Tough On Crime

Funny, I don't hear any candidate talking about crime this election season.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any developed country, maybe even in the world, I'm not sure about that last part.
Anyway, the cost of locking up non-violent drug offenders started catching up with the states a few years ago. Even Republican legislators began to rethink the knee-jerk policies.
Now, it's come to this.

Between 1987 and last year, states increased their higher education spending by 21 percent, in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the Pew Center on the States. During the same period, spending on corrections jumped by 127 percent.

In the Northeastern states, according to the Pew report, prison spending over the past 20 years has risen 61 percent, while higher education spending has declined by 5.5 percent.

No Comment

It's Just Wrong

that...

1. The pump tube in every body lotion is (purposely?) designed to reach only to the top of the last 1 1/2 inches of liquid, thereby requiring you to replace the product at least two months early. So the "bonus" ounces were no such thing, but just a waste product. Oh, sure, you can unscrew the top every time and tip the bottle to get a few drops out, smacking the bottom. But where do you put the gunky top in the meantime? So you fish a piece of plastic or paper out of the waste basket and gingerly set it on that. This will last a day or two, then you'll replace it rather than deal with the hassle. Exactly! "They" count on this.

2. The lace panels on your panties are placed exactly where your thumbs just naturally go to pull them on. This guarantees that your thumbs will tear the lace, meaning that eventually the panties will have to be replaced long before it would otherwise be necessary. Exactly! "They" count on this.

3. Aging women begin to grow whiskers at the same time they begin losing their near sight. They can't even see them with their glasses on, which is why they mostly give up on mascara. (Hillary has an artiste to do it for her.) The only way to detect these black, coarse, vile straggles is to stroke for them, feel the stump and then wander, hands shaking across the chin, trying to capture the bugger with the tweezers.
The chin stroking is not a sign of wise old age, it is a nervous habit.
Don't tweeze, you say? Shave.
Now, I love the tiny little lady razors as much as anyone, but the thing is, the buggers grow back.
Like, right away. Arrgh.

4. — 10. Your choice

Horses!

Lorenzo: the Flying French Man

h/t Andrew Sullivan

Lorenzo : the Flying French Man...
by alatebo

More horse stuff from alatebo in France.

Sufei Saturday

Bad Boys of Beijing. Sorry, I'm addicted.

What Happened? Lincoln Chaffee's Take

It started with the tax cuts, according to former Sen. Lincoln Chaffee, who switched parties to become a Democrat, lost re-election in Rhode Island, and has a new book out.
He supports Barack Obama.
Compelling reading, disturbing insight, fairly short.

To me, the tax cut was a stalking horse. The Cheney-Bush strategy behind the cut was to set the tone—to preempt the Congress not just on taxes but on every issue. It would tame any future resistance to a radical agenda by serving up this politically irresistible prize: lawmakers could go home and say they had voted to cut taxes. The White House was out to neuter Congress, and the minute Congress rolled over for the cuts, it set the stage for one-branch rule in America and all the consequences we live with today. The two aggressive personalities at the top of the executive branch had tested the Congress and had found it lacking. A coequal branch of government? In their wisdom, the Founders had given us power to respond when events demand that we check and balance an unwise president. I looked around in the Senate and saw few who had the courage to wield that vital power.

Also, Arcana Saturday

University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
From the Digital Scriptorum at Columbia University. Surf through highlights here.

Frogs 'N Toads Saturday

Why not? Look and listen.



P.S. Please congratulate me. This is the first time I have managed to embed an audio clip. It's actually quite simple, but it took awhile to find the simple instructions.

Doin' The Math

I don't do it, Josh Marshall at TPM does. Hillary and Barack don't have time to go after McCain, so others are picking up the slack.

I'd also forgotten that back in September, when President Bush first rolled out the Korea model of the permanent occupation of Iraq which Sen. McCain (R) has now embraced as his platform, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office did a study of what a 50 year 'Korea model' presence in Iraq would cost.

The study was done with highly conservative estimates, figuring a much smaller contingent of troops, and basically all the best case scenario numbers, including everything being basically chill over there like McCain says it'll be.

They came up with an additional $2 trillion over 50 years.

Now, an interesting point of comparison is the projected shortfall in the Social Security budget, which is on the contrary tabulated on highly pessimistic assumption. That number over 75 years is projected at $4.7 trillion.

Now I hasten to add, again, that the Iraq numbers are highly optimistic and the Social Security ones highly pessimistic. If we do a simple back of the envelope calculation we get the 75 year cost of Iraq would be $3 trillion.

And remember that the Social Security number is the one that is supposed make the country curl up, collapsed in upon itself and supernova.

