Happy T-Day!

'T' can stand for turkey...

Not Suitable for Our House,
but maybe for Yours

... or tofu...

Fried Tofu with Lemon Grass
Kim Son is a Good Source in Houston

... or Tofurky™, a roastable... thing... shaped vaguely like a turkey, made mostly of tofu and intended to be roasted. We did one of those one year; it was a royal bother, but it was a convincing substitute for a dead bird (and the stuff in the middle is a fairly persuasive... um... stuffing):

Tofurky™
Whole Paycheck carries them,
but you'd better get there early...
They're long gone by now!

Whatever you're... ah... stuffing yourself with, have a wonderful T-day, with family and friends! What are we doing? Well... with Catherine (see blogroll), we're going out to an utterly traditional Thanksgiving day meal (for us, at least): the buffet at India's, on Richmond, one of the best Indian restaurants in town, and always open on American holidays. Mmmmm, I can just taste the sag paneer now...

(Catherine is mere days back from more than two weeks in Morocco, where she tells us she took 7,000 pictures. I hope we're home before she starts showing them. :-) )

Sen. Bernie Says It Like It Is

... on michaelmoore.com:

...

Most important, in the coming weeks and months, the Democrats must demand that deficit reduction is done in a way that is fair — and not on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. At a time when real unemployment remains close to 15 percent, we must also focus on creating the millions of jobs that our people need.

In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. Incredibly, the top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 60 percent owns just 2.3 percent. In the last study done on income distribution, we learned that 93 percent of all new income generated between 2009 and 2010 went to the top 1 percent while the bottom 99 percent split the remaining 7 percent. This extraordinary unfairness is not only morally reprehensible, it is bad economics. It will be very difficult to create the jobs that our people need when so many Americans have little or no money to spend.

...

Please read the whole post.

Antarctica Unable To Say No To Crack

Carl Franzen at TPM:

NASA really rocked the boat around the world in February when it announced the discovery of a 19-mile-long crack off the Western side of Antarctica, a crack poised to calve off an iceberg the size of New York City.

On Monday, NASA released a new video of the latest aerial observations of the crack — located on Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. What NASA discovered was not only has the crack widened and lengthened, but it’s also led to a smaller, secondary crack.

NASA Goddard Flight Center calving specialist Kelly Brunt explained in the video that although the cracks in the glacier are evidence that the ice in region is thinning and the flow accelerating, and in turn, adding to a rise in sea level, it’s still within what can be considered “normal” annual fluctuations in the ice levels.

“Even calving when we use small states of the island or Manhattan as a unit of measure, this is generally normal, it’s part of the process,” Brunt said.
That said, the new calving site is the furthest inland that’s been observed in the past 40 years.

...

NASA expects the New York City-sized glacier to calve off any day now.

TPM has a photo and a video.

Do I even need to comment on this?

I Got It From Tom Lehrer

... who made it from whole cloth. Until today, this may have been the only significant Tom Lehrer song that I had never heard, though I had heard of it. Walt at BlondeSense remedied my ignorance. For your listening pleasure... "I Got It from Agnes":

‘Once... I Had A Secret Law,’ Part 148257

Obama has issued a secret directive regarding cyber security which may, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), enable "military deployment within the United States." EPIC has filed a FOIA request for the text of the heretofore secret law. Here's Stephen C. Webster at Raw Story:

...

Bill of Rights

The FOIA was filed in response to an article that appeared in The Washington Post this week, claiming that Obama issued a secret directive shortly before the elections that empowers the military to “vet any operations outside government and defense networks” for cyber security purposes.

However, because the exact text of the directive remains a secret, nobody can really say exactly what it does. That was somewhat disconcerting to American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Michelle Richardson, who told Raw Story on Wednesday that without the text, “it’s hard to see what they mean.”

In their FOIA, EPIC attorneys Amie Stepanovich and Ginger McCall go even further, arguing that the directive is tantamount to the president issuing a “secret law” that may enable “military deployment within the United States” in order to vet network security at companies like AT&T, Facebook, Google and others. And indeed, the Post‘s article seems to substantiate that concern, explaining that the order will help “finalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.”

