"I would step back."

(Updated below.)


Eight months ago:

(Update: It's all in the paperwork.)

Perhaps the fault was mine. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.

Last week, when I said I'd heard enough of the emails between (still-)Governor Mark Sanford and "the other woman." There are privacy issues regarding the family, of course, but mainly it was that the image of Sanford doing it with anyone, any time, anywhere, was definitely not something I wanted stuck in my head.

My admonishment was directed toward the mainstream and alternative media. It simply never entered my mind I needed to worry about Sanford himself using the occasion of an AP interview to let his inamorata know she's still his "soul mate."

This is classic masochism on Sanford's part, enduring pain to increase desire. Fine. If he's going to get off on public self-inflicted humiliation, who am I to stand in his way?

In fact, I dedicate this Tom Lehrer classic to the governor--while he still is the governor.

The unforgiving minute

How thoughtful of God:

In a written message to supporters Monday, Mark Sanford asserted that God’s plan for him includes finishing his term as South Carolina governor.

Minute's up.

"Cry-wolf" fundraising versus "Pummel them" fundraising

CQ Politics has an article up this morning on the importance of tonight's 2Q fundraising deadline and with it, the inevitable ratcheting-up of the apocalyptic tone of political fundraising letters:

Without fail, these solicitations note the importance that the press and political analysts ascribe to the second-quarter campaign finance reports, which candidates have to file by July 15. The fundraising implorations often are couched in apocalyptic and urgent tones, warning of the political consequences of the opposition winning the upcoming election.

The article listed several examples of candidates around the country, all specifically stressing the importance of appearances in second-quarter fundraising:

"[My campaign needs] the strongest showing possible to show President Obama and Washington's liberal politicians that our conservative voices will not be silenced." (LA)

And:

Tomorrow, June 30th concludes our 2nd financial filing period with the Federal Elections Committee. This report is extremely important, as my possible opponents will look at this report to find any potential weakness in our re-election efforts. (VA)

And another ask from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (over John Kerry's signature) makes this last-minute plea on behalf of House Dems:

"We need your help to raise $1 million before June 30th to show the world how committed we are to standing with President Obama and against those who are rooting for him - and America - to fail."

As the end of June rolls around, the optics are everything, baby. Nothing too surprising there.

What's irritating--and, unfortunately, it's becoming less surprising with repetition--is the Dems' continued reliance on "cry-wolf" fundraising. It's one thing to acknowledge the importance of the inevitable tea-leaf reading that will follow the July 15th reports, and to dip into your thesaurus under "dire" and "apocalyptic" in the process; it's another, as I noted earlier this month. to stampede donors with alarums about a wolf that just isn't there.

Case in point: Another "cry-wolf" ask yesterday, this one Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, doesn't thump on the importance of the July 15th reports, instead recycling this story:

Dear ________,

We underestimate them at our peril.

Forget what you've heard about a Republican Party in disarray.

It's raising money at an astonishing rate - $14.5 million in a single night. It has history on its side - the president's party nearly always loses congressional seats in off-year elections.

(Emphasis in the original.)

First, raise your hand if you don't believe the Republicans are in disarray right now.

I thought so. Yes, things can turn around in only a cycle or two, but they ain't there yet.

Second, about that $14.5 million--here the story, from three weeks ago:

Standing in as the party's de facto leader, Gingrich was filling a speaking role that Bush held in recent years and that was initially offered to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, this year. He headlined a series of speakers who gave the crowd a blistering review of President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill.

Despite the rallying cry, the GOP faithful still weren't opening their wallets as they have in recent past. The event took in a relatively small fundraising haul of $14.5 million, the lowest total in at least five years. Last year, it raised $21.5 million, compared with $15.4 million in 2007 and $27 million in 2006.

(Emphasis mine.)

I suppose you could call a drop-off like that "astonishing," although it wouldn't be in the sense that the DSCC wants you to have in mind.

And the Gingrich fundraising event wasn't quite the example of party discipline it's being offered up as. Perhaps you remember the story-behind-the-story from that same evening:

The dinner for weeks was clouded by a will-she-or-won't-she mystery about whether Palin would make an appearance.

The party's 2008 vice presidential nominee left frustrated organizers hanging as late as Monday afternoon after she was told she would not have a speaking role at the event.

It was the latest twist in an unusual public flap between the potential 2012 presidential candidate and the Republican congressional leaders who run the fundraising committees.

In March, organizers replaced Palin as the keynote speaker with Gingrich after she wavered over accepting the invitation. Although the committees issued a press release announcing her as the headliner, Palin said she never confirmed that she would speak and wanted to make sure the event did not interfere with state business.

She hadn't been expected to attend until last week, when her advisers approached organizers saying she would be near Washington and would like to come.

Palin, who attended with her husband, Todd, was introduced to the crowd but did not speak.

This is not the leadership of a party with flint-jawed determination and steely-eyed discipline. This is a party that is in trouble, and knows it.

My point is not that the Democratic leadership needs to let up or become complacent. Just the opposite. My point is that the correct rallying cry for Democrats right now is not "They're more dangerous than ever!"

The correct Democratic rallying cry is "They're down, but they're still not out. As long as they're still moving, we need to keep pummeling them."

Another thing: "Cry-wolf" fundraising fits much too comfortably with the sap-headed urge to accommodate Republican intransigence in the name of "bipartisanship" that has some top Democrats (and the purveyors of Beltway Conventional Wisdom) still claiming this morning that the "public option" is not necessarily a deal-killer on health care reform.

By comparison, "Pummel them" fundraising fits nicely with the strategy of strong-arming health care reform through--"public option" and all--using the reconciliation process in the Senate, removing even the threat of an obstructionist Republican filibuster.

If it was a different Republican Party, it would be a different story. But it isn't, and it isn't. "Pummel them" is the way to go, not because the Democrats are looking at a Rove-style permanent majority for decades--but precisely because they aren't.

(Tip of the hat to Doctor Beyond for sharing his mail.)

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered (usually) by Carl, Christine,and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM Morning Show, are posted at LO.

I'm still trying to convince TJ to actually refer to me as "The Poet Laureate of Oregon News" on the air, but he hasn't caved yet. Give it time.

And once again we ended up with an extra limerick that didn't make it on the air, so you can play along at home. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

"There's no danger," she solemnly swears
"They like grapes--why shouldn't I share?"
But though she resisted,
The trial judge insisted
She had to stop ___________ .

