Seeya.
Let's put the blame where it belongs: on Gwen Stefani. If it weren't for that jumpsuit, we'd have been relieved of Stefano.
And, Iggy... no. That did not work. I love you, but I don't think America understands.
April 7, 2011
"David Prosser gained 7,582 votes in Waukesha County..."
"... after a major counting error of Brookfield results was detected, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced in a stunning development this afternoon."
Who knows if that's the end of the back-and-forth between Prosser and Kloppenburg, but at this point it looks decisive for Prosser.
AND: Nickolaus said:
"How do you feel comfortable declaring victory when the margin is so thin...?" Ah, yes.
ALSO: On election night, I was watching Waukesha and noted the problem:
Who knows if that's the end of the back-and-forth between Prosser and Kloppenburg, but at this point it looks decisive for Prosser.
AND: Nickolaus said:
"I'm thankful that this error was caught early in the process. This is not a case of extra ballots being found. This is human error which I apologize for, which is common," Nickolaus said, her voice wavering as she spoke to reporters.It's interesting to go back and look at Kloppenburg declaring victory yesterday:
"How do you feel comfortable declaring victory when the margin is so thin...?" Ah, yes.
ALSO: On election night, I was watching Waukesha and noted the problem:
UPDATE, 11:35: Concentrating on the AP numbers, looking at which counties still need to report, I'm irritated by the way Waukesha (strong for Prosser) and Dane (strong for Kloppenburg) seem to be holding out, like it's a game of chicken. Right now the candidates are 50-50%, with Prosser up 6,000+. It's been seesawing back and forth, with Kloppenburg up some of the time. To my eye, it looks as though there are more votes left to report in the places that are pro-Prosser, so I think in the end Prosser will squeak by.
UPDATE, 11:43: Dane (Madison's county) is nearly all in. I don't see how Kloppenburg can net more than about 3,000 with what's left of Dane. Waukesha is now shown as completely in, but the numbers didn't change, so I think something may have been misreported. I took the trouble to do a calculation and was going to predict that Prosser would net 40,000 more votes in Waukesha. What happened?
Let's talk about Trump.
He's second only to Mitt in a recent poll. But there's no way he can be the nominee. What's going on? Name recognition? An early-in-the-game spirit of fun? I don't know, but he's in it now enough that he'll be listened to and included in the debates, and he can say whatever he wants until the moment arrives when he throws his support over to some realistic candidate. Meanwhile, we've got him stirring up the old birther issue, going where candidates who must coddle their credibility dare not go.
Apparently, Justice Prosser won the election!
According to the latest count. The AP tally that everyone was looking at had the Winnebago County number wrong:
UPDATE: Whoa!
Winnebago County's numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887. The AP has 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg's 18,421.ADDED: I wonder if the concept of fraud is suddenly much more appealing to certain people.
The new numbers would give Prosser 244 more votes, or a 40-vote lead statewide.
UPDATE: Whoa!
"Obama seems stunned that someone might actually *need* a larger vehicle rather than using it as a status symbol."
Obama said "You may have a big family, but it probably isn’t that big."
Maybe the unspoken message is: Having more kids than will fit in a small car is a decision that high gas prices effectively disincentivize.
Maybe the unspoken message is: Having more kids than will fit in a small car is a decision that high gas prices effectively disincentivize.
"First homosexual caveman found."
How do you figure out that a skeleton is gay? The body was buried "with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves."
Wendy Kaminer "can't find feminism" in the charges of sexual harassment aimed at Yale...
"... at least not if feminism includes independence, liberty, and power for women."
Instead I find femininity -- the assumption that women are incapable of fending for themselves in the marketplace of epithets or ideas, the belief that women are rendered helpless by misogynist speech and the sexist tantrums of their male peers....
What accounts for such feminine timidity, this instinctive unwillingness or inability to talk or taunt back, without seeking the protection of university or government bureaucrats?...
Decades ago, when Catherine [sic] MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and their followers began equating pornography with rape (literally) and calling it a civil-rights violation, groups of free-speech feminists fought back, in print, at conferences, and in state legislatures, with some success. We won some battles (and free speech advocates in general can take solace in the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the right to engage in offensive speech on public property and public affairs). But all things considered (notably the generations of students unlearning liberty) we seem to be losing the war, especially among progressives.
"Justice Kagan's First Dissent."
I admired it myself (for the nicely clear writing), but the Atlantic's Andrew Cohen is downright fawning?
She was even willing to spend some time offering a "hypothetical" to make her point -- just like they taught her at Harvard Law School. Justice Kagan wrote:Well, that is really spiffily written, but I don't see enthusing about her being "even willing to spend some time" writing it. Settle down, Andy. But you see why he's excited, don't you? It's been so demoralizing to liberals to have Justice Scalia writing readable, quotable dissents all these years while the other side of the Court has been so... boring.
Our taxpayer standing cases have declined to distinguish between appropriations and tax expenditures for a simple reason: Here, as in many contexts, the distinction is one in search of a difference. To begin to see why, consider an example far afield from Flast and, indeed, from religion. Imagine that the Federal Government decides it should pay hundreds of billions of dollars to insolvent banks in the midst of a financial crisis. Suppose, too, that many millions of taxpayers oppose this bailout on the ground (whether right or wrong is immaterial) that it uses their hard-earned money to reward irresponsible business behavior. In the face of this hostility, some Members of Congress make the following proposal: Rather than give the money to banks via appropriations, the Government will allow banks to subtract the exact same amount from the tax bill they would otherwise have to pay to the U. S. Treasury. Would this proposal calm the furor? Or would most taxpayers respond by saying that a subsidy is a subsidy (or a bailout is a bailout), whether accomplished by the one means or by the other? Surely the latter; indeed, we would think the less of our countrymen if they failed to see through this cynical proposal.
"Bloggers Challenge President on Standardized Testing."
The NYT reports:
Meanwhile, the article is festooned with links — on words like "Malia" and "Sasha" — that go to a NYT page full of links to other NYT articles about on that topic. It looks like they don't understand how people read on the web, or more likely, that they are trying to manipulate us into random poking around inside the NYT, upping their page-view count for their own purposes. To be fair, the one blog post they link to collects the links to the various blogs they've talked about in the article. Oddly, that blog post links back to the NYT article that linked to it.
Ah, no. I see! They just link to Anthony Cody's blog, and not the 2 posts that their hyperlinked text refers to. The top post is a new post about the NYT article, and it provides all the links that were missing in the NYT article. Ugh! NYT, get your linking right! If you're talking about blog posts, link to each specific blog post. And get rid of those idiot links on words that go to your own search pages!
I know, I linked to the NYT. I did that because I'm honest about showing my own entry point. I wouldn't have read Cody's blog otherwise. From his top post:
Mr. Obama criticized “high-stakes” tests last week at a town-hall-style meeting, contrasting them with less-pressured tests his daughters took in their Washington private school....
Anthony Cody, a teacher in Oakland, Calif., who writes a blog for Education Week, suggested that the president was disavowing the policies of his education secretary, Arne Duncan, which include expanding student testing to evaluate teachers and developing new tests to be given several times a year to measure student progress.The NYT makes an article about bloggers making an issue out of something the mainstream press had ignored, and the article only contains one link to one of the blogs it has mined for material.
“All these changes RAISE the stakes on the tests, for teachers and for schools,” Mr. Cody wrote in a blog post, following an earlier post titled “If only the Department of Education could hear this guy Obama, boy, they would have to rethink their approach!”
... [A]nother blogger, Deborah Meier, a senior scholar at New York University’s education school, [wrote] “In reality the government is paying people to invent more bubble tests”...
Meanwhile, the article is festooned with links — on words like "Malia" and "Sasha" — that go to a NYT page full of links to other NYT articles about on that topic. It looks like they don't understand how people read on the web, or more likely, that they are trying to manipulate us into random poking around inside the NYT, upping their page-view count for their own purposes. To be fair, the one blog post they link to collects the links to the various blogs they've talked about in the article. Oddly, that blog post links back to the NYT article that linked to it.