But that’s literally all anyone outside of the chain of command knows about this order, McCall told Raw Story Thursday afternoon. “We don’t know what’s in this policy directive and we feel the American public has the right to know.”

...

Indeed we do. "AT&T, Facebook, [and] Google" are companies with substantial involvement in civilian communications of several types. Yet the NSA is first and foremost a military agency. While it is difficult from the wiki to ferret out all the interrelationships among intelligence-related agencies, there is a clear, unambiguous statement that "[b]y law, NSA's intelligence gathering is limited to foreign communications, although domestic incidents such as the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy have occurred." So which is this secret law: military or civilian? If it is civilian, why is it secret?

One of the aspects of the "war on terror[ism]" that most upsets me is the apparent use of the "war," which has no end and no limits to its scope, as a means to involve our most powerful, capable government intelligence-gathering agencies in the process of spying on American civilians... a practice hard to justify in any case and surely unconstitutional.

I don't want to know military secrets; they are for the most part none of my affair. But I damned surely want to know when my "person[], house[], papers and effects" (and implicitly, emails including encrypted business emails, and other electronic communications) are being spied upon without benefit of a warrant. The Fourth Amendment, at least in theory, guarantees us all no less than the security of those things. I want my security, or I want to know a damned good reason why I don't have it.

Correction (?): apparently I mistakenly assumed the NSA was involved. Well, OK, it was to have been, but apparently, facing considerable pushback, Obama has moved the most draconian information-sharing parts of the mystery program under the control of the DHS, which is a civilian agency. See this Raw Story article.

I Thought It Was The Feral Gummint That Was Going To Take Away Our Guns

... but apparently in Pinetop, Arizona they're receiving some help from a local gun shop:

If you voted for Obama and you’re heading over to Southwest Shooting Authority in Pinetop, Arizona to stock up on guns or ammo, don’t bother. Obama voters are no longer allowed on the premises.

Way to pertec' them rahts, Bubba!

The shop owner posted a letter on the door; here's an excerpt (see immediately previous link):

...

We will try to demonstrate once again that the bottom line for our business is principle, not money.

Yes, it has been damaging at times but our values are intact.

Effective immediately, if you voted for Obama, your money is no good here. You have proven beyond a doubt that you are not responsible enough to own a firearm. We have just put a sign up on the front door to save you the trouble of walking all the way in here...

...

Yeah, it's the principle of the thing: the principle that the owner don' wan' no n****r-lovers buyin' from him.

As for his claim that "your money is no good here," there's a statement on the dollar bill in my pocket that asserts the contrary position. He can probably prevent my coming into the store, but once I'm in, my money is as good as anyone else's: "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE". Suck on that, mofo.

Aside: I still don't own a firearm. I probably never will. I have only fired a rifle a few times in my life, to please my maternal granddad; I can't say I enjoyed the experience. But hey, if you want one, get one... if the shop owner will sell you one...

There Is No ‘Fiscal Cliff’!

As many have said, in politics, s/he who controls the choice of language controls the dialogue. Enter the "fiscal cliff": a mythical Jan 1. deadline by which all sorts of dire things are supposed to happen, unless Congress and the president act to... well, to what? Well, to hear Republicans tell it, to avert a major fiscal crisis that will push us back into recession immediately.

And what do those same congressional Republicans propose as a remedy to these dire predictions? Awwww, c'mon: what do Republicans ever propose? tax cuts for the wealthy... the very thing least likely to alleviate any fiscal problem, except the problem of anything resembling fair taxes on their obscenely wealthy base! This is just another GOP attempt like the one they perpetrated some months back, to hijack a government they don't legitimately control at the moment.