(Answer in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "Kick the Habit" Edition

From Farrah Fawcett's point of view, the death of Michael Jackson--for whom the Clock of Celebrity Self-Abuse had been ticking for some time--only a few hours after her own sad but much more dignified death was reported, had to be genuinely irritating.

On the other hand, from SC governor Mark Sanford's point of view, it was a PR-diversion blessing.

Only the protests in Iran top Sanford in the charts in Daryl Cagle's round-up this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich. Daryl Cagle, R. J. Matson, Bob Englehart, John Trever, Henry Payne. and Adam Zyglis.

p3 Best of Show Award: David Fitzsimmons.

p3 Too-Obvious-to-Pass-Up hat-tip: Scott Santis.

p3 Plain Truth Medal (with clusters): Mike Lane

p3 Award for Painful Historical Irony: Pat Bagley

Brush up your Spanish: The translated punch-line for Larry Wright's cartoon is in the Comments, below.

p3 World Toon Review: Pavel Constantine (Romania), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and Cameron Cardow (Canada).


It's a filthy habit. He's known better for years. Will he kick it? Ann Telnaes isn't so sure.


p3 Guest Toon: For those Minnesotans who want to shake off the embarrassment of Norm Coleman, there's always Michelle Bachmann. The folks at Dump Bachman have released False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story. You can read the TPM review here.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman watches Iran 2.0 and Web 2.0 coming together.


Tell me what you (don't) see: Normally, I use this spot on p3 Sunday Toons to resurrect my favorite classic animations. Today I'm going to go the other direction: Great music, but incredibly cheesy animation. In the 1960s, Al Brodax developed quite a résumé of classic characters ground into the dirt: He ruined Popeye, he debased Krazy Kat, and he drove The Beatles straight down the tubes. Mercifully, none of the Lads voiced the 40 animated episodes that Brodax produced (nor did they voice the "Yellow Submarine" movie for which Brodax was, inexplicably, co-screenwriter and producer). My advice: Turn the monitor away and crank up the sound as the Fab Four sing "Tell Me What You See."

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer reflects on the prospective Oregon budget, and worries how it will all shake out. (Click to enlarge.)

The unforgiving minute

Didn't need to cast an "Obama for Change" vote last fall to get this; we already had it:

White House Is Drafting Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention; Move Would Bypass Congress

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate suspected terrorists indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war.

Minute's up.

Saturday tunes: "You're a flower, you're a river, you're a rainbow."

One of my favorite Randy Newman tunes is also, by coincidence, one of the few he seems to have written without the clear intention of pissing somebody off somewhere. (Don't believe me? Catch the short bit at the end of this clip where he tees up his next song for the audience.)

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

From a pretty early age, he was destined to be his generation's Judy Garland.

From the Motown 25th Anniversary show, here he is, at the top of his game, and at about the last moment before things began to turn the corner.

It's like the Sgt. Pepper album cover of insurance industry lobbying

As 22 senators worked on the first draft of the health care reform bill earlier this month, about three times as many lobbyists sat in the room watching them like hawks.

NPR asks your help putting names to the faces.

I don't often say this anymore, but good for NPR News. I'm looking forward to seeing this develop.

Somerby's right

You know, I really don't want to hear what's in those emails between Gov. (for the time being) Sanford and his mistress in Argentina. Apart from the fact that it red-lines my personal yuck-meter, it's just cheap, smirky Starr Report-style voyeurism.

Okay, we get it--Sanford the Promise-Keeper had an affair and wasn't very smart to think he could keep it quiet for very long. But the emails' content adds nothing substantive to the real story, which is aberrant behavior by the state's chief executive (to say nothing of the question of dereliction of duty and possible misuse of public resources, which aren't proved yet). You want to see Sanford brought to heel, those are pretty good grounds right there. The rest--and Keith and Rachel, I'm looking at you--is just sheet-sniffing.

I'll also be interested to hear how the Charlotte Columbia SC paper that broke this story got their hands on the email, and more importantly why they decided to sit on them for six months.

But the content of those emails--now made slightly pathetic by events--will have plenty of opportunity to see the light of day in the probably forthcoming Sanford v. Sanford. For now, let it drop. "Sauce for the goose" is no excuse for sinking to the murky moral depths of Kenneth Starr (or then-Congressman Sanford, who argued that Clinton should resign over Monicagate on the grounds that the cover-up was as bad as the infidelity, if not worse).

Drinking Liberally/Portland Thursday night at the Lucky Lab NW, 19th and Quimby

Join the Portland DL chapter for our next meeting--at the regular time, and with the regular line-up of the Finest Minds of Our Generation^[TM]--but at a new location:

The Lucky Lab Brew Hall at 19th and NW Quimby (map), Thursday (tomorrow) night at 7pm. (DL meets the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of every month.)

The Lucky Lab NW has a reasonably-priced menu of pizza, sandwiches, and salads. (Note that this is the LL in Northwest, not the one in Southeast where we met until a couple of years ago.)

As most of you know, Drinking Liberally (over 330 chapters in all 50 states plus DC) is one of several "Liberallys" operating under the umbrella organization Living Liberally. In addition, there's also Laughing Liberally (their motto: "Saving democracy one laugh at a time."). Laughing Liberally sponsors stand-up performances and tours, and has now branched out into the online video satire biz, starting with a series of videos about health care reform:

For bandwidth's sake, I'll let you link on your own to more Living Liberally video satire about the continuing adventures of health care industry lobbyists at H.A.A.R.M.(Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine) by going to haarm.org.

And if you appreciate Living Liberally promoting progressive action through social interaction--including keeping the whole Drinking Liberally network up and running--consider sending them a little love via Tipping Liberally.

Join the Drinking Liberally gang for drinks and political conversation. (And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.)

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

The unforgiving minute

First he was "writing."

Then he was "hiking on the Appalachian Trail."

Now he's in Argentina, for "a break?" It's not often we see a single moment that just kills a Presidential campaign, three years out while it's still abornin', but this is almost certainly one of those times.

As longtime p3 correspondent Doctor TV wrote to me from his undisclosed location in Europe, "This guy not only wouldn't pass the '3:00am' test, he wouldn't pass the '2:00pm' test."

Minute's up.

Shameless Plugola Department

Fresh from its nine-Drammy triumph a couple of weeks ago, the Broadway Rose Theatre Company opens its summer season with "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" this Friday night, June 26th.

Good news: This season they're discounting the ticket price for Wednesday night performances to $20 (while they're still available). It is, as they say, a steal. (Click image to enlarge.)

I've served on the board of the BRTC for several years, and it's been a pleasure. In the last year they finished up a capital campaign and moved into the New Stage, allowing them to program year-round. And their stuff is the best, as the Drammys attest.