Ah, no. I see! They just link to Anthony Cody's blog, and not the 2 posts that their hyperlinked text refers to. The top post is a new post about the NYT article, and it provides all the links that were missing in the NYT article. Ugh! NYT, get your linking right! If you're talking about blog posts, link to each specific blog post. And get rid of those idiot links on words that go to your own search pages!
I know, I linked to the NYT. I did that because I'm honest about showing my own entry point. I wouldn't have read Cody's blog otherwise. From his top post:
The Obama campaign relied on the energy of millions of us, activated by a call to our hopes and dreams. We were exhausted by eight years of Bush, seven years of No Child Left Behind, and Obama promised a fresh start. We have not seen that fresh start in education. Instead we are seeing a deep entrenchment on the part of the Department of Education, finding ever more creative ways to pretend that making the tests more frequent will somehow make them benign. Those of us who are experiencing the effects of these policies are not deceived. We see how they are destroying schools, and stealing opportunities from children....
Last week, President Obama reminded us all why his election gave many of us so much hope. In 338 words he spoke of how he wanted his daughters, Sasha and Malia, to have their learning tested. He described a low-stakes, low pressure environment, with the results used not to punish them, their teachers or their school, but simply to find out what their strengths are, and where they might need extra support. He spoke of the need to avoid teaching to the test, and the value of engaging projects that would make students excited about learning. President Obama has made sure his daughters can learn this way. If only Department of Education policies would allow students in our public schools this same privilege!
Don't talk about fraud! Fraud?! There is no fraud! Pay no attention to those... those... those... frauders!
Lawprof Richard L. Hasen, author of the Election Law Blog, has a column in Politico:
In this context, Prosser proponents have every right to drag us through the search for fraud one more time. I hope they don't find it, and Professor Hasen can add this new example to his next there-is-no-fraud column. But there's a 204 vote margin in this crazy election. We need to feel confident that the outcome is correct.
UPDATE: Hey, suddenly Prosser is ahead in the vote tally. I wonder if the fraud poo-pooers are singing a different tune now.
A recount in [the Wisconsin Supreme Court] race... seems inevitable, and it is not clear who will ultimately take the seat on the Wisconsin bench. But if this expensive and nasty race ends up in protracted litigation, it could undermine public confidence in both the judiciary and Wisconsin’s electoral process, especially if, as I expect, supporters of Prosser raise ugly allegations of voter fraud....Don't dare say fraud!
While the fraud allegations [in various recent elections] remain stuck in the public’s mind, no proof of any systemic fraud has been unearthed. Instead, close examination of elections show, time and again, that our election systems are not perfect – but this is due to human error and not fraud....To become contentious and partisan? It's been ridiculously contentious and partisan here in Wisconsin since mid-February. It's hard to understand why the Republicans should stand down now. Prosser was way ahead and would have easily won if Democrats hadn't turned what was supposed to be a nonpartisan election into a referendum on the Republican governor they hate. It took Prosser a long time to realize he had to fight like a politician and not just sit quietly modeling traditional judicial demeanor. Outrageous, dirty politics was played against the old jurist, and he had little idea what to do about it. Now, his advocates are supposed to play nice so things won't get ugly? We've been in uglyville since February.
[I]f the Wisconsin Supreme Court race goes into extra innings, I expect things to become especially contentious and partisan.
If Kloppenburg can eke out a victory, I wouldn’t be surprised if Prosser supporters play the fraud card. Professor Ann Althouse already raised the specter of fraud in her final post on election results last night. I am sure that others will trumpet now-discredited allegations of voter fraud in Wisconsin, especially about alleged fraud in heavily Democratic and minority communities.Now discredited? See, that's the meme among Democrats. There is no fraud. You're not even supposed to talk about "[t]he possibility of some fraud" — which was the phrase I used in my 11:55 p.m. post on election night. Note that I wasn't even making an accusation. I was just trying to sign off and go to bed. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day. But the mere mention of fraud triggers the reaction: Don't talk about fraud! Fraud?! There is no fraud! Everybody knows there is no fraud, and anybody who mentions it is, by that mere mention, an agent of discord and deceit. This is an effort to delegitimatize the very interest in the problem of fraud. I expect a label to emerge, a label like "birther." Ugh! She's a frauder.
In the last decade, the now-defunct Americans for Voting Rights focused on such spurious and grossly exaggerated claims out of Wisconsin, which Lorraine Minnite has methodically debunked. But that won’t stop the allegations from resurfacing, and be taken credibly by those who want to believe it.So... because past claims of fraud have been "methodically debunked" — have they? — we should stop even looking for fraud? We'll only suffer if we keep checking for cheaters? This sounds way too preemptive to me. I've spent the last 2 months in a vortex of political ugliness and saw it grafted onto the judicial election. I saw frantically impassioned protesters grasping at the symbolism of this election and building an intense shared feeling of entitlement to shift the politics of this state. I heard the phrase "by any means necessary" more than once.
It is the voters of Wisconsin and those who depend upon the state supreme court’s system of impartial justice who are sure to suffer.
In this context, Prosser proponents have every right to drag us through the search for fraud one more time. I hope they don't find it, and Professor Hasen can add this new example to his next there-is-no-fraud column. But there's a 204 vote margin in this crazy election. We need to feel confident that the outcome is correct.
UPDATE: Hey, suddenly Prosser is ahead in the vote tally. I wonder if the fraud poo-pooers are singing a different tune now.
April 6, 2011
"The members of our 2011 list of wealthiest fictional characters have an average net worth of $9.7 billion..."
"... up 20% from last year."
Related: "Why so Few Women on the Forbes Fictional 15?"
Related: "Why so Few Women on the Forbes Fictional 15?"
Our fictional reporters — the best in the business — have worked hard to rectify the gender imbalance, even breaking Fictional 15 rules against folkloric characters (the Tooth Fairy appeared on the 2010 list), but the gap persists.... What do you think is going on here?I'd say they're not getting equal pay for equal... evil.
"I like the president personally. We get along well. But the president isn’t leading."
"He didn’t lead on last year’s budget, and he clearly isn’t leading on this year’s budget."
Said House Speaker John Boehner today. Later, he met with the President and Harry Reid at the White House, and, per Boehner, "We made some progress... But I want to reiterate there’s no agreement."
(NYT link.)
Said House Speaker John Boehner today. Later, he met with the President and Harry Reid at the White House, and, per Boehner, "We made some progress... But I want to reiterate there’s no agreement."
(NYT link.)
"Those red chairs in the background? 'Orange Slice,' designed by Pierre Paulin in 1960, produced by the Dutch furniture maker Artifort."
Says Palladian, commenting on the chairs you can barely see in the "woodland computer" post just below. I said I had some better views of the chairs, which you can see — and sit in — at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, at Town Center of the beautiful now Institutes for Discovery.
(Enlarge.)
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"Kloppenburg declares victory."
"' I look forward to bringing new blood to the Supreme Court and focusing my energy on the important work Wisconsin residents elect Supreme Court justices to do.'"
And the Prosser campaign launches the "Prosser Victory Fund."
And the Prosser campaign launches the "Prosser Victory Fund."
"After a challenging battle... [t]he likely next step is a recount, requiring resources to protect the integrity of the ballots cast and deliver a win...."
"'I know his songs from karaoke, but I'm really not that familiar with him,' said advertising executive Yin Yang, 24."
"'Still I think this was a historic concert and I'm glad I've seen him.'"
Bob Dylan played the Worker's Gymnasium in Beijing today.
He purportedly submitted his play list to government approval. How absurd for the government officials to imagine that concertgoers would understand the lyrics, which are hard to hear in concert even when English is your first language and you already know the lyrics from the records. What's the big deal about Dylan's "protest" songs in China anyway? They're almost entirely aimed at the United States.
ADDED: A reader emails:
Bob Dylan played the Worker's Gymnasium in Beijing today.
He purportedly submitted his play list to government approval. How absurd for the government officials to imagine that concertgoers would understand the lyrics, which are hard to hear in concert even when English is your first language and you already know the lyrics from the records. What's the big deal about Dylan's "protest" songs in China anyway? They're almost entirely aimed at the United States.
