The Bund continues to fester

Rachel calls it "hooliganism."

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Via TPM.

 

Incidentally, the health care industry admits disrupting town hall meetings of health care reform supporters.

 

Technorati Tags: town hall meetings,hooliganism,Rachel Maddow,Talking Points Memo

Quote of the day

Economist Laffer:

If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.

Because you can't make this stuff up.

Well, here’s one, Dave

Dave challenges Spot to mention one Muslim country that permits Jewish political participation. Indonesia (not in the Middle East, but the largest Muslim country on the planet), Lebanon, and Afghanistan come to mind as probables, too, but just offhand, Dave, here’s one:

As Iranians head to the polls Friday to elect their next president, Israeli experts expect Iran’s 25,000 Jews to vote for incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while Iranian experts say they will likely vote for a candidate more friendly to minority rights.

Technorati Tags: Indonesia,Lebanon,Afghanistan,Iran,Muslims,Jews

Dateline: Circle, MT, July 31, 2009

Two guys are standing around waiting to use the only unleaded pump at a gas station in Circle, Montana. Circle, for the uninitiated, is just down the road from Jordan, the home of famous crackpot Ted Kaczynski and ground zero for the Patriot movement. One fellow, in overalls with a straw hat, driving a flatbed truck with a range cattle waterer on the back, notices the other fellow’s car bearing a Minnesota plate. Here’s their conversation:

What part of Minnesota ya from?

The Minneapolis area.

The part with all the people.

Yes.

I suppose you’ll be eatin’ each other pretty soon.

Beg pardon?

The way things are goin’.

I don’t think so.

Saw some flags at half staff; know what goin’ on?

We saw some too, in Great Falls, but we don’t know why. [some Montana big wig must have died]

[obviously trying to bait the Minnesotan] Maybe Obammy drowned in his beer!

[in a carefully calibrated response] I know a lot of people around here don’t like him, but I think he’s a good man.

[spits] He’s trying to install fascist-socialist regime. Just like Stalin.

[mentally considering the utility of remarking that while both systems can be authoritarian, fascism and socialism are rather opposites of each other; the Minnesotan decides to demur] That’s pretty unlikely.

You know the only thing Obammy ever did in the Senate was to try to stop the slaughter of wild horses, and now he wants to spend $500 million of our money to do it again? What would you do with an old horse?

Put it down, I suppose.

[snorts] Then you got a vet bill for $125 and you need a backhoe.

[returning to his main theme] Gets to the point where people who know how to work for a livin’ not gonna’ take it any more and rise up.

[it is tempting to ask who would buy the rancher’s stringy, sage brush-fed cows if all the city people disappeared] I don’t think it’ll get to that.

At least we still got our guns. Do you know we’re the only country that still has guns? If it weren’t for our guns, they’d be here now.

Well, so long. I’ve got to get down the road.

The dog is back

And while waiting to become one with the news again, here’s a couple of observations about the comments to MNO’s posts this past week.

The Dot took James to task over the latter’s claim teen pregnancies had increased under’s W’s abstinence regime in comments to MNO’s post When things don't work well in the bedroom, they don't work well in the living room, either. Dot said that teen pregnancy rate had declined under Clinton and had continued to decline under Bush.

The issue, of course, was the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education. That wasn’t exactly the subject of the post, but the commenters do tend to wander.

The Dot quoted some national statistics from the CDC, using data through 2004 and preliminary data through 2006. But if you pick around, you find that the case for abstinence-only sex education really isn’t good. Especially if you look in places where abstinence-only sex education is most popular. As Think Progress reports:

The Centers for Disease Control released a new report today that found that Mississippi “now has the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title.” The report found that in 2006, the Mississippi teen pregnancy rate was over 60 percent higher than the national average and increased 13 percent since the year before.

