February 2013 archive

Late Night Karaoke

Your Invite to the 85th Academy Awards

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I need a break from all the yammering about sequester, austerity, cliff and whatever the topic du jour is, at least for a few hours. The chance to sit in front of the big tube with a drink and a bowl of popcorn or other finger food and watch the glitz and glamor as the stars walk down the red carpet and make fools of themselves bumbling the lines of acceptance speeches.

Tomorrow night at The Stars Hollow Gazette, I will be hosting a live blog of the 85th Academy Awards starting at 6:00 PM EST when the march of celebrities into the Dolby Theatre begins. Unlike past years, I have actually been inside a movie theater and watched four movies that have been nominated for awards, Best Movie nominee Les Miserables; Best Animated Feature nominee Brave; Best Costume Design nominee Mirror Mirror; and Best Visual Effects nominee The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”

This year’s show will be hosted by actor, comedian, producer, etc, Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame so be prepared for a lot of bleeping.

Once again I will be ensconced on the couch in my comfy sweats and sequined blue suede pumps with a pitcher of my favorite libation (vodka martinis and lots of olives) and plenty of popcorn sprinkled liberally with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. If you prefer something more exotic to drink or an appetizer a bit more sophisticated than popcorn, you can check out my previous entries here and here (yes, I am being lazy but I’ve been busy).

These are this year’s winner predictions over the The New York Times Carpetbagger:

Best Picture: “Argo”

Best Director: Ang Lee, “Life of Pi”

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln”

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Best Supporting Actor: Robert De Niro, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, “Les MiseĢrables”

Best Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio, “Argo”

Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, “Zero Dark Thirty”

Best Animated Feature: “Wreck-it Ralph,” Rich Moore

Best Documentary: “Searching For Sugar Man,” Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn

Best Foreign Language Film: “Amour,” Austria

Get ready for the party and live blog with us tomorrow night.

Oh, and the nominees are below the fold.

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What We Now Know

In this Saturday’s final segment of Up with Chris Hayes, host Chris Hayes and his panel guests share what they have learned this week. Chris’ guests are John McWhorter, professor of Linguistics and American Studies at Columbia University and New York Daily News columnist; Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer to Newsweek/Daily Beast; Avik Roy, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, former member of Mitt Romney’s health care policy advisory group; and John Nichols, senior editor at The Nation.

Steinem’s Support for Quinn as Mayor Depends on Sick-Leave Bill

Gloria Steinem, the feminist author and activist, said this week that she would withdraw her support for Christine C. Quinn in the New York City mayor’s race if Ms. Quinn, speaker of the City Council, did not allow a vote on sick-leave legislation that is a cherished cause of liberal groups. [..]

Underscoring the depth of the disappointment with Ms. Quinn among some left-leaning activists, Ms. Steinem said in a statement that she viewed passage of the sick-leave legislation as more significant than electing the first female mayor of New York City.

China to introduce carbon tax: official

BEIJING, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) — China will proactively introduce a set of new taxation policies designed to preserve the environment, including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, according to a senior official with the Ministry of Finance (MOF).

The government will collect the environmental protection tax instead of pollutant discharge fees, as well as levy a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, Jia Chen, head of the ministry’s tax policy division, wrote in an article published on the MOF’s website.

It will be the local taxation authority, rather than the environmental protection department, that will collect the taxes.

The government is also looking into the possibility of taxing energy-intensive products such as batteries, as well as luxury goods such as aircraft that are not used for public transportation, according to Jia.

Missouri City, Texas, To Impose ‘Crash Tax’ On Drivers

Missouri City, Texas, will impose what’s being called a “crash tax” on drivers that are at fault in accidents in order to pay for the cost of first responders, KHOU 11 reports. The fine will range from $500 to $2,000 depending on the severity of the crash.

Missouri City plans to bill insurance companies for the fine, according to KHOU 11, but some drivers are worried that insurance companies won’t pay for it.

Florida Atlantic Football Stadium Will Be Named For Private Prison Company

The public university on Tuesday announced an unconventional partner: the nation’s second-largest operator of for-profit prisons, the GEO Group Inc. The newly christened GEO Group Stadium came as part of a $6 million donation from the prison company’s charitable foundation, which will be paid out to Florida Atlantic over 12 years. [..]

“It appears to be a charitable gift that is trying to be a marketing vehicle, and it just doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon’s business school. “To link themselves with an athletic department when their business is locking people up, it just doesn’t connect to me really well.”

Critics of the private prison industry said the donation to a public university in Florida falls in line with efforts to gain influence with state and local public officials who decide whether to hand out contracts.

Cartnoon

The Size of the Universe-

On This Day In History February 23

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

February 23 is the 54th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 311 days remaining until the end of the year (312 in leap years).

On this day in 1954, a group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, receive the first injections of the new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk.

