HumidCity

I love old movies and one thing I love about them are the stock characters that pop up in genre films. Westerns in the Fifties featured tales of strife between farmers (aka sodbusters) and ranchers: Shane was the best example but there were many others. Invariably there would be a tough minded, wiry and very blond Swedish farmer named Johnsen, Jensen or some kind of sen. Said movie Swede said yumpin’ yiminy alot and that’s what he’d say if he were observing the 2008 campaign.

The GOP is trying very hard to paint Barack Obama as some sort of wild eyed socialist/bolshie/marxist. It’s been a tough sell: the last thing Obama can be called is wild-eyed, he’s the calmest guy in the room; especially when John McCain is around. Someone else, I forget where I saw this, said that Obama would bring <drum roll> Swedish style socialism to America. Yumpin’ yiminy. But what’s so wrong about that?

Sweden has terrible weather and strange native cuisine BUT it’s a civilized country where nobody goes broke if a family member has a catastrophic illness. That’s right, they have the dreaded so-called socialized medicine <shudder> sort of like the US military. Senator Walnuts may rail against guvmint run medicine but he’s had federal health care benefits for his ENTIRE life; from cradle to grave.

Beyond nefarious national health care, porn and cold weather, life is good in Sweden. It ranks 6th out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index, which looks at overall quality of life issues and not just how much money people have. The United States does pretty well too, ranking 12th but the picture painted by the HDI doesn’t make Sweden look like hell on earth as our Republican “friends” would like us to think.

Now that crony/buccaneer capitialism has been discredited for the umpteenth time, we could do a lot worse than look to Scandinavia as a model for a better society. And we probably *will* do worse since we live in the United States of Amnesia…

All I’ve got to say is: Yumpin’ yiminy. Now where is my Sven and Ole joke book when I need it?

-ADRASTOS

It would be a nice thing. Voter turn out is always crap and then afterwards everybody wants to whine about the result. I have angered many people over the years with a  staunch stance of “if you don’t vote, you cannot bitch.” As I see it this is a small price to pay in order to at worst critique the elected leaders and at best effect change.

Now yesterday was voting day, I’m not sure how many people got out there to participate in the process but I’m willing to bet based on past numbers that turnout was less than stellar. What I do know is that I am already getting a lot of complaints about the school board elections. Seems that there may have been either some sneaky redistricting or the possibility of outright voter fraud.

Quoth one associate of mine:

Looking at the freaking school board district maps, I was absolutely certain we were in District 4.

D__ walked into the voting booth and found that we were actually in District 5.

What the hell happened?  Last time we voted for school board, we were in 4.

Considering that we, as a state, has justly earned our rep for slimy polititcs I far it far to easy to believe that there is something rotten smelling going on. Please leave comments here if you experienced issues with the districting or the voting process. If evidence is sufficient for a voter fraud case doing so will help whoever pursues it.

Loki, HumidCity Founder (day 3 w/out cigarettes, no fatalities yet)

I have already mentioned that three years ago my lovely wife and I were stuck halfway across the country waiting to find out if our home was one of those submerged by the engineering failures of the levee breach, we stayed with my good friend Sean Hastings and his wife Jo, and that I am once again staying with them for a few days. What I have not mentioned is that my hosts are both examples of that rare and beautiful political animal, the wild libertarian, and that this always leads to some interesting political conversation.

Sean is the author of a book entitled, “God Wants You Dead,” which details his views on politics, religion, racial groups, and all other ideas that divide human beings into groups so that they may do battle with each other en masse. It is a humorous and interesting book with a lot of interesting ideas, and I strongly recommend that you read the whole thing, whether you buy a copy or just download it for free from some file sharing site. (Don’t worry - Sean doesn’t believe in intellectual property. The message is the important part.)

But briefly put, the main theme of the book is that people are individuals, should think for themselves, and should never identify themselves as part of any group. That to do so, is to surrender your mind to others, making you obligated to believe everything that your group believes - to accept the “party line” without critical thought. Such thinking is what so often divides people into two waring camps.

[Sean has created a T-shirt based on an illustration from his book which perfectly fits election season and illustrates this point nicely in pointing out the frustration we all often feel in participating in a two-party political system.]

