The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — striking down bans on independent spending by unions, corporations, and individuals — continues to ripple through American politics, especially at the state level.

A new blog — The Money Tale — at the National Institute on Money in State Politics makes this abundantly clear. Writes researcher Anne Bauer:

Prior to the ruling, 24 states banned independent expenditures by unions, corporations, or both. Since the ruling, all 24 have dropped their bans following court challenges, rulings by attorneys general, or through legislation.

That means it’s even harder to find publicly accessible data on independent political spending in state races.

Campaign cash for federal races — the presidency and members of Congress — has been tracked for a decade by the Center for Responsive Politics (recently named to the inaugural list of institutions comprising a new journalism ecosystem). But the interpretation has often been done by people like me — using the CRP’s opensecrets.org site. Similarly, I’ve used reports at followthemoney.org as background for commentary on state elections and referenda.

But that was before Citizens United. Now, at either the state or federal level, can we calculate which is larger: The total of publicly accessible, legally required reports of contributions to candidates — or the the total of anonymous, unreported, publicly unaccessible spending legitimized by the Supreme Court?
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It’s “Week Two.”

For veterans of National Novel Writing Month, Week Two has the same kind of cheerful reputation as Darth Vader. It’s so evil it gets its name capitalized.

Week Two has become so notorious it’s become a verb, as in “I’ve been Week Two’d.”

“For participants everywhere,” says Lindsey Grant of the NaNoWriMo home office, “this has become the week to survive.”

Week One started off with a bang. Like other NaNoWriMo writers, I was full of energy and enthusiasm. I hammered out extra words each day beyond the daily goal of 1,667. I was cookin’.

But Week Two, veterans say: that’s the tough one. People start to run out of steam. Plots begin to bog down. Characters begin to stagnant. Enthusiasm flags.

Brick walls. Writer’s block. End of the road. Full story »

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918, seven days before the Armistice)

From the Scholars & Rogues White House Desk

“The solution of the Palestine problem is key to many problems between the West and the Muslim world. Our hope as Muslims to Obama and the U.S. is not unreasonable: If the Palestine problem could be resolved, it would be more than enough.” – Masdar Mas’udi, deputy chairman of Indonesia’s largest Islamic group

So all you have to do is solve the Middle East crisis, Mr. President. Make the Jews, Muslims, and Christians put aside the crusades, victory mosques and well poisoning, and start getting along. Mr. Obama is in Indonesia right now, the world’s largest Muslim (86%) democracy. His trip will be cut short because the volcano is menacing. Maybe it’s the left over jinx from George Bush’s 2006 visit, when an Indonesian mystic named Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throats of a black crow, a snake, and a goat, and then drank a potion made with the blood. Full story »

Photo by Lisa Wright. Text by Chris Mackowski.

The flat top of the stone wall clearly said, in orange spray-painted letters, “Do not climb on wall.” So, of course, Lisa climbed on top. She was angling for a better picture of the footbridge that spanned the gorge beneath Letchworth State Park’s “lower falls.” A rebel and an artist—who knew? Full story »

A Gallup poll released in August indicated that the advertising and PR industries aren’t viewed very favorably by the American public.

One-third of respondents voiced a positive view of the advertising/pr industry (6 percent “very,” 27 percent “somewhat”). Twenty-seven percent were “neutral.” Twenty-five percent expressed a “somewhat negative view,” while 11 percent were “very negative.” (The rest didn’t venture an opinion.)

