What Wisconsin Means

Walker's defeat of the recall effort has been the subject of a number of op-eds, blog posts, and screeds today. Ezra Klein at WaPo's Wonkbook went so far as to write, "Wisconsin Recall Shows Labor Isn't Coming Back." And even more prematurely (but inevitably), some are talking of higher office for this creep.

Is Walker's victory a setback for labor? Absolutely. Is it the death knell of unions? Too soon to say.

Let me add that I have some ambivalence about unions, given that I am a member of a union that privileges seniority over competence, which has burdened my workplace with some serious dead wood and cost a good friend her job. On the other hand, without the protections unions afford, I honestly believe city government would have made all librarian positions half-time so they could weasel out of providing us health insurance. And the better wages and working conditions unions provide usually force some private employers to keep in step to stay competitive in hiring.

But back to Wisconsin: the vote shows nothing more than the unpopularity of union employees during recessions. If you're working two jobs just to pay your bills and you've got terrible insurance (if you have it at all), it's natural to resent somebody who can go home at five every day and who can get sick without becoming destitute. Furthermore, the pro-union forces were at a severe disadvantage in campaign finances (a shocker, no?), although the ubiquitous "outspent 7-1" seems to be debatable.Nevertheless, it's not a complete victory for Walker: the Democrats may re-take control of the Wisconsin Senate.

And while the failure of the Wisconsin recall has emboldened opponents of unions, the labor movement is still winning some victories. Last year the Ikea factory in Virginia unionized (think about that: Virginia). Also in Virginia a group of Eastern Shore chicken catchers who work for Tyson Foods have voted to unionize, after getting fed up with horrendous working conditions and making $40 a day.  Here in Boston workers at the Hilton Boston Downtown are joining the local hospitality workers union, and in Chicago the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will soon be negotiating wages and benefits for the registered nurses at Loretto Hospital.

And back in Wisconsin, Scott Walker shouldn't feel too smug: odds are he'll soon be facing criminal indictment.

Quote for the Day

“I need the rest of you to help me fix the world. The rest of the world is getting stupider.”

—Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, speaking at Mount Holyoke's commencement.

I'm Back

After a long neglect of this already seldom-updated blog, I've decided to resume posting. Given my longtime obsession with the instruments of government intended to drive us all completely insane keep us safe, I'm restarting this blog by telling you what words to avoid using in social media posts if you want to stay off government watch lists. Recently (and uncharacteristically), the government actually responded to a Freedom of Information Act request and released the Department of Homeland Security's National Operations Center's Analyst's Desktop Binder, which includes a "current list of terms that will be used by the NOC when monitoring social media sites and to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture" (starts on page 20). Some of the words seem like sensible choices, like "anthrax," "dirty bomb,"  "assassination," and "Artistic Assassins" (the name of the contract killers for the Sinaloa cartel, but which could just as easily be the name of a rock band).  Other words seem plausible depending upon what other words they appear with, like "El Paso" (since it's on the US-Mexico border, which is where the Mexican drug cartels operate), "crash," "bridge," "port," or "delays." Then there are choices that seem utterly bizarre, like "pork."  So if I send a Facebook message to a Texas uncle,  "I've experienced some delays in my trip to El Paso for the family barbecue because there have been traffic delays due to a car crash on the San Luis Rey bridge; but don't worry, I'll be there in time to help cook the pork," the gubmint might start monitoring my online activities? Seems unlikely on the face of it, but given their track record, they might well waste time on little ole me. The staff of  Homeland Security are, after all, the same people who waste time on nonsense like asking a 79-year-old if she's wearing a sanitary napkin, and yet a guy without a boarding pass manages to bypass TSA staff and get on a plane without a boarding pass, only to be busted by a stewardess.

(Hat tip to Scribd).

The Way We Live Now...

...or the joys of auto correct.

A Georgia school was put on lockdown for two hours yesterday after a student received a text message that appeared to warn of the arrival of a gunman.

A student wrote, "Gunna be at West Hall today." Auto correct changed it to "Gunman be at West Hall today."

The Week in Food (The One Day Late Edition)

In honor of Downton Abbey, NPR answers the question of the ages: why was British food terrible for most of the twentieth century?

Slate's Explainer tackles another important question: does sloth taste veal?

First you kill a seal. Then you catch some auks. How to make the Inuit equivalent of the turducken.

Mmmmm....smokehouse fire.

The latest foodie craze...rats (at least in Thailand). Note: if you are at all squeamish don't click on the link.

The Three Stooges, Part Two (and the Apocalypse)

Santorum is on the rise (I apologize for any unpleasant mental imagies provoked by that sentence). In the Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado primaries, he won the anyone-but-Mitt vote (rumor has it that in Missouri, dogs voted in record numbers). A recent national poll placed the former Pennsylvania senator in the lead, with Romney second, and Gingrich third. And there's a tell-tale sign that Santorum has his eye on Gingrich's (and the Republican party's) hard core base: fundamentalist Christians.

In a speech last week in Plano, Texas, Santorum repeated his assertion that the Obama Administration is hostile to religion, and came up with this gem:



Some commentators have been scratching their heads over Santorum's references to the French Revolution, but any members of the Bourbon, Capet or Valois families currently living in the U.S. can relax. An online associate who had the misfortune of being raised in a fundamentalist church gave me some much-needed context by directing me to Revelation 20:4:

I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

When a speaker publicly invokes hostility to religion and decapitation, he's invoking a narrative of the end of the world believed by millions of Americans: after the saved are swept up into the Heaven, the Antichrist takes over the world and those who still worship Jesus (or at least refuse to worship the Antichrist) are executed. Now it's never been adequately explained to me why if the saved have been gathered up into Heaven there's anyone left on earth who still worships Jesus, but nobody has ever asked me to edit apocalyptic narratives for logic and consistency.


But the larger point: any fundamentalist Christian who believes that narrative and who heard Santorum's speech heard a presidential candidate imply that President Obama is the Antichrist, or at best paving the way for him. If you think this conclusion is a bit of a stretch, take a look at this clip from a film called The Image of the Beast. My recovering Christian friend was required to watch it as a teenager by his church youth group. I've read the film is still popular with evangelical churches. It's on sale as a DVD at a site called Christiancinema.com. In this clip, a Christian is decapitated with a guillotine.

WARNING: The film you are about to see has really bad production values. And even worse facial hair.





Oddly, at the same time that Santorum was invoking an American future where Christians are guillotined, he seemed to want to sound relatively sane to appeal to independents because he closed by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that."

Don't ask me how you call your political opponent an evil overlord with supernatural powers foretold by Biblical prophecy and then expect to be able to back-pedal from that, but Santorum has never asked me to edit his speeches for logic and consistency.

Hat tip to David Harnden-Warwick for the background information.

The Week in Food

Public schools: the enemy of baked goods and entrepreneurship.

If you want to buy foods with a long shelf, put lard first on your list.

Purple tomatoes: you know you want them.

There was chocolate everywhere. Oh, the humanity!

Citrus: it's what's for dinner.