But even if we agree that the current two-party system doesn’t work well, what can we do about it? Voting for a third party candidate is at best throwing away our vote, and at worse is a vote for a “spoiler candidate” tht will help give the election to the major party candidate we dislike the most. So we all find ourselves faced with the logic that voting for the lesser of two evils is a smarter choice than voting for the third party candidate we actually admire. Thus the inadequacies of the two-party system are perpetuated.

I have many friends who are either Libertarian, Green Party, or just fed up with current parties and the lobbyists controlling them, and discussing this problem with Sean yesterday, I became acquainted with an alternate voting system known as IRV - instant runoff voting - that eliminates the problem of spoiler candidates and could break our current two party system. It would probably require a constitutional amendment to get IRV implemented at a national level, but a movement to implement it in local elections first might demonstrate its advantages to people and bring about the needed collective desire for change to eventually bring it to elections at the federal level.

Here is a cute video that describes how it works:

Loki, HumidCity Founder

It seems that not all local pols with Italian surnames are running for District Attorney. State Rep. John LaBruzzo (R-Metry) has other things on his mind. LaBruzzo is advocating a plan to pay poor folks to get their tubes tied to save on “welfare costs.” LINK. It’s a pity that LaBruzzo doesn’t have a phallic name but he’s definitely a dickhead who deserves to be beaten with a plaster schmeckle.

LaBruzzo represents the district that once elected Fuhrer wannabe and plastic surgery connoisseur, David Duke. No surprise there. It is, however, disappointing that someone with roots in Southern Europe is advocating what amounts to neo-eugenics. Early 20th Century American Eugenicists favored sterilizing as many folks of “non-native” stock as feasible. That meant that *my* Greek relations were as likely to have been on the…uh…chopping block as those of Mr. LaBruzzo.

Mr. LaBruzzo *claims* that he just wants to help “those” people and save the taxpayers some money. I’m sure getting his picture on the front page of the Picayune had nothing to do with it. I’m sure he’s enjoying the comments at NOLA.com as well. I only skimmed them, I have a delicate digestive system and rabid bigotry upsets my stomach.

Since we’re kinda/sorta on the subject of eugenics (neo or old school) I can’t resist quoting one of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ less salubrious opinions as a Supreme. It came in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell wherein Justice Holmes upheld a Virginia law that allowed forced sterilization of the mentally retarded:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Obviously, LaBruzzo’s bill provides an *incentive* for the “wrong sort of people” to be sterilized instead of making it mandatory but the intent is the same. Basing public policy on bigotry and stereotypes is another form of imbecility.

-Adrastos

This will be cross-posted in a slightly different form at the Adrastos Virtual Cafe.

Sarah Palin needs to close her legs and open a book.

[EDIT 4:40pm: BTW, now that the reactions are in and the original author of the quote has been outed in our comment stream I'd like to point out that this statement came from a woman. FYI]

-Loki, HumidCity Founder

(For a complete and updated list of all Blog Carnival Posts visit this page.)

What the fuck happened? Or, in pukka: Why are we they way we are?

Pirates, mostly. Privateers, if you want to split hairs.

Look, I’m not *blaming* anything on pirates. I like pirates. But the fact is, it was Jean Laffite who provided the tipping point after which Louisiana started the long slow slide.

Laffite, for you out of towners, was a privateer (that is, a pirate with a license). He and his brother roared around the gulf near the turn of the nineteenth century, liberating the contents of ships of all nations and carting them back to the island nation of Saint-Domingue, from which they were transferred (okay, smuggled) into New Orleans.

In 1808, however, the Louisiana government (such as it was) decided to start enforcing the Embargo Act of 1807, which barred any American ship from docking at a foreign port. Saint-Domingue was now problematic, so Laffite moved his operation to Barataria, near Grand Isle in Barataria Bay. Once unloaded there, the swag was transported to New Orleans through the bayou via pirogue (that’s a boat for your corn farmers). Read the rest of this entry »

Longtime HumidCity friend Lipwrap got chosen to be in a town hall with David Vitter over the phone yesterday. She reported the whole thing, 140 characters at a time, over Twitter. For those of you who would like to see what went on she posted the log from, it here.

If you’re not familiar with Lipwrap’s Lament- The Line, you should be. The NOLABlogosphere’s favorite jewish mother has a dose of perspective you should appreciate. Lipwrap, thanks for posting this, its a mitzva!

Loki, HumidCity Founder