You might argue that, on balance, the numbers are only slightly negative – total positives were 33% while total negatives were 36% – and the AdWeek story cited here certainly goes out of their way to put a chirpy spin on the results (no real surprise there, I suppose). Full story »

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Have you ever wondered just how bad the devastation would be if the Moon (or a Moon-sized object) were to graze the Earth? How big the crater would be, how tall the tsunami if it hit the ocean, how far from the impact point you’d have to be to avoid being instantly ejected into space by the impact, whether it would cause the Earth to crack open, that sort of thing? I have, and I’ve been fascinated by these kinds of questions since I was a kid and first learned about asteroid impacts and I read “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

If you’re weird like me and enjoy celestial collision end-of-the-world fiction, have I got a site for you. Full story »

Don’t you love the smell of bipartisanship in the morning? It smells like … it smells like burning flesh, or victory. After all, those two smell pretty much the same, don’t they? Now that the American people have spoken, or at least a small percentage of them have spoken because it was a mid-term election with predictably low turnout, power players in the Republican leadership are in Ottawa dropping clues for Mr. Obama. If he wants to win their favor and cooperation, then all he has to do is attack Iran.

Last week, David Broder opined that if Obama wants to sail to reelection he only need start a war. That’s real political strategy there, people, never mind dealing with serious problems in the US; the trick is to incite an irrational fear and hatred in the American people. Get ‘em all riled up for some vicarious killing and they’ll follow you anywhere. Some call it the “Bush doctrine.” Oh, hey, now don’t get Mr. Broder wrong: “I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.”

Lindsay Graham agrees, to a point, and he too would just love to see Barack Hussein Obama be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history. Of course he would, loyal opposition and all that. So to that end, Sen. Graham took the opportunity afforded by his trip to Ottawa to outline his favored, possible future for the US in regards to Iran.
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Excuse the sensationalistic head: the subject lends itself to hyperbole both because of its urgency and the imperative to draw reluctant readers. Of course, the “What if” doesn’t actually figure to materialize any time soon. Still, it hints at what a Pandora’s box the development of nuclear weapons has been for over six decades. Actually, it’s starting to look more like a clown car — an evil-clown car. Full story »

A bit of Saturday afternoon fun, courtesy of Thomas Stearns Eliot and Wordle.

There appears to be two main narratives circulating about the cause of the widespread Democratic losses in the elections on November 2^nd. The first is that the Democrats earned it because their actions over the last two years de-energized the Democrats who voted for hope and change in 2008. The second is that the Democrats who stayed home instead of voting in the mid-terms need to grow up and realize that they were never going to get everything they wanted, that Obama had done everything (or nearly everything) he could, and that they’d just shoot their beliefs in the metaphorical foot. While I’m solidly in the second camp, I remember a time when I would have related to those Democrats whose liberal idealism was deflowered over the last two years. And because I remember what it was like to be young and idealistic, I can appreciate that there is certainly some truth to the first narrative as well. Full story »

On several occasions we have pointed you toward the Poem for Tuesday feature at The Agonist. That weekly must-read is presented by Bruce Jacobs, who’s a fantastic poet in his own right. He’s our Poet of the Day at the Samuel Smith Poetry community on Facebook, and I thought I’d take a moment to point S&R lit lovers to his work while I’m at it.

So give “Jeep Cherokee,” his much-lauded rant at the master-of-the-universe affluenza infecting our society, a read. I don’t have a Jeep, but my truck is probably as much an affront to good sense as the Cherokee is, and great art makes us take a hard, uncomfortable look in the mirror sometimes, doesn’t it?

A snip:

This is a car for
a uniformed strongman, Full story »

I got this. 6,668 words? Yeah, I got this.

Except I’m 294 words short of the goal for today. To get my 50K-word novel done by the end of November, I have to average 1,667 words per day. By today, Day Four, I should be up to 6,668 words.

As of right now, I’m at 6,374.

I started out National Novel Writing Month going gangbusters: 2,604 words in my first sitting, which took about two and a half hours.

But the week has been so hectic at work. Looooong hours. I’ve not settled in to write until well after ten p.m. most nights. Already, I’m only averaging about four-and-a-half hours of sleep a night.

I got this, though. I’m hopped up on a six-pack of Diet Mountain Dew and seven cups of coffee (no kidding). I only need to crank out 294 words tonight to stay on track. Cake. I’ll do that and then some. I just have to pound out my S&R story first, then I’ll turn my attention to my novel. I so have this.

When I look at the word counts some of my friends have posted, though, I get a little worried. Full story »

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