In what amounts to a brazen political attack at a Democratic base, Wisconsin Republicans are trying to incapacitate the teacher’s unions. They claim that it is about balancing the budget, but that claim is pretty much pure BS. Stripping the unions of their collective bargaining rights will not even come close to solving the state budget crisis; instead, the worst culprits, according to Business Week, are “anticipated Medicaid expenses and a court-ordered repayment to a fund that was raided four years ago.” Additionally, Gov. Walker proposes another big chunk–$117 million–to be given to businesses in the form of a tax cut. Somehow, cutting the direct stream of revenue will increase revenue, but paying a fair wage to workers who directly spur business and pay money back in taxes is a revenue-killer.

Meanwhile, despite determined efforts to demonize the unions and frighten a gullible public into viewing them as lazy, greedy, and destructive, public support for the unions is surprisingly solid–a fact which Fox News, of course, shamelessly lies about.

This is not about balancing the budget. Walker and the Republicans are not doing what would be necessary to accomplish that–quite the opposite. This is 100% political. It’s about cutting the legs out from under one of the Democrat’s only remaining base constituencies–workers–while shoveling the state more into debt by further engorging a Republican constituency–business. Walker believes that he’s a Republican hero, setting a trend that will spark a nation-wide conservative revolution. When asked if he would back off on the unions if they agreed to pay cuts, he said no–this is not about money, this is about political support and power bases.

As if to punctuate that, Walker–who is not easy to reach by phone–accepted a prank phone call by a blogger claiming to be infamous billionaire and Tea Party funder David Koch. Walker spent twenty minutes on the call, during which he explained how he planned to lie to Democratic lawmakers, tricking them to coming back so he can ram through his budget. The call also highlighted Walker’s cozy relationship with big business in his state, ending with Walker showing enthusiasm at the suggestion that Koch would treat him to a vacation in Cali after Walker succeeds with his plans.

It hurts me to see a news organization get involved in politics to that level.

–Juan Williams, talking about CNN on Fox News

CNN, for the record, had a guy on the scene who rather simply and straightforwardly said that doctors were “helping out” teachers in Wisconsin by writing false notes that the teachers were ill when they were participating in a sick-out. The statement was not even sympathetic to the teachers or the doctors, it was simply stating that the doctors supported the teachers, nothing more than what actually happened. That was Williams’ assessment of how CNN was “getting involved in politics.”

Sean Hannity dedicated two segments of his show to this guy. Fox & Friends debated him as if he were a serious media figure and an actual threat. Right-wing blogs, magazines, and news sources are abuzz about him. Other, less outrageously right-wing media outlets have picked up on him.

Who is this major news figure? His name is Anjem Choudary. He’s a British Islamist who wants to lead a protest outside the White House to brand America as criminal and institute sharia law. Essentially, he’s a small-time loud-mouthed radical extremist who otherwise would be ignored.

So, why isn’t he being ignored? Why, instead, is he all over the news? Because he makes for a great bogeyman. He’s scary and is happy to go on any TV show and say exactly the kind of stuff that right-wingers want Americans to be afraid of, stuff that isn’t anywhere near being real but they want us to think it is.

Or, in summary: Oogah Boogah!!

Scared yet? Because the U.S. is just a few short steps from becoming a fundamentalist Islamic dictatorship, you know.

We’re not quite there yet, but we’re appreciably on the way, and might be 90% of the way should nothing untoward happen. We’ve been looking to buy a home for either a few months or a year now, depending on how you count it. We started about a year ago, looking in Kanagawa, when the bank told us that I didn’t have much of a chance of getting a loan until I got my permanent residency. So I got that, and we started looking again late last year.

We’ve been going around to properties in the area since December, looking at several properties each weekend. We’re using a real estate agency known as “Suumo,” a Seibu firm. We tried looking at some properties in neighboring towns, but they just didn’t work out for us. The area we live in now, Hibarigaoka, is nice: two large department stores, lots of supermarkets, restaurants, and other shops. The train station is an express stop, and connects up with two subway lines, connecting to almost any other lines you could think of. It’s not too close to Tokyo, but not too far, either–about the right balance. Sachi didn’t want to live any farther out, and any farther in would be too expensive. The next station in, Hoya, had some possible properties, but the area was just too plain–not much there at all, just houses for a long way.

There was a place we looked at a few months back which had a nice location, but it was just a foundation under construction, and was out of our price range anyway. However, our agent called up and said that the property’s owner–a developer who bought a larger property from the prior owner and split the land into two lots (a very common thing in Tokyo)–was cutting the price by about $25,000. It was still a bit high for us, but the agent talked him down another $15,000, and it came in to our price range.

