Democracy trumped by big money.

"Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan: Why we're committing $120 million to Bay Area schools."

Almost four years ago we started supporting efforts to improve district schools and expand charter schools in Newark, New Jersey...

To see what happened in Newark, read "Schooled: Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education."

They got an education... and presumably they learned something. The local people might not appreciate the imaginative, dreaming experiment performed on their children. There seems to be a subtext that the subjects of the experiment have such bad prospects that it's hard to put them in a worse position.

"Invasive species: envisioning the future of food in America."

A photo series.

Via NPR, which says: "Scientists have said that one way to deal with these creatures is to eat them up. The problem is, they don't seem very appetizing. While some of these critters might be perfectly edible, they can't really compete with hamburgers or cupcakes."

Just make them into hamburgers... and cupcakes.

Frankly, I'm not buying "lemon curd tart in chocolate and earthworm crust, with a crispy earthworm topping."

The "envisioning" really should come in the form of putting things out of our vision, which is what hamburgers are already doing. Grind it up. Make it disappear. You don't think about the insects (and excrement!) that have taken their place inside your food.

Parlors I walk right past without thinking of entering.

Politico: "Parlor game: What's next for Jay Carney?"

The Wall Street Journal says Scott Walker "dodged" its point about settling the John Doe investigation.

Walker said he had no power to settle the federal lawsuit that attacks the investigation because he's not a party to that lawsuit, but...

Sorry, that's disingenuous... Our editorial concerned Mr. Walker's willingness to settle with prosecutors over his role in the state John Doe probe. The worry is that he might settle to help his re-election campaign while throwing his allies over the side.

Such a settlement would make even less sense after the latest judicial order late Friday by federal district Judge Rudolph Randa rebuking John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz. Our editorial had suggested that Mr. Schmitz might be in contempt of Judge Randa's May 8 preliminary injunction against the John Doe by trying to cut a deal with Mr. Walker. Mr. Schmitz followed by asking Judge Randa to "clarify" if the injunction included "all activities related" to the investigation, presumably including any talks with Mr. Walker's lawyers.

ADDED: Here's my post about the older editorial and before Walker made the statement discussed in the new editorial:

[I]t's not as if Walker could settle O'Keefe's claim. But Walker might bind himself not to associate with the Club, when in fact there was a right of association. That is, Walker could unilaterally render the Club's right to associate unusable.

Club for Growth sues in Wisconsin state court to force the Government Accountability Board out of the John Doe investigation.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

The lawsuit argues that the involvement of the GAB — a civil enforcement agency — in the criminal John Doe probe has created a "Frankenstein monster" that has deprived O'Keefe of some of his legal rights.

"The result is terrible to behold: a creature that covertly collects sensitive information on political activities that do not — and cannot — constitute a crime, all the while maintaining a nearly impenetrable shield of secrecy," the lawsuit reads....

"Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling does not have the authority to stop a $2 billion sale of his team..."

".. because he has been determined to be mentally unfit to make decisions related to the family trust..."

Now, there's a clever move in a devious game, right?

On theme today — the theme is self-refutation — the name of Obama's new press secretary: Josh Earnest.

So Jay Carney is out, and the new Obama mouthpiece is Josh Earnest. Great name! And that name is on theme today. We were just talking about self-refuting statements... on the occasion of Hillary's "I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans... Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me."

2 Pinocchios for "A ‘happy’ Obamacare infographic designed to be tweeted."

"We realize an infographic has to condense information, but there is a high burden to meet for one designed to be tweeted. In this case, Enroll America grabbed the statistics that cast the Affordable Care Act in the best possible light, even though a huge percentage of the respondents had barely a chance to experience the system and form opinions about it. We highly doubt many people actually read the report before they retweeted the graphic."

"Shinseki resigns after VA scandal."

WaPo headline — apparently true, but not yet supported by the accompanying text, which begins:

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki apologized publicly Friday for what he called an “indefensible” lack of integrity among some senior leaders of the VA health-care system, and he announced several remedial steps, including a process to remove top officials at the troubled VA medical center in Phoenix.

Shinseki gave no indication that he intends to resign, despite growing calls for him to step down because of the scandal.

Hillary self-refutes: "I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans."

"It’s just plain wrong, and it’s unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me."

From her forthcoming book, previewed in Politico.

By "self-refutes," I mean a statement that asserts something and cancels it out simultaneously. I'm trying to think of some famous examples of this, but failing that, I'll just make up a sentence that demonstrates the kind of statement I'm talking about: I will not indulge in hyperbole as I present myself to you as the most qualified individual who has ever run for the office of President of the United States.

Ah! I thought of a well-known example: any statement that begins with the words "Not to mention." And here's one I found on the internet: "There are no absolute claims."

And here's something: "Internal Contradiction: Fallacies of Self Refutation." That quotes Aristotle,  — "One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time" — and Thomas Paine:

"But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd: -- for example, Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the men which were on the face of the earth." If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment."

Let us do unto Hillary as Thomas Paine did unto Moses.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paul Zrimsek said:

Bush lied, people [censored]! 

"In New Orleans, major school district closes traditional public schools for good."

"With the start of the next school year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation."

WaPo reports. 

For contrast, read this New Yorker article by Dale Russakoff: "Schooled: Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education." Excerpt:

... Ras Baraka [the principal of Central High School, a city councilman, and post-Booker mayoral candidate] held a press conference in front of Weequahic High School, denouncing the plan as “a dismantling of public education.… It needs to be halted.”...

In late January, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, spoke at a school-board meeting at First Avenue School in Newark. Five hundred people filled the auditorium; another three hundred and fifty listened in the cafeteria, and more than a hundred stood outside, demanding entry. Weingarten pledged the A.F.T.’s support “until this community gets its schools back,” and declared, “The nation is watching Newark.”...

