A little partisanship cures all your budget woes...

To be fair, it's not like I expected anything different. But it's so disheartening to have elected officials who refuse to handle the fiduciary matters we hired them to do, instead deflecting the question back to the utterly uninformed masses, and the best the political establishment can come up with to help us sort this out is transparent, unabashed partisanship.

Direct democracy, which is what Props 1A-1F are, doesn't offend me prima facie. The success of direct democracy, however, hinges (almost) entirely on a well-informed, participatory electorate. I vote every chance I get and I love reading ballot propositions and discussing the pros and cons with my fellow citizens, and I tell you what -- even I can't find a damn bit of good, straightforward information on what's going on with these proposals. As best I can tell, the "public information" campaigns are essentially presenting the same information ("we're fucked") while coming to precisely opposite conclusions ("so vote (yes | no) on election day").

Naturally, one place one might turn to look, in ceding a bit of electoral independence, is to some sort of prominent proxy institution like the political parties. But literally all you get there are arguments of definition by opposition:

"Republicans have been pushing for state spending caps around the country, and it made no sense for us to welcome one here when Democrats have been fighting them everywhere else."

Get that? Republicans like this, and we're not Republicans, so we don't like this. How nuanced.

"Whatever way the vote goes on the propositions, we can't let it break up our solidarity of the Democratic Party," he said in a speech before the voting.

Party first, comrades.

"Prop. 1A was the ransom (Democratic legislative leaders) were forced to pay to the Republican minority," said Taiz. "Prop. 1A flies in the face of core Democratic values and forces us to live the Republican dream."

My team good. Your team bad. There's no information here; just saying "it's a Republican idea therefore it's bad" is about the worst kind of information out there; if anything it's making the public less well-informed because they think they know which team they're playing for, but they still have no idea what they're voting on. Even the Chron's synopsis of the measures is horrid:

Prop. 1A: Caps future state spending, increases the state's rainy day fund and triggers $16 billion in tax extensions.

Prop. 1B: Provides $9.3 billion in new school funding, but only if Prop. 1A also passes.

Prop. 1C: Modernizes the state lottery and allows the state to borrow up to $5 billion against future lottery revenues.

Prop. 1D: Moves $600 million in 1998's Prop. 10 tobacco tax money to the general fund to help balance the budget.

Prop. 1E: Moves $450 million over two years from 2004's Prop. 63 mental health money to the state's general fund.

Prop. 1F: Bars raises for government officials in deficit years.

What does all this mean?! Help!!

Baby snail

Found him on my rosemary bush this morning!



UPDATE: According to this, snails hate highly aromatic herbs. Which explains why I found this guy on my rosemary bush, right next to my explosively-growing lavender... Hmf.

Bringing American freedom to Iraq

I guess the Bush administration can count this among their successes of bringing the American way of life to Iraq:

A shadowy group has posted signs around the Iraqi capital's main Shiite working-class district of Sadr City naming alleged homosexuals on a list and threatening to kill them.

"We will punish you, perverts," the posters say.

And I know, I know, it's not fair to a lot of people to say that America is that harsh on gays, but in so many ways, it is. There are extreme examples and less extreme examples, but ultimately I don't see how close you have to get to the issue before it looks like there's not a fundamental underpinning of "we don't like you and you're not welcome here" to the whole thing.

Also, "puppies" (first link above) is about the coolest slang term for 'you homos' in history. American gays might get some traction with a little Lakovian reframing, eschewing "queers" or "fags" for "puppies". Who doesn't like puppies?!



Credit: Pirate Scott, Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic)

Conservatives love teabagging

UPDATE: I was gonna stay away from the obvious, sophomoric teabag humor, but when I saw that, indeed, they teabagged the Wabash, I'm sorry, but you freakin' asked for it.