While the new report does not explain why the state’s teen pregnancy rate is increasing, one reason may be the poor quality of its sex ed programs. As the Sexuality Information and Education Center explains, Mississippi focuses heavily on abstinence education and teachers are prohibited from demonstrating how to use contraceptives:

Mississippi schools are not required to teach sexuality education or sexually transmitted disease (STD)/HIV education. If schools choose to teach either or both forms of education, they must stress abstinence-until-marriage, including “the likely negative psychological and physical effects of not abstaining.” [...]

If the school board authorizes the teaching of contraception, state law dictates that the failure rates and risks of each contraceptive method must be included and “in no case shall the instruction or program include any demonstration of how condoms or other contraceptives are applied.”

A reporter for ABC News’s Jackson, MS affiliate explained, “The Mississippi Department of Human Services says abstinence is the only birth control that is 100 percent effective. And that’s the only message teens need to hear.” Unfortunately, numerous studies show that abstinence-only education is not effective. As one study found:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

And while Spot was using the Google, he also found this from July 21st of this year: Christian Right, Bush and Abstinence Education to Blame for Rising Teen Pregnancy. That’s a column in U.S. News and World Report by Bonnie Erbe. She, in turn, cites a U.K. Guardian article that has more recent statistics from the CDC:

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

And there’s more:

In addition, about 16,000 pregnancies were reported among 10- to 14-year-old girls in 2004 and a similar number of young people in the age group reported having a sexually transmitted disease.

"It is disheartening that after years of improvement with respect to teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, we now see signs that progress is stalling and many of these trends are going in the wrong direction," said Janet Collins, a CDC director.

So, Dot, live the CDC, die by the CDC.

And to Dave’s hysterical blather about Israel being overrun by terrorists, Spot commends this post by Juan Cole about the expansionist Israeli mindset that has existed ever since 1948:

Israel's political tradition seeks expansion if possible; if not possible, it seeks a balance of power with its enemies. If that is not possible, it seeks to be held harmless from its avowed foes. If that is not possible, it is willing to wage total war to punish the enemy population until it accepts at least a cold peace. (I mean by "total war" war on the civilian population in which the guerrilla group is embedded, as for instance dropping a million cluster bombs on the farms of south Lebanon in 2006 or half-starving Gazan children in 2007-2008, methods illegal in international law but routinely deployed by Israeli leaders and defended by most Zionists everywhere.) Where necessary, Israel is willing to give up territorial expansion to get the cold peace.

Instead of Israel being overrun by terrorists, it’s the guerilla war that’s keeping the entire Occupied Territories from being swallowed up by the Israeli colonists. Or at least slowing it down. Spot has written about this too many times to link. Just put some appropriate search term, like “genocide” or “lebensraum” in the search box at the top of the site.

It’s nice to see you all, too, boys and girls.

Technorati Tags: abstinence-only sex education,CDC,Israel,Palestine,Juan Cole,Israeli colonists

Where have I heard that name before?

Something that’s been percolating around my brain for a while is a question about this Tony Sutton dude. No, not whether the Mexican restaurant chain is introducing a line of chimichangas named after prominent GOP gasbags, but his new gig as Chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota. As I read about his new job, I had this sneaking suspicion that his name was not entirely new to me, that there was something in the past that he’d done.

Then it came flooding back to me. This Sutton guy was, before ascending to the throne room at the RPM, the treasurer of the RPM. He’s the one whose name is most closely associated with the horrific accounting and auditing nightmare that is the treasury of the RPM. He’s been front and center in that complaint filed with the Federal Elections Commission and he’s the one who has had rather pointed questions directed at him by the FEC here, here, here, and here. He also had to send in those humiliating letters – over and over and over again – stating that "An amended report correcting this error will be filed when the committee's internal audit has been completed." In short, he was apparently the doofus in charge as this mess was allowed to fester and grow into what some think will eventually lead to the largest FEC fine in history for poor bookkeeping.

For most of us, being so intimately connected with this monumental mess would be such a professional embarrassment that we’d slink off to North Dakota or something. We’d at least have the good sense to drop out of politics.