(Almost as soon as I posted this, I started getting email and phone calls from fans wanting to know if I'll be dying on stage in this production. Sadly, no, but thanks for thinking of me.)

Reading: "Call the insurance companies' action for what it is: evil"

Paul Waldman at The American Prospect says that, if Obama is serious about health care reform, it's time put names and faces to the enemies of reform.

If the administration wants to win this fight, it's going to have to explain the issue to the public in a way it hasn't before. Unfortunately, political debate in America isn't an arena where competing ideas get a full and fair airing and the public chooses between them. Political debate is where stories are told and identities are defined. The key to prevailing in this kind of conflict is defining just who people should be mad at. But up until now, the administration has hesitated to tell the story of health care reform in a way that makes clear who the bad guys are.

But last week, it was given an opportunity to tell that story. At a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan asked executives from three of the nation's largest insurance companies whether they would commit to ending the practice of "rescission" unless there was evidence of intentional fraud or misrepresentation. They all said no.[…]

What is "rescission"? Here's how it works. As Stupak's committee, investigations by a couple of news organizations and some state insurance commissioners, and lawsuits by policyholders have revealed, many insurance companies routinely take the opportunity of a serious accident or illness by one of their policyholders to launch an investigation to see whether they can drop the policyholder from coverage. They don't do this when you first sign up for your policy -- instead, they cash your premiums every month, waiting until you actually file a major claim. At that point, they begin poring over all your past medical records and every form you ever filled out for them, to see if they can find a reason to claim that you violated the terms of your policy. It doesn't even have to have anything to do with the illness in question -- for instance, the Los Angeles Times cited the case of a nurse in Texas who was booted from her insurance policy "after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne."

Rest assured, the insurance companies are working hard to deny coverage to people who have become sick or injured. "One employee, for instance," reported the Times, "received a perfect 5 for 'exceptional performance' on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care."

Think about this for a moment. Somewhere in America today, a woman is sitting in her doctor's office, experiencing the worst moment of her life, as she learns she has breast cancer. Death is staring her in the face. She's wondering whether she'll be there to raise her children or meet her grandchildren. But there's something she doesn't know as she walks out of the office and begins to plan how to tell her family that she could be dead soon.

What she doesn't know is that because she was just diagnosed with cancer, her insurance company is launching an investigation of her, in the hopes that they can find a mistake on one of the many forms she's filled out over the years. One of their employees is poring through her records, and that employee's job is to see if the company can come up with some rationale, any rationale, for cutting off her coverage, so they won't have to pay for the treatment for her cancer. And of course, once they do drop her, she won't be able to get coverage from any of the other insurance companies. Because she has cancer.

And so Waldman concludes it's time for the normally cool and cerebral Obama to go at this Chicago-style:

Although it's a word that often gets thrown around too lightly, we can call the insurance companies' action for what it is: evil. If you're looking for a villain in the story of health care reform, there it is. The people who do this to other human beings -- who say, "One of our customers has cancer? Quick, let's see if we can cut off his coverage!" -- are the same people who will be pouring money into fear-mongering attack ads and putting the screws to wavering senators, telling everyone that if the government gets too involved in health care, then terrible things will happen.

If the administration wants to win this fight, it ought to start talking about this practice every day. They ought to make sure that every American knows exactly what rescission is. They ought to have the video of the insurance company executives pledging to continue rescission playing on a continuous loop in the White House press room.

Here, by the way, is the video he refers to. The insurance executives don't even pretend to be troubled by the consequences of their policies.

Waldman's article is going to the Readings list on the sidebar. Check it out.

Obama's DOJ: Making the world safe from The Comedy Channel

This argument is certainly preposterous on its own merits:

A federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion[…] that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney's statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney's political enemies or late-night commentary on "The Daily Show." […]

[An attorney in the case] told the judge that if Cheney's remarks were published, then a future vice president asked to provide candid information during a criminal probe might refuse to do so out of concern "that it's going to get on 'The Daily Show' " or somehow be used as a political weapon.

But what's downright revolting is that the argument wasn't made by one of Cheney's defenders (well, at least not strictly speaking); it was made by "career civil division lawyer Jeffrey M. Smith" of the Obama Justice Department!

Let me see if I've got this: Cheney conspired with others in the Bush Administration to out an undercover CIA agent as political payback because her husband wrote a perfectly accurate NYTimes op-ed piece disagreeing with one of the smaller lies Cheney told to get us into Iraq and keep us there--and the Obama "Change You Can Believe In" Administration doesn't want to compel Cheney to cooperate in the investigation because it might provide fodder for Jon Stewart?

As Jim Naureckas of FAIR asks:

Do they still teach the First Amendment in law school? […]

Here's an alternate plan: How about instead we allow the media to criticize and even satirize the statements of public officials, and make sure that officials cooperate with criminal investigations by subpoenaing them if they refuse to do so?

Disgraceful.

But at least maybe it will provide some fodder for Jon Stewart.

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

If you prefer to get your Oregon news in anapestic meter with an AABBA rhyme scheme, then we have just the thing for you:

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered (usually) by Carl, Christine,and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM Morning Show, are posted at LO.

And once again we ended up with an extra limerick that didn't make it on the air, so you can play along at home. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

Whether live-in boyfriend or spouse,
And no matter if he was a louse,
Ladies, please show restraint--
Though he may be no saint,
You shouldn't _____________.

(Answer in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "Poopdeck Pappy" Edition

Hell of a week: Letterman apologized to Palin, and Palin accepted his apology--but conservatives don't care. Neocons have been itching to bomb Iran for over a decade, and now there are stirrings (tweets?) of democracy there--and the neocons think we should meddle more. All that, and Father's Day too.

Let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lane, Larry Wright, David Fitzsimmons, Joe Heller, Jimmy Margulies, and John Cole.

The p3 Certificate for Perfect Aim goes to Steve Sack.

The p3 Legion of Honor goes to David Horsey.

The p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium goes to R. J. Matson.

Wait! Listen! Out in the garden--I think I can hear a tiny little voice--it seems to be saying "Help me . . . ! Help me . . . !" Nate Beeler, John Darkow, Michael Ramirez, Jerry Holbert, and Dana Summers heard it too.

Better than a new tie: Some Happy Father's Day wishes (and one or two sad ones): Milt Priggee, Thomas A. Bolton, J. D. Crowe, Cameron Cardow, and Henry Payne.

p3 World Toon Review: Nik Kowsar (Iran), Cameron Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chapatte (Switzerland), Paresh Nath(India), and Anjomrooz Sepideh (Iran).


