Indiana Blogs
Question of the Day
We haven't done a "desert island" question in ages, so here we go… As always, the desert comes equipped with a power source and kickass entertainment system.
Were you to be stranded for an indefinite period of time, which one book, one album, and one film would you want to have with you?
Book: The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Album: "Strangeways, Here We Come" by The Smiths
Film: Harold and Maude
Were you to be stranded for an indefinite period of time, which one book, one album, and one film would you want to have with you?
Book: The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Album: "Strangeways, Here We Come" by The Smiths
Film: Harold and Maude
Categories: Indiana Blogs
This is a real thing in the world.
[Image Description: Two cake toppers photographed on a store shelf. On the left, a thin white bride dragging a thin white groom across the ground by his collar. On the right, a thin white bride grabbing a thin white groom to stop him from running away.]
Mama Shakes sent these charming cake toppers to me with the note (which I am publishing with her permission):
Hi, Sis. I didn't know if these were nice enough for your "This Is a Real Thing in the World" feature. I know you may find it surprising to learn I spotted them at Wal-Mart.I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you.
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
[Background.]
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Courts - More on "Bid to pull judge from ballot advances"
Updating this ILB entry from August 11, 2010, Niki Kelly of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports late this afternoon:The...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for discussion of body image.]
Many Americans Don't Even Know They're Fat.
Of course we don't. Because the DEATHFAT! has mememtoed our memories and shrunk the stuffin' in our brainpans!
You really expect my critically addled fatbrain to be able to remember that I'm a fatsronaut once I walk away from the scale or the mirror the closest stranger calling me a fat cunt when the DEATHFATZ ARE EATIN MY BRAINZZZ?!
For the record: I know I'm fat.
[H/T to Shaker Julie.]
Many Americans Don't Even Know They're Fat.
Of course we don't. Because the DEATHFAT! has mememtoed our memories and shrunk the stuffin' in our brainpans!
You really expect my critically addled fatbrain to be able to remember that I'm a fatsronaut once I walk away from the scale or the mirror the closest stranger calling me a fat cunt when the DEATHFATZ ARE EATIN MY BRAINZZZ?!
For the record: I know I'm fat.
[H/T to Shaker Julie.]
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Photo of the Day
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chats with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as leaders gathered to deliver a joint statement on Middle East Peace talks in the East Room of the White House in Washington September 1, 2010. [Reuters Pictures]
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Courts - More on: Court charges for miscellaneous services and the race for the Judicial Nominating Commission
In this April 29, 2010 entry the ILB noted and commented upon the "Order governing fees charged by clerk of...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Courts - Tax Court issues one opinion today
In 6787 Steelworkers Hall, Inc. v. John R. Scott, Assessor of Porter County, an 11-page opinion, Judge Fisher writes:6787 Steelworkers...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
The Overton Window: Chapter Three
Chapter one introduced us to our hero, Noah Gardner. Chapter gave him a sidekick, Molly Ross. With chapter three comes our story's villain.
Arthur Isaiah Gardner: World's greatest PR man, head of Doyle & Merchant (the world's greatest PR firm, duh), Noah's father, atheist, mastermind behind the new order of things: The Great and Powerful Oz.
Like Noah, Arthur isn't described physically. We are again to presume he's white, since that's assuredly the default for Beck. He's seventy-four and silvery voiced and has a "taste for blood." Figuratively speaking, of course. Or not. Thanks to Joe Mande, Arthur Gardner is cemented in my mind as being portrayed by Jon Voight. (See image below.) So every time he speaks, and he speaks a lot, it's like watching Anaconda, or National Treasure 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold, but not as cleverly written.
I haven't quite got my head wrapped around Arthur Gardner. He spends the bulk of chapter three pontificating and speechifying. Part of what he espouses is Beck brand neocon nonsense: hatred of: Social Security, government debt, corporate bailouts. But Gardner's solution is to replace the U.S. government with his own system: "a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm." And while Beck hates Social Security, government debt, corporate bailouts, his solution is "Restoring Honor."
