and they didn’t have to increase sales? For large corporations, tax cuts mean that people in the C-suite get richer. Nothing. Filters. Down.

Here is your Monday tune to fight the Plutocracy. “Rich Man’s War” by Steve Earle, from his 2004 album, “The Revolution Starts Now”:

And some Monday hot links:

The Westminster Dog Show starts today. Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right are attending.

Researchers are using drones and satellites to spot lost civilizations. Remote sensing technology is revealing traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.

Lobbyists move though the revolving door back to House and Senate committees. There is a profound change taking place among Capitol Hill staff, as many GOP lawmakers are handing the keys to K Street corporate lobbyists. Public Citizen’s Paul Holman notes that Speaker John Boehner, has “encouraged new members to employ lobbyists on their personal and committee staff.”

More than 4,000 Fort Carson soldiers are heading to Kuwait, where they will become one of America’s largest ground forces in the troubled region. Did you know that the Army has kept a brigade in Kuwait since the end of the Iraq war in 2011?

Majority of public school students are now considered low-income. Another success brought to you by trickle-down economics.

Unaffordable rents here to stay say experts. They aren’t likely to ease up for at least two years, according to the latest Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey

 

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