[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- President Obama's immigration speech: Long on good thoughts, short on a plan to make it happen
- [Crooks and Liars]
President Obama's speech this morning on comprehensive immigration reform was a good start to getting the ball rolling with this effort. (The transcript is here.) But that's all it was. And like a lot of Obama speeches, it was strong on philosophical substance — though typically, it equivocated in trying to split the middle between the "poles" of the debate — and pretty short on practical details for getting it done. He didn't even forecast a deadline for legislation.
The heart of the speech was this part:
[redacted]
Be sure and read Sharry's more detailed thoughts at HuffPo. He's one of our best thinkers on immigration, and the president would do well to hew more closely to Sharry's advice on this than Rahm's, ifyaknowaddimean.
- The Hills are Alive
- [Balloon Juice]
Today’s New York Times reports that FEMA trailers have re-appeared in the Gulf as a source of cheap housing for oil spill cleanup workers. Because the trailers were constructed with cheap materials, they have unsafe levels of formaldehyde.
That’s not the only place those things have landed. I’m traveling in the Dakotas and the hills on the reservations are dotted with these things.
- Discussion Thread: Work of Art
- [Shakesville]
Is anyone else as morbidly fascinated with the Bravo reality competition trainwreck "Work of Art" as I am? I hope so, because I really want to talk about last night's episode.
Some background for those who aren't watching the show: It's a reality/game show in which a dozen or so artists compete for a monetary prize and the title of Bestest Artist or wev, a la "Top Chef" or "Project Runway," except instead of geoduck or silk chiffon, the contestants are working with paint and cameras and concrete. To build concrete buttholes. No, really. (That's how the artist described them; I'm not being cheeky. Ahem.)
And, as you'd expect from the "progressive, edgy" art world, the first three challenges were won by young white men, while the contestants who went home were, in order: A black woman, an Asian man, and a white woman over 50. To be clear, the concrete butthole work pictured above was one of the winners.
…last night it got even absurder when Andres "Piss Christ" Serrano showed up as guest judge, and the contestants were instructed that their new challenge was to create something "shocking." Really? This is how art works?
…Because that quite evidently isn't how art works, the artists commanded to conceive of something deliberately and consciously outrageous—as opposed to creating something with the purpose of expression, which may be shocking as a by-product of that expression—the majority of the concepts were juvenile, calculated, and painfully obvious; they had all the subtlety of a hammer being applied directly to the skull.
[Redacted: description of some of the art produced in this challenge.
The full post has a trigger warning. -L]
- Pete Stark Slams Anti-Immigrant Wackos
- [Calitics]
Last Saturday, Pete Stark, who represents CA-13 in the House of Representatives [in the state govt, not federal], held a town hall in Fremont. Some immigrant bashers showed up and demanded to know what Stark was doing about immigration and the border. As Politico reports, Stark was having none of it, and gave what may be the definitive smackdown to these [ableist slur*]…
There is seriousness in Stark's response. He's not calling them "killers" idly. In 2009, Minutemen members in Arizona killed a Latino man and his 9-year old daughter….
Meanwhile, here in Monterey, a group of teabaggers are protesting today in support of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. They're waving a bunch of Arizona flags and sporting a sign that reads "Boycott California, Not Arizona." Are they even aware that Monterey is in California?
I considered stopping to ask them what they thought of the fact that Monterey was founded by the Spanish and was the state capital under Mexico, and that the 1849 California Constitution written here in Monterey made California officially bilingual, with specific protections for Spanish speakers…
[
* an ableist slur that I'm having trouble training myself to stop using.
-L]
- "Enough Already" — the Village is tired of boring, icky talk about corporatism
- [Hullabaloo - Digby]
Joshua Green has a smart op-ed in today's Globe about the usefulness of Supreme Court confirmation battles as education tools. He recounts how successful the right has been over the years ib creating the myth of the "activist judge" as a way to discredit rulings they didn't like and notes that in the Kagan hearings the left is using the Citizens United case to make similar points.