But not Mr. Sutton. Nope, he decides that such a stellar performance only means one thing – he’s destined for bigger and better things! He’s going to run for the top office in the party! He's going to win that top spot and he's going to reboot that party! Proclaiming that the Minnesota GOP is “alive and running hard,” he feels he’s just the man to engineer the renaissance of the party after some pretty lousy election cycles.

But wouldn’t you think that the party might be asking for a bit of trouble by elevating the inept treasurer while the FEC complaints are still pending, still unresolved, still going to eventually lead to trouble - and a sizable fine - at Mr. Sutton’s doorstep?

In a word, no. You see, the Federal Elections Commission, thanks to appointees of outgoing President Bush, has become a toothless joke:

Election-law experts, supporters of campaign-finance regulations, and even some members of the commission itself are expressing growing concern about a string of cases in which the three Republicans on the commission -- led by Tom DeLay's former ethics lawyer -- have voted as a block against enforcement, preventing the commission from carrying out its basic regulatory function. As the normally mild-mannered Washington Post editorial board wrote recently: "The three Republican appointees are turning the commission into The Little Agency That Wouldn't: wouldn't launch investigations, wouldn't bring cases, wouldn't even accept settlements that the staff had already negotiated."

And when the agency that is supposed to investigate and punish the malfeasance and illegal actions of the Republican Party of Minnesota can be counted on to continue to do nothing, why not install the guy as chair? They've gutted the system and they know that even thought they've been caught, they're not likely to ever be held responsible. In the meantime, the RPM has smear campaigns to run. They have questionable operations to coordinate with political operatives who escape oversight. They have to continue to recycle those "tax and spend liberals" press releases over and over and over again. Go team!

About those flying Imams

On Friday of last week, federal Judge Ann Montgomery issued a decision on motions to dismiss in what has been called the "Flying Imams" case. Background can be found here. I have only read very quickly through Judge Montgomery's order, but the length and detail of the opinion demonstrate the thorough analysis she undertook in the case. In the end, she dismissed some of the claims and allowed others to proceed to trial.

Predictably, this upset those Powerline guys.

But reading through the Powerline guy's post, you'd think that uncharted territory of official immunity had been created, that vast precedent had been thrown aside by some activist judge. He's wrong, of course. What he misses first is that there were claims that were dismissed. Judge Montgomery dismissed the false arrest claims, she dismissed the claims against US Airways in their entirety, and she denied the Imams' request for more discovery against US Airways.

What remains is a claim for a pretty standard constitutional tort under the longstanding law in Bivens v. Six Unknown Agents, a 1971 US Supreme Court case. It's a well-accepted legal vehicle for addressing deprivations of constitutional rights by law enforcement, and the Imams now get to present that claim to a jury.

What the law enforcement people had tried to do in their motion to dismiss was to gain immunity from the lawsuit by trying to fit under established immunity or under recently-created immunity granted to people who report suspicious terrorist activity -- people like the paranoid old white couple who freaked out and turned in the Imams. Judge Montgomery held that this didn't protect law enforcement and they were subject to the well-settled law already in place. If she'd ruled the other way, any cop who wanted to get out of a brutality charge or a Bivens lawsuit would simply have to proclaim "I thought he was a terrorist!" to escape liability.

But the Powerline guy tries to get his brain cells moving by next asking: "Reading the opinion, I ask myself: What was law enforcement to do?" The answer is simple. Like any one of thousands of American cops on the job every day who know what they're doing, these officers were to follow the law. We don't detain people when there is no probable cause, but that's what they did. Cops know what is and what is not "probable cause," and to insist that they don't (just because some Powerline guy doesn't) sells law enforcement people short.

And his argument that there was justification because one of them asked for a seat belt extender because "there's always a first time" some object will be used for violent purposes is just plain stupid. By that account, every man with a belt is a potential terrorist who should be arrested and detained.

Judge Montgomery put it best:

But when a law enforcement officer exercises the power of the Sovereign over its citizens, she or he has a responsibility to operate within the bounds of the Constitution and cannot raise the specter of 9/11 as an absolute exception to that responsibility.

