Who's pushing the female candidate aside in the Scott Walker recall primary?

"Labor group's pro-Falk TV ads vanish," headlines the Milwaukee State Journal:

Public employee unions had everything lined up.

Their nemesis, Gov. Scott Walker, was facing an unprecedented recall election. Their hand-picked candidate, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, came out of the blocks running. Their front group was set to spend millions to help push Falk over the top.

So what went wrong?

Read the whole grisly story of how the mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett, who already lost to Scott Walker in 2010 (by a lot!) horned in on the Dane County lady's territory. The unions had all clustered around her, and now, Barrett has swept in. It seems like the lady is supposed to cede her ground and let the man take over. Talk about a war on women!

"The History of English in 10 Minutes."

This video is truly great:



Found via Smithsonian, where I'm finding so much great stuff this morning and wondering why I don't go here all the time.

Somehow I found Chapter 7 "The Age of the Dictionary" the most touching.

Try as [Doctor Johnson] might to stop them, words kept being invented and in 1857 a new book was started which would become the Oxford English Dictionary. It took another 70 years to be finished after the first editor resigned to be an Archbishop, the second died of TB and the third was so boring that half his volunteers quit and one of the ended up in an Asylum.

Well summed up. (Even better with the cartoons running.) And I've read "The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary," which takes much longer than 10 minutes to read, but is also truly great, as is the OED itself. I especially love — I'm madly in love with — the OED website, which requires a subscription.

A piece of writing at the end of a document, e.g. the concluding clause or formula of a letter with the writer's signature, the colophon of a book, etc., the note appended to the epistles in the New Testament, etc.

No, not that. Cash money. You have to go to definition #7 to get to the money stuff and to #8a to get to the idea we're talking about:

A contribution of money for a specified object; spec. the fixed sum promised or required as a periodical contribution by a member of a society, etc. to its funds, or for the purchase of a periodical publication, or in payment for a book published ‘by subscription’ (see 9).

The oldest usage like that comes from 1679 "Had not some of our benefactours been very slow in paying their subscriptions."

"Mitt Romney’s father was born in a small Mormon enclave where family members still live, surrounded by rugged beauty and violent drug cartels."

"This state of feeling in between, I would soon learn, defines nearly every aspect of Mormon life in the old colonies."

The settlers’ descendants, numbering several hundred in all, keep alive a culture that’s always been caught between Mexico and the United States, between the past and the present, between stability and crisis....

The Mexican Revolution played a critical role in the history of the Mormon colonies. Were it not for that 1910 uprising and the years of war that followed, Mitt Romney might have been born in Mexico, and might be living there today raising apples and peaches, as many of his cousins do....

And disqualified from serving as President of the United States.

When the first settlers arrived here in the 1870s and ’80s, some were fleeing a U.S. crackdown on polygamy. (The practice ended after a 1904 LDS edict that polygamists would be excommunicated.) They dug canals to channel the flow of the Piedras Verdes River to their crops, though the river’s waters dropped precipitously low afterward. But lore has it that the Lord quickly provided: An earthquake triggered the return of an abundant flow....

Biographers of the Romney family have pointed to the “indomitable will” of the forebears. But this characteristic, it seems to me, is common to many of the Mormons of the colonies. Their shared determination is one of the things that has allowed a relatively small number of English-speaking people to keep their language and way of life essentially unchanged for more than a century, despite being surrounded by an often hostile Spanish-speaking culture.

Leighton Romney, Mitt Romney’s second cousin, told me he hasn’t met the former governor of Massachusetts. (They have the same great-grandfather, Miles P. Romney, one of the 1885 pioneers.) I met Leighton the next day, on a visit to the fruit cooperative, packing house and export business he runs.

A 53-year-old dual citizen, Leighton has lived in Mexico all his life. Four of his uncles and one aunt served with the U.S. military in World War II. He knows the words to both country’s national anthems. Like people of Latin American descent living in the States, he hasn’t lost his sense of “kinship” to the country of his roots. “We’ve got a lot of similarities to Mexican-Americans,” he said. “We’re American-Mexicans.”

I wonder if the Romney campaign has a plan to roll out this American-Mexican dimension of the candidate. How should that be done? And are Americans ready at this point to absorb the story of how the government of the United States persecuted the Mormons?

"The 20 Best Small Towns in America."

Compiled by Smithsonian, placing "one quality above others: culture."

If you're like me, you'll go through the list looking for one in your state. And there is one in Wisconsin: Menomonie!

"Can legalized prostitution ever be safe and free of exploitation?"