ADDED: A reader emails:
My wife has booked a few acts into China and had to spend a few days translating American standards (let's say the Pinna Colada Song) into Chinese for the lyric permission. It is true that the nominal reason is to reject anti-revolutionary sentiments. But I think the real reason is to grease the palms of the literal 15 different minor officials you have to get to sign off on booking a concert tour.
Only 1 county left to report in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and I calculate that Prosser will fall 137 votes short of tying.
Here are the updated results, just in. Prosser needs 225 more votes to win by 1 vote. The one precinct left is in Jefferson County, and my calculation predicts Prosser will pick up 89 votes there. Not enough.
(My calculation assumes the last precinct has the same number of voters as the average in the other Jefferson County precincts and that the relative popularity of Prosser and Kloppenburg is the same as the rest of the county. This prediction method worked well in predicting what would happen with a couple other late-reporting counties.)
UPDATE: All reports in.
(My calculation assumes the last precinct has the same number of voters as the average in the other Jefferson County precincts and that the relative popularity of Prosser and Kloppenburg is the same as the rest of the county. This prediction method worked well in predicting what would happen with a couple other late-reporting counties.)
UPDATE: All reports in.
"It may take more than a month before any recount would even start" in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
"The Government Accountability Board has until May 15 to complete its canvas of the vote. No date has been set for the board to canvas the vote, which is dependent upon when the counties submit their results to GAB."
Settle in, people. It'll be just like the never-ending election night of 2000. Except that it's not a presidential election. It's just a state election. For a judge. How perfectly weird to get so intensely caught up in this matter. It got way too symbolic. Let's try to untangle the unresolved election from all the other things it had come to signify for us.
First, let's dispose of the "referendum on Walker" notion. Yesterday's voting did not produce anything that can be translated into a renouncement of last November's election. We can see that the people of Wisconsin are pretty evenly divided between conservatives and liberals, so we can't say that Walker and the GOP legislature have somehow lost their legitimacy. We've taken the temperature of Wisconsin and there is no fever. Normal politics should continue with the results of the last election intact.
The potential for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to invalidate the work of the political branches is relatively slight. Even assuming a Kloppenburg victory is sealed sometime next month or whenever the hell the election is finally over, there's a limit to what a court can do, especially without the boost of a landslide election that can be portrayed as the will of the people to stop Scott Walker and his minions.
The court might decide that the bill that stripped collective bargaining rights violated the open meetings law, but the GOP legislature can pass a new bill, without that procedural flaw, so what difference will it make? Indeed, such a decision, especially with Kloppenburg's participation, will open the court to the criticism that it is has over-leaped the bounds of judicial propriety, and that will undermine the court's legitimacy, making it harder to crank out the next self-aggrandizing decision and tipping the next judicial election toward the conservative candidate.
So... settle in... and settle down.
Settle in, people. It'll be just like the never-ending election night of 2000. Except that it's not a presidential election. It's just a state election. For a judge. How perfectly weird to get so intensely caught up in this matter. It got way too symbolic. Let's try to untangle the unresolved election from all the other things it had come to signify for us.
First, let's dispose of the "referendum on Walker" notion. Yesterday's voting did not produce anything that can be translated into a renouncement of last November's election. We can see that the people of Wisconsin are pretty evenly divided between conservatives and liberals, so we can't say that Walker and the GOP legislature have somehow lost their legitimacy. We've taken the temperature of Wisconsin and there is no fever. Normal politics should continue with the results of the last election intact.
The potential for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to invalidate the work of the political branches is relatively slight. Even assuming a Kloppenburg victory is sealed sometime next month or whenever the hell the election is finally over, there's a limit to what a court can do, especially without the boost of a landslide election that can be portrayed as the will of the people to stop Scott Walker and his minions.
The court might decide that the bill that stripped collective bargaining rights violated the open meetings law, but the GOP legislature can pass a new bill, without that procedural flaw, so what difference will it make? Indeed, such a decision, especially with Kloppenburg's participation, will open the court to the criticism that it is has over-leaped the bounds of judicial propriety, and that will undermine the court's legitimacy, making it harder to crank out the next self-aggrandizing decision and tipping the next judicial election toward the conservative candidate.
So... settle in... and settle down.
"[T]he corny, brainless antics of a devout American non-entity, notice of whose mere existence is beneath the dignity of any thinking person...."
... have provoked "self-righteous frenzy married to a neurotic need to take offence; the easy resort to indiscriminate violence and cruelty; the promulgation of makeshift fatwas by mullahs on the make; those writhing mustaches framing crude slogans of piety and hatred, and yelling for death as if on first-name terms with the Almighty."
Christopher Hitchens is writing about the Koran-burning and the offense taken.
(Where will we go for well-overheated prose if we lose Christopher Hitchens?)
Christopher Hitchens is writing about the Koran-burning and the offense taken.
(Where will we go for well-overheated prose if we lose Christopher Hitchens?)
"7 Basic Things You Won't Believe You're All Doing Wrong."
Oh, I'm doing at least some of them at least part right. And as to the ones I'm doing wrong or part wrong, I believe it, at least partly.
What does it mean that 24 of the 3630 precincts have not yet reported their votes in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race?
The polls closed 12 hours ago, and the race has been really tight all along as results came in. Right now Prosser holds a slim lead, with 736,878, over Kloppenburg's 736,043. That's a mere 835 votes.
At the link, you can scan the list to find the counties that haven't reported all their precincts and see which candidate is favored in the precincts that have reported. For example, Ashland has 6 precinct that haven't reported, but in the 22 that have reported, Kloppenburg did much better than Prosser, 71% to 29%. If you assume the precincts are equal in population and the 71-29% split remains intact, Kloppenburg should decrease Prosser's lead by 405 votes when Ashland comes in.
There's one more precinct in Madison's Dane County. You can try to calculate what that precinct should be, using the 73-27% difference between the candidates in the 248 precincts that have reported, but I'd like to know what part of town the nonreporting precinct is in. More important, I'd like to know why that one precinct hasn't reported, because, without more, I'm suspicious that politicos with a "by any means necessary" attitude are waiting to see how many votes are needed.
What security do we have that these votes are being handled properly? With the vote so close, and the number needed to close the gap right there for all to see, it's hard to believe that nobody's going to cheat.
This race has been so politicized that, whether Prosser or Kloppenburg wins, the public will lack faith in the work of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Every 4-3 decision — assuming the winner of this election is one of the 4 — will raise suspicion. The power of the court, in the end, rests on the faith of the people. It cannot balance the power of the other branches of government without the faith that this election has eroded.
This is why I think a Kloppenburg victory will be a disaster. Her supporters and her opponents expect her to vote to undo the legislation of the Republican majority that won decisively in the November election. If she proceeds to decide cases that way, people — including her supporters — won't believe that her vote was properly judicial, and the decision against the legislation will look like the court abused its power. How then will the court retain its prestige? If the people do not believe that the court is a court, then we will not have a workable system of separated powers in our state government.
UPDATE: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
At the link, you can scan the list to find the counties that haven't reported all their precincts and see which candidate is favored in the precincts that have reported. For example, Ashland has 6 precinct that haven't reported, but in the 22 that have reported, Kloppenburg did much better than Prosser, 71% to 29%. If you assume the precincts are equal in population and the 71-29% split remains intact, Kloppenburg should decrease Prosser's lead by 405 votes when Ashland comes in.
There's one more precinct in Madison's Dane County. You can try to calculate what that precinct should be, using the 73-27% difference between the candidates in the 248 precincts that have reported, but I'd like to know what part of town the nonreporting precinct is in. More important, I'd like to know why that one precinct hasn't reported, because, without more, I'm suspicious that politicos with a "by any means necessary" attitude are waiting to see how many votes are needed.
What security do we have that these votes are being handled properly? With the vote so close, and the number needed to close the gap right there for all to see, it's hard to believe that nobody's going to cheat.
This race has been so politicized that, whether Prosser or Kloppenburg wins, the public will lack faith in the work of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Every 4-3 decision — assuming the winner of this election is one of the 4 — will raise suspicion. The power of the court, in the end, rests on the faith of the people. It cannot balance the power of the other branches of government without the faith that this election has eroded.