Fortunately, MoveOn has done my homework for me and compiled a concise list reflecting the state of things, which I am taking the liberty of reproducing here (MoveOn explicitly invites us to share it):

1. The “Fiscal Cliff” Is A Myth. As Paul Krugman put it, “The looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage.”^[1] Republicans are manufacturing this crisis to pressure Democrats to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and accept painful cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

2. The Bush Tax Cuts Finally End December 31. If Congress does nothing, the ax will fall on all the Bush tax cuts on New Year’s Eve.^[2] Then, on January 1, the public pressure on John Boehner and House Republicans to extend the middle-class tax cuts (already passed by the Senate and waiting to be signed by President Obama) will become irresistible.^[3] So the middle-class tax cut will eventually get renewed, and we’ll have $823 billion more revenue from the top 2% to do great things with.^[4]

3. The Sequester. The sequester is another political creation, forced on Democrats by Republicans in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling last year to avoid crashing our economy.^[5] It’s a set of cuts (50% to a bloated military budget and 50% to important domestic programs) designed to make both Republicans and Democrats hate it so much that they’d never let it happen.^[6] And the cuts can be reversed weeks or months into 2013 without causing damage.^[7]

4. The Big Three. Nothing happens to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits on January 1—unless Republicans force painful cuts to beneficiaries in exchange for tax increases on the wealthy, which are going to happen anyway if Congress does NOTHING.^[8] So, there’s literally no reason benefits cuts should be part of the discussion right now.

5. We Should Be Talking About Jobs. The real crisis Americans want Congress to fix is getting people back to work. And with just a fraction of that $823 billion from the wealthiest 2%, we could create jobs for more than 20,000 veterans and pay for the 300,000 teachers and 52,000 first responders, which our communities so desperately need.^[9] That’s not to mention jobs from investing in clean energy and our national infrastructure.

---

Sources

[1] “Hawks and Hypocrites,” The New York Times, November 11, 2012

[2] “Bush-Era Tax Cuts,” The New York Times, November 9, 2012

[3] “Boehner Is Bluffing,” Slate, November 9, 2012

[4] “CBO: Ending High-Income Tax Cuts Would Save Almost $1 Trillion,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 24, 2012

[5] “The sequester, explained,” The Washington Post, September 14, 2012

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Let’s Not Make a Deal,” The New York Times, November 8, 2012

[8] “How the Across-the-Board Cuts in the Budget Control Act Will Work,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,” April 27, 2012

[9] “Veterans’ Jobs Bill Blocked in the Senate,” The New York Times, September 19, 2012

[10] “Jan Schakowsky Announces new Budget Plan With Focus On Jobs,” The Huffington Post, August 10, 2011

[11] “Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act,” The White House, September 8, 2011

I understand this full well. You do, too, if you've been following the same sources I have. The only question is whether Obama both understands it and will act on it. There is some hope: he seems to be feeling his post-election Wheaties these days. It's time he shows us what he's really made of.

Priebus To Seek Another Term As RNC Chair

Which finger?

Via TPMLiveWire, according to CNN, Reince Priebus will run for reelection as chair of the Republican National Committee.

CNN did not say that his campaign slogan will be... wait for it...

LATHER. REINCE. REPEAT!

Billionaires Buy... Bupkis

... and the incomparable Jim Hightower summarizes.

Given the way the GOP has approached literally everything lately, I suspect the message these masters of the universe will take from the drubbing they experienced is "next time, twice as much money."

I'm sure that will help. I'm just not sure if it will help them... or us!

People Unclear On The Concept: House GOP Continues To Reject Extension Of Violence Against Women Act

Despite losing women's votes by what Gallup says is the widest margin in history, as Sahil Kapur of TPM informs us,

...

House GOP leaders aren’t yielding to a bipartisan coalition of Senate leaders demanding they extend the protections of the Violence Against Women Act — an anti-domestic abuse bill that was first passed with broad support in 1994 but hit a brick wall of Republican opposition earlier this year.

“Nothing has changed,” a senior GOP aide told TPM. “The House has passed a bill, we are ready to move to conference, and the Speaker has announced his conferees. We are waiting on Senate Democrats to follow suit and act.”