When things don't work well in the bedroom, they don't work well in the living room, either.

I can't let too long pass without some mention of Katie's column on Sunday, in which she picks up that most classic of themes for scolds: Sex. Katie's addressed sex in the past, and you can be pretty certain that she's never going to celebrate the joy in that particular part of life, no matter how wholesome the circumstances.

Of course, she's always been particularly appalled at civil rights for gay people, so much so that she even opposes anti-bullying efforts because some day, somewhere, some child perceived to be gay might be given some protection from getting stuffing beaten out of him. She was horror-struck at the idea of kinky people loving each other in a safe manner (although spanking is apparently permitted under the right circumstances), of girls kissing girls, even broadcasts of "Sex and the City."

She's not fond of condom use even though it saves lives, she bemoans the use of most contraception even though the vast majority of Americans use it, and questions the reports that show that abstinence as a form of sex education is an expensive joke. She disdains any reality-based sex education as divorced from the "true language of love."

But on Sunday she went far beyond her earlier efforts at Victorian pique. On Sunday, she used the personal lives of pioneering sex researchers Masters and Johnson as reason to reject the idea that there is any place in the world for research that makes people understand and enjoy sex. It's not just gay, kinky, young, interracial, or unmarried people who deserve shame heaped on them because of their enjoyment of this most natural of acts. Nope, Katie believes that we all deserve sex lives long on romance and short on facts, even wholesome, married, heterosexual trying-to-make-a-baby-like-Jesus-wants people. Well, mostly women, but men, too. Reminiscing about our long-lost ignorance, Katie sums it up thusly:

Sex is available without constraints or commitment. But love, romance and the beauty of a carefully guarded sexual gift are in short supply.

Something tells me that the "carefully guarded sexual gift" has little to do with fireworks, the earth moving, the big O, la jouissance, or anything that involves screaming like Meg Ryan in Katz's Delicatessen. Unless our sex lives are nasty, brutish, and short, we're apparently wasting this gift.

A while back, we had this to say about Katie's criticism of a group who dared to try to enlighten about a brand of sexuality Katie didn't like. But I fear that she appears to be going further, finding reason - any reason - to champion an ignorance that would begrudge all of us sexual joy we might manage to find in this world. How sad.

Note: The title is, of course, a quote from Dr. William H. Masters, that monster.

Whoops

Support for Sonia Sotomayor Crumbles as Pro-Abortion Bona Fides Established

Sorry, "Life News," things didn't turn out quite that way:

Senate Judiciary Committee votes to confirm Sotomayor

(CNN) -- The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved the nomination of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to become the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, setting up a final confirmation vote by the Senate.

The committee's 13-6 vote was mostly on partisan lines, with one Republican joining the panel's Democrats in sending the nomination to the full Senate.

At least five Republican senators have announced their intention to support Sotomayor, making confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate a virtual certainty

Good show, soon-to-be-Justice Sotomayor!

Who's paying for that pilgrimage?

Well, kids, Spot’s gone off for his annual fishing trip, leaving me in charge of this here blog. I’ve been a bit short on the additions to the blog lately, causing Spot some consternation as to whether I’d be up to the task of holding down the fort while he heads off on his frolic and detour.

Let’s just say I’ll give it a try.

First up, local Republicans are apoplectic about the privately financed trip to Mecca taken by our nation's first Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison. The state party has demanded that Congress look into the matter. The party's official party organ favorite blog hammers on the story endlessly. Why, one even local dimwit concluded that traveling to the Middle East on someone else's dime proves that the Congressman is a terrorist.