Though not as devastating as the plague or influenza, poliomyelitis was a highly contagious disease that emerged in terrifying outbreaks and seemed impossible to stop. Attacking the nerve cells and sometimes the central nervous system, polio caused muscle deterioration, paralysis and even death. Even as medicine vastly improved in the first half of the 20th century in the Western world, polio still struck, affecting mostly children but sometimes adults as well. The most famous victim of a 1921 outbreak in America was future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a young politician. The disease spread quickly, leaving his legs permanently paralyzed.

Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route The term derives from the Greek polios, meaning “grey”, myelos, referring to the “spinal cord”, and the suffix -itis, which denotes inflammation.

Although around 90% of polio infections cause no symptoms at all, affected individuals can exhibit a range of symptoms if the virus enters the blood stream. In about 1% of cases the virus enters the central nervous system, preferentially infecting and destroying motor neurons, leading to muscle weakness and acute flaccid paralysis. Different types of paralysis may occur, depending on the nerves involved. Spinal polio is the most common form, characterized by asymmetric paralysis that most often involves the legs. Bulbar polio leads to weakness of muscles innervated by cranial nerves. Bulbospinal polio is a combination of bulbar and spinal paralysis.

Poliomyelitis was first recognized as a distinct condition by Jakob Heine in 1840. Its causative agent, poliovirus, was identified in 1908 by Karl Landsteiner. Although major polio epidemics were unknown before the late 19th century, polio was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases of the 20th century. Polio epidemics have crippled thousands of people, mostly young children; the disease has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. Polio had existed for thousands of years quietly as an endemic pathogen until the 1880s, when major epidemics began to occur in Europe; soon after, widespread epidemics appeared in the United States.

By 1910, much of the world experienced a dramatic increase in polio cases and frequent epidemics became regular events, primarily in cities during the summer months. These epidemics-which left thousands of children and adults paralyzed-provided the impetus for a “Great Race” towards the development of a vaccine. Developed in the 1950s, polio vaccines are credited with reducing the global number of polio cases per year from many hundreds of thousands to around a thousand. Enhanced vaccination efforts led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and Rotary International could result in global eradication of the disease.

Eradication

While now rare in the Western world, polio is still endemic to South Asia and Nigeria. Following the widespread use of poliovirus vaccine in the mid-1950s, the incidence of poliomyelitis declined dramatically in many industrialized countries. A global effort to eradicate polio began in 1988, led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and The Rotary Foundation. These efforts have reduced the number of annual diagnosed cases by 99%; from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to a low of 483 cases in 2001, after which it has remained at a level of about 1,000 cases per year (1,606 in 2009). Polio is one of only two diseases currently the subject of a global eradication program, the other being Guinea worm disease. If the global Polio Eradication initiative is successful before that for Guinea worm or any other disease, it would be only the third time humankind has ever completely eradicated a disease, after smallpox in 1979 and rinderpest in 2010. A number of eradication milestones have already been reached, and several regions of the world have been certified polio-free. The Americas were declared polio-free in 1994. In 2000 polio was officially eliminated in 36 Western Pacific countries, including China and Australia. Europe was declared polio-free in 2002. As of 2006, polio remains endemic in only four countries: Nigeria, India (specifically Uttar Pradesh and Bihar), Pakistan, and Afghanistan, although it continues to cause epidemics in other nearby countries born of hidden or reestablished transmission.

Late Night Karaoke

The Outlaw In the Oval Office

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The word in beltway circles is that President George W. Bush Barack Obama is negotiating with Republicans to provide more information on the lethal attack last year on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya in order to insure the confirmation of his nominee for CIA Director, John Brennan, who headed the CIA torture program under the Bush administration. So why you ask is this of any importance? It would seem this new capitulating to Republican whining, as reported in The New York Times is a tactic to hold back the Department of Justice memos authorizing drone attacks:

The strategy is intended to produce a bipartisan majority vote for Mr. Brennan in the Senate Intelligence Committee without giving its members seven additional legal opinions on targeted killing sought by senators and while protecting what the White House views as the confidentiality of the Justice Department’s legal advice to the president. It would allow Mr. Brennan’s nomination to go to the Senate floor even if one or two Democrats vote no to protest the refusal to share more legal memos. [..]

Only after an unclassified Justice Department white paper summarizing the legal arguments was leaked to NBC News this month did the administration make two legal opinions on the targeted killing of American citizens briefly available to members of the Intelligence Committees.

But the documents were available to be viewed only for a limited time and only by senators themselves, not their lawyers and experts.