Six months ago, Senate Democrats passed re-authorization that expanded the law’s protections to LGBT women, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. House Republicans rejected that approach, and in response passed a scaled back version that would make it more difficult for domestic violence victims in the country illegally to achieve legal status.

...

The law has been demonstrably successful in providing states with the additional resources they need to pursue and combat domestic violence. And the GOP was for it before it was against it.

Indeed, it's hard to see why any decent human being would be against it. But by now it should scarcely be surprising.

Women, please take notice: it's the GOP again. In particular, it's the GOP House, including the Tea Party, arbitrarily endangering your right to live life without being beaten by your spouse or partner. Apparently, they just don't care. They see you as chattel, as something to be used as a bargaining chip. You might start by overwhelming them with phone calls, emails, letters, brickbats, ... nah. Nix the brickbats. But give them an earful of your legitimate grievances.

Ireland As Example: Woman, Non-Catholic, Miscarrying, Denied Abortion, Dies Of Septicemia

Via Echidne, this is where our own woman-murdering nut-jobs would take us... the Ohio legislature has a similar law in the works right now, a law that denies all abortions after the presence of a fetal heartbeat... all of them, not even to save the woman's life.

Apparently 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar's death came from a denial of abortion that was not even in accord with Ireland's strict anti-abortion laws. Ohio's proposed laws (there are two) are stricter. The woman wasn't supposed to be allowed to die under Irish law. Under proposed Ohio law, she would be.

The goddamned motherfucking right-wing fundamentalists pushing this sort of thing in America are murderers of women. Murderers, pure and simple. An issue of "morality"? Please... don't make me sick.

The first "medical professional" in America who allows a woman to die under the terms of such a law should be put away for the rest of his or her life, without possibility of parole. Society deserves better. Women deserve better.

Rmoney Shows His CLASS

Mitt Rmoney may be the GOP's greatest gift ever to the Democratic Party. First, here's Benjy Sarlin of TPM:

Mitt Romney has a simple explanation for donors as to why his presidential campaign came up short: President Obama gave out too much stuff.

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, the former Republican nominee said during a call with donors on Wednesday that Obama had been “very generous” in doling out “big gifts” to “the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people” as well as to women throughout his first term. Benefits such as access to “free health care,” guaranteed contraceptive coverage, more affordable student loans, and “amnesty for children of illegals,” all combined to give the president a decisive edge in popularity.

“The President’s campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift — so he made a big effort on small things,” Romney said. “Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.”

His explanation contained strong echoes of a leaked fundraiser tape earlier this year in which he told campaign backers that Obama’s strength came from the 47 percent of Americans who consider themselves “victims” and “dependent” on government.

...

Next, even Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) strongly criticized Mittens for needless divisiveness:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) strongly condemned Mitt Romney Wednesday night for remarks the former Republican nominee made blaming President Obama’s re-election on “big gifts” for minorities and women.

“That is absolutely wrong,” Jindal told reporters in Las Vegas at the Republican Governors Association meeting. “Two points on that. One, we have got to stop dividing American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent — we need to go after every single vote. And second, we need to continue to show that our policies help every voter out there achieve the American dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children the opportunity to get a great education, which is for their children to have even better-paying jobs than their parents.”

...

Um... Mittens? Those lazy, rotten "takers" that Obama promised so much stuff to? There's a word for them.

TAXPAYERS.

Why don't you just go to your home (any of them) and STFU? You would do more than just the GOP a big favor if you put a cork in it.

Erskine 'Catfood' Bowles For Treasury Secretary? Seriously?

Paul Krugman, in "Deficit Hawks and Hypocrites":

A large white cat menaces Erskine Bowles,
possibly seeking catfood

I don’t know how seriously to take the buzz about appointing Erskine Bowles to replace Timothy Geithner. But in case there’s any reality to it, let’s recall his record. Mr. Bowles, like others in the deficit-scold community, has indulged in scare tactics, warning of an imminent fiscal crisis that keeps not coming. Meanwhile, the report he co-wrote was supposed to be focused on deficit reduction — yet, true to form, it called for lower rather than higher tax rates, and as a “guiding principle” no less. Appointing him, or anyone like him, would be both a bad idea and a slap in the face to the people who returned President Obama to office.