But it seems to me that Ellison's problem is that he went to Mecca, not Israel and that the group paying for it was a Muslim nonprofit rather than a Christian nonprofit. Because if it's a shadowy Christian nonprofit bent on exerting political influence by sending elected officials on junkets, it seems to be just fine:

On at least three occasions in recent years, Sen. Ensign traveled to Asia and the Middle East on what he described as official policy trips, paid for entirely by the International Foundation, one of the network of little-known nonprofits that make up the Family. Sen. Coburn, meanwhile, traveled to Beirut in 2005 on the Family's dime, with the explicit mission of setting up Lebanese political prayer groups, just like the one that covered for Ensign. The following year, Coburn humbled himself in prayer at a special Family event in the British Virgin Islands, a Christian mission of earthly rewards also undertaken, at Family expense, by fellow C Streeter Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., who also sacrificed himself for God with a Family-paid trip to Aruba.

Because Jesus wants you to go to Aruba. Really.

There have been complaints about the Family's assistance given to Senator Ensign's recent travel. For reasons that I'll go into later this week, it's questionable whether those complaints will ever go anywhere, but one can hope.

In the meantime, you can track your congresscritter’s travel here. Not very up-to-date, but there's a pattern to who pay for Collin Peterson's travel that is particularly interesting.

And now, boys and girls, a fond adieu

Well, just for a little while. Spot will be back the first few days in August. Behave yourselves.

In the meantime, MNO has some things for your consideration. Stay tuned.

What this blog needs is some Saint Paul content

Just a question that's been bugging me. Wouldn't you think that the Saint Paul Republican nominee would stop and think before screaming about a man named Coleman who might abandon the City to run for Governor and check out if it might have happened before?

Do as we say, not as we do

From Scott Horton:

In Tehran reports circulate that protestors held in the infamous Evin Prison are being waterboarded. The practice was unheard of in Iran before the latest troubles. So where did the Iranians get the idea of waterboarding prisoners? Ask Dick Cheney.

We’re watching the Iranians, but they’re watching us, too:

The former vice president describes waterboarding as “dunking in water” and insists it isn’t torture. Those who set the political stage in Washington dismiss the question of accountability for torture as an “attempt to criminalize policy differences.”

And yet Washington just doesn’t get it:

The idea that Washington’s trivialization of the issue will result in tens of thousands around the world being tortured, in some cases tortured to death, is beyond their comprehension. Chuck Todd is one of the brighter political commentators of the new generation, yet in recent on-air remarks even he fell for these typical inside-the-Beltway delusions. Glenn Greenwald challenged him, and the two had a face-off interview that is well worth a listen.

Technorati Tags: Scott Horton,waterboarding,Iran,Evin Prison,Dick Cheney,Chuck Todd,Glenn Greenwald

DL: loot and bloggers

Any bloggers out there are urged to make a special effort to make it to Drinking Liberally tomorrow night.

We’ve also got more loot to give away: a Drinking Liberally t-shirt, baseball-style cap, a couple of books, and of course, some DL buttons.

We meet at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis, six to nine.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,331 Club

DL: One Day in July reprise

Last Thursday, Jim McGuire, one of the organizers of the One Day in July street festival and observance, came to Drinking Liberally and told us a little about the 1934 teamsters’ strike in Minneapolis and the event to mark its 75th anniversary. One of the stories he told was about how the Aquatennial was dreamed up by the Minneapolis business community to repair some of the damage to the community’s reputation and to lure people back downtown.

Nick Coleman told the story on Sunday, too:

There will be fireworks in downtown Minneapolis next Saturday night to mark the end of another Minneapolis Aquatennial. Fittingly, the fireworks will coincide with the commemoration of an explosive event that helped lead to the creation of the Aquatennial, which was invented in the hope of healing the reputation of a city that had been torn for years by economic strife: The 75th anniversary of the 1934 "Teamster Rebellion" that gave American labor one of its most important victories.

Here’s Nick describing the event:

Called the One Day in July Street Festival, the remembrance of the tumult of 1934 will take place from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday in the Warehouse District (at the corner of 3rd St. and 7th Av. N), near the site of much of the mayhem when workers stood together against heavy-handed policing and gangs of strikebreakers to make Minneapolis one of the most pro-union cities in the country.

You can find more about the One Day in July festival linked here.