"Or should laws against prostitution remain?" — a forum at the NYT with 8 contributors.

I was interested in "Nevada’s Legal Brothels Are Coercive, Too," which got some real pushback in the comments, including this from Madame Suzette:

It"s obvious that whomever wrote this article has never been to the BunnyRanch and does not have the proper knowledge to even comment on this subject.

I have been the general manager at the BunnyRanch going on 20 years, and whatever this article says it is just the total opposite. These lades are business women who do not have pimps.... Our housing facility are better than most of their own homes. They do not have to do anything they do not wish to do and can leave at any time. In fact we have limos that will drive them in style to their spa appts, errands and shopping. I have never witnessed any violence of any sort at the BunnyRanch ever. The most I have ever seen was perhaps a disagreement between two girls having the same type shoe. I personally would like to invite any one to come out to the Bunnyranch and see for themselves or at least watch an episode or two of the Cathouse.

All ladies before hiring are gone thru an extensive back ground check before they are issued a sheriffs card from the county.

And here's Antoine:

In a sink-or-swim Darwinian society such as we have, what form of work is not to some degree coercive? The need to pay for food, shelter, taxes and everything else all adds up to a form of coercion. The working conditions in brothels described above resemble conditions in other avenues of employment, including factories. It's difficult to make a living, and it's often an unpleasant experience. Everyone should have a choice as to how they want to do it-- even if that choice includes prostitution.

The nose tube...

... diet.

"The Pineapple And The Hare: Can You Answer Two Bizarre State Exam Questions?"

"A story and two questions on the New York state English exam taken by eighth-graders this week has stumped many — including Jeopardy! star Ken Jennings."

The story was written by the amusing author Daniel Pinkwater, but he didn't write it for the exam, and he didn't write the exam questions.

The story is funny and absurd on its own, but the questions, asked of poor students who are struggling not to appreciate the absurd but to get the answers right, are truly evil:

1. Why did the animals eat the pineapple?
a. they were annoyed
b. they were amused
c. they were hungry
d. they wanted to

2. Who was the wisest?
a. the hare
b. moose
c. crow
d. owl

No decent educator would torment students this way. It's an abuse of humor. The teachers should not be amusing themselves, and I feel sorry for the kids who may take a hatred of silliness forward into their newly gloomy lives.

"We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies."

"Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices. They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?"

"In the summer of 1969, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, a staunch conservationist, was reading an article about the impact of college teach-ins on anti-war activism..."

"... when he had a flash of inspiration: What if the energy of these student teach-ins could also be harnessed to address environmental concerns?"

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Today, not thinking about Earth Day at all, we happened to go for a long walk in Governor Nelson State Park. It looked like this:

"I don't even know what to say. I don't know what Philip Humber is doing in this list."

"No idea what my name is doing there, but I'm thankful it's there."

There are 21 names on the list now, pitchers of perfect games.

The man who wrote Nixon's enemies list...

... Chuck Colson, dead at 80.

Medical psilocybin.

Easing your way down life's off ramp.

Why not? The boomers are aging. The death panels will be handing out prescriptions.

Turn on, tune in, drop out... indeed.

"Ode to Magritte."

A cool photo portrait... based on this famous painting and this... according to the photographer who can only remember the name of the first one — which is "Rape" — and not the second one — which is called "The Dangerous Liaison."

Looking for the image of "Rape," I got to a blog called WTF Art History — "For everyone interested in art history who has asked, WTF?" There's some amusing stuff there.

"Obama’s race to save the Rust Belt."

A headline at Salon that has us wondering if maybe, just maybe, Obama's race is the cure-all for everything.

Winning the recall election "It will send a powerful, powerful message that you can stick your neck out..."

"... you can make the tough choices and there will be voters helping you along the way," said Gov. Scott Walker yesterday.

"I think when we win, it will not only reaffirm what we did. It will send a powerful message to every politician…in our state and even in our city governments who are trying to take on the tough issues and do the right thing."

That "when we win" language caused the Chicago Tribune to headline its article "Wisconsin Gov. Walker says he'll prevail in recall," but Walker also said:

"[I'm] running to win, but I’m not afraid to lose.” He said the actions he has taken to stabilize Wisconsin finances will last for the long term, “even if people don’t see it the next election.”

Presumably, if he loses he'll be the GOP candidate in the next election, claiming credit for whatever goes well in the next couple of years and blaming Tom Barrett (or whomever) for whatever goes badly.

At the Dark Tree Café...

... why so gloomy?