This is why I think a Kloppenburg victory will be a disaster. Her supporters and her opponents expect her to vote to undo the legislation of the Republican majority that won decisively in the November election. If she proceeds to decide cases that way, people — including her supporters — won't believe that her vote was properly judicial, and the decision against the legislation will look like the court abused its power. How then will the court retain its prestige? If the people do not believe that the court is a court, then we will not have a workable system of separated powers in our state government.
UPDATE: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
As of 9:45 this morning, the Associated Press had results for all but 7 of the state's 3,630 precincts and Kloppenburg had taken a 140 vote lead after Prosser had been ahead most of the night by less than 1,000 votes.
That close margin had political insiders from both sides talking about the possibility of a recount, which Wisconsin has avoided in statewide races in recent decades. Any recount could be followed by lawsuits - litigation that potentially would be decided by the high court.
April 5, 2011
At the Madison Café...
... you'd better keep a lookout for storms.
(Photos taken yesterday evening.)
Watching the election results.
Results reported here.
On the TV station we're watching, News 3, with 6% in, Prosser and Kloppenburg are tied at 50%.
UPDATE, 8:50: 51% Prosser, 49% Kloppenburg, with 9% reporting.
UPDATE, 8:55: According to the Milwaukee State Journal, with 11% reporting, it's 51% Prosser, 49% Kloppenburg.
UPDATE, 9:30: On TV, they seem to be pre-spinning a Kloppenburg loss, saying what an amazing thing it is that she has come close to beating an incumbent.
UPDATE, 9:36: 34% reporting, David Prosser 265,662 (50%), Joanne Kloppenburg 263,356 (50%).
UPDATE, 9:54: With 49% in, News 3 has Prosser at 51% and Kloppenburg at 49%.
UPDATE, 11:08: Paul Soglin has won the mayoral race. He's speaking now, looking extremely tired.
UPDATE, 11:14: Kloppenburg had gone up, but now they're back even at 50%.
UPDATE, 11:35: Concentrating on the AP numbers, looking at which counties still need to report, I'm irritated by the way Waukesha (strong for Prosser) and Dane (strong for Kloppenburg) seem to be holding out, like it's a game of chicken. Right now the candidates are 50-50%, with Prosser up 6,000+. It's been seesawing back and forth, with Kloppenburg up some of the time. To my eye, it looks as though there are more votes left to report in the places that are pro-Prosser, so I think in the end Prosser will squeak by.
UPDATE, 11:43: Dane (Madison's county) is nearly all in. I don't see how Kloppenburg can net more than about 3,000 with what's left of Dane. Waukesha is now shown as completely in, but the numbers didn't change, so I think something may have been misreported. I took the trouble to do a calculation and was going to predict that Prosser would net 40,000 more votes in Waukesha. What happened?
UPDATE, 11:55: There will be a recount, I assume. All those absentee ballots. The possibility of some fraud. It's nearly midnight here. Maybe we won't know the answer for days.
On the TV station we're watching, News 3, with 6% in, Prosser and Kloppenburg are tied at 50%.
UPDATE, 8:50: 51% Prosser, 49% Kloppenburg, with 9% reporting.
UPDATE, 8:55: According to the Milwaukee State Journal, with 11% reporting, it's 51% Prosser, 49% Kloppenburg.
UPDATE, 9:30: On TV, they seem to be pre-spinning a Kloppenburg loss, saying what an amazing thing it is that she has come close to beating an incumbent.
UPDATE, 9:36: 34% reporting, David Prosser 265,662 (50%), Joanne Kloppenburg 263,356 (50%).
UPDATE, 9:54: With 49% in, News 3 has Prosser at 51% and Kloppenburg at 49%.
UPDATE, 11:08: Paul Soglin has won the mayoral race. He's speaking now, looking extremely tired.
UPDATE, 11:14: Kloppenburg had gone up, but now they're back even at 50%.
UPDATE, 11:35: Concentrating on the AP numbers, looking at which counties still need to report, I'm irritated by the way Waukesha (strong for Prosser) and Dane (strong for Kloppenburg) seem to be holding out, like it's a game of chicken. Right now the candidates are 50-50%, with Prosser up 6,000+. It's been seesawing back and forth, with Kloppenburg up some of the time. To my eye, it looks as though there are more votes left to report in the places that are pro-Prosser, so I think in the end Prosser will squeak by.
UPDATE, 11:43: Dane (Madison's county) is nearly all in. I don't see how Kloppenburg can net more than about 3,000 with what's left of Dane. Waukesha is now shown as completely in, but the numbers didn't change, so I think something may have been misreported. I took the trouble to do a calculation and was going to predict that Prosser would net 40,000 more votes in Waukesha. What happened?
UPDATE, 11:55: There will be a recount, I assume. All those absentee ballots. The possibility of some fraud. It's nearly midnight here. Maybe we won't know the answer for days.
"Kloppenburg = A Vote Against the Bill."
A pro-Kloppenburg yard sign that works as an anti-Kloppenburg yard sign (for 1 if not 2 reasons):
Meade and I voted at around 11. He was #399 and I was #401 at our polling place (the First Congregational Church). There were about 6 others there, including the guy that slipped in between me and Meade and snagged the lucky number 400. The ladies manning the polls seemed to think the turnout was good. But with no waiting in line, it felt light to me.
ADDED: If Kloppenburg wins, her opponents should move on to a "recuse Kloppenburg" effort.
Meade and I voted at around 11. He was #399 and I was #401 at our polling place (the First Congregational Church). There were about 6 others there, including the guy that slipped in between me and Meade and snagged the lucky number 400. The ladies manning the polls seemed to think the turnout was good. But with no waiting in line, it felt light to me.
ADDED: If Kloppenburg wins, her opponents should move on to a "recuse Kloppenburg" effort.
Wisconsin street theater: "Come along, Scottie."
The Koch Brothers and their puppet, Scott Walker. (Video recorded by Meade yesterday.)
"House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a far-reaching budget proposal that cuts $5.8 trillion from anticipated spending levels over the next decade..."
The NYT reports:
ADDED: Here's Ryan's WSJ column on the plan.
The ambitious plan, drafted principally by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Budget Committee, proposes not only to limit federal spending and reconfigure major federal health programs, but also to rewrite the tax code, cutting the top tax rate for both individuals and corporations to 25 percent from 35 percent, reducing the number of income tax brackets and eliminating what it calls a “burdensome tangle of loopholes.”...Well, it is a conservative ideological manifesto, isn't it? Do the Republicans deny that? Do you like ideological clarity, or would you move away from the party that wears its ideology openly and seems committed to following it? Ideologues scare me.
Democrats... say the emerging proposal amounts to a conservative ideological manifesto showing that Republicans intend to cut benefits and programs for the nation’s retirees and neediest citizens while protecting corporate America and the wealthiest people from paying their share of taxes....
ADDED: Here's Ryan's WSJ column on the plan.
Election day in Wisconsin.
If you're here in Wisconsin, have you voted yet? What's the turnout where you are?
Who's going to win? David Blaska has his predictions:
"Out-state" doesn't mean "out-of-state." I learned that term only recently. It refers to the parts of Wisconsin beyond Madison and Milwaukee. Another term I saw for the first time is "Wisconsin nice." It was in this Wall Street Journal column 3 days ago informing us that "It seems 'Wisconsin Nice' is now gone with the wind." I've been living here since 1984 and I've never heard of "Wisconsin nice." Maybe you need to go "out-state" to hear about it, or maybe only out-of-staters look at us and say that. Maybe the truly nice people don't think of themselves as nice. It's just the way they are. I don't include myself. I didn't grow up in Wisconsin, and I don't see why I would have picked up any niceness by living in Madison as an adult. Niceness needs to be more deeply ingrained. I grew up in Delaware, where people seemed normal to me. I went back recently and was stunned by how surly people were! Proof of Wisconsin nice? Perhaps. I don't know. I'm a stranger here and in Delaware now too.
Anyway: Vote, people. Wisconsin will have the court it deserves.
Who's going to win? David Blaska has his predictions:
Supreme Court: Odana Road from Midvale Boulevard to Monroe Street is a blizzard of Kloppenburg signs -- many of them homemade. Has there ever been a state supreme court race this passionate? I do love the challenger’s motto, “Elections have consequences.” Tell that to Marty Beil. No pretense here, folks. This is a “do-over” of the November 2 election that Scott Walker won by a 52-47 margin...Will it? It seems to me it could be anything, and the interpretation of what it means after we see what it is could be anything.
