Right winging it

ThinkProgress offers this: Under Misspelled Banner, Buchanan And White Nationalist Brimelow Argue For English-Only Initiatives

and this from he who walks the Appalachian trail (pre-trip of course): Sanford Predicts Stimulus Will Result In ‘A Thing Called Slavery’

and from our former Governor: Romney: Republicans ‘Believe In Allowing People To Have Choice In Their Health Care’ — Except A Public Option

and offering education: Census Bureau: We’re Working With Bachmann To ‘Explain The Rules Of The Census’

In memorium

Reuters reports: A fight broke out on a Florida bus when news of Michael Jackson's death sparked debate over whether he should be remembered as a great musical talent, and one passenger was charged with assault. When one passenger disagreed with anothers evaluation of Jackson's place in pop music the offended party started chasing the would be critic with a knife.

Never speak ill of the departed.

Go see....

Julius Lester is a man of many talents and his considerable ability as a photographer is on display at the Robert Floyd Gallery (2 East St & Route 10) in Southampton through July 31st. Julius will do gallery talks Sunday (June 28th) at 3:00 and 4:15 PM. for his "Ways of Seeing" exhibit.

Starting July 1st, John Van de Graaff will be showing "Birds of the Massachusetts Coast" at the US Fish and Wildlife Service on Westgate Center Drive in Hadley (that's past the credit union and Staples). The opening reception is July 9th from 4:30 to 6:30 PM, else hours are Monday - Friday, 8-4:30. Forget the illustrations in the bird book, these ain't like that.

Two sets of remarkable images, no charge at either venue.

Tagged isn't it.

Got an email recently from a long lost friend advising me that so and so has pictures for you to see. I just had to agree to be added to the friends list and was advised that the sender would be disappointed should I not respond. Turns out the site, Tagged, does what's known as content scraping and, if I had gone through with the sign up process, would have sent similar emails to everyone in my address book.

Read the CNET piece and avoid this.

#GOPFAIL

I guess all that Twitters is not gold.

The Daily Show Defense.

Americablog points us to this:

Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.

Doubts are rising about the Obama DOJ.

Morning news

Scanning the (online) papers this morning....

William Williams, the soon to be former town manager of Billerica, is leaving after he made some less than flattering observations about the place during an address to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast. Mark Twain advised: “always tell the truth – in will amaze your friends and confound your enemies.” It's good to remember that Twain was self-employed.

The city of Springfield, having convinced the legislature to allow it to require residency on the part of all city employees not covered by a union contract is now considering a mandate to require that any contractor with a contract of over $250,000 have at least 35% of its workforce be city residents. The excuse is, as with the residency requirement, that the city's money should be spent to benefit city residents. This parochialism will likely result in higher costs, fewer bidders, and inspire the kind of “hack hiring” that you'd think municipalities would want to avoid. Springfield is emerging from receivership but the argument that it's “the city's money” is bogus, given the level of state aid it gets and the amount of state and federal funds involved in major building projects.

The members of SEIU in Amherst met to discuss a possible contract reopener and a giveback of the 3.5% cost of living adjustment in the face of the town's deficit. SEIU represents the technical and clerical workers in town, the folks that make up the infrastructure of the government. Most of their work goes unnoticed, if its done well, which puts them in an interesting position. Amherst, like other towns, is a collective enterprise and we need to approach the budget issues from that perspective, rather than lob brickbats.

They're flying too high

I'm struck by, actually sick of, the commentary that's been streaming out about Sonia Sotomayor that began even in advance of her nomination to the Supreme Court by Barack Obama, himself subjected to some pretty wild accusations in the MSM and the Internets. Homeland Security issued a report indicating the level of dangerousness from homegrown wingnuts is at its highest level since the early '90's, when coincidentally another unconventional person – William Jefferson Clinton – managed to make it to the presidency.

For those people who Ann Richards would label as “being born on third base and growing up thinking they hit a triple” folks like Clinton, Obama and Sotomayor represent a pretty scary prospect. After all they managed by virtue of intelligence, hard work and dumb luck to make it into positions of power in the public sector, not as “public servants” but as decision makers of the highest order. This type of achiever challenges the master narrative of who should lead and breaks the wealth equals intelligence paradigm. These are uppity types who don't know their place and the “wise Latina” remark illustrates that tendency, so it gets replayed over and over again.