No doubt -- I'm away from the TV but I have no doubt -- there's much excitement in the conservative punditsphere over the apparent populist uprising taking place against taxes, which the conservative punditsphere doesn't bother to differentiate from "big" (i.e., wasteful) government. I'm with MSNBC on this little family dispute:

[CNBC's tantrum-throwing NYSE floor reporter Rick Santelli] also said despite the claims from others in the media, including people at CNBC’s sister network MSNBC, calling the movement “Astroturf,” Santelli declared it a grassroots movement.

“I think from a grassroots standpoint, I’m sure some of the media out there is not going to peg it that way, but isn’t it about as American as it gets – for people to roll their strollers and make their signs and go voice their opinion about the direction of the country?” Santelli said. “Good, bad or indifferent – that’s a great thing. There’s not a lot of countries, of course, that afford their people that, that type of right. It’s a great thing.”

Yes, why on earth would 'some media out there' not call this 'grassroots' effort grassroots? Because, quite simply, 'Astroturf' is what this is:

The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, a lobbyist whose corporate clients including Verizon, Raytheon, liquor maker Diageo, CarMax and drug company Sanofi Pasteur.

That, people, is not a grassroots, populist uprising. That is an uprising brought to you and underwritten by big business and big government. That is not the peasants sharpening their pitchforks, it's pawns being played in the game. It's simulacrum. Well, and to be fair, it's very effective politics. The slick political insiders convinced the peasants to do the insiders' bidding while convincing the peasants that it was their own idea; and that it is for their own good. Deceptive, but incredibly effective. Or in other words, the usual old-guard Republican game.

Indiana preparing for Obama's gun ban

Evidently word has made it to Indiana that the liberals, progressives, hippies, peaceniks, treehuggers, atheists, gays and communists -- and oh yeah, that guy they supported for President -- are coming to take their guns. Hoosiers are a scrappy bunch though, and it seems as though preparations are already underway for the coming firearm prohibition:

"A man died Monday, days after he was involved in a swordfight with the grandson of a woman who was killed when she tried to intervene in the fight, police said.

Keep it classy, Indiana :)

Senior Seating

Well, you know as well as I do that when someone leaves their blog unmolested for two straight months, that's the end of that. So don't be surprised if and when this all goes kaput. On the other hand, dear reader, since you're here, may I pass this along?

I've often wondered about the politics of the ADA seats on BART. They're labeled that "Federal law requires these seats be made available to seniors and people with disabilities" -- doesn't seem super-political, right? But what about pregnant women? It's considered good etiquette to offer pregnant women -- well, to offer them any seat, but those seats in particular. But on the other hand, how do they feel about their condition (or child) being called a disability? I still don't understand that. But the other day the "senior" thing finally happened: A guy walked in and a lady offered him her seat. He asked "Oh, are you getting off at the next stop?" and she said "No, seniors..."

Fortunately, the guy had a good sense of humor about it; in fact, everyone in the immediate area did. He gave her a hard time, but did end up accepting the offer, as most of us in the vicinity chuckled. I guess from now on my standard response to such questions will be "No, it's OK." Maybe 'cause it's just the nice thing to do.

Phelps smokes weed, destroys conservative narrative

Of course Michael Phelps has smoked weed. But you wouldn't know it from the flabbergasted reaction of Drudge Report and other sensationalist online rags: "THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history."

No, actually, it can't destroy his career. He's already won 14 freaking Olympic gold medals.

It can, however, destroy the conservative narrative that's been shoved down our throats by Nancy Reagan and the Office of National Drug Control Policy for the last three decades or so.

The shock that everyone is reported is that -- have you heard? -- Michael Phelps has smoked a little Mary Jane on occasion. Or at least once. The shock that isn't reported is that, you know, funny, he's the most successful Olympic athlete and he appears to have done so whilst having some interaction with controlled substances. Which means that the egg I fried for breakfast this morning might just not be like your brain on drugs. It might be something like part of a delicious breakfast sandwich, for example.

Gotta love this AP follow up wherein Phelps promises "I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again." You heard it here first: Michael Phelps will never ever let someone take pictures of him smoking out of a bong again. Ever.