Mr. President--you keep using that word "transparency." Ann Telnaes does not think it means what you think it means.


p3 Guest Toon Commentary: Surprised by the budding romance between Mike Doonesbury's daughter Alex (by his first marriage, to Joanie Caucus's dingbat daughter J. J.) and Leo "Toggle" DeLuca (an Iraq War vet who served with B.D., later lost an eye and suffered traumatic brain injury after surviving an ambush there, and who met Alex over the internet)? So is Lance Mannion, but not in a good way.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman watches the pageantry of democracy unfold in Iran.


I don't like relicktives!After forty long years, Popeye is finally reunited with his Poopdeck Pappy, in "Goonland," from 1938, directed by Dave Fleischer--in glorious black and white!

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer marvels at what you can see from space. (Hint: Only Michigan has a bigger one.)



This is the point where we normally remind you to browse Dan Froomkin's weekday political toon review. Alas, Froomkin has been handed the pink slip by the Washington Post, on the editorial grounds that the blog--one of the most popular and widely linked-to on the WaPo web site--had "run its course." (Yes, because David Broder, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol surprise and delight us with something new and unexpected in each column.) Myself, I buy Paul Krugman's theory about why it happened: Froomkin did something unforgivable.

Anyway, the bottom line is that his WaPo blog (with toons) was still going as of Friday, but it (and he) won't be there much longer. Here's hoping he lands someplace more deserving.

Saturday Tunes: "You have no scars upon your face"

Here's Billy Joel from the 1982 "Live from Long Island" tour, back in the days when hearing his name and "smash" in the same sentence made you think of his "Nylon Curtain" album, not--alas--a tree in Sag Harbor.

A friend who's in a position to know has always referred to "Nylon Curtain" as "Billy Joel's 'Sgt. Pepper.'" And since that's the second time this week I've gratuitously worked the latter album into a post, I'm calling it here.

Nice work if you can get it, Mr. Mayor

In October of 2006, Rudy Giuliani came through Portland as the featured speaker on the "Get Motivated" Tour day-long event at the Memorial Coliseum. (And while he was in town he made an appearance at a Ron Saxon fundraiser.)

I had attended one of these a couple of years earlier and somewhat sheepishly recounted the story here. The closer you examined the selection process that bought our particular audience to the Coliseum that day, the less flattering it became: Far from being the "movers and shakers of Portland" that the emcee assured us that we were, I'm afraid it appeared that we were the 5,000 people that Portland managers felt they could most easily spare for the day.

It was a mixture of get-rich quick and old-time religion: Secrets to Success in Business and Life, and Beating the Stock Market with your PC. Suffice it to say that the "come to Jesus" moment in the all-day event was in the literal sense a "come to Jesus" moment. Buried in the fine print on the full-page ads in the Oregonian for weeks leading up to the event was this:

"SPECIAL BONUS: One of the most popular parts of The GET MOTIVATED Seminar is a special optional 15 minute bonus session on the Biblical Secrets of success."

Rudy--"America's Mayor," the maraschino cherry atop this Jesus and Compound Interest sundae--made his rock-star entrance to cheering fans, falling balloons, and Sinatra singing "New York, New York."

Now it appears that Rudy--and Colin Powell, and Steve Forbes--are back out on the "Get Motivated" circuit again.

And why not hit the circuit again? Certainly, those are three people whose opinions the Republican Party--or anyone else for that matter--has little interest in hearing about these days.

And it's a pretty sweet deal. Guilani had the stage for less than an hour the whole day. (I'm assuming that Rudy, Colin, and Steve will alternate tour dates rather than risk a scene by appearing on the stage together.) And for that, according to the May 2007 public financial disclosure report for his presidential campaign, Rudy netted $80 thousand per appearance. (The speaker's bureau that promoted him pocketed an additional $20K per appearance.)

(Click image to enlarge.)

In 2006-2007, Giuliani earned $9.2 million in speaking fees (not consulting--just speaking), of which about $2 million came from the "Get Motivated" organization. Eighty thousand for an hour's work, once or twice a month, is nothing to sneeze at. And improbable as it might seem, his fees are probably higher in 2009.

That probably softens the blow for all three men of being cast out of the Sunday morning talk show circuit.

The average age of the US Supreme Court Justices is 69, and they have life tenure

Which makes this especially reprehensible:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas today leads the conservative wing of the Supreme Court in an unusual decision that rules that plaintiffs in age discrimination suits don’t get the same benefit of the doubt that every other discrimination plaintiff gets.

In concluding that a plaintiff claiming age discrimination must show not only that age was a motivating factor in the employer’s decision, but the determinative motivating factor, the court is essentially requiring the employee to produce direct evidence that the employer’s action was based only on age. In the past, because employers are careful to hide direct evidence of discriminatory motives, after a plaintiff had provided evidence of age discrimination the burden shifted to the employer to prove its legitimate reason for firing or demoting the older employee.

As Digby pointed out, less harshly than Thomas and his ilk deserve:

It's a good thing we don't have an activist Supreme Court. Imagine what might happen if they went around disturbing precedents willy nilly and legislating from the bench.

It's also lucky for us that the Civil War Re-Enactment Society Senate Republicans are on the job to explain why "empathy" should be a disqualifying factor for any nominee to the high court.

Grumpy

For the last 24 hours or so, rumors were ricocheting all around the Twin Cities--and beyond--that the Minnesota Supreme Court, which usually releases its decisions at 10am local time on Thursdays, would deliver its ruling on the Franken-Coleman case today.

Now it's mid-afternoon in Minnesota and the rumors seem to be dying down. (When the ruling finally does come, here's a fairly good gaming out of the scenarios that could follow.)

Back in December, when the vote count was still going on (that would be the one that Franken eventually was shown to have one by a slim but clear margin), we here at p3 passed the time by recounting some of our favorite behind-the-scenes stories of Franken from his SNL days.

The best of those stories are pretty much used up by now, I’m afraid, so here's a good interview from several weeks ago with Franken at a breakfast diner (called The Egg & I) back in his home state:

I have to say, in a political culture where congressional Republicans have vaingloriously compared their suffering and frustration as a minority party with the violence and harassment directed toward election protesters in Tehran this week, it's sort of refreshing to hear someone who's had his rightful electoral victory withheld from him for over six months by partisan maneuvering describe his mood as "grumpy" and let it go at that.