This fear – the natural order of things is under attack – gets transmitted up and down the line in a variety of ways. From the people John Gresham characterizes as “living poor but voting rich” to the third basers and beyond, the word is out, the barricades are going up. The folks who intend to profit from this know enough to stay just far enough out of the way, same as the leaders of the KKK did. The messages aren't really coded, just slightly oblique, couched in good PR fashion by individuals who are clever with words. The opinions are sanitized just enough to make them acceptable to repeat and placed in contexts that inhibit us from questioning the authority or motives of the speakers.

Computing Center for Holyoke

The Governor's announced plans to build a high performance computing center in Holyoke. Looks like a home run for that town and its departing mayor, Mike Sullivan. Sullivan's done a credible job as mayor, operating in difficult circumstances.

Holyoke, having a municipal utility and keeping control of the dams, may have done itself a real favor.

"Hack Holidays"

Those two Suffolk County holidays -- Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day -- that got extended to state employees in general either because the state offices are located in Suffolk County or through some kind of equity arrangement are under fire. They were saved by a narrow vote but there may be another try to eliminate them. As it goes, the days off are expensive, disruptive and difficult to justify, except that Evacuation Day falls on St. Patrick's Day and Bunker Hill celebrates a battle that was largely fought (and lost) on Breed's Hill.

Remember counties? Some were disestablished in a move to reform government. Suffolk was supposedly merged with municipal government (aka Boston). Only 7 out of the 14 counties actually went away. Hampshire and Franklin reinvented themselves as Councils of Governments and are now thought of as models for the regionalization proposals now being promoted out of the State House.

And to the West

If you think things are bad in Boston, consider Albany. For the last forty years, Republicans have controlled the State Senate until last November's elections when the Democrats ended up with a two vote majority. Suffice it to say the Democrats ascendancy to power has not gone smoothly. Last Monday, two dissident Democrats (both with some significant ethics and other issues) joined the Repubs in a surprise vote to reorganize the leadership. When the lights came back on, literally, the Repubs were now in control of the Senate.

Moving in the background is one Blase Thomas Golisano, a billionaire, libertarian, three time candidate for governor, who had pumped a bunch of money into the Democrats campaigns hoping for some “reform” to be promoted when they gained a majority. Suffice it to say that Mr. Galisano is unhappy with his subsequent treatment by the new majority. He, like Rushbo, moved his primary residence to Florida to protest new taxes but Golisano apparently decided to extract a non-monetary penalty as well, hence the overthrow of the Democratic leadership. With all the issues facing New York and just two weeks to go in the legislative session, the place is now in chaos.

Bob Dylan said it best: money doesn't talk, it swears.

Palin on Socialism

From Mudflats:

There are times when commentary just seems unnecessary.

(From Sean Hannity’s interview on Fox News tonight with Sarah Palin)

Hannity: By the way for all of us in New York, where we are now, where we pay 10% income tax, you actually give every citizen in Alaska a check back.

Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate (Hannity looks at the camera in disbelief and envy mouthing “I’m so envious(?)”) where we don’t have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to the people that own the resources. Imagine that.

Hannity: And it went up higher since you’ve been the governor and you negotiated with the oil companies. That all went up so people get a bigger check.

Palin: There was a corrupt tax system up there and we had a couple of lawmakers end up in jail because of the tax system that was adopted so we cleaned it up and said we wanted a fair and equitable share of the resources that we own, and the people will share in those resource revenues that are derived.

********************************

5 minutes, and one wormhole into another dimension later…..

********************************

Palin: If Americans aren’t paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize. Certainly that is so far from what the founders of our country had in mind for us.

Hannity: Socialism?

Palin: Well….that is where we are headed.

Dr. K calls the bottom

Paul Krugman, to whom we must all pay attention, says we've likely bottomed out. He adds conditions, of course. Roubini makes the case for pessimism.