"Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before."

Mitt Romney makes income inequality his issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Necessary rebranding for Mr. 47%.

At the Big Colors Café...

... we need more color on January 17th!

That's an old picture, from August 2009, but it cheered me up just now, as I was doing some unnecessarily somber searching through the blog archive (for the phrase "he died doing what he loved," a topic in the comments thread on the first post this morning).

Anyway, in the winter, it's hard to keep up a stream of new photographs. Even when it's a bit warmer — as it has been these last few days — it's still awfully dim and gray most of the time. Meade found a few rays of light over at the dog park last Thursday. I thought Lucy looked pretty grand, seeking out the sunshine:



Anyway, this is a "café" post, so talk about whatever you want.

"When a homophobic preacher began spewing his hateful rantings on an M train this week...

"... one subway rider blessed with the voice of an angel decided to take matters into his own hands and shut him up...."

"An Oklahoma inmate executed amid a legal challenge over lethal injection began complaining about the effects on his body before the drugs were administered..."

"... prompting some to question whether he may have exaggerated his symptoms to help his fellow death row inmates' case."

Charles Warner, who was executed Thursday for the killing of an 11-month-old girl in 1997, said during his last words: 'It feels like acid.' The comment came before any of the lethal drugs were administered and while he was only receiving a saline drip through an intravenous line....

Warner was the first person put to death in Oklahoma since a botched execution in April that left Curt Lockett gasping for air and writhing in pain for 43 minutes. The procedure drew national attention to the drugs used in lethal injections.

On Thursday, after the first drug, a sedative, was administered, Warner again complained: 'My body is on fire.'

"Not only does this postponement... expose the utter brutality of this punishment, it underlines its outrageous inhumanity."

"The notion that Raif Badawi must be allowed to heal so that he can suffer this cruel punishment again and again is macabre and outrageous."

ADDED: That case, from Saudi Arabia, made me think about what Justice Scalia has said about flogging in the United States:

You’ve described yourself as a fainthearted originalist. But really, how fainthearted?

I described myself as that a long time ago. I repudiate that.

So you’re a stouthearted one. 

I try to be. I try to be an honest originalist! I will take the bitter with the sweet! What I used “fainthearted” in reference to was—

Flogging, right? 

Flogging. And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that’s stupid is not unconstitutional. I gave a talk once where I said they ought to pass out to all federal judges a stamp, and the stamp says—Whack! [Pounds his fist.]—STUPID BUT ­CONSTITUTIONAL. Whack! [Pounds again.] STUPID BUT ­CONSTITUTIONAL! Whack! ­STUPID BUT ­CONSTITUTIONAL … [Laughs.] And then somebody sent me one.

"For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families..."

"... according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation...."

Schools, already under intense pressure to deliver better test results and meet more rigorous standards, face the doubly difficult task of trying to raise the achievement of poor children so that they approach the same level as their more affluent peers....

Many Republicans also think that the government ought to give tax dollars to low-income families to use as vouchers for private-school tuition, believing that is a better alternative to public schools....

The report comes as Congress begins debate about rewriting the country’s main federal education law, first passed as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and designed to help states educate poor children.

"Was Times ‘Disgusting’ to Grant Anonymity to Al Qaeda Source?"

NYT "public" editor responds to FBI director James B. Comey.

Man dies in the middle of a days-long internet-gaming binge.

"Hsieh was a regular customer here and always played for consecutive days. When tired, he would sleep face-down on the table or doze off slumped in his chair. That is why we were not aware of his condition in the beginning."

My post title reflects a problem I have with the headline at the link: "Man dies after three-day internet gaming binge."

"Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred."

"Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs."

Good! (Second thing I've read about Holder today that made me write "Good!" (Here's the first.))

"Right after the French Revolution, France abrogated its old laws making blasphemy a crime—and so Charlie Hebdo’s blasphemous depictions of Muhammad are not a crime."

"At the same time, France’s press laws, which date to the late nineteenth century, make it a crime to 'provoke discrimination, hatred, or violence toward a person or group of persons because of their origin or belonging to a particular ethnicity, nation, race, or religion.' In other words, you can ridicule the prophet, but you cannot incite hatred toward his followers. To take two more examples, the actress Brigitte Bardot was convicted and fined for having written, in 2006, about France’s Muslims, 'We are tired of being led around by the nose by this population that is destroying our country.' Meanwhile, the writer Michel Houellebecq (whose new novel was featured in the issue of Charlie Hebdo that came out just before the attack) was brought up on charges, but acquitted, for having said in an interview that Islam 'is the stupidest religion.' Bardot was clearly directing hostility toward Muslim people, and was thus found guilty, while Houellebecq was criticizing their religion, which is blasphemous, but not a crime, in France."

From the New Yorker article "Why French Law Treats Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo Differently."

