Labor Day: Go fledge yourself

Eastern screech owl fledglings, thankful that the Supreme Court has protected them from union organizers? No, they want a contract! Photo by Joe McDonald.

Edroso commemorates Labor Day with a tribute to the awesome awfulness of Mr. Mark Mix, chairman of the "National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation", and a column by Mr. Mix that ran in the Pensacola News Journal last week, "It's 'Labor Day', Not 'Union Day'" in which he talks about what America's liberty-loving workers have done to defeat greedy totalitarian unions this year, including

• Wisconsin's adoption of a "right-to-work" law in March (jewel in the crown of Governor Walker's effort to turn Wisconsin into a Deep South state);
• the success of the Republican dirty tricks campaign in stopping UAW from organizing the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga (no, Mix didn't put it exactly that way), though as a matter of fact that was in February 2014, and the latest news from May is that 55% of the factory's work force are now UAW members, and talks are already underway to form a German-style Works Council there, so this year's developments may be a little more on our side; and
• the clearly incorrect, and vile, Alito decision in the case of Harris v. Quinn on the organization of Illinois home health care workers, though that one came out in June 2014.

I wrote the last one up a little at the time, but it was at the end of a post about a completely different Supreme Court decision (the Hobbity Lobbity), and it could have been more thoroughly researched and more clearly written, and I'd like to come back to it, especially because the Mixian account, which fills up most of his column, enshrines such a distorted view of what it's about, and the elements of a proper response are sort of scattered in bits around the Web. So I've done my bit, below the fold:

Annals of Derp: Ted Cruz

Image via Wonkette.

Anointed future king and attention seeker Teodoro Cruz:

“For every politician — Democrat and Republican — who is tut-tutting that [bigoted Kentucky county clerk Kim] Davis must resign, they are defending a hypocritical standard. Where is the call for the mayor of San Francisco to resign for creating a sanctuary city — resulting in the murder of American citizens by criminal illegal aliens welcomed by his lawlessness?

“Where is the call for President Obama to resign for ignoring and defying our immigration laws, our welfare reform laws, and even his own Obamacare?"

1. The mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, should not resign for creating a sanctuary city because, in the first place, he didn't create one; that was done 21 years before he became mayor, under Art Agnos, in 1989:

Support for Israel is critical

Because if it's not critical, it's just codependent enabling.

One thing the two Jennifer Rubins have in common: an association with screaming. Bad Jennifer Rubin makes me scream with rage, Good Jennifer Rubin starred in Screamers (1995).

Jennifer, Jennifer...

The Iran deal is as big a threat to Israel as any event since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Well, good, I guess that's not much of a threat. I mean the Yom Kippur War took 19 days, took place almost entirely off Israeli soil and brought no civilian casualties, was an overwhelming Israeli victory, and brought Egypt to the negotiating table for Israel's first peace agreement with an Arab country just three years later. Is that the threat, that peace might break out?

The American people as a whole by a large majority oppose it

Unless you ask the question a different way, in which case they support it—as I can't believe you don't know; that's an out-and-out lie.

Isn't it romantic? *spoiler alert*

No. It isn't.

Image by The Frumanista.

Shorter David Brooks, "The New Romantics in the Computer Age", September 4 2015:

Isn't it romantic? After all these years of anxious materialism, young people will soon start deciding they'd rather be like me. Or Dorothy Day, you know, whichever works better.

Or, verbatim:

West of Eden, and hopefully on the way north

Aylan Kurdi alive, apparently threatening the cultural integrity of Mr. Orbán's continent, though I don't quite see that. Photo via The Independent.

I've heard of governments hating foreign refugees so much they'd seal the border with a razor-wire fence, or a Great Wall as the case may be, so they can't get in, but I've never heard of one like the Hungarian Fidesz regime that won't let them out either.

Why are there 500 Syrians stuck on a train in the town of Bicske, and thousands more haunting the central station in Budapest? When crypto-fascist* prime minister Viktor Orbán says,

“Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” he said. “This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity.

“Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? There is no alternative, and we have no option but to defend our borders.”