Chapter three opens with Arthur Gardner reading a classified memo titled "Constitutionalists, Extremism, the Militia Movement, and the Growing Threat of Domestic Terrorism." The memo lists groups of fringe elements that the government needs to keep an eye on. Mostly Beck's target audience: "Militant anti-abortion or 'pro-life' organizers, anti-immigration, border defenders, 'Tea Parties', third-party political campaigns, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, tax resisters, 'End the Fed' proponents, gun rights activists." Then some more ... frightening ... elements are thrown in. "Christian Identity, White Nationalists, American Nazi Party, Holocaust denier, hate radio/TV/Web/print."
It's almost clever. See what's he's done here? He's lumped in his own audience with the more dangerous elements on the right and tied it all in with "hate radio." It is designed to appeal to Beck's audience's sense of persecution. The government is out to get them, as they see it, and this plays right into their paranoia: Those in charge hate the right, from the "pro-lifer" to the Nazi, they're all the same. That's probably the most insidious part. It's that sameness in the minds of the cons that normalizes and mainstreams those dangerous elements. If the government hates them all the same, then maybe the American Nazi Party is no more dangerous than the average "pro-lifer."
There follows a bit on the "detention / rendition / interrogation / prosecution" of these elements:
With U.S. citizens suddenly in the news in the place of al-Qaeda terrorists, some level of psychological resistance must be anticipated and then defused when it arises. It is the opinion of the committee that such a reflexive populist reaction would prove to be a major obstacle to progress. In fact, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event (on the order of a Pearl Harbor / 9/11 attack), there is a potential that the government's reasonable actions in this critical area may be met with significant public outrage and even active sympathy and misguided support for these treasonous/seditious elements and their hate-based objectives.
Gardner throws the report aside and addresses his newest client. A government stooge named Purcell, who's hired Doyle & Merchant to fix the PR nightmare that is the leaked memo, due to hit the front page of tomorrow's Washington Post.
Much to Purcell's surprise, Noah's already got the memo blamed on an "overzealous local bureaucracy." Like Molly said, PR people just lie.
All of this leads to ten-odd pages of Gardner addressing the guests in his conference room. It's far too long, but kind of fun to imagine Jon Voight delivering it on-screen. I mean, that beats just reading it straight. (How long until ABC puts The Overton Window miniseries into production, you think?) Gardner tells how the 2004 tsunami ruined his Sri Lankan vacation, all if which he use as analogy for the destruction of the U.S. He also tells of how he was the guy who invented bottled water. His greatest PR scheme, conning folks into buying water in plastic bottles instead of drinking it relatively free of charge from the tap. All the while he rails on about the ills of the U.S. government's overspending. Highlights below:
Bear Stearns, a cornerstone firm of Wall Street founded when my father was a young man, a company whose stock had quite recently been selling at a hundred and sixty dollars a share, was bailed out by the Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan at two dollars per share. That was the beginning, my friends.
We are in the midst of what will become the most devastating financial calamity in the history of Western civilization, and just this week—please do correct me if my figures are wrong—the Congress and the administration have committed to funnel almost eight trillion dollars to the very institutions that engineered the crisis.
Over the last century you've saddled your hapless citizens with a hundred thousand billion dollars in unsecured debt, money they'll be paying back for fifty generations if there are still any jobs to be had by then. Meanwhile you're up to your necks in misguided, escalating wars on two unforgiving fronts with no sign of the end. That's trillions more in unpayable IOUs.
For heaven's sake, you nationalized General Motors just to get your union friends off the hook. As you know, those union pensions you just took over are severely underfunded, adding another seventeen billion dollars to your tab. Seventeen billion, I might add, that you don't have.
Just to stay afloat the government is borrowing five billion dollars every day at ever-rising interest rates from our fair-weather friends in Asia. Sooner or later the truth will be undeniable, that these massive debts can never be repaid, and there'll be a panic, a worldwide run against the dollar, and through your actions you've ensured that the results will be fatal and irreversible.
And all this will lead to the collapse of the U.S.