Gentlemen, Madam Secretary: Your suite in The Hague is waiting

Gleaned from among the 100,000 pages of Bush administration documents pried loose by the ACLU's Accountability for Torture project FOIA lawsuit:

On January 25, 2002, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised George W. Bush in a memo to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protections under the Geneva Conventions because doing so would "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" and "provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated February 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention. That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to "considering aggressive techniques," which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.

Peace in our lifetime: A musical chronology

1966: The Beatles release "Revolver," including the track "Got To Get You Into My Life."

1967: Chicago is formed (as Chicago Transit Authority).

1968: The Beatles release "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hears Club Band."

1971: Earth, Wind, and Fire release their first album.

1974: Chicago, touring to promote "Chicago VII," includes a "Revolver"-indebted arrangement of "Got To Get You Into My Life" as an encore.

1978: Earth, Wind, and Fire receive a Grammy for their cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life," which the group also performed in the film flop "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Chicago mentions to reporters that they had hoped to be cast performing the song in the "Sgt. Pepper" film, rather than Earth, Wind, and Fire. At about the same time, Chicago split with their manager, James William Guercio, over "creative differences," leaving some to wonder if "Sgt. Pepper" was part of the reason.

2003: After many personnel changes for both groups, Chicago goes on tour with Earth, Wind, and Fire and the two groups release the concert DVD "Chicago/Earth, Wind & Fire Live at the Greek Theatre," which goes platinum. Earth, Wind, and Fire perform "Got To Get You Into My Life" on the DVD.

2009: Chicago and Earth, Wind, and Fire tour together again, including a June 18th performance in Portland at the Rose Quarter. No word on who will be awarded custody of "Got To Get You Into My Life."


Just for equity's sake, though, here's Chicago in 1979--meaning that guitarist/front man Terry Kath was already gone, replaced by Donnie Dacus--performing That Song:

(H/t to Grandmaster Keith.)

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

Real estate deals come and go all the time, but we only get one Metolius Basin every several million years.

This tune goes out to Carla, who spent the afternoon liveblogging the debate on the proposed Metolius river basin development as it made its way to an unhappy but inconclusive finish. (Check out the rare extra verse at the end.)

The bill goes back to conference, so no pink hotels, no boutiques, no swingin' hot spots--not yet, anyway.

To mix my Joni Mitchell with my Yogi Berra: It ain't over 'til it's over.

"Cry-Wolf" fundraising

From the latest DSCC fundraising email (courtesy of Doctor Beyond):

Don't believe what you've heard about a GOP in disarray. They're mad, they're organized, and they're determined to return to what they see as their rightful place: ruling the halls of Congress.

How do I know? $14.4 million.

That's how much Newt Gingrich raised during a fundraising dinner last week for Republican House and Senate committees. One speech. $14.4 million.

They not only have cash, but also history on their side. There are only a handful of times in our nation's past when the party that won the White House hasn't lost big the following midterm election. That would spell disaster for President Obama's agenda.

Doctor B forwarded the ask letter with this comment: "I really dislike these types of appeals. They are just lazy. I wonder how many people who contribute would be so out of touch to actually buy the argument that the Republicans are organized."

Indeed. And it does look like more people are catching on to this dishonest ploy, not only on the left, but perhaps also on the right, where the cash-strapped GOP is cynically using the Sotomayor confirmation process to stampede donors--even though their money, which the GOP will happily pocket, is unlikely to make any difference in the outcome:

After sending out a bazillion lizard-brained fearmongering direct mail flyers and raising heaps of cash, NARAL proceeded to sit on their hands for the Alito fight. After the Gang of 14 cleared the way for his confirmation, they announced that they didn't consider cloture votes "significant," and had their members thank Lieberman and Chafee for their subsequent "no" votes on the floor.

Many liberals at the time refused to act like suckers and called them out for manipulating people and using them like ATMs. I wonder if anyone on the right will have that kind of clarity this time around.

Not that it's a bad thing to donate money to the DSCC, but surely they can offer better reasons than the cynically counterfactual "OMG the Republicans are out-organizing us!" ploy.

Dispatches: Protecting the Metiolus, health care reform, civil liberties and national security, controlled substances, and more

Items from the p3 inbox:

• Contact your State Representative by phone or email today, to politely let them know to vote YES to protect the Metolius river basin from destination resort development. (Carla @ Blue Oregon)



• Contact Sen. Ron Wyden and politely let him know your priorities for health care reform: a strong public option, no corporate freeloading, and no taxes on the benefits. (AFL-CIO Working Families)



• Tell Attorney General Holder that an investigation into Bush administration torture policies and practices is fully warranted. (ACLU Accountability on Torture action center)



• Attend the public forum "Civil Liberties Under the Obama Administration: Are We Still at Risk?" moderated by Steve Novick, Wednesday 6/17, 7pm, on the PSU campus. (ACLU of Oregon)



• Urge your state representative to oppose SB 355, the pharmacy database bill for controlled substances as an unwarranted intrusion into Oregonians' privacy. (ACLU of Oregon)

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered (usually) by Carl, Christine,and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM Morning Show, are posted at LO.

And once again we ended up with an extra limerick, so you can play along at home. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

Like proverbial lions and lambs
The feuding sides joined in a plan.
The first steps were taken
In the great Klamath basin
To finally get rid of _________________.

(Answer in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "We Aim to Please" edition

Let us honor,
not later but soonest,
our endangered
political cartoonists.

(Sincere apologies to T.S. Eliot.)

Editor & Publisher has a special report this week surveying the landscape for newspaper staff (and syndicated) political cartoonists. Let's put it this way: It's not unlike what the rest of the newspaper industry faces, only a little worse.

To be a newspaper staff editorial cartoonist these days is to live in dread that the next phone call is coming from the human resources department. "There's a great sense of dismay and gloom in the editorial cartooning world," says Steve Greenberg, a member of that fraternity. Because their numbers were so small to begin with, the departure of cartoonists amid the mass layoffs in newsrooms around the nation has had a huge impact on the craft.

MSNBC cartoonist Daryl Cagle, who hosts the Political Cartoonists Index Web site, counts more than 30 who took buyouts or were laid off by mid-April, including such well-known figures as Don Wright at The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, Jim Borgman at The Cincinnati Enquirer and Bill Day at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. More recently, the departures of editorial cartoonists have been coming at a rate of two or more a month.

"The number of staff editorial cartoonists who are extremely safe is tiny," says Greenberg. He speaks from experience: Before he was laid off at the Ventura County (Calif.) Star last November, he reasoned that he was safe because cartooning was a secondary job to his main occupation there in news graphics.