Not because the migrants want to be the guests of such a narrow-minded and unwelcoming government. They're just passing through on their way to Germany, which has agreed to take on 800,000 refugees. Hungary is holding them under the theory that they are legally required to herd them into camps.

We're only human

Image via Don Zeigler.

Spent a ridiculous amount of time playing BooMan's new game:

Here's an exercise. Tell me your answers to following questions. Which Republican presidential candidate:

1. is the funniest.
2. is the smartest.
3. seems like the most decent person.
4. would you drink a beer with (if you had to).
5. is the most gifted politician?

And then the opposite—the least funny, the dumbest, and so on. My solution is over the fold:

Cheap shots and white Walkers

Scratch the northern wall plan https://t.co/jnVuDK9fKF the white Walkers are already here. And running for president. pic.twitter.com/maa5oKDQQM

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) August 31, 2015

Whatever happened to Scott?

David Brooks, the Prime Offender

Elliott Dexter and Pauline Garon in Cecil B. DeMille's Adam's Rib (1923). 

David Brooks, "Hillary Clinton, the Great Defender", September 1 2015:

Hillary Clinton has obviously had a bad summer. She’s losing in New Hampshire to Bernie Sanders, even among women. She’s barely leading him in Iowa. In a Quinnipiac poll of potential general election matchups, she’s beating Donald Trump by only four points, 45 to 41, and she’s beating Marco Rubio by only one point.

David Brooks has obviously had a bad summer. In moral philosophy, he consistently loses to columnists who actually have a point of view, however repellent, like Ross Douthat; in a shocking turnaround, he's even losing to Douthat in wry cynicism—the smile-pout that has long been his signature moue (Ross is a Hansel come to challenge Brooks's Zoolander). In a head-to-head test of how he is viewed by economists, he gets considerably less respect than Thomas L. Friedman, and is barely more positively regarded than Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post.

The conventional view on the pandit cocktail circuit is that he horribly mishandled the fabricated-data scandal that accompanied the launch of his campaign book, The Road to Character. That's part of it, especially since (unlike, say, just for example, Hillary Clinton) he had clearly done something unethical, but popular opinion shows a more pervasive personal set of weaknesses, portraying him variously as a tool of the Likud Party; a hypocritical moralizer asking people to live their family, work, and religious lives in a way he has been completely unable to do himself; and an ignorant twit. He—

"This is not rocket science, at the front end"

As the Maine goes... No, wait.

Correction, in its entirety (August 28 2015) on the story about Parchin:

VIENNA (AP) — In a story Aug. 19 about an arrangement over alleged past nuclear weapons work between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, The Associated Press erroneously referred to Parchin as a "nuclear site. In fact, it's a military site where some believe nuclear work occurred.

A corrected version of the story is below:

An unusual secret agreement with a U.N. agency will allow Iran to use its own experts to inspect a site allegedly used to develop nuclear arms, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation is sure to roil critics who argue the deal is built on trust of the Iranians.

The investigation of the Parchin military site by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of nuclear weapons allegations.

Interesting that they—or author George Jahn—evidently didn't allow a copy editor to look at the text long enough to close the quotation marks in the first paragraph, or uncontract the "it's", which I don't think is AP style (though their style guide seems not to be too specific on that score). You suppose it's (I use contractions freely, as you know) because inside every copy editor is a fact checker screaming to be let out?

It is a somewhat unsatisfactory correction for a couple of reasons:

Grammar as Propaganda

"Building this tower is working! Why would you stop?" Pieter Bruegel the elder, 1563, via Wikipedia.

National Review night manager Jim Geraghty doing some sweeping while the TV's on:

Notice Sanders talks about the awesome power of sanctions, and then applauds a deal that takes away sanctions on Iran. The sanctions were working. 

They're very fond of saying this, and it's an interesting case of a bit of English grammar being used to smear grease all over the window so we can't see what they're doing in there.

What does it mean to say "the sanctions were working"? The link they provide, to an article by Suzanne Maloney at Markaz, the Brookings Institution Middle East blog,  March 2014 and about how sanctions against Russia over the Crimea seizure might not "work", is pretty clear:

Cheap shots: Twitter edition

Image via Azimuth.