"Barry Blitt drew next week’s cover, inspired by the photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that are everywhere again."

"'It struck me that King’s vision was both the empowerment of African-Americans, the insistence on civil rights, but also the reconciliation of people who seemed so hard to reconcile,' he said. 'In New York and elsewhere, the tension between the police and the policed is at the center of things. Like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Martin Luther King was taken way too early. It is hard to believe things would have got as bad as they are if he was still around today.'"

The Green Bay Packers are "completely addicted" to the board game "The Settlers of Catan."

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The number of players that have devoted a long night to the game is in the double-digits—including most of the team’s starting offensive line, among others.... The game’s object is to build settlements on the board using “resource” cards. Think of it as a fantasy version of Monopoly. “At first we’re like, ‘What the hell is this? Brick? Wool? What kind of game is this?’” said starting center Corey Linsley....

“Everyone is super competitive, so when you first start playing they don’t tell you all the rules. So you start your moves and they say ‘well, actually you can’t do that’ and it sort of screws you in the game,” [Packers center Garth Gerhart] said. “They get very salty.”...

The game’s popularity among the Packers is due in part to the lack of other things to do in town. Green Bay is the smallest town in the NFL. “We’re always looking for something to do, it’s cold. No one wants to go outside, better find something,” Flynn said. “And this is a great game.”

You can buy the game at Amazon, here.

The Supreme Court takes the same-sex marriage cases.

SCOTUSblog reports:

The Court said it would rule on the power of the states to ban same-sex marriages and to refuse to recognize such marriages performed in another state. A total of two-and-a-half hours was allocated for the hearings, likely in the April sitting. A final ruling is expected by early next summer, probably in late June.

ADDED: This simultaneously boring and exciting. It might be the most exciting boring thing or the most boring exciting thing I've ever seen the Court do.

AND: "In a statement issued on Friday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department will file a friend-of-the-court brief calling for gay and lesbian Americans across the country to be able to marry." Good!

It's really painful to wince for 3 and a half minutes, but I'm afraid you must look at this.

"Secretary of State John Kerry is in Paris after the White House apologized for not sending a high-ranking official to a massive unity rally after the terrorist attacks there," and he's using James Taylor to convey the message "You've Got a Friend."

I love James Taylor, so this is really difficult for me. But of all the douchebaggery in the history of the world... this takes the gateau!

AND: I felt compelled to write some parody lyrics, but then I heard Meade typing away. "Are you writing parody lyrics?" I ask. More typing. Meade: "First!" I see he's written:

I'll come running
to appease you again

Is parody even needed:

Close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there
to brighten up even your darkest nights.

I'm overwhelmed by the absurdity of the idea that on one's darkest nights, it would help to visualize John Kerry.

Hey, ain't it good to know that you've got a friend?
People can be so cold.
They'll hurt you and desert you.
They'll take your soul if you let them,
Oh, but don't you let them.

Indeed. Kerry was cold. Don't let him take your soul! Is that what our dear James was thinking as he sang those holy words with his honestly bald head so steadfastly bowed down?

ADDED: James Taylor has helped Obama before. There was this from October 2012:



Can't you just feel the moonshine?

The boy came back to say that he didn't come back.

He took it all back.

"I did not die. I did not go to Heaven... Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short…. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention...."

 (And yes, as was always there in plain sight, the boy and his father's name is: Malarkey.)

ADDED: From the OED entry for "malarkey":

Etymology: Origin unknown.

A surname Mullarkey , of Irish origin, exists, but no connection is known between any person of that name and this word. Another suggested etymology is from modern Greek μαλακός soft, or its derivative μαλακία , in fig. use (see malacia n.).

From the OED entry for "malacia":

Etymology: In sense 1 < classical Latin malacia a disorder of the stomach, especially as experienced by pregnant women (glossed by Oxf. Lat. Dict. as ‘sickness, nausea’ but interpreted by earlier authors as denoting a craving for unusual or unnatural foods) < ancient Greek μαλακία softness, homosexual desire, sickness < μαλακός soft (see malaco- comb. form) + -ία -ia suffix1. 

Whoa!

"The French authorities are moving aggressively to rein in speech supporting terrorism..."

"... employing a new law to mete out tough prison sentences in a crackdown that is stoking a free-speech debate after last week’s attacks in Paris. Those swept up under the new law include a 28-year-old man of French-Tunisian background who was sentenced to six months in prison after he was found guilty of shouting support for the attackers as he passed a police station in Bourgoin-Jalieu on Sunday. A 34-year-old man who on Saturday hit a car while drunk, injured the other driver and subsequently praised the acts of the gunmen when the police detained him was sentenced Monday to four years in prison. All told, up to 100 people are under investigation for making or posting comments that support or try to justify terrorism..."

The NYT reports. 

(Photograph at the link shows the coffin of one of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre: It has cartoons drawn all over it.)