Winning a Pulitzer Prize isn't even enough in some cases. David Horsey, who won Pulitzers for cartooning in 1999 and again in 2003, lost his job when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased print publication. Though he stayed on as the newspaper went online-only, he now draws for all Hearst papers, but not as a local cartoonist. Following the layoff of Eric Devericks at The Seattle Times last December, there is no major-metro local editorial cartoonist in Seattle. […]

This exodus of editorial cartoonists, however, isn't creating any real selling opportunities to newspapers suddenly without staff artists, syndicates say. "I wish I could tell you there was something positive out of this," Newcombe adds. "That certainly seems to be what logic would dictate — but at the same time, budgets have been cut so much that I haven't seen any change. It's just such a depressed market these days."

Another reason there's been no bump for the syndicates is that newspapers with staff editorial cartoonists often were also substantial buyers of syndicated cartoons, says King Features' Burford. While the demand for that material hasn't slackened, neither has it increased, he notes.

So unless Craig's List or DailyKos start featuring in-house or syndicated political toons regularly, things look pretty dreary for the indefinite future. p3 will continue to promote the art, but I sense that's probably not going to be enough on its own to revive the industry. Of course, current intellectual property laws are working against word-of-mouth (word-of-blog?) distribution channels online, as p3 favorite Batocchio found out the hard way this spring.

(Thanks to John Sherffius for permission to use "Signature Loss." Click to enlarge.)


Meanwhile: It's date night for the Obamas! It's open season on abortion providers (and, indirectly, on the women who need their services)! North Korea goes looking for ways to stick it to the US! Conservatives now think Hitler was a Liberal, and so are all racists! Health care reform wakes the undead! Republicans ask, "Which kind of animal are we?" All this and more at Daryl Cagle's round-up this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lane, Mike Keefe, John Darkow, Monte Wolverton, Jerry Holbert, Steve Sack, Milt Priggee, and Matt Davies.

The p3 Special Mention to Nate Beeler.

The p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium goes to R. J. Matson.

And the p3 "Politics is Local" Medal to Pat Bagley. (Puzzled non-residents of the Beehive State can find the explanation here.)

p3 World Toon Review: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Arcadio Esquivel (Costa Rica), and Hassan Bleibel (Iran).


Ann Telnaes salutes the ones who are always there when we need them, arms outstretched.


Walt Handlesman ponders a romance gone sour.


p3 Guest Toon: A tip of the harlequin's cap to Batocchio, making a second appearance today--it takes a certain amount of cockeyed daring to undertake a parody MAD Magazine.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman muses on an underrepresented class.

"Watch me obtain a hamburger without the necessary fee!" Selected for the rarity of a fight between Popeye and Bluto in which Olive doesn't get the worst of it, here's "We Aim to Please," directed by Dave Fleischer, from 1934.

p3 Bonus Toon: Now that the Oregon legislature passed it tax bump for corporations and top-end earners. Jesse Springer wonders what will happen if, as is likely, the usual suspects manage to refer it to the voters.



And remember to browse Dan Froomkin's weekday political toon review.

Saturday tunes: "Too much for the man"

Uhm, yeah, my name is Bill, and for 36 years I've secretly wanted to be a Pip.

[Hi, Bill . . . ]

The unforgiving minute

Best line of the day (I was working up a similar play on words, then realized it was already taken care of for me):

From this morning's TPM, quoting on Indiana Republican Rep. Steve Buyer on the slide-toward-socialism inherent in finally giving the FDA regulatory control over tobacco:

"What we have in the bill is abstinence," he said -- explaining that while it does mention harm-reduction, there is such a complicated regulatory mechanism that it effectively locks in the current market.

For once, an American conservative has recognized that it's pointless to teach abstinence. The real answer is safe smoking.

Minute's up.

Merkley calls out Frank "Say Anything" Luntz on Senate floor

More of this, please:

It's a little unusual to go after a political strategist by name in a Senate speech. But not only does Sen. Merkley nail Luntz for manufacturing talking points that can't even be dignified as an ideological opposition to health-care reform (since the points were created, focus-grouped, and disseminated two months ago, before the specifics of any plan were made public). Merkley also puts Luntz's words, point by point, again and again, in the mouth of Senate Minority Leader McConnell.

So recognize that that is a point that's coming from a document about how to kill health care, not a responsible debate about the plan we have in front of us.

Republicans are horrified at the prospect of large government programs that are popular and efficient. They'd rather see your health continue to be traded on Wall Street.

Good for Senator Merkley.

(H/t to Sam Stein.)

Drinking Liberally two-fer this week

Portland area Drinking Liberally folks have two--yes, two!--chances to share a brew and political discussion with the finest minds of our generation ^TM:

• DL Portland Metro-West meets Wednesday night (6/10) at Friends Café & Pub, on the corner of 154th Terrace and Millikan Way, in Beaverton (about 4 blocks south from the Beaverton Creek MAX stop), from 7pm to 10pm. (DL PDX M-W meets on the second Wednesday of the month.)



• And DL Portland (downtown) meets Thursday night (6/11) at Madison's Grill, SE 9th and Hawthorne, from 7pm to 10pm. (Portland DL meets on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month.)

And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

Limericks

This week's KPOJ/Loaded Orygun "Spanning the State" Limerick Challenge is posted here.

There was one limerick they ran out of time for, so you can play along at home. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

His failure to put on the breaks
Was hardly a gourmet's mistake
Still, it all went to waste
When a truck driver's haste
Covered Interstate 5 with ______________.

(Answer in the Comments.)

Fifty years later: The thirty seconds he sold for $200

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make successful in entertainment.

--Steven Spielberg

A few months ago, I was musing about the sort of bill that can one day come due when, let's say, you're Bernie Taupin and you've just spent less than an hour on the phone with Elton John creating "Rocket Man," which will then go on to sell a gazillion records.

Here's another sobering example:


First, the outcome:

Now the back story:

In the late 1950s the CBS television network offered $200 to any composer who could write a catchy, creepy signature theme for its new sci-fi show, “The Twilight Zone.” The winner was Marius Constant, a French modernist composer of Romanian descent. Sadly, no other work by Constant, who died at 79 in 2004, will ever attain the pop-culture status of the “Twilight Zone” theme, 30 seconds of music that he tossed off in a single afternoon for kicks.

My confession

Before National Review hack Ed Whalen has the chance to out my identity too, as he has now done for Publius at Obsidian Wings, I have elected to "come clean" and confirm that "nothstine" is my nom de blog, not my real name.