There’s also a big labor picnic the next day:

There will also be a picnic next Sunday at the Wabun Picnic Area in Minnehaha Park, with speeches and free food to celebrate the anniversary. One of the speakers at the picnic will be Tom Dooher, president of the largest union in the state, the 70,000-member Education Minnesota. Dooher's grandfather, Patrick Corcoran, was an officer of the militant Minneapolis truck drivers' union who was murdered in a 1937 assassination that remains unsolved.

Here’s a handbill about the picnic:

Technorati Tags: One Day in July,1934 teamsters' strike,Jim McGuire,Tom Dooher,Education Minnesota,labor picnic

Sating the appetite for brutality

From Scott Horton’s No Comment:

One of the most striking things about this report [in the Washington Post] is the extent to which the entire torture process was driven by healthcare professionals. The account makes clear that contract psychologists Mitchell, his partner John “Bruce” Jessen, and CIA psychologist R. Scott Schumate played a vital role in the entire process. It also makes clear that, contrary to the official Bush White House account, under which they were responding to pleas from the ground to “take the gloves off,” in fact the struggle was consistently between handlers who wanted to stop or limit the rough stuff, and unidentified people in the pinnacles of power in Washington whose appetite for brutality could apparently never be sated. Who was calling the shots? The story tells us that the approvals came from “downtown,” agency jargon for the White House. And there’s another giveaway:

“Headquarters was sending daily harangues, cables, e-mails insisting that waterboarding continue for 30 days because another attack was believed to be imminent,” the former official said. “Headquarters said it would be on the team’s back if an attack happened. They said to the interrogation team, ‘You’ve lost your spine.’ “

And who was talking to “headquarters” and pressing them? If you’ve read Jack Goldsmith’s book The Terror Presidency, this cajoling and threatening will sound familiar. In his book, the man consistently on the delivering end was David Addington [Counsel to Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney].

And as Horton points out in another post, the American Psychological Association tried to provide the “health care professionals” with a Nuremberg defense of their own:

As the Bush Administration introduced its torture program in 2002, the APA modified Section 1.02 of its ethics rules, to state that in the event of conflict between ethics standards and law as interpreted by government organs like the Department of Defense or CIA, psychologists are free to disregard the requirements of applicable ethics guidelines and “may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority.” This provision was curiously passed just as psychologists undertook their key role in the torture program. And it dovetails perfectly with a scheme introduced by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to undercut the ethics standards of lawyers, doctors, and other healthcare professionals by binding them strictly to the laws and regulations as definitively interpreted by him as Secretary of Defense (DOD Policy Directive 3115.09). It is a full-throated repudiation of the rule fashioned at Nuremberg under which individuals involved in the torture or abuse of prisoners are not entitled to rely on a defense of superior orders. The APA was saying that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were free to suspend the organization’s ethics rules whenever they chose to do so. [italics are Spot’s]

If somebody tries to suspend the laws of war, it that a war crime Spotty?

We’ll have to stay tuned for that, grasshopper.

Technorati Tags: David Addington,Dick Cheney,torture,American Psychological Association,waterboarding,Nuremberg Defense

Snowballs in Hell

It's unlikely to ever ever ever happen again, so take note.

What Kathleen Parker said:

More troubling were questions based on anonymous hearsay aimed at Sotomayor's bench personality. Here's what women hear when men ask a female candidate about her temperament: "Are you really the bitch everybody says you are?"

Harry Potter and the Invisible Hand

Hey, ‘Arry, you there?

Ron, go away, I’m trying to sleep.

I’m not Ron, ‘Arry.

Hagrid?

Nope.

Hermoine? What are you doing in the boys’ dorm?

In your dreams, ‘Arry.

Then who are you?

I’m the Invisible Hand.

I can’t see you.

[mutters under breath] Jesus, ‘Arry, what did I say my name was?

Oh, right: the Invisible Hand. Then how do I know you’re real?

You infer me.

Infer you? How?

Well, you know what some people infer from the beauty of flowers, don’t you, ‘Arry?