Yes, wish is father to the thought. But I’m knocking on wood that pro-Walker voters are just as energized as the unionistas responsible for the Siege of the Capitol 2011.
A squeaker but the good guy wins thanks to out-state disgust over bully-boy tactics: David Prosser 50.5% over JoAnne Kloppenburg. But boy, this will be close.
***
"Out-state" doesn't mean "out-of-state." I learned that term only recently. It refers to the parts of Wisconsin beyond Madison and Milwaukee. Another term I saw for the first time is "Wisconsin nice." It was in this Wall Street Journal column 3 days ago informing us that "It seems 'Wisconsin Nice' is now gone with the wind." I've been living here since 1984 and I've never heard of "Wisconsin nice." Maybe you need to go "out-state" to hear about it, or maybe only out-of-staters look at us and say that. Maybe the truly nice people don't think of themselves as nice. It's just the way they are. I don't include myself. I didn't grow up in Wisconsin, and I don't see why I would have picked up any niceness by living in Madison as an adult. Niceness needs to be more deeply ingrained. I grew up in Delaware, where people seemed normal to me. I went back recently and was stunned by how surly people were! Proof of Wisconsin nice? Perhaps. I don't know. I'm a stranger here and in Delaware now too.
Anyway: Vote, people. Wisconsin will have the court it deserves.
Woman attacks "2 Tahitian Women" because "I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children."
"He has two women in the painting and it’s very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned. I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you."
Somewhere there's a mythical country where the people love post-Impressionism so much that this lunatic's attack on the Gauguin is causing them to run wild, riot, and kill each other.
Somewhere there's a mythical country where the people love post-Impressionism so much that this lunatic's attack on the Gauguin is causing them to run wild, riot, and kill each other.
"It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I'm not all that interested in talking about the past..."
"... and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music."
That's the official, philosophical statement of why Billy Joel has decided not to publish the memoir HarperCollins wanted to give him $3 million for. The linked article is a bit confusing on the subject of whether Joel has actually written the memoir. I'm guessing he wrote something bland, and HarperCollins didn't accept the draft.
? Do you trash your ex-wives or reveal yourself as the abuser?
That's the official, philosophical statement of why Billy Joel has decided not to publish the memoir HarperCollins wanted to give him $3 million for. The linked article is a bit confusing on the subject of whether Joel has actually written the memoir. I'm guessing he wrote something bland, and HarperCollins didn't accept the draft.
[A] source also said that [Joel] became "dissatisfied" with expectations that "The Book of Joel" would be a tell-all about his marriages, including one to Christie Brinkley, and his battle with alcohol.If he's dissatisfied, it should be with his own delusion that he should get $3 million without doing that. And even if he did, would it be good enough? Another alcohol memoir
? Do you trash your ex-wives or reveal yourself as the abuser?
You spank Kapanke, and we'll besmirch Wirch.
The Wisconsin recall competition is now Dems 1, GOP 1. I hope you're having fun.
Professor makes professor look woefully abused by leaving out the key phrase "on her hands."
Lawprof Paul Caron stirs us up with this:
Professor Arrested for Shutting Student's Laptop in ClassI click on one of the links and find this:
Frank J. Rybicki, an assistant professor of mass media at Valdosta State University, was arrested by campus police last week on a charge of battery after shutting the laptop of a student who was web surfing in class.
An assistant professor of mass media at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, was arrested last week on charges of battery after a confrontation with a student over extracurricular Web surfing during class led him allegedly to close the lid of the student’s laptop computer on her hands....On her hands.
April 4, 2011
The April 4th protest.
There was a Martin Luther King theme...
(Because we remember his death today.)
Jesse Jackson was there:
Waiting in a tent for his turn.
A boy waited in a tree like Zacchaeus:
Enlarge to find the woman with a clown nose.
There was some street theater, with "the Koch brothers" manipulating their puppet, the giant head that is Scott Walker:
(Enlarge.)
There were men, with manly messages:
"I don't have enough middle fingers to deal with this!"
Women with womanly messages:
"Save our State!!! Wisconsin rules!!!!!!!!"
And there was Meade, Flip-camming the Protest Dog of the Day:
That's all.
(Because we remember his death today.)
Jesse Jackson was there:
Waiting in a tent for his turn.
A boy waited in a tree like Zacchaeus:
Enlarge to find the woman with a clown nose.
There was some street theater, with "the Koch brothers" manipulating their puppet, the giant head that is Scott Walker:
(Enlarge.)
There were men, with manly messages:
"I don't have enough middle fingers to deal with this!"
Women with womanly messages:
"Save our State!!! Wisconsin rules!!!!!!!!"
And there was Meade, Flip-camming the Protest Dog of the Day:
That's all.
The greatest student union building of all time.
UW's new Union South:
(I know. The word "union." Please don't be distracted.)
The opulent, $94.8 million building features a climbing wall, an eight-lane bowling alley, billiards, scores of flat-screen TVs, a 350-seat movie theater, a two-story fireplace, a wine and coffee bar and a banquet hall big enough to seat 1,500 people.And yet the Memorial Union, the original UW-Madison Union, is still the greatest.
(I know. The word "union." Please don't be distracted.)
"Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to Be Tried by Military Commission at Guantánamo, in Reversal."
That's the right way to do it, Obama comes around to admitting, by coincidence, on the day he launches his reelection effort.
ADDED: What would it take for Obama to say Bush was right... or anything close to that... just a decent amount of respect for his predecessor?
AND: Here's the link to the NYT article, indicating that the decision represents no real judgment by Obama or Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., but simply yielding to Congress's "steep new restrictions on transferring any detainees from Guantánamo Bay onto United States soil, making such a trial impossible."
UPDATE: Holder speaks (live).
ADDED: Holder is adamant that his original decision was correct. Congress made it impossible for him to follow his original policy. The last question challenged him about how long it will take: perhaps another 10 years? He answers quickly and testily and — to my eye — stomps out of the room.
ADDED: What would it take for Obama to say Bush was right... or anything close to that... just a decent amount of respect for his predecessor?
AND: Here's the link to the NYT article, indicating that the decision represents no real judgment by Obama or Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., but simply yielding to Congress's "steep new restrictions on transferring any detainees from Guantánamo Bay onto United States soil, making such a trial impossible."
UPDATE: Holder speaks (live).
ADDED: Holder is adamant that his original decision was correct. Congress made it impossible for him to follow his original policy. The last question challenged him about how long it will take: perhaps another 10 years? He answers quickly and testily and — to my eye — stomps out of the room.
Whatever happened to the "purchase" Larry Tribe thought Elena Kagan had on Anthony Kennedy's brain?
Remember that embarrassing sentence in Larry Tribe's letter pushing President Obama to nominate Elena Kagan? "Neither Steve Breyer nor Ruth Ginsburg has much of a purchase on Tony Kennedy’s mind." Remember discussing that in the context of a case called Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn when it was argued last fall? I wrote:
The majority said there was no standing, which means that it did not reach the Establishment Clause question.
ADDED: Justice Kennedy makes the key distinction between this case and other cases (notably Flast) in which taxpayers had standing to challenge taxing and spending laws using the Establishment Clause:
This is a case about tax credits for contributions made to private tuition funds that make grants to students who go to private schools. Many of those schools are religious and some of the qualified funds only make grants to students who go to religious religious schools. [Lyle] Denniston begins his description [of the argument] with a claim that he detected Elena Kagan's purchase on the mind of Tony Kennedy (a subject we were just talking about the other day). Denniston says Kagan and Kennedy — the 2 Ks (sounds like trouble!) — "took crucial, reinforcing roles." I don't see much support for that point.
This case has a substantive Establishment Clause issue — whether government is subsidizing religion — and a threshold issue about standing — whether taxpayers can sue over this. These issues are linked because they both may depend on whether a tax credit turns the privately donated money into money from the state....Today, the Supreme Court came out with the decision in the case and there's Kennedy writing for the majority and Kagan —with (guess who?) Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor — writing for the dissent.