(Funny story: I had originally chosen the pen name "Goat's Wine," but my car was going into a tunnel and my cell connection was breaking up, so the phrase got garbled at the other end. "Goat's Wine" made at least a little sense, but--"nothstine?" Still, it was the silly season and my backers and I decided to go with it.)

We originally assumed that, because I had never so much as mentioned Whalen's name once in the five years this blog has been running, that there would be no purpose to his exposing my identity other than childish, pointless spite. Unfortunately, since that's the only plausible motive for his exposure of Pubilus at Obsidian Wings, I now had to consider myself a potential target too.

Knowing that the moment of truth could come at any time, my original plan was to stand up, like Tony Curtis at the end of "Spartacus," and proudly declare that I, not that fellow at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, was Publius. I imagined bloggers across the country--around the world--one after another proudly proclaiming, "No, I am Publius!" "No--I am!" But while the theatricality of such a moment was certainly appealing, I wasn't sure I was in a position to organize such an action.

So, in the end, I can only speak for myself: After blogging here and elsewhere as "nothstine" since December 2004, I now announce--proudly, defiantly--that I am in fact Arlen Specter, Senior United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. You often wondered why you never saw the two of us in the same place at the same time--now you know.

I adopted the pseudonym because I knew that no one would take seriously the things I had to say about politics, persuasion and the media--let alone classic animation or bicycling--if they knew it was written by Specter, the professional narcissist, political opportunist, and sunshine Democrat. And, of course, there would be the difficulty of explaining my continued interest in Oregon when I have represented Pennsylvania in the US Senate for 29 years.

(Naturally, all of this (to say nothing of this) was simply an attempt--a clever one, I thought--to throw sand in the eyes of my adversaries.)

Let Whalen now do his worst; the truth has set me free.

Sunday morning toons: Special "What's Goodbye for GM" Edition

Good news and bad this week: Good: GM gets a long-overdue flushing out. Bad: Domestic terrorism in the heartland again; Good: Obama talks to the Middle East and only the American right-wing media responds hysterically. Bad: The craziest person in the world who doesn't have his own cable news program is testing nukes.

This week's Daryl Cagle toon round-up has it all: The good, the bad--and possibly even the ugly.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, Pat Bagley, Mike Keefe, John Trever, John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, Adam Zyglis, Milt Priggee, and Drew Litton.

David Fitzsimmons knows when the genie's been let out of the bottle.

The p3 Legion of Merit (with black crepe) goes to R. J. Matson,

The p3 No Pussy-Footing Around citation goes to John Sherffius.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Michael Kountouris (Greece), Humberto Lázaro Miranda Ramírez (LAZ) (Cuba), and Peter Pismestrovic (Austria).


It's an unprecedented Ann Telnaes three-fer this week: The family business, Spring cleaning, and The Sixth-and-a-Halfth Commandment.


Miss it at your peril! Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation comes to Cinema 21 in Portland next weekend.


p3 Guest Toons: I saw my share of professional conventions back in the day but, save maybe the first one or two when I was still a virgin in Babylon, I never came away as jazzed up as The K Chronicles' Keith Knight did after crashing the National Cartoonists Society convention. He even came away with A Dream. (Dude--lobby for Portland!)

Carol Lay celebrates--if that's the word we're looking for here the emerging medium for public debate. (Oregon even gets a nod!)


Protecting Our Endangered Toonists: Red Meat reflects on the natural impulse to set things right.

(Thanks to John Sherffius for permission to use his "Signature Loss" image. Click to enlarge.)


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman offers a toast.


Genius! As loyal p3 toonophiles have probably figured out, I'm not the world's biggest Disney fan. But there's one exception: As Roger Rabbit marveled,

Nobody takes a wallop like Goofy. What timing! What finesse! What a genius!

Goofy's forte was the cheerfully accident-prone everyman--think of Fred MacMurray as the dad on "My Three Sons," but heavy on the wallop--in a series of "How to" films. From 1942, directed by Jack Kinney (who also directed (Der Fuehrer's Face), the national pastime gets the Goofy treatment in "How to Play Baseball:"

p3 Bonus Toon: When it comes to tax cuts, Jesse Springer wonders why it seems so easy to get voters to vote against their interests. Does it have anything to do with how refreshed they feel when they wake up?



And don't forget to browse Dan Froomkin's weekday political toon review.

Pierce's 'Idiot America' hits the book stands

I featured the original Esquire article by Charlie Pierce as a p3 Reading 'way back in 2007. In a sentence, his thesis is this: America is hosting a war on expertise--and expertise is losing.

"Idiot America" the Esquire article has become Idiot America the book (subtitled "How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free"), and if it signals bad times for our country, at least we get the fun of catching Pierce making the media rounds this month hawking it.

(In fact, he took part in the Book Salon this morning at FDL.)

Whether the subject is climate change, evolution, stem cell research, sex education, AIDS prevention, or any of a number of other topics where you'd think expertise and the factual record ought to have the rhetorical upper-hand, the trend is the same: Public discourse in America, driven by anti-intellectual fire-breathers, cynical opportunists, and garden-variety cranks--and abetted by the lazy journalistic conventions of sapheaded objectivity--is being hijacked by people who want you to think that education and expertise are the enemy.

Idiot America, says Pierce, is not the collection of people who, for example, believe that Noah's flood created the Grand Canyon and believe that the gift shop at the Grand Canyon should sell books that advance this point of view. Those are just cranks, members of the propeller-hat brigade, and America's always had 'em. In fact Pierce shows a surprising fondness for cranks. Rather, Idiot America is the set of conditions that encourage--often require--these people to be taken seriously by the rest of us, and not as the cranks they are.

Check it out.

Saturday Tunes: Hey, WalMart and FOX--it's "fookin'!"

The currently omnipresent Green Day can now stand proudly shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Jon Stewart, John Mellancamp, and George Carlin: WalMart has refused to carry their #1-selling album "21st Century Breakdown" unless they remix a separate version without--ahem--"questionable lyrics."

Wal-Mart has a long-standing policy of not stocking CDs that come with a parental advisory sticker (as Breakdown does), instead offering "clean" versions of the albums with profanity and questionable material removed.

"As with all music, it is up to the artist or label to decide if they want to market different variations of an album to sell, including a version that would remove a PA rating," the AP quotes Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien as saying. "The label and artist in this case have decided not to do so, so we unfortunately cannot offer the CD."