This news set off a most righteous rants by Esquire‘s Charles Pierce that prompted Glenn Greenwald to tweet:

After reading The New York Times article and Ed Kilgore’s reaction at the Washington Animal, Charles Pierce had this to say about a bad idea that is getting worse:

This is what happens when you elect someone — anyone — to the presidency as that office is presently constituted. Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making — that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment — is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future. The powers we have allowed to leach away from their constitutional points of origin into that office have created in the presidency a foul strain of outlawry that (worse) is now seen as the proper order of things. If that is the case, and I believe it is, then the very nature of the presidency of the United States at its core has become the vehicle for permanently unlawful behavior. Every four years, we elect a new criminal because that’s become the precise job description.

(emphasis mine)

The previous paragraph was just as bruising.

So much for the pledge of greater transparency made by Pres. Obama in his last State of the Union address:

I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word that we’re doing things the right way. So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.

The most worrisome parts of all of this is that these criminal acts by the president, vice president or any of the civil officers of the United States are now the norm, unconstitutional laws that have been passed and unlawful executive orders are acceptable and rubber stamped by the courts. The system of checks and balances no longer exists since Congress has refused to hold the Executive Branch accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors since Ronald Reagan ignored the law with the Iran/Contra affair and literally taken off the table by the Speaker of the House never to be mentioned. Now, Congress and the Courts nonchalantly brush aside the concerns that President Barack Obama has become judge, jury and executioner of American citizens for crimes against the United States that they might commit simply for what they said or for whom they were associated. The proud principles that we cherished have been not merely diminished but dismissed and the Constitution is now just a lovely document that is on display in the National Archive.

Charles Pierce has it only partially right when he said liberals were “criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future.” If they aren’t speaking out and standing against this criminal in the Oval Office, demanding that Congress fulfill its sworn duty, then they too are criminals under the law.

Democracy in the United States is on life support with little hope for recovery.

Justice and the Law for Aaron Swartz

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Law professor Lawrence Lessig marked his appointed as Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School with a lecture dedicated to the memory of internet activist Aaron Swartz and his work. Prof. Lessig was a close friend and mentor to Aaron and his death was a great loss to him. He had planned to lecture on corruption but after Aaron’s death decided to discuss Aaron’s Law and his work:

At the center of [Aaron’s] struggle is and was copyright.  In the debate between people who are pro and anti copyright, Aaron was on neither side.”  Rather, he opposed “dumb copyright.”  A perfect example was Swartz’s efforts to liberate data from PACER the database of public court records, which charged 8 cents a page.  He was not violating copyright, technical restraints, terms of service or any other prohibitions.  He had found a loophole.  “A loophole for public good” as opposed to the loopholes used for private gain by lobbyists and tax lawyers.  Swartz did the same thing with the government’s database of issued copyrights.  The PACER project got Aaron FBI surveillance; the copyright project, on the other hand, was met with approval by the Copyright Office.  Using all this as proof Lessig continued to emphasize that Aaron was a hacker.  He defines “hacker” as one who uses technical knowledge to make a better world.

According to Lessig, Aaron was his mentor, not the other way around.  The two worked together, upon Aaron’s insistence, on anti-corruption campaign for a while before they split again: while Aaron wanted to turn Barrack Obama into Elizabeth Warren, Lessig wanted Obama to pick up the fight with corruption he had promised in 2008.  Without that fight, the defenders of the status quo would defeat real change.

Aaron’s Laws – Law and Justice in a Digital Age’

Random Japan

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OUCH!

A Fukuoka man in his 30s was hospitalized after being bitten by a redback spider while removing a can of coffee from a vending machine.

A special-ed teacher in Aichi was reprimanded for handcuffing a ten-year-old autistic student who wouldn’t follow her instructions.

A worker at a nursing home in western Tokyo is in hot water after taking a photo of a female resident and sending it to colleagues in an email that compared the woman to a cartoon character.

Headline of the Week: “80 Percent Approve of Being Cared for by Robots: Survey” (via Mainichi Japan)

Friday Night at the Movies

Unfortunately Chuckles refused to disappear and all I have left at the moment is good stuff.

I’m putting it below the fold in hopes of confusing the ‘bots, but if you have any interest in large constrictors and what’s in Carol Merrill’s box or pacifist themes you’ll watch this while it’s still available and put it in your Netflix account for when it won’t be.

Here is a song about boxes-

And another one-

And of course, no boxed set would be complete without a heart shaped one-

Murder Capitol of the World

 photo Jose_Pepe_Palacios_insert_courtesy_Gay_Liberation_Network_zpsa5cc9e74.jpg

[Of] the 89 LGBT murders since 2009, 52 have been transgender women.

–Jose Pepe Palacios

Honduran gay rights advocate Jose Pepe Palacios is on a mission.  He is visiting seven US cities to drum up support for for a coalition of LGBT and progressive groups in Honduras that is seeking to peacefully challenge anti-democratic forces which have taken control and are believed to be responsible for a large number of those murders mentioned above.

Palacios is a founding member of the LGBT group Diversity Movement in Resistance (MDR) and a member of the steering committee of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP).

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