The majority said there was no standing, which means that it did not reach the Establishment Clause question.
ADDED: Justice Kennedy makes the key distinction between this case and other cases (notably Flast) in which taxpayers had standing to challenge taxing and spending laws using the Establishment Clause:
[T]ax credits and governmental expenditures do not both implicate individual taxpayers in sectarian activities. A dissenter whose tax dollars are “extracted and spent” knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience. In that instance the taxpayer’s direct and particular connection with the establishment does not depend on economic speculation or political conjecture. The connection would exist even if the conscientious dissenter’s tax liability were unaffected or reduced. When the government declines to impose a tax, by contrast, there is no such connection between dissenting taxpayer and alleged establishment. Any financial injury remains speculative. And awarding some citizens a tax credit allows other citizens to retain control over their own funds in accordance with their own consciences.Dissenting, Justice Kagan states the opposing position:
Cash grants and targeted tax breaks are means of accomplishing the same government objective — to provide financial support to select individuals or organizations. Taxpayers who oppose state aid of religion have equal reason to protest whether that aid flows from the one form of subsidy or the other. Either way, the government has financed the religious activity. And so either way, taxpayers should be able to challenge the subsidy.
Still worse, the Court’s arbitrary distinction threatens to eliminate all occasions for a taxpayer to contest the government’s monetary support of religion. Precisely because appropriations and tax breaks can achieve identical objectives, the government can easily substitute one for the other.I love the clarity of Kagan's writing. But it will take more than that to gain purchase on Kennedy's brain. The truth is that Flast is out of line with a whole lot of other standing cases. Distinguishing this case from Flast may seem like a strain, but it's a more a matter of not letting the anomaly grow. Justices Scalia concurs, with Justice Thomas, to say Flast should be overruled altogether, and not just costrained. Scalia is pulling on one side, and Kagan on the other, and Kennedy maintains his purchase on the center.
Bill Clinton on arming Libyan rebels: "“I might need to know a little more, I would be inclined to do it."
That's nicely hedged. Know a little more. But inclined to do it. Is he saying more than I don't know? I don't know.
"Gov. Scott Walker is pushing for an additional $1 million during the next two years to crack down on Internet predators who prey on children..."
Does Wisconsin really need 33 people investigating internet pedophiles?
Protecting children has been a priority for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who requested the extra money and staff.So it's Van Hollen's pet project. I'm skeptical. If you're making cuts everywhere, there should be a strong presumption against expanding anything. I express this opinion out loud, and Meade defends Walker. I'm all "Don't be such a Walker whore," and he coins a term:
"We can only speculate the number of cases in a given year are going to increase," [said Jenniffer Price, who oversees the Department of Justice's Internet Crimes Against Children unit]. "The more investigators we have to investigate, the more cases will be worked."
Street Walker.
YouTube path, reverse order.
I ended up listening to The Swingle Singers doing "Eleanor Rigby" a cappella, found in the sidebar while listening to SongstaForLife doing "Eleanor Rigby" (also a cappella), which I got to after SongstaForLife doing "Friday" — that much-mocked Rebecca Black thing — in a way that I found charming, which I got to from the faux-Dylan "Friday," which I got sent to from this news article telling me that faux-Dylan thing is the "Internet Meme of the Week," which came in through my Google alert on "Dylan."
Will Obama be reelected?
Assume you must make a $1,000 bet. You'll forfeit the $1,000 immediately if you don't choose one side or the other right now. You'd better think fast and be honest, because you have a $1,000 stake in getting this right, not expressing your hope-and-change feelings. This isn't about your preference. This is about winning a bet:
"I don't agree with Obama on everything, but I respect him and I trust him."
Obama's 2012 campaign launch video is all individuals, talking to other individuals, and making a difference....
This is a nice effort at reviving the old feeling of generality that marked Obama's 2008 campaign.
This is a nice effort at reviving the old feeling of generality that marked Obama's 2008 campaign.
"Hey! Barack Obama emailed me that he's running for President!"
"Good thing you got that post up yesterday."
"Oh, he can still back out. Of course, he has to say he's running. Then later... some beautiful elaborate I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes.... that sort of thing. Hmmm... I should reply to this email."
"Can you reply to that email?"
"Yeah. They want you to reply. In fact there's a big old donate button."
"How about a doughnut button? He ought to have a doughnut button."
"A lot of people think the whole Obama presidency is a big old doughnut button."
"Yep."
April 3, 2011
"How to Steal Like an Artist."
"(And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me.)"
(Via email from Reader_i_am.)
I liked:
Speaking of books: "Write the book you want to read." That's #3 of the things nobody told Austin Kleon. (Austin Kleon is the guy this post links to.) Hey, I'm writing the blog I want to read.
(Via email from Reader_i_am.)
I liked:
I also love the book Just Kids by Patti Smith. I love it because it’s a story about how two friends moved to New York and learned to be artists. You know how they learned to be artists? They pretended to be artists. I’ll spoil the book for you and describe my favorite scene, the turning scene in the book: Patti Smith and her friend Robert Maplethorpe dress up in all their gypsy gear and they go to Washington Square, where everybody’s hanging out, and this old couple kind of gawks at them, and the woman says to her husband, “Oh, take their picture. I think they’re artists.” “Oh, go on,” he shrugged. “They’re just kids.”It's funny, I picked up "Just Kids" just today as the next part-finished book in the house to finish. I'm on a finishing unfinished books kick.
Speaking of books: "Write the book you want to read." That's #3 of the things nobody told Austin Kleon. (Austin Kleon is the guy this post links to.) Hey, I'm writing the blog I want to read.
The reason why Obama should not want to run for a second term in 2012.
If he is reelected, then that will be the end of running for President. He'll be 54 years old, and what will he do? Move to Hawaii and play golf? But he could move to Hawaii and play golf in January 2013, if that's an enticing prospect. And, if he does, he won't have maxed out his eligibility for being President. He can tantalize us, year after year, with the possibility that he would run for another term — a fascinatingly out-of-sequence term. The thing he's best at is running for President. Why let that game expire? He could toy with it in 2016, when he's 58, and in 2020, when he's a clear-visioned 62, and in 2024, when he's a well-seasoned 66, and in 2028, when he's a beneficent elder, offering his services once again, because his country longs for the golden days of 2011. It will never end, as long as the icon of hope and change — oh, my lord, I typo'd "hope and chains"! — walks the face of the earth... unless he serves that second term.
(Idea originally suggested by Meade and developed in a conversation between Althouse + Meade that took place as we walked on the Ice Age Trail, Saturday, April 3, 2011.)
(Idea originally suggested by Meade and developed in a conversation between Althouse + Meade that took place as we walked on the Ice Age Trail, Saturday, April 3, 2011.)
"$$$$ for every "A", $$ for every "B", reduction of above for any "C" and complete forfeiture for any "D."
"Also, 2 hours at the dining room table five nights-a-week. No TV. No music. No phone. I didn't force them to do homework -if they just wanted to stare at each other for two hours, OK with me. They were not as pleased with this as they were with 'bribery' and did try sitting there and day-dreaming for a couple of nights. And then, the strangest thing happened. Their friends thought this arrangement was so novel, they had to see for themselves. For the next two years, our house became a study hall for 8-10 kids almost every night."
mm's method.
mm's method.
"Conservative pundits and operators do their best to silence any professor who ventures into the public realm with the kind of unwelcome facts that scholarly and scientific expertise can produce."
Writes Anthony Grafton in The New Yorker, applauding the University of Wisconsin's defense of Professor William Cronon, who was the target of an "open records" request from the Wisconsin Republican Party.
I too applaud the UW's treatment of the Cronon case, but I don't know why Grafton thinks its so politically one-sided. Don't liberal pundits and operators do just as much to try to silence any professor who ventures into the public realm with the kind of unwelcome facts that scholarly and scientific expertise can produce?
There are far fewer professors who disappoint liberals, because that's the political structure of academia. But correct for that. I don't see any reason to think that conservatives are more aggressive than liberals in their efforts to intimidate university professors.
I too applaud the UW's treatment of the Cronon case, but I don't know why Grafton thinks its so politically one-sided. Don't liberal pundits and operators do just as much to try to silence any professor who ventures into the public realm with the kind of unwelcome facts that scholarly and scientific expertise can produce?