…sure enough here's a writer named Eva Rodriguez writing how silly all this boooooring back and forth about corporate power is. (Presumably she found Amy Klubuchar's penetrating question about whether Kagan was "Team Edward or Team Jacob" yesterday to be vastly more enlightening.)
- The Plum Line – To subpoena BP or not to subpoena BP? That is the question
- Sargent reports that Senator Jim DeMint is blocking a bill that would allow the Oil Spill commission to function properly…
[via Digby, who thinks the commission needs subpoena power to function properly.
...I can find no flaw in that.
-L]
- Haley Barbour: BP Oil Disaster Proves Free Market System Works
- [Firedoglake]
The Republican governor of Mississippi, who previously said the BP oil disaster was being overblown by the liberal media, was asked by NPR if all of the damage and destruction and deaths have caused him to reconsider his “smaller government, less regulation, more freedom for industry” ideology.
Nope.
- 10 Useful WordPress Security Tweaks
- [Smashing Magazine]
- Into The Abyss
- [Talking Points Memo]
I don't have a firm enough grip of economics to decide with any confidence whose predictions to believe about the direction of the economy. And there's enough different about this recession from all or most of those of the post-war era to give me some pause when people cite historical norms for how recessions operate. But we do seem to be seeing more and more evidence that the recovery is at risk of stalling, if not falling back into recession, which seems possible too. And as that is happening, both the elite and the popular/political policy debate seems to be going to those who believe we should ramp back government spending even though history suggests that is the best way to choke off the recovery and toss the economy into a double dip recession or worse.
…hopefully everybody making [the historically-based] argument [for more deficit spending] is wrong and the economic recovery is more robust than they think; it's certainly possible. But the economic and political repercussions seem both vast and perverse — perverse because the people pushing the policies that could kill the economy seem most likely to gain from the damage politically.
- Progressive Dems: Fiscal Responsibility Means Opposing the War Supplemental
- [Firedoglake]
Progressive Democrats issued a challenge this morning to their colleagues in the House on the eve of a scheduled vote on the war supplemental: the only fiscally responsible stance is to end the emergency funding [of the War on Abstract Concepts].
- Facebook tightens up on user data
- [BBC News]
The social network rolls out changes to its site in its continuing efforts to appease critics of its privacy practices.
- Could Boxes of Water Help Reforest the World?: Scientific American
- [Scientific American]
The mechanism is almost suspiciously simple. The box collects rainwater and condensation and funnels it to the plant. In spring 2009, [inventor] Hoff partnered with Eduard Zanen, co-founder of the stroller company Bugaboo International, to finance experiments with the device that are now under way in Kenya, Morocco, Spain and the United States. Eight hundred of the boxes have been installed in Joshua Tree National Park, where they are nourishing native mesquite and saltbush plants.
Hoff, an impassioned climate evangelist, published a book in 2008 titled "CO2: A Gift From Heaven," which argues that policymakers should leave the climate debate aside and focus on planting trees. Planting 5 billion acres of trees — about 2.5 times the surface area of Canada — would be enough to offset annual emissions of 10 billion metric tons of CO2, he calculates…
"We can use the box to reforest California, and we can use it to restore our water tables to safer levels again," he said…
Hoff said he has spent about $7 million on the project thus far, with about $500,000 coming from the Dutch government. He has been through more than 10 prototypes, and is also working on building one out of biodegradable material, for one-time use in remote areas like the Sierra Nevada.
Right now, Hoff sells the boxes for $275 for 10, manufactured in his native Holland, but he envisions local production wherever the box is sold. "I think it's a disaster that the only people who know how to weave clothing are in China," he said. Gardening and home-improvement stores could sell them for about $15, he said.
- Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson says Indonesia's last glacier may be gone in a matter of years.
- [Science News]
Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson says he thought it would take decades before Indonesia's last glacier disappears, but now he thinks it may happen in a matter of years.
- Water droplets create multilayered display
- [New Scientist]
Projecting images onto a series of parallel "waterfalls" creates the illusion of a 3D display
The Link(s): Thu, Jul 1st, 11am by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.