But that's okay. Gardner has a plan. He also has a Powerpoint presentation. And some hand-outs. (Which I guess is what Churchill got his hands on in the prologue.)
"Because we must, we will finally complete what they envisioned: a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm. Within this framework the nation will reemerge from the rubble, reborn to finally take its rightful, humble place within the world community. And you," he said, looking around the table, "will all be there to lead it."
A hand went up on the far side, a question from the senior member of the party, who'd so far only listened in silence.
"Mr. Gardner," the man said. "What about the public?"
"What about them? The public has lost their courage to believe. They've given up their ability to think. They can no longer even form opinions, they absorb their opinions, sitting slack-jawed in front of their televisions. Their thoughts are manufactured by people like me. What about the public? There's a double-edged sword by which the public can be sold anything, from a three-dollar bottle of tap water to a full-scale war."
And not only does Gardner have a plan, it's gonna be easy to implement:
"The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow. There'll be no revolution, only a brief, if somewhat shocking, leap forward in social evolution. We'll restore the natural order of things, and then there will be only peace and acceptance among the masses." He smiled. "Before we're done they'll be lining up to gladly pay a tax on the very air that they breathe."
Kind of scary, huh? No, not Gardner's plan, but Beck's audience, who believe this. This reads less like a cautionary tale, and more like a call to arms. "The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow." I fear, the only solution, in the eyes of Beck, is a preemptive strike.
[Note: I'll be in Baltimore all next week, so no Overton updates until I get back, mid-September or thereabouts. Enjoy your time off, Shakers!]
Arthur Isaiah Gardner: World's greatest PR man, head of Doyle & Merchant (the world's greatest PR firm, duh), Noah's father, atheist, mastermind behind the new order of things: The Great and Powerful Oz.
Like Noah, Arthur isn't described physically. We are again to presume he's white, since that's assuredly the default for Beck. He's seventy-four and silvery voiced and has a "taste for blood." Figuratively speaking, of course. Or not. Thanks to Joe Mande, Arthur Gardner is cemented in my mind as being portrayed by Jon Voight. (See image below.) So every time he speaks, and he speaks a lot, it's like watching Anaconda, or National Treasure 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold, but not as cleverly written.
I haven't quite got my head wrapped around Arthur Gardner. He spends the bulk of chapter three pontificating and speechifying. Part of what he espouses is Beck brand neocon nonsense: hatred of: Social Security, government debt, corporate bailouts. But Gardner's solution is to replace the U.S. government with his own system: "a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm." And while Beck hates Social Security, government debt, corporate bailouts, his solution is "Restoring Honor."
Chapter three opens with Arthur Gardner reading a classified memo titled "Constitutionalists, Extremism, the Militia Movement, and the Growing Threat of Domestic Terrorism." The memo lists groups of fringe elements that the government needs to keep an eye on. Mostly Beck's target audience: "Militant anti-abortion or 'pro-life' organizers, anti-immigration, border defenders, 'Tea Parties', third-party political campaigns, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, tax resisters, 'End the Fed' proponents, gun rights activists." Then some more ... frightening ... elements are thrown in. "Christian Identity, White Nationalists, American Nazi Party, Holocaust denier, hate radio/TV/Web/print."
It's almost clever. See what's he's done here? He's lumped in his own audience with the more dangerous elements on the right and tied it all in with "hate radio." It is designed to appeal to Beck's audience's sense of persecution. The government is out to get them, as they see it, and this plays right into their paranoia: Those in charge hate the right, from the "pro-lifer" to the Nazi, they're all the same. That's probably the most insidious part. It's that sameness in the minds of the cons that normalizes and mainstreams those dangerous elements. If the government hates them all the same, then maybe the American Nazi Party is no more dangerous than the average "pro-lifer."
There follows a bit on the "detention / rendition / interrogation / prosecution" of these elements:
With U.S. citizens suddenly in the news in the place of al-Qaeda terrorists, some level of psychological resistance must be anticipated and then defused when it arises. It is the opinion of the committee that such a reflexive populist reaction would prove to be a major obstacle to progress. In fact, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event (on the order of a Pearl Harbor / 9/11 attack), there is a potential that the government's reasonable actions in this critical area may be met with significant public outrage and even active sympathy and misguided support for these treasonous/seditious elements and their hate-based objectives.