Shavar Jeffries [lawprof and mayoral candidate] believes that the Newark backlash could have been avoided. Too often, he said, “education reform . . . comes across as colonial to people who’ve been here for decades. It’s very missionary, imposed, done to people rather than in coöperation with people.” Some reformers have told him that unions and machine politicians will always dominate turnout in school-board elections and thus control the public schools. He disagrees: “This is a democracy. A majority of people support these ideas. You have to build coalitions and educate and advocate.” As he put it to me at the outset of the reform initiative, “This remains the United States. At some time, you have to persuade people."

That mayoral election took place on May 13th. Baraka beat Jeffries:

Was Ras Baraka’s win a referendum on Cory Booker?...

... Baraka and Booker are polar opposites. Booker is the Ivy-League and Oxford educated, suburban-bred son of IBM executives who brought a deracialized campaign persona, neoliberal policy proposals and tremendous national and international attention to the city. Baraka is the son of the late poet Amiri Baraka who brought his parents progressive, nationalist and activist sensibilities into formal politics. The only things these two men share are a common racial identification and birth year.

"These two amazing young men, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe, truly could have gone all night."

"Having outlasted 279 of their colleagues, they went toe-to-toe, round after round, demonstrating their facility across every challenge the English language could provide."

There was no reason to go past twenty-two rounds and the limits of the Championship Word List, because neither of these boys was better than the other tonight. Both were outstanding. All that would have happened, had this gone further, was one would have gotten lucky and the other, not—but neither would have been "better" in any meaningful sense.

And: "The competition was against the dictionary, not each other,"  said Sriram, in a nice demonstration of grace and style... to go with the fantastic spelling.

"The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas."

I got a lot out of this NYT Magazine profile of the poet Patricia Lockwood. I'll just give one excerpt, about her father:

Greg Lockwood married Lockwood’s mother, Karen, when they were both teenagers; he had just joined the Navy. Karen was raised Catholic, but Greg was an atheist. During one patrol, on a nuclear submarine off the coast of Norway, he underwent what he later described as “the deepest conversion on record.” He claims it grew out of soul-searching following several personal setbacks, but the family legend ascribes it to the fact that he and the crew on his previous patrol watched “The Exorcist” more than 70 times in 88 days. Whatever the catalyst, Lockwood became a devout Christian. He started a family, attended college and seminary and eventually was ordained as a Lutheran minister. And then one morning in 1985 he “woke up Catholic”; a few years later he became a priest, with the zeal of the twice-converted.

In Lockwood’s telling, her father ruled the home as a loving and idiosyncratic patriarch who wore his cassock in the living room, or else very little — “It was either full regalia or nothing” — watched sword-and-sandal movies obsessively, played blues guitar, ate copious amounts of sausage and fed the family a steady dose of prog rock. 

Also at the link: very quirky sex jokes, like: "Sext: I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me."

"[Obama's] reliance on baseball and football metaphors does reveal him to be an American exceptionalist of sorts. If he weren't, he'd use soccer analogies."

"Football, after all, is the most distinctively American sport; and baseball, although popular in some Asian and Latin American countries, is a close second. To people in most of the world's countries, except Greece, Obama might as well be speaking Greek when he talks about 'singles' and 'doubles' and 'home runs.' Then again, Obama himself got a bit confused. He said he'd 'stick to baseball,' then proceeded to stick to football, or maybe switch to basketball. In the last two sports, teams on offense 'advance the ball'; in baseball, it is the offensive player who advances from one base to the next. 'Put the ball in play' is, however, a baseball term."

Says James Taranto.

ADDED: Also at that link, I liked this:

Life Imitates the Onion

"Woman a Leading Authority on What Shouldn't Be in Poor People's Grocery Carts"--headline, Onion, May 1

"The Campaign for Junk Food: Michelle Obama on Attempts to Roll Back Healthy Reforms"--headline and subheadline, New York Times, May 29

"And now, with this diploma in hand, most of you will go on to the noblest pursuits, like helping a cable company acquire a telecom company."

"You will defend BP from birds. You will spend hours arguing that the well water was contaminated well before the fracking occurred. One of you will sort out the details of my pre-nup. A dozen of you will help me with my acrimonious divorce. And one of you will fall in love in the process. I'm talking to you, Noah Feldman!"

In case you're wondering what Exene Cervenka thinks of the Santa Barbara murders.

She thinks it's a hoax.

And if you don't know who Exene Cervenka is, that just means you don't know your 80s punk, so don't say "Exene who?" Look into your own soul and ask why you are not more informed about punk rock music.

ADDED: This story made me want to show you something I read yesterday when Meade and I were debating about whether a place was "twee," and it became necessary to narrow down exactly what "twee" is supposed to mean. (Did you know "twee" originated as baby-talking the word "sweet"?) Anyway, this — "Twee time: Can we stop the sweet?" — was written in 2011:

"But twee now is almost a value set," said Lisle Mitnik, guitarist for Very Truly Yours, Chicago's best-known twee offering to the latest resurgence of twee-inflected rock. "It's a rejection of societal pressures, a denial of coolness, punk without anger. It can be precious, but a precious moment can also be beautiful."

Indeed, if there's a reason for our current twee proliferation, it's probably here: When every other innocuous TV show and commercial and pop song and animated movie requires the kind of "edge" once associated with a more cantankerous strain of pop culture, what could be more contrarian than a hand-stitched, sunshiney smile delivered without an ounce of detectable irony?

What was that edge that no longer cuts? What is this sweetness that doesn't cloy?