Erskine Bowles (wiki) is a board member at GM and Morgan Stanley. In August he spoke in praise of Paul Ryan and in particular of the latter's "serious budget." I cannot think of a more archetypal representative of The 1%... or a worse choice for Treasury secretary. Appointing him to that post would be a sharp stick in the eye of everyone less conservative... more economically sane... than Newt Gingrich.

Krugman quotes the late great John Maynard Keynes: “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” The deficit scolds with their one-track minds would be only too happy to give us more austerity, packed full and running over... just what we don't need as we begin to claw our way out of the Great Recession. Obama must be strongly discouraged from appointing any of them to anything. Their way has been tried; their way has failed. It is time for them to leave.

Full disclosure: I have some money invested through Morgan Stanley, from back in the days 30+ years ago when they had the only broker in Houston specializing in "socially responsible investing." I kept my conscience clear about what I was invested in, but I didn't make much money. A shoebox would have served me better. Oh well.

Corrected: I inadvertently substituted a link from a different Krugman post.

Corrected: I substituted "Newt Gingrich" for "Genghis Khan" as an archetypal radical conservative. May be better; may not be...

Afterthought: speaking of an "austerity bomb," look at Europe's unemployment. Jeebus!

Update 11/16: Bowles has said he will not serve as Treasury Secretary.

Will AZ County Stop The Count? Shades Of Florida 2000!

People have been saying really bad things against Texas lately, mostly regarding our good-haired governor and his buddies spewing all the loose talk about secession. But at least we didn't have any of this shit:

One of the few unresolved congressional races in the nation could come down to whether voters in a heavily Latino precinct in Arizona get their ballots counted this week.

Backed by two high-powered lawyers, a supporter of Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to get election authorities to halt counting of provisional ballots from a heavily Latino area of the state’s Cochise County.

The suit could be pivotal as McSally is trying to unseat Rep. Ron Barber (D) in southern Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. At last count, McSally was trailing Barber by just 512 votes, but the lead had changed hands multiple times since election night.

Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Weekly reported that Barber campaign manager Jessica Floyd called the lawsuit an “active attempt by Martha McSally’s attorneys to disenfranchise voters in Cochise County.

...

Clearly Arizona GOPers want to enforce what I've always called the Republican Right to Rule: no matter the actual vote count, Republicans win. If they don't win at the ballot box, they win in the courts, but they always win, democracy be damned. Eternal vigilance lawyering is the price of liberty making sure your your vote is counted!

Occupy Sandy... Wow

Cynthia Kouril at FDL tells us how, in the face of super storm Sandy, Occupy Wall Street, now transformed into Occupy Sandy, is effectively managing the recovery effort.

Not the city. Not the police. Not FEMA. Not even the Red Cross. No, it's OWS, delivering the organizational skills and labor to make it happen. Here's Kouril:

OWS did what they do best, rallied compassionate people, started cooking meals and gave them away, just like at Liberty Plaza (it’s hard to get me to call it Zuccotti Park). They organized blankets and flashlights and charging stations (including the Green Peace solar truck and those cool Gilligan’s Island bicycle generators), just as they did at Liberty Plaza. They knocked on doors to ask the stranded residents what they needed. They sent out tweets for “needs of the occupiers” and supporters from all over the world sent supplies, just like at Liberty Plaza. They even improved on that with an Occupy Sandy “wedding registry” on Amazon that helps do[n]ors to ship supplies quickly and easily. Genius!

But you need to read the whole post to capture the flavor of just how effectively this large, amorphous, leaderless organization (can one call it an organization?) has succeeded where established recovery channels have failed. Somebody needs to tell the world about this. But our media, instead, delivers Mayor Bloomberg's press conferences to an audience of people whose electricity is on. Ah, irony!