Gardner throws the report aside and addresses his newest client. A government stooge named Purcell, who's hired Doyle & Merchant to fix the PR nightmare that is the leaked memo, due to hit the front page of tomorrow's Washington Post.
Much to Purcell's surprise, Noah's already got the memo blamed on an "overzealous local bureaucracy." Like Molly said, PR people just lie.
All of this leads to ten-odd pages of Gardner addressing the guests in his conference room. It's far too long, but kind of fun to imagine Jon Voight delivering it on-screen. I mean, that beats just reading it straight. (How long until ABC puts The Overton Window miniseries into production, you think?) Gardner tells how the 2004 tsunami ruined his Sri Lankan vacation, all if which he use as analogy for the destruction of the U.S. He also tells of how he was the guy who invented bottled water. His greatest PR scheme, conning folks into buying water in plastic bottles instead of drinking it relatively free of charge from the tap. All the while he rails on about the ills of the U.S. government's overspending. Highlights below:
Bear Stearns, a cornerstone firm of Wall Street founded when my father was a young man, a company whose stock had quite recently been selling at a hundred and sixty dollars a share, was bailed out by the Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan at two dollars per share. That was the beginning, my friends.
We are in the midst of what will become the most devastating financial calamity in the history of Western civilization, and just this week—please do correct me if my figures are wrong—the Congress and the administration have committed to funnel almost eight trillion dollars to the very institutions that engineered the crisis.
Over the last century you've saddled your hapless citizens with a hundred thousand billion dollars in unsecured debt, money they'll be paying back for fifty generations if there are still any jobs to be had by then. Meanwhile you're up to your necks in misguided, escalating wars on two unforgiving fronts with no sign of the end. That's trillions more in unpayable IOUs.
For heaven's sake, you nationalized General Motors just to get your union friends off the hook. As you know, those union pensions you just took over are severely underfunded, adding another seventeen billion dollars to your tab. Seventeen billion, I might add, that you don't have.
Just to stay afloat the government is borrowing five billion dollars every day at ever-rising interest rates from our fair-weather friends in Asia. Sooner or later the truth will be undeniable, that these massive debts can never be repaid, and there'll be a panic, a worldwide run against the dollar, and through your actions you've ensured that the results will be fatal and irreversible.
And all this will lead to the collapse of the U.S.
But that's okay. Gardner has a plan. He also has a Powerpoint presentation. And some hand-outs. (Which I guess is what Churchill got his hands on in the prologue.)
"Because we must, we will finally complete what they envisioned: a new framework that will survive when the decaying remains of the failed United States have been washed away in the coming storm. Within this framework the nation will reemerge from the rubble, reborn to finally take its rightful, humble place within the world community. And you," he said, looking around the table, "will all be there to lead it."
A hand went up on the far side, a question from the senior member of the party, who'd so far only listened in silence.
"Mr. Gardner," the man said. "What about the public?"
"What about them? The public has lost their courage to believe. They've given up their ability to think. They can no longer even form opinions, they absorb their opinions, sitting slack-jawed in front of their televisions. Their thoughts are manufactured by people like me. What about the public? There's a double-edged sword by which the public can be sold anything, from a three-dollar bottle of tap water to a full-scale war."
And not only does Gardner have a plan, it's gonna be easy to implement:
"The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow. There'll be no revolution, only a brief, if somewhat shocking, leap forward in social evolution. We'll restore the natural order of things, and then there will be only peace and acceptance among the masses." He smiled. "Before we're done they'll be lining up to gladly pay a tax on the very air that they breathe."
Kind of scary, huh? No, not Gardner's plan, but Beck's audience, who believe this. This reads less like a cautionary tale, and more like a call to arms. "The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow." I fear, the only solution, in the eyes of Beck, is a preemptive strike.
[Note: I'll be in Baltimore all next week, so no Overton updates until I get back, mid-September or thereabouts. Enjoy your time off, Shakers!]
