Farewell Left-handed, Gay, Jewish, Congressman

Barney Frank (D-MA) will be leaving Congress after the 112th and will be remembered as master of the House floor.  Here is a little clip from December 11, 2009 at the end of House debate on the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (now “Dodd-Frank”).  Just a year earlier predatory lending and a gambling financial industry punished house prices, the stock market, and everyone’s retirement savings by 20% as unemployment skyrocketed. The bill on the floor was designed to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Here, Frank gets up to oppose the Republican motion to recommit the bill, a tactic offered to the opposing party to make a broad amendment at the end of debate:

Aww, it thinks it’s people

Joshua Holland writes a fascinating piece on how a corrupt court clerk made corporations people:

Corporate personhood’s origin in English law was reasonable enough; it was only by considering companies “persons” that they could be taken to court and sued. You can’t sue an inanimate object.

During the 19th century, however, the robber barons, aided by a few corrupt jurists deep in their pockets, took the concept to a whole new level in the United States. According to legal textbooks, the idea that corporations enjoy the same constitutional rights as you or I was codified in the 1886 decision Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. But historian Thom Hartmann dug into the original case documents and found that this crucially important legal doctrine actually originated with what may be the most significant act of corruption in history.

It occurred during a seemingly routine tax case: Santa Clara sued the Southern Pacific Railroad to pay property taxes on the land it held in the county, and the railroad claimed that because states had different rates, allowing them to tax its holdings would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th  Amendment. The railroads had made the claim in previous cases, but the courts had never bought the argument.

In a 2005 interview, Hartmann described his surprise when he went to a Vermont courthouse to read an original copy of the verdict and found that the judges had made no mention of corporate personhood. “In fact,” he told the interviewer, “the decision says, at its end, that because they could find a California state law that covered the case ‘it is not necessary to consider any other questions’ such as the constitutionality of the railroad’s claim to personhood.”

Hartmann then explained how it was that corporations actually became “people”:

In the headnote to the case—a commentary written by the clerk, which is not legally binding, it’s just a commentary to help out law students and whatnot, summarizing the case—the Court’s clerk wrote: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The discovery “that we’d been operating for over 100 years on an incorrect headnote” led Hartmann to look into the past of the clerk who’d written it, J. C. Bancroft Davis. He discovered that Davis had been a corrupt official who had himself previously served as the president of a railroad. Digging deeper, Hartmann then discovered that Davis had been working “in collusion with another corrupt Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Field.” The railroad companies, according to Hartmann, had promised Field that they’d sponsor his run for the White House if he assisted them in their effort to gain constitutional rights.

Hartmann noted that even after the ruling, the idea of corporate personhood remained relatively obscure until corporate lawyers dusted off the doctrine during the Reagan era and used it to help reshape the U.S. political economy.

Haps Thanks-for-giving-or-whatever

Happy Thanksgiving from the V+V family. It all went off without a hitch here at V+V headquarters, where we downed some turkey saltimbocca, plentiful stuffing and green bean casserole. And, of course, Bulleit brand bourbon.

Mac and Cheese

This is quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen all week. Kristi Watts, on the 700 Club on Christian Broadcasting Network, interviews former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and asks her about her must-have Thanksgiving dish. Mac and cheese, she answers, which Watts agrees is absolutely necessary at any Thanksgiving table. But, somehow, Pat Robertson has no idea what mac and cheese is. “Is it a black thing?” he asks. This year, this clip is for what I’m thankful.

I have to agree with Watts, though: The world needs to get on board with mac and cheese. I make it with Cabot Hunter’s sharp cheddar and pepper jack. No Gruyere here, thank you; this is America.

Here’s Romney’s shady new ad

It’s not actually a terrible campaign advertisement, as far as those things go. But, you may notice a strange nugget right at the end of the scary Obama quotes: “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Sure, those words in that order were spoken by then-candidate Obama. But, yes, BUT, he was quoting his rival, Sen. John McCain.

So, Romney’s attacking Obama for a line, a line that quote John McCain. We have to go deeper.

I have to assume that Romney’s got probably the best campaign staff on the Republican side, so, I have to assume that this misleading was on purpose. Was it a ploy to get the ad played for free, even on little blogs like this one? Would the extra exposure make up for the blatant lie? You know what? Probably.

Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly: Pepper spray just a food product

Delicious pepper spray. I spray it all over my turkey on Thanksgiving. Maybe with pizza, we can get it turned into a vegetable and then the police would just be giving students their vegetables.

Hump-Day Song of the Week: Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe by Okkervil River

Poem of the Week: Consent

Holy crap, it’s Earth

Yeah, check out this amazing stopmotion video of Earth captured from the International Space Station.

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a 4K-camera by Ron Garan fragileoasis.org/​bloggernauts/​Astro_Ron and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. All credit goes to them, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km. I intend to upload a FullHD-version presently.

HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc. All in all I tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible, avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since in my opinion the original footage itself already has an almost surreal and aestethical visual nature.

More on those robots that will end us all

Honda shows off the new ASIMO robot. It can now run, hop, and dance better than I can. Don’t they know they’re making machines that will one day end humanity?

Scoop your poop. Dog diggity.

YouTube description:

We made this video to help raise awareness about how cleaning up your dog poop will improve water quality in Puget Sound (http://pugetsoundstartshere.org). So pick-up that doo! And learn more about what you can do to help Puget Sound at http://ScoopPoop.org

FYI, this music video is a spoof of Blackstreet’s 90′s hit song “No Diggity” (see it at http://youtu.be/3KL9mRus19o)

Check out the “Dog Doogity” Poop Pick-up Dance here:
http://youtu.be/XPnq3vkK9wE

Behind the Scenes and Outtakes from the “Dog Doogity” video shoot here:
http://youtu.be/MzYnyTt26rU

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Seriously, though, scoop your poop. That shit’s gross.

h/t Sullivan.

Who is behind the Cain allegations?

Well, according to a report in The Hill Monday, the Romney, Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum, Paul and Huntsman campaigns have all flatly denied having any involvement in the Cain sexual harassment story.

So, we’re looking at you, Buddy Roehmer.

Actually, it would be almost awesome if it came from the Roehmer or Johnson campaigns (or even Fred Karger—I think he’s still “running”). Sort of a “Nice campaign you got there; shame if something happened to it,” threat to let him or them into the debates.

How did we get so big so fast?

Neat video from NPR about somehow in the last two centuries we went from 1 billion people to 7 billion.

It was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion — in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population, especially in the West.

As higher standards of living and better health care are reaching more parts of the world, the rates of fertility — and population growth — have started to slow down, though the population will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

U.N. forecasts suggest the world population could hit a peak of 10.1 billion by 2100 before beginning to decline. But exact numbers are hard to come by — just small variations in fertility rates could mean a population of 15 billion by the end of the century.

Next thing you know they’ll want the vote

Responding to the Cain imbroglio, Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky makes it clear that he doesn’t like sexual harassment. Or, at least, he doesn’t like that it’s against the rules or something. These women, they can’t take jokes:

“There are people now who hesitate to tell a joke to a woman in the workplace, any kind of joke, because it could be interpreted incorrectly,” he says. “I don’t. I’m very cautious.”

I, I, I had no idea. I mean, I guess that after you, you know, kidnapped a girl once you might be wondering why doing whatever you want to whatever lady you like is somehow bad.

“In my election, I had an anonymous girl from college — who I still don’t know — make accusations against me,” he tells National Review Online. “I don’t think you should print stuff like that. To libel someone’s character and not put your name on it, I think is inappropriate and shouldn’t be printed.”

Next thing you know, they’ll be telling you that you can’t force a woman to sleep with you to keep her job.

Hump-Day Song of the Week: Emergency Emergency by The Promise Ring

The real flip-flopper

Usually I disagree with just about anything David Frum says. Yet, sometimes David Frum says smart stuff. This is one of them:

It’s not Romney who is the flip-flopper. It’s the conservative movement. It was only three years ago that Jim DeMint was praising the Massachusetts healthcare plan. Post-2009, conservatives have flip-flopped on individual mandates, they have flip-flopped on monetary policy, in these cases they have adopted ever more extreme positions.

Yes Romney has had to shape-shift to keep pace, and that’s unfortunate. But don’t blame him – blame them.

And, for good measure:

Politicians change their minds all the time. Look at Rick Perry for example. Five years ago, he was to the left of Larry Summers, directly investing state government funds in preferred industries. Now suddenly he’s Mr Free Market. George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan changed their minds on abortion. The only people who never change their minds are fanatics – the Ron Pauls – who start wrong and stay wrong.

Hurray trains

CC photo by Flickr User John H Gray

Ta-Nehisi Coates waxes damned eloquent on trains:

The train, in all aspects, was a superior experience. The first thing was the feeling of everything melting away, of someone else taking control. When flying there are generally so many rules to be obeyed, and times when specific things can happen that I generally feel like, as a passenger, I’m actually a co-pilot. Lights tell you when you can and can’t move. Announcements indicate (because I use a lap-top and iPad) when it’s safe to read, write or listen to your music. Food and drink are administered at precise times. All of this within a confined space.

But there was a freedom on the train that you may need to be taller than six feet to really understand. You could walk as you needed to. You could sit in the cafe car and watch the scenery. You could fall into your book. Or you could just sleep, something I can’t really do on airplanes.

I absolutely agree. Trains really are the best conveyance. Which is why I feel violent when people blather “wehhhh boondoggle.” Tell that to your sprawling airline security apparatus.