God?

Right. I’m like that.

Oh, come on now.

‘Arry, when you go to the apothecary to buy tooth powder, what do you see?

Well, if I’m lucky, I see Glenda, the clerk.

Come on ‘Arry, focus! [mutters: hormones]

Well, row on row of tooth powder, I suppose.

That right, ‘Arry! That’s me!

You make tooth powder?

No! Of course not! I make people make tooth powder.

I don’t get it. What do you do, whisper in their ears, like now?

It’s much more subtle than that, ‘Arry. I just kind of put the idea in their heads, you see? And they just go and do it!

That’s amazing!

Yes, it is!

Can you make people make anything?

Yes, I can.

Anything?

Anything!

Do you ever have people make too much of something?

Advertising is supposed to take care of that, ‘Arry! Creatin’ demand, we call it; saved my bacon a time or two, let me tell you!

All right. Can you make people do good?

[defensively] What do you mean by that, ‘Arry?

I don’t know; something that benefits everyone.

Never mind about that, ‘Arry. We’re going to have some adventures, you and I. I’m going to show you some things and introduce you to some people.

Great; when do we start?

Patience boy; soon.

Invisible Hand? Hello? I guess he’s gone.

Technorati Tags: Invisible Hand,Harry Potter

Reflexive pronouns

Object pronoun that refers to the same person as the subject. ‘I cut myself.’ ‘You see yourself as the leader.’ Himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves, and oneself are the other reflexive pronouns.

The Free Dictionary.

So let’s review:

The committee awarded prizes to Fred and myself.

Unless you and the committee are the same person: wrong.

Fred and myself were the prize winners.

Even more odious, since here “myself” isn’t even used as an object, but rather as a subject.

Unless you want to give yourself away as a hopeless grammar moron, boys and girls, get it right. It’s a very simple rule: unless “I” is the subject of your sentence, just never use the word “myself.”

Golly Spot, where did that come from?

From the misuse of a reflexive pronoun by somebody who ought to know better.

Technorati Tags: reflexive pronouns

Do unto Christians

Do unto Christians as you would do unto Muslims.

Shorter Mark Gislason, reacting to Katie’s column today about the ACLU of Minnesota going after the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) for mixing pubic education and religion in its charter school operation.

Katie’s column is remarkable not for its subject matter, heaven forefend; she has railed about the school for a long time in keeping with her concern about all things Muslim: cab drivers, foot baths, flying imams, and the like. You name it and Katie has probably wailed about it. Several times.

No, what makes this one special is that she praises the action of the ACLU of Minnesota. And she even quotes its state director, indirectly:

"It's a theocratic school," state ACLU director Chuck Samuelson told City Pages. "It is as plain as the substantial nose on my face."

Katie also quotes the ACLU complaint in a couple of spots. Do you know what this means, boys and girls?

That Katie has multiple sources, Spotty?

Grasshopper, it probably means that Katie not only didn’t actually talk to anybody at the ACLU, that she was in a fevered dream state when she wrote that the lawsuit would “tear down the school’s curtain” to reveal the answers to important questions raised by, well, Katie (or maybe by Powerline; Spot didn’t check), including the disappearance of several young Somali men and the death of some of them.

Perhaps we can also get the ACLU to look into the disappearance of Judge Roy Bean, Amelia Earhart, and Jimmy Hoffa. The FBI hasn’t figured these cases out either.

But back to Mark’s substantial point: there are many more Christian-inspired charter schools out there, ripe for the suing, too, but the ACLU is nowhere to be found so far. Spot has written about them, and their theological-sounding names several times (just put “charter schools” in the search engine). And, come to think of it, where was the ACLU when the “flying imams” were denied a public accommodation (a seat on a scheduled airline)?

Spot gets at least a couple of fund-raising appeal messages from the ACLU every week. But he certainly won’t be inclined to respond until this organization figures out the Establishment Clause has a broader reach when it comes to education than it seems to believe now.

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