@DanScavino @realDonaldTrump @MichaelCohen212 Just saw this on the way to work. CA is going to turn Trump RED!!! pic.twitter.com/VvySi8nF3l

— Lindsey C'est Moi! (@ORiverway) August 21, 2015

Like it's going to embarrass him? I didn't think The Donald was much of a blusher.

WHERE? WHERE? Acting like he sees something we don't, Obama insists that climate change is taking place "right now" http://t.co/kfy0I3ZAA8

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 29, 2015

Sorry Gunga Dinesh, you have to actually read. http://t.co/IjC7KuDqvG You can't just go outdoors and look at it. https://t.co/xOSAYGduR2

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) August 29, 2015

@calypsoh13 WHERE? WHERE? Folks keep telling me there's this entropy going on, "right now", but nobody ever shows me any of it.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) August 30, 2015

West of Eden: Give a soldier a flower

Tahrir Square, August 7, photo by Khalid Mohammed/AP.

Scenes from Baghdad over the past week, h/t Nancy Le Tourneau for pointing to them. It seems there is some real mass politics taking place in the Iraqi capital and the mainly Shi'ite cities to the south, with huge demonstrations protesting corruption and the failure of government to provide essential services, in particular the electricity supply (in the global-warming hottest year in history), which is apparently still failing all the time the way it did ten years ago at the height of the war. The Times just picked the story up (from Reuters) today.

"We want separation of religion& politics" In today protest, even mullahs ask for secularism! #IraqProtest #IraqWins pic.twitter.com/HQcuXRN495

— Layla (ع) (@mesoscorpio) August 21, 2015

Return of the Stupid Shit Caucus (like they went somewhere?)

Agnes Ayres and Rudolph Valentino in George Melford's The Sheik (1921).

Verbatim David Brooks, "When ISIS rapists win", August 28 2015:

President Obama has said that ISIS stands for nothing but savagery. That’s clearly incorrect.

Aw, Mom, do I have to?

OK, OK, incorrect in what sense? What are you, Politifact? By what metric would you determine the truth or falsity of that statement?

And by the way when did Obama say it? You put a link there as if to lead us to your source, but it just leads to the Times Obama Navigator page, and a search button whose closest result is your column today.

FBI director James Comey has called the Da'esh forces "savages", White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has said that their killings show they "stand for nothing" tout court. Secretary of State John Kerry called the killing of Stephen Sotloff "an act of of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask."  At the United Nations last September, Obama must have been referencing the Da'esh indirectly as the contrast when he told young Muslims, "You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder." But that's as close as it comes.

He has used "barbaric" in association with a "nothing but" account:

Annals of Derp: Deadlier by the Dozen

Image by Kaioden/DeviantArt.

On the awful shooting of Alison Parker and Adam Ward in Roanoake, the Vixen and a whole series of important posts by Steve. There's nothing for me to say but to repeat that we need better gun control and better mental health care, both.

Oh wait, someone's speaking up for the white murderers who always get called racists after they kill black people, and yet nobody's calling this BLACK GAY killer of white people names, what's up with that, Gunga Dinesh?

A-and speaking of white killers who are always getting called racists...

It's on his hat

Image via annieli.

Trump supporter at a Frank Luntz focus group explaining her preference to the horrified old ratfucker:

“We know his goal is to make America great again,” one woman said. “It’s on his hat, and we see it every time it’s on TV."

Cue up the music! To the tune of

Cheap shot: Rebranding

Update 8/30:Welcome Crooks, Liars, and the People Who Love Them—thanks, Batocchio!
For those who can't get enough Trumpery, check out the Official Rectification of Names (shoop, shoop, shoop, shoop) Trump Song!

Drawing by Nick Anderson.

Charles C.W. (Crispy Wings) Cooke:

Know what else ”happened here”? By first explaining why he had Ramos removed, and then by bringing him back and debating with him for a while, Trump regained the moral high ground. As the Daily Mail reports, Trump did not banish Ramos. Rather, he let him return, and then he “proceeded to take questions . . . about immigration policy, the term ‘anchor babies’ and security at the Mexican border.” 