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Courts - More on "Bursting Pipes Lead to a Legal Battle "
Following up on this Feb. 12, 2010 ILB entry, JM Eagle issued a press release yesterday headed "Indiana joins California,...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Courts - More on "John Walker Lindh seeks Indiana prison prayer ruling "
Updating yesterday's ILB entry, the ILB has now obtained copies of John Walker Lindh's motion for summary judgment and the...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Decisions - One Indiana case decided today by 7th Circuit
In U.S. v. Ivan Rea and Jose L. Medina (SD Ind., McKinney), a 25-page opinion, Judge Kanne writes:This is...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Decisions - Court of Appeals issues 0 today (and 5 NFP)
For publication opinions today (0): NFP civil opinions today (2): Conwell Construction v. Abbey Road Development, LLC, et al. (NFP)...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Today in Ugh
The president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, tasked with "identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run" and proposing "recommendations designed to balance the budget [and] meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government" is comprised of 18 people profiled here by TPM.
The president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is very white, very male, and very terrifying.
I just bipartisaned in my pants.
This deserves a much more serious post, but I am too depressed to write it.
Ugh.
[H/T to Shaker Carol.]
The president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is very white, very male, and very terrifying.
I just bipartisaned in my pants.
This deserves a much more serious post, but I am too depressed to write it.
Ugh.
[H/T to Shaker Carol.]
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Check Out This Tenured Professor of Feminism at Dipshit University
So there's this principled men's rights activist douchey anti-feminist fame-chasing self-promoter who, among pursuing other important legal issues involving feminists ruining the world for men, has been on this asinine crusade to challenge the constitutionality of ladies' nights at bars. But, sadly, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected his argument.
The court, with evident amusement, said it must rule against [Manhattan lawyer Roy Den Hollander] even though "without action on our part, (he) paints a picture of a bleak future, where 'none other than what's left of the Wall Street moguls' will be able to afford to attend nightclubs."
…"The guys are paying for girls to party. I don't think that's fair," Den Hollander said. "It's a transfer of money fom the wallets of guys to the pocketbooks of girls."
He vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.Good luck with all that, Roy.
The best part of his complaint, however, is that he doesn't lay the responsibility for ladies' nights at the doorstep of the money-grubbing club promoters who use the promise of cheap booze to lure women into their meat markets for the benefit of their horny male clientele, but instead "blames militant feminists for the ladies-pay-less door policies." He's really onto us, my Feminazi Cooter Cultists.
Shaker Tereska, who gets the hat tip, exclaims: "Of course ladies' nights were fought for and won by feminists. My top two issues are access to abortion and HALF PRICED MARTINIS!!!"
The court, with evident amusement, said it must rule against [Manhattan lawyer Roy Den Hollander] even though "without action on our part, (he) paints a picture of a bleak future, where 'none other than what's left of the Wall Street moguls' will be able to afford to attend nightclubs."
…"The guys are paying for girls to party. I don't think that's fair," Den Hollander said. "It's a transfer of money fom the wallets of guys to the pocketbooks of girls."
He vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.Good luck with all that, Roy.
The best part of his complaint, however, is that he doesn't lay the responsibility for ladies' nights at the doorstep of the money-grubbing club promoters who use the promise of cheap booze to lure women into their meat markets for the benefit of their horny male clientele, but instead "blames militant feminists for the ladies-pay-less door policies." He's really onto us, my Feminazi Cooter Cultists.
Shaker Tereska, who gets the hat tip, exclaims: "Of course ladies' nights were fought for and won by feminists. My top two issues are access to abortion and HALF PRICED MARTINIS!!!"
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Environment - Proposed wood-fired boiler rule is preliminarily adopted by APCB
Here is a list of five years of ILB entries on the topic of wood fired boilers and their regulation....
Categories: Indiana Blogs
Ind. Law - Still more on: "Can you rely on the Indiana Code?"
The ILB has written much about this, including this entry from August 23, 2008 which began:Yesterday afternoon several of us,...
Categories: Indiana Blogs