Hillary, Racism, Sexism, Feminism

A little analysis from Betsy Reed, executive editor at The Nation.
She hits the high points, even though I have to say that from early on, I still remember Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s misogynistic sarcasm toward Hillary (note we haven't heard a word from him since, though) and some Hillary surrogate's statement that Obama supporters just wanted to have a black best friend.
Anyway:

"More than any single thing, that moment with Bill Clinton in South Carolina represents the rupture that was coming," says Harris-Lacewell. The moment occurred in late January, when the former President compared Obama's landslide win, in which he received a major boost from African-American voters, to Jesse Jackson's victories there in 1984 and 1988. Because the former President offered the comparison unprompted, in response to a question that had nothing to do with Jackson or race, the statement was widely read as chalking up Obama's win to his blackness alone and thus attempting to marginalize him as a doomed minority candidate with limited appeal. Obama was now "the black candidate," in the words of one Clinton strategist quoted by the AP.

Women's Voices Women Vote Fri. Update

Diarist at Daily Kos has the latest on the voter suppression, Clinton ties story from NPR.
Short, worth a read.
Most interesting to me was the sidebar story from a reporter from the Center for Investigative Journalism looking at the conflict-of-interest in members of the board like Maggie Williams, Hillary's new campaign manager, getting contracts with the group.
And then there's the executive director's husband, whose firm got $700,000.
Just bad. Just stink.
* Women's Voices Women Vote Update

* Women's Voices Women Vote NOT!

Fainting Goats

I've seen this about three times but in case you haven't. It was on the mommapostcards site, so in case your momma didn't share, here it is.

Mother's Day Is May 11

Wonder what I'll get. Maybe another not trip to the art museum. Or maybe not the zoo.
Anyway, postcardsfromyomomma is going to be a book.
Fun read.

McCain On Iraq

There are two ads up and running with the 100 years quote and according to one follow-up poll, they're having an effect. I've suggested giving a few bucks to the Democratic National Committee and MoveOn.org for their efforts to counter McCain while his prospective Democratic opponent, whoever that may be, is still in the primary battle.
In the meantime, both the Republican National Committee and McCain himself have complained that the ads are misleading. They're not. There's no need to be so foolish as to accuse McCain of advocating "war" or "fighting" in Iraq. His own words resonate, as videos down further on this page show.
But I wanted to add this:

McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.

from Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker in January. He was there, he heard it all.
Hat tip Josh Marshall at TPM for reminding us all again.

An Honor

One of the things on my to-do list is to get to the down-and-dirty game of maximizing hits for my blog. But so far, I've just procrastinated.
I have learned, however, that it's good to be cited by other blogs. I don't know if it's happened before, but here's one.
Just cool, that's all. I think all she did was plug in WVWV to Google blogs and find me. Still.

FISA As Of Today

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com has bulldogged the telecom immunity issue from the beginning, along with Firedoglake.com and McJoan at Daily Kos.
Today, he picks up the behind-the-scenes games going on in the House to get a bill despite the obvious disinterest of the people and the stalwart performance of many of the Blue Dogs whose re-election is threatened by Republicans in swing districts.
Money quote:

(Steny)Hoyer's motives, then, appear to be two-pronged: (1) he and the House Democratic leadership simply want to grant amnesty to telecoms -- they favor it -- because they do not want the lawsuits relating to illegal spying to proceed to resolution; and (2) they are deferring to the tiny number of Blue Dogs who favor amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping.

In the interest of more and better Democrats, Act Blue is taking contributions towards an ad campaign to run in Dino (Dem in name only) Chris Carney's Pennsylvania district not unlike the R's who targeted the vulnerable House Dems who stood firm against telecom immunity.

Remember, the whole issue about the lawsuits against the telecoms is that discovery in those suits is the only way at this point we are likely to learn just how extensively the administration was involved in illegal spying on Americans, and just how far up the chain it went.
The administration is not going to hand this stuff over without them.

Lesson: Primary politics isn't the only thing going on right now.

Hillary Clinton on O'Reilly

I don't have to be fair, but I surprisingly find myself deciding to anyway. This is a TPM video created from two nights of interview.
If I were one of O'Reilly's regulars, I would think "she's not so bad. I might disagree, but she's actually likable and funny and holds her own (although he's entirely soft here, not the usual O'Reilly)." 5 min.
They won't vote for her, though.

Medical Marijuana News O' Teh Day

I haven't heard a story like this before. Both Swedish and UW turned him down because he smoked for pain, which is legal in Washington state. I'd like to see a reporter go a little farther with this story, was their federal funding in jeopardy if they okayed the liver transplant?
In my experience, it's the feds who mess with this stuff, but maybe the medical committees are just jerks.
In any case, he died.

SEATTLE -- A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

Whew, At Long Last

something to make us laugh. Leave it to the Brits, hat tip Andrew Sullivan. 2 min.

Babs!

From the AP:

After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters is disclosing a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as "exciting" and "brilliant."
Appearing on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcript of the show provided to The Associated Press.

A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined his career as well as hers, Walters says.