There are far fewer professors who disappoint liberals, because that's the political structure of academia. But correct for that. I don't see any reason to think that conservatives are more aggressive than liberals in their efforts to intimidate university professors.
Harry Reid: "Of course, this man in Florida who burnt the Koran, it’s a publicity stunt."
On "Face the Nation," today. (Here's the PDF transcript.)
ADDED: Later in the show, Lindsey Graham opines on the same issue:
Basically, [he] had nobody in his church anyway and this is an effort to get some publicity for him. He got it. But in the process ten to twenty people have been killed. You-- you-- you-- religious extremism in any form is wrong. And certainly all these deaths is wrong. I’m very, very disappointed that this man who we had some dealings with in January, December, who indicated he wouldn’t do anything. And suddenly, I guess, the publicity had fallen down a little bit so he decided to do this. It’s-- it’s really too bad. And, I think people should understand the consequences of what they do un-- under the guise of reli-- religion.What guise? Criticizing a rival religion's scripture is religion. What would it be a guise for? You can't just say "publicity." Most public speakers are trying to get attention. Reid himself is trying to get attention by going on "Face the Nation."
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you introduced a resolution to condemn this by the Congress... or where do you go from here?
SENATOR HARRY REID: We’ll-- we’ll take a look at this, of course. John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been on top of this. He’s made many trips to Afghanistan. And I think we’ll take a look at this as to whether we need hearings or not, I don’t know.And that's the end of the discussion. Zero attention is paid to freedom of speech or religious freedom. Neither Schieffer nor Reid gives a damn (or dares to say he gives a damn). Pathetic.
ADDED: Later in the show, Lindsey Graham opines on the same issue:
You know I wish we could find some way to-- to-- to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea but we’re in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. So burning a Koran is a terrible thing. But it doesn’t justify killing someone. Burning a bible would be a terrible thing but it doesn’t justify murder. But having said that, any time we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk we ought to do it. So I look forward to working with Senator Kerry and Reid and others to condemn this, condemn violence all over the world based in the name of religion."[T]o condemn this"... this what? "[C]ondemn violence all over the world based in the name of religion." I can't tell whether he's condemning the Koran-burning or the murders purported inspired by Koran-burning. Is Koran-burning "violence"? Graham is incomprehensibly mealy-mouthed. "Free speech is a great idea... any time we can push back...we ought to do it"? What WWII precedents does he mean to invoke, and can he get his position — assuming he can state it clearly — anywhere close to American constitutional law?
Court rules that a dog must die because he looks like a pit bull.
In Ireland, where pit bulls are illegal. The dog, Lennox, is a cross between a bulldog and a Labrador.
Before the young dog was seized from his home he had committed no crime and no members of the public had complained about his behavior. On the day he was seized three police officers arrived at the family home unannounced along with the Dog Wardens. The police were sent away and the Wardens sat down with the family, had tea, smoked cigarettes and played with the family's other dogs.
The Wardens then measured Lennox's muzzle and rear legs with a dress-maker's tape measure and decided, without any professional advice, that he was a "Pit Bull Type Breed"....
"I was determined... not to raise a soft, entitled child...."
"Classical music was the opposite of decline, the opposite of laziness, vulgarity, and spoiledness."
I read books with a pen in hand and mark passages I want to be able to find later. That's the only thing I marked in "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," which I'd read about a third of a few weeks ago and picked up and read to the end yesterday. Those 2 quotes appear on page 22 (of the hardback). As you probably know, the book is a memoir written by a lawprof, Amy Chua, who goes to great lengths driving her 2 daughters to learn to play the piano and violin and portrays this intense venture as Chinese.
You're left on your own in deciding whether to hate her for being so cruel or to worry that you should be (or should have been) a whole lot tougher on your own kids. In the process of making that decision, you've got to face up to or struggle to deny the way you are influenced by the extremely high level of accomplishment the 2 daughters reach. There has to be some degree of admiration or envy pushing you around.
See? She's a lawprof, and, I, a lawprof, see the book as setting up a Socratic inquiry. The lawprof keeps her distance as she gives you something complex to try to pull apart and examine. I can see why I marked the passage I marked and then left the pen capped. There's a very basic goal that is easy to accept in itself: We don't want to raise soft, entitled children. But how do you do that? Here's one example of someone trying to achieve that goal. Now, what have we learned about the goal and how to achieve it?
There's something skeletal about the story Chua tells. The accomplishments of the daughters are documented objectively. There are specific honors that can't be denied. But we can only imagine the cost. Chua presents herself as a cartoon character, and she all but excludes her husband from the picture. I have no idea why these 2 people are married or what their relationship is like. That's one way to write a memoir. I've read other memoirs that deal with ongoing marriages that way. (One is "Dreams From My Father.")
A novelist could find rich material for a brilliant rewrite in "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (or "Dreams From My Father"). There is so much missing from these stories. Create the flesh that could hang on those bones.
I read books with a pen in hand and mark passages I want to be able to find later. That's the only thing I marked in "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," which I'd read about a third of a few weeks ago and picked up and read to the end yesterday. Those 2 quotes appear on page 22 (of the hardback). As you probably know, the book is a memoir written by a lawprof, Amy Chua, who goes to great lengths driving her 2 daughters to learn to play the piano and violin and portrays this intense venture as Chinese.
You're left on your own in deciding whether to hate her for being so cruel or to worry that you should be (or should have been) a whole lot tougher on your own kids. In the process of making that decision, you've got to face up to or struggle to deny the way you are influenced by the extremely high level of accomplishment the 2 daughters reach. There has to be some degree of admiration or envy pushing you around.
See? She's a lawprof, and, I, a lawprof, see the book as setting up a Socratic inquiry. The lawprof keeps her distance as she gives you something complex to try to pull apart and examine. I can see why I marked the passage I marked and then left the pen capped. There's a very basic goal that is easy to accept in itself: We don't want to raise soft, entitled children. But how do you do that? Here's one example of someone trying to achieve that goal. Now, what have we learned about the goal and how to achieve it?
There's something skeletal about the story Chua tells. The accomplishments of the daughters are documented objectively. There are specific honors that can't be denied. But we can only imagine the cost. Chua presents herself as a cartoon character, and she all but excludes her husband from the picture. I have no idea why these 2 people are married or what their relationship is like. That's one way to write a memoir. I've read other memoirs that deal with ongoing marriages that way. (One is "Dreams From My Father.")
A novelist could find rich material for a brilliant rewrite in "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (or "Dreams From My Father"). There is so much missing from these stories. Create the flesh that could hang on those bones.
"4 Out of 5 Zombies Recommend Neo-Con Brains."
A sign at the zombie protest here in Madison yesterday. Sorry, I missed that one. I have a bad case of protest fatigue.
Nice to see that the zombies appreciate the high quality of neo-con brains. They've done the taste test.
Nice to see that the zombies appreciate the high quality of neo-con brains. They've done the taste test.
"Illinois Workers Find That a Death Penalty Ban Abolishes Their Jobs, Too."
Says the NYT.
It's a fascinating life crisis. The celebration followed by ironic job loss could be the first scene in a movie. But what would happen next?
[S]ome of the very people who pushed and prayed most fervently to end capital punishment in the state found that the triumph came with a termination notice.The "workers" in question are lawyers and others at the Office of the State Appellate Defender. (Odd to see lawyers called "workers.") The job market in the law field is rough, and it must be especially grim to have put your specialty out of business in the state where you are licensed to practice law. Grim... but ecstatic. These were people devoting their lives to fighting the death penalty.
“We’ve done such good work that we’ve put ourselves out of work,” joked [Wendi ]. Liss, 37, who spent a decade as a mitigation specialist assembling information to persuade juries to spare the lives of defendants....
It's a fascinating life crisis. The celebration followed by ironic job loss could be the first scene in a movie. But what would happen next?
April 2, 2011
"TV Ad Spending By Special Interest Groups Tops $1 Million in Wisconsin Judicial Election."
According to the Brennan Center, as of March 29th. This means that only 18% of the spending has come from the candidates.