Greece: Same Shift, Different Day

Greece's legislative move toward even greater austerity (with the burden falling on the Greek people, e.g., cuts to pensions and public sector wages) has enabled it to receive further financial aid. A Greek government campaign against tax dodgers, especially those people who have moved money overseas recently, has been launched, in hopes of quieting understandable public unrest provoked by the austerity moves. And the Eurozone finance ministers delayed a decision on releasing the latest 31.5bn euro tranche of bailout funds at least a week, while they decide if Greeks have suffered enough.

FDL's fatster did my homework for me, pointing me to all three of the aforementioned articles.

Seldom have I been so glad the US has its own currency and owes no major debts in any other currency. A glance at Greece will show you why I'm glad. I only wish no one had to suffer in this way, but as my late father used to say, "wish in one hand, spit in the other; see which one fills up fastest."

Robert Reich On Taxing The Rich

Robert Reich offers two articles, each in its own way an argument for why we must tax the wealthy their fair share of the burden:

• On Facebook, via ellroon, on how to cut the deficit by the apparent consensus figure of $4 trillion, "without raising taxes on the middle class, without cutting Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid, without cutting education or infrastructure, without reducing programs for the poor."
• On Reich's own site, about the next game of economic "chicken": the notion of competing legitimate national needs and the role of timing in meeting them;

Sounds good to me. America's wealthy have never been richer, or taken away a larger share of total income, or paid less in taxes, than today. It's time they carried their load.

'Poopy Head'!

Americans for Tax Deform

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Deform (damn, I never could type that org name right), had something stupid to say about Obama's re-election. Here's TPM quoting Politico quoting Norquist:

“The president was elected on the basis that he was not Romney and that Romney was a poopy-head and you should vote against Romney,” Norquist said on CBS’s “This Morning.” “[Obama] won by two points, but he didn’t make the case for higher taxes and higher spending. He kind of sounded like the opposite.”

Well, thanks, Grover, that was informative... mostly about you. Minimize Obama's victory any way you like. Use language appropriate to a two-year-old. It will garner attention for you for perhaps five minutes. "Breaking news! Conservative anti-tax guy says something really stupid and childish!"

Of all the nutjob movements that arise on the Right, opposition to taxes must be the most idiotic. Perhaps it should be made a crime. Norquist could be sentenced to do without everything he doesn't want his tax money to pay for. Start with roads...

No, start with sewers...

Veterans' Day; Sick Day

I had hoped to write a suitable Veterans' Day post... pics of my dad and my uncle, sentiments about war and peace, etc. ... but my body has other ideas. After a phone call to my doc, I spent the night alternating aspirin and ibuprofen to break a moderately high fever. At some point I fell asleep without setting my timer, but by then the fever was already gone, and it was still (again?) gone when I awoke this morning. Holiday or no, my doc has agreed to see me this morning, to see what we need to do about this. It may be nothing more than the cold Stella had last week. Or it may be an infected foot. Either way, it's out of bed and off to the doc.

Thank you all for your kind wishes. And thanks, today and every day, to the women and men of America's armed forces. Don't let my brevity this morning fool you: I know we owe them a lot.

The Pain, Insane, Stays Mainly In The Br... Aieeeee!

About 1½ hours ago, I was afflicted, first by a chill so deep I thought I was freezing to death (the room temp was 74°F), then by a "fevered" response (not really fevered) great enough to force me to put on a soft wool jacket over my regular clothes. This was not entirely a surprise; Stella had something like this last week. Meanwhile, a front is blowing through Houston, occasionally dropping some rain and mucking with the barometer, but not lowering the temp very much. I've experienced a similar reaction once before. Both feet hurt like hell, from the "chill" and from the "fever." It's all about my diabetic wound(s), only it's not.

I am scheduled to see my doc Tuesday. I don't need advice; he gives me that in plenty, and he's the most knowledgeable doc I've ever had. But damn, I wish the pain would slack off long enough for me to get some sleep; I didn't get much last night.

Stella, bless her, is preparing us a sandwich, a veggie BLT-plus-avocado. Normally it's a real treat. I'm crossing my fingers that the pleasure of the sandwich outweighs the pain of the...

Aieeeeee!!!