That's a good emperor: no banishment, just a temporary exile until the offender learns his lesson. Cookie really hates Trump ("resembling a man who hoped to discover whether methamphetamine or LSD served as the best accompaniment to a mostly whisky diet"), but he'll always defend his prerogative of ordering journalists around, at least if the journalist belongs to the Spanish-speaking persuasion.

And works for an organization that had the nerve to dissociate itself from a business deal with the vile billionaire after the v.b. mortally insulted its entire audience—

Thin, relativistic, and ephemeral

18-foot fork in the road by Ken Marshall, Pasadena, Los Angeles Times, November 2009. Photo by Wakitu via Flickr. 

David Brooks writes, "The Big Decisions", New York Times, August 25, 2015:

Suppose you had a chance to become a vampire. Or suppose you had a chance to run for Senate. But I repeat myself.

No, seriously, the vampire question is one of those whimsical little devices used by professional philosophers to get a fix on how we should live our lives. And let's say it isn't a standard-issue evil Dracula type of vampire, for the sake of argument, but a stylish and benign vampire, what the philosopher L.A. Paul referred to before an editor got hold of the draft as a "vegetarian vampire", who only drinks free-range, organic, humanely slaughtered animal blood, bear with me here, and it turns out lots of your friends and relatives have done it already and are really happy with their decision, which gives them immortality, immense power, heightened sensory experience, companionship, and meaning. But once you do it there's no going back. I added the companionship and meaning part myself.

West of Eden: Trolling from the Times

Image via All Hat No Cattle.

The good news is that the more educated Iran trolls, such as the New York Times's David Sanger and Michael Gordon (remember him?), have finally pretty much acknowledged that the JCPOA deal will prevent Iran from building a nuclear device over the next 15 years; they don't quite come out and say it, but they've pretty much stopped suggesting it won't. The bad news is that they're doubling down on the "problem" of what might happen in 2031:

the flip side is that after 15 years, Iran would be allowed to produce reactor-grade fuel on an industrial scale using far more advanced centrifuges. That may mean that the warning time if Iran decided to race for a bomb would shrink to weeks, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis by Robert J. Einhorn, a former member of the American negotiating team.

Critics say that by that time, Iran’s economy would be stronger, as would its ability to withstand economic sanctions, and its nuclear installations probably would be better protected by air defense systems, which Iran is expected to buy from Russia.

Critics are wrong:

Cheap shots: It's gone, boom!

Image via Arizona Star.

The former neurosurgeon ate at the Silver Saddle Steakhouse on the south side's East Benson Highway, a day after speaking to thousands of people at the Phoenix Convention Center.

He drew national attention as well, after commenting later in the day that he supports the use of military drone strikes to help secure the border....

In January, comedian/actor/director/screenwriter Adam Sandler stopped in to the Silver Saddle to have dinner with his sister.

That Silver Saddle wouldn't by any chance be an advertiser or anything, would it, Star?

Anyhow, what does Dr. Ben Carson mean by "drones" in his stump speech, as at his Phoenix rally last Tuesday?

“What I have said consistently is that we need [to] seal our borders,” he said. “We can use a whole series of things to do that, not just fences and walls, but electronic surveillance and drones.”

I mean, given that US Customs and Border Patrol has been using surveillance drones since 2005, to virtually no effect, although they have managed to crash 23 unmanned planes, one 100 yards from somebody's house in Nogales? What use other than surveillance did he have in mind? He wasn't planning to kill anybody, was he? He wasn't planning to use armed military drones, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus law (funny trick for a small-government Constitutional conservative, I must say), was he?

She writes beyond parody

Panorama of crowd and stadium here in Mobile. #trump. pic.twitter.com/rLDMDzIrKo

— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) August 22, 2015

Maureeen Dowd, in her fourth column devoted to Donald Trump since August 8 (i.e., every column she's written since August 8 plus one spillover piece last week when she had too much material to fit in):

He lives beyond parody....

There is nothing that excites Trump the candidate more than crowing that he has a great big crowd and Jeb has a teeny weeny crowd. He sounded orgasmic as he described to the New Hampshire town hall that his Alabama event this weekend had to be moved from a room that held 1,000 to a room that held 2,000 to a convention center to a stadium.

So overwhelmed with the thought of the