UPDATE: The Brennan Center's numbers as of March 31st show 4 special interest groups spending more than $2.16 million. Greater Wisconsin Committee has now spent more than $993,000 on TV ads for Kloppenburg. Three groups supporting Prosser have spent more than $1.16 million.
Through Sunday, March 27th, three special interest groups had spent more than $1.14 million on TV... Leading the pack is the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee, which, beginning March 18th, has spent more than $575,000 on blistering attack ads targeting Justice Prosser.... [T]he conservative groups Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturer & Commerce’s WMC Issues Mobilization Council, Inc. have also poured money into the race on pro-Prosser TV ads. Through Sunday, March 27th, the Club for Growth had spent approximately $415,000, and the WMC Issues Mobilization Council about $150,000. These numbers are expected to rise substantially in the final week before Election Day: According to the Brennan Center, 42 percent of all judicial election TV spending in 2010 occurred in the last week of the election season.Consider that in this race, the candidates both opted into a public financing scheme that capped them each at $300,000.
UPDATE: The Brennan Center's numbers as of March 31st show 4 special interest groups spending more than $2.16 million. Greater Wisconsin Committee has now spent more than $993,000 on TV ads for Kloppenburg. Three groups supporting Prosser have spent more than $1.16 million.
"KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Violent protests over the burning of a Koran in Florida..."
"... flared for a second straight day, with young men rampaging through the streets of this southern capital, flying Taliban flags and wielding sticks. Nine people were killed and 81 injured in the disturbances... [S]everal thousand young men, shouting slogans calling for death to Americans and to the Karzai government, were still rioting after several hours on Saturday, setting tires aflame throughout the city, burning cars and attacking journalists trying to cover the disorder...."
The NYT reports.
The NYT reports.
"My students are out of control... They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners."
"They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."
I dug up that longer version of what a teacher wrote on her Facebook page after reading about it in this story about another teacher who wrote, in Facebook, about her first graders as future criminals and said she felt like "a warden." Both teachers were suspended. Also:
I dug up that longer version of what a teacher wrote on her Facebook page after reading about it in this story about another teacher who wrote, in Facebook, about her first graders as future criminals and said she felt like "a warden." Both teachers were suspended. Also:
And Chicago Public Schools officials are investigating a teacher who apparently posted a photo on her Facebook page of a student who wore Jolly Rancher candies in her hair. The 7-year-old girl's mother complained to school officials after she saw negative comments written about her daughter's picture on the page.There's a big difference between writing in general about the discipline problems in your school and posting a photograph of an individual child. I don't think schools should cover up for their own discipline problems by attacking the livelihood of a teacher who dares to describe them in public.
April 1, 2011
Andrew Sullivan: "King Barack I."
Oh! The disillusionment!
Many of us supported this president because he promised to bring back the constitutional balance after the theories of Yoo, Delahunty, et al put the president on a par with emperors and kings in wartime. And yet in this Libya move, what difference is there between Bush and Obama? In some ways, Bush was more respectful of the Congress, waiting for a vote of support before launching us like an angry bird into the desert.
2 new anti-Prosser/pro-Kloppenburg ads... presented for discussion purposes here.
In these last few days before the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court election, third party ads dominate. Here are 2 that were put up on YouTube today by a group called GreaterWisComm. I got to the first one via Dave Weigel, who doesn't express any opinion other than that the ad uses video of "Prosser looking like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon." The ad exploits the incident, which we talked about here, in which Prosser, in private, called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch." The video looks like it comes from long ago when Prosser was a state legislature.
It's up to the viewer to figure out what the context of that is, but obviously, it plants doubts and stirs up emotions.
The next one I discovered after clicking through to the YouTube user's page. It's quite long and begins with cheerful music and happy images of the recent protests here in Madison. Purported misdeeds of the Republicans are cited, Prosser is linked to the Republicans, and his opponent JoAnne Kloppenburg is presented as a political solution:
Again, it's a confusing ad. It does a good job of putting a happy face on the protests. Where's the corresponding ad that makes the protests look nightmarish and portrays the protesters as intent on overturning the results of the last election by installing Kloppenburg on the court?
Ads like this are deplorable, but they probably work, and with third parties putting them up, the candidate has deniability.
It's up to the viewer to figure out what the context of that is, but obviously, it plants doubts and stirs up emotions.
The next one I discovered after clicking through to the YouTube user's page. It's quite long and begins with cheerful music and happy images of the recent protests here in Madison. Purported misdeeds of the Republicans are cited, Prosser is linked to the Republicans, and his opponent JoAnne Kloppenburg is presented as a political solution:
Again, it's a confusing ad. It does a good job of putting a happy face on the protests. Where's the corresponding ad that makes the protests look nightmarish and portrays the protesters as intent on overturning the results of the last election by installing Kloppenburg on the court?
Ads like this are deplorable, but they probably work, and with third parties putting them up, the candidate has deniability.
A million nights in Vegas?
A screen-grab from yesterday's CNN.com has us distracted by the number 319:
UW Chancellor Biddy Martin's message about professors' "zone of privacy" in email communication.
This is the general policy, stated on the occasion of the Wisconsin Republican Party's effort to delve into Prof. William Cronon's email related to the recent protests:
We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of the faculty member's job responsibilities and that could be considered personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law. We are also excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is entailed by it....
Scholars and scientists pursue knowledge by way of open intellectual exchange. Without a zone of privacy within which to conduct and protect their work, scholars would not be able to produce new knowledge or make life-enhancing discoveries....
When faculty members use email or any other medium to develop and share their thoughts with one another, they must be able to assume a right to the privacy of those exchanges, barring violations of state law or university policy....
This does not mean that scholars can be irresponsible in the use of state and university resources or the exercise of academic freedom. We have dutifully reviewed Professor Cronon's records for any legal or policy violations, such as improper uses of state or university resources for partisan political activity. There are none.
U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is investigating Yale "for its failure to eliminate a hostile sexual environment."
Apparently, the problem is male students:
One ... incident took pace in October last year when a group of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity pledges were surrounded by brothers from the same fraternity who chanted: 'No means yes! Yes means anal' at them in an area where most female freshman live.
In another incident, in September 2009, the so-called 'pre-season scouting report' was issued via email in which a group of male students circulated a list of 53 female students ranking them in order of how many beers they would have to have before they slept with them....
And on January 2008, a group of pledges from the Zeta Psi fraternity surrounded the entrance to the Yale Women's Centre at midnight holding signs saying, 'We Love Yale Sluts'.
It is argued that this behaviour limited women's equal access to educational opportunities at the university and that there were 'inadequate responses' to the sexual misconduct.Yeah, "behaviour." It's the British press reporting this. The Daily Mail... where, by the way, the sidebar is sexually harassing me.
"He felt in a position to say he knew now that hell had nothing to do with fires or frozen troops."
"Lock a fellow in a windowless room to perform rote tasks just tricky enough to make him have to think, but still rote, tasks involving numbers that connected to nothing he’d ever see or care about, a stack of tasks that never went down, and nail a clock to the wall where he can see it, and just leave the man there to his mind’s own devices."
A vision of hell — quoted in the NYT review — found in "The Pale King," the book that was pieced together out of the unfinished pages and notes left by the self-murdered David Foster Wallace.
A vision of hell — quoted in the NYT review — found in "The Pale King," the book that was pieced together out of the unfinished pages and notes left by the self-murdered David Foster Wallace.
It’s impossible to know whether Wallace, had he finished the book, might have decided to pare away such passages, or whether he truly wanted to test the reader’s tolerance for tedium...What the reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, does not say is that, in addition to wondering whether this section would have been edited down or rewritten, the reader must wonder whether this is the expression — or the cause — of suicidal despair. Reading long tedious passages — deliberately tedious passages? — how can one escape from the nagging thought that the author himself escaped from this tedium?
The big clash in the novel pits old-school I.R.S. employees, “driven by self-righteousness,” against newer ones with a corporate desire “to maximize revenue.” We have to slog through stultifying technical talk about “the distinctions between §162 and §212(2) deductions related to rental properties,” and inside-baseball accounts of obscure battles within the I.R.S. hierarchy. There is even one chapter that consists of little but a series of I.R.S. workers turning page after page after page.
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