Most of the time, the artists relent. In 1993, Nirvana famously changed the title of their song "Rape Me" to "Waif Me" on the packaging of their In Utero album to satisfy the demands of retailers like Wal-Mart and Kmart. But Green Day refused to change one note or lyric on Breakdown — which, while not as overtly political as 2004's American Idiot, still takes an unflinching look at issues like religion and war (and uses some dirty words too) — and that means their CD won't be on Wal-Mart shelves anytime soon. That's something they're more than OK with.

"The label and artist in this case have decided not to do so," said WalMart, and shed a bitter tear. Given the chunk of the market that WalMart controls, that's a little like saying, "The parents in this case decided not to meet our ransom demand their child." Extortion sounds so much cleaner when you can blame it on the victim.

Good for Green Day, for not putting up with it. If "parental warning stickers" aren't enough for WalMart, too bad. Makes you wonder what Rhett says to Scarlett at the end of those "Gone With the Wind" DVDs in WalMart's bins.

Here's Green Day performing a John Lennon standard--and for those of you who like your irony applied with a fire hose, notice that FOX has neatly clipped out the "questionable parts:"

So exactly how crazy do you have to get until you can't follow their rules anymore?

Say it with me.

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven.
Imagine no possessions.
Imagine there's no countries.
Imagine a world where racial assaults by right-wing political leaders are considered news

You may say I'm a dreamer.

Violence, hardly noticed

All three of these incidents happened, but only one ended up on the front page of the NYTimes as a cautionary example of the current recession stressing people until they resort to extreme violence. Was it:

David B. Kellermann, the chief financial officer of beleaguered mortgage giant Freddie Mac, tied a noose and hanged himself in the basement of his Vienna, Virginia, home.

or

Betty Lipply, a 72-year-old resident of East Palestine, Ohio, "who feared she'd lose her home to foreclosure hanged herself to death" shortly after "receiving her second summons and foreclosure complaint from her mortgage lender,"

or

[T]wo California dairy farmers who "killed themselves... out of despair over finances, according to associates."

The answer (which you probably guessed) is here, along with the dismal account of how stories like these have been playing out under the media radar for months now.

It's not pretty.

Dispatches: The end-of-life discussion, vigil for Dr. George Tiller, meet-ups on health care reform, killing the "Real ID"--and doughnuts!

Items from the p3 inbox:

• Compassionate Choices offers guidelines (and a sample letter) to help discuss end-of-life considerations with your doctor. (Compassionate Choices blog)



• A vigil to honor the memory of Dr. George Tiller, his commitment to women, his compassion for families, and his dedication to ensuring access to safe reproductive health care will be held Sunday, June 7th, at 3723 NE MLK Boulevard in Portland. (Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette)



• This Saturday, June 6, Organizing for America will organize meetings in homes across America to discuss health care reform. (AFL-CIO Working Families Network)



• Let Gov. Kulongoski know you want him to sign SB 536, which will kill the "Real ID" in Oregon. (ACLU of Oregon)



• In honor of National Doughnut Day (tomorrow, 6/5), Krispy Kremes across the US will give everyone a free doughnut (PR Newswire)

Penguin sign

As Doctor Beyond noted in an email to me, "I don't think I remember anything about this in 'Happy Feet.' Or 'March of the Penguins,' for that matter."

Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey are using satellite images to track colonies of Emperor Penguins by the stains on the Antarctic ice caused by their guano.

The penguins can grow to four feet tall and weigh as much as 80 pounds. As a result, the ice gets 'pretty dirty' say the scientists who have located 38 colonies on the satellite images, including ten that were previously unknown.

The satellite images are more accurate that the previous method of tracking the birds by ship or helicopter. Higher resolution images can hopefully be used to count the number of penguins in each colony and keep track of any decline in numbers.

Peter Fretwell, co-author of the study and geographic information officer at the British Antarctic Survey, said the discovery would revolutionize the way scientists kept tabs on penguins.

"Now we can locate the colonies we will be able to go out and get an accurate count of the total breeding population," he says. "It was purely by chance that I realized I could see the red-brown stains on the sea ice, which is formed every year in the Antarctic winter and usually looks absolutely pristine and white."

"Emperor penguins are quite big birds and it gets quite messy and very smelly. I think remote sensing is the best way to monitor them as you really don't want to get too close."

By "not getting too close," I imagine researcher Fretwell probably means "Bermuda."

I'm trying to imagine Morgan Freeman delivering the line "I could see the red-brown stains on the sea ice," but I'm getting nothing.

Do the right thing

It took congressional Democrats about 40 years to become so corrupt that voters tossed them out in the mid-1990s. It took congressional Republicans only a little over 10 years to reach the same point, which is some kind of accomplishment, I suppose.

Kos points out that congressional Dems should do everything they can to prevent (or at least delay) the moment when the pendulum begins to swing the other way again, even if it hurts:

The people should know about any House investigation of PMA group and its crooked dealings with Rep. Murtha. Looks like GOP pressure is finally forcing Steny Hoyer to do the right thing.

Republicans lost the House in 2006 in large part because of their culture of corruption. Democrats shouldn't be allowed to follow suit. We need that majority.

The weekly KPOJ/Loaded Orygun "Spanning the State" Limerick Challenge

For the last month or two, TJ's Monday morning appearances during the 7-8am hour of the Morning Show on KPOJ 620AM have featured a news quiz for Carl, Christine, and Paul that I'd prepared based on Oregon news stories I covered in StS the previous day. I write them up, TJ sells them in that mellifluous tenor voice of his, and Carl, Christine, and Paul provide the answers--if they can!

We experimented with different formats for the competition: First we tried "Feats of Strength," but, although those in the studio say it was fascinating to watch, it was such a largely-visual experience it didn't lend itself well to the medium of radio. Then we tried "The Airing of Grievances," but we quickly found that was wrong for radio too, although for completely different reasons. So finally, we've settled on a quiz format we're having a lot of fun with: the Limerick Challenge.

And behind the scenes the LO Legal Department, where there are so many white shoes it's blinding (and the only part of the organization to show a profit in 2008), have been tasked with fending off TROs from NPR's "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" (Sorry, guys, but neither the limerick form nor the fill-in-the-blank quiz format can be trademarked. We checked.)

Here's this week's StS Limerick Challenge--match wits with the pros and see how you do.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

"Planned obsolescence" meets "Accelerated attrition" meets "Chapter 11"

Alas. Michael Moore can quit looking for Roger Smith.

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" - the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one - has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh - and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars?

Thus was Charles Wilson, former CEO of GM--and author of the oft-misquoted phrase I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa--eventually proved right, at least in the negative: What could drive the country to its knees, economically, could lay GM out flat on the canvas.