The land parcel is 102 m² (31 tsubo), which is fairly average for this area. The location, however, is very good, and you know what they say about location. It’s a 7 or 8-minute walk from Hibarigaoka station, along a road that almost hits the station. There are tons of restaurants and small shops in the area. There are a few small grocery shops along the way, but 5 minutes in the other direction is a cluster of shops which includes a large, nice supermarket/store, a few video rental shops, and a few more nice restaurants.

The house we’re looking at is just off the roads that lead places, but it’s pretty quiet, so far as we can tell. The back of the house looks over a parking lot for a fitness canter, but it’s on the opposite side from the bedroom (which overlooks a small, quiet street), and the parking lot doesn’t seem to be very noisy at all–though we’ll have to check that. (The agent says he’ll take us for looks over the next few weeks at different times of the day, opportunities we’ll take to inspect the house very closely as well. I’ll also be camping out by the house at other times to check noise levels.)

In short, the location, while not perfect, is excellent. The main down side we can see is that there are no parks nearby–a bit of a disappointment, as we plan on getting a dog very soon. We can still visit parks, just not on an everyday basis.

Now, the house design is nothing special. No high ceilings, no stylish frills. Not even a dishwashing machine, something a lot of new places seem to have. It has a very standard look, nothing that would turn your head. The layout didn’t knock our socks off, but looking at a floor plan doesn’t always tell the whole story.

In fact, I thought that the floor plans were rather dull. One thing I do when I move in to a new place, though, is to plan out how the furniture will go. It helps me understand how the space can be utilized, and really helps with the moving. So I took the layout of this place into InDesign, made sure I had drawings of all our furniture to scale, and then started arranging things. I found that they fit quite nicely. We would utilize the upstairs most of all, and that would be the bedroom–big enough for our bed and furniture plus room to move around–a room for me, like a home office, about 10′ square, quite nice–and another room, about 9′ x 12′, very open and sunny, which we would make into a kind of second-floor living room, with a sofa, table, and the big TV.

Still, the design wasn’t knocking my socks off. So to compare, I took the floor plans for an “ideal” house that had been drawn up just for us. When we were looking at a plot of land in Hoya, a housebuilding firm drew up plans for us based on what we said we wanted. It looked really nice, and we were very interested in building it on some plot of land we might find in the future. Just for comparison, I also put it into InDesign, and started arranging the furniture.

It was terrible. Nothing fit, the living room had no way to comfortably set a sofa and television, and a dogleg between the living and dining areas completely wasted a large amount of space. The rooms for Sachi and I were just too small, and didn’t work for us very well.

Despite being sexier, the “ideal” layout didn’t live up to expectations–and the “dull” layout suddenly started showing promise. That, along with the location being as good as it is, started making the property look a lot more attractive.

Then there was the price; there was nothing wrong with the property (nothing we’ve been able to detect so far, at least), but the price was very good for that area. Just a block or so to the south, about the same distance from the station, were properties opening up–plots of land without houses yet–which were going for about the same as the housed property we’re looking at. Yes, they are about 10% larger, but the prices ranged from 25% to 45% more than our estimate of the land we were purchasing. That seemed to set the local land values such that our land seemed nicely priced, even if you allow for the close-by land plots to also be discounted.

One possible snag–or fringe benefit, depending on how it plays–is that the city of West Tokyo has plans for creating new roads through the town, and one of the planned roads goes through the property we’re looking at. However, the plan will probably not be realized for a few decades at least, if even ever. If it does materialize, it might come at just about at the time we could be looking to sell the house and retire elsewhere. Our agent told us that such eminent domain purchases were usually for good prices, better than market value, and that some people even speculated on such land. However, I’m still a bit suspicious–that the property should be offered to us for a lower price than most in the neighborhood already, plus there being this possible “benefit” way in the future… it’s something I want to look into, though I have to admit I am not sure how I would do it. But I have to wonder if the easier answer might be true–that we’re being sold a plot of land that others may not want because of possible future development in the area.

In any case, there are many steps along the way to buying a house, and we didn’t want to just sit by and possibly watch this one go by, should it be what we want. So we agreed to start the process of purchasing, comfortable that we could back out at any time over the next month. That involved putting up a million yen on the down payment, though it is fully refundable (the process does include signing contracts requiring 15,000 yen in revenue stamps, non-refundable of course). But in doing so, we have dibs on the property, and can still back out anytime up until March 14.

So we went in to the real estate office and spent much of the day there, as the agent walked us through 12 pages of legal and technical details, telling us the history and quality of the property, how the road in front is not city property so we will have to work with neighbors if it needs work, as well as a host of zoning details and contractual obligations.

Then we signed the forms, handed over the deposit, and arranged to see the house again later this week.

Either we could discover that the place is not what we want, or the bank might fail to give us the loan, or we could be moving into our new house by early April.

Why is this always the case?

About 200 people spent the night at the Capitol, and on Saturday morning, many walked around wearing signs declaring the protest peaceful. Several said they were concerned that the four days of violence-free protests would be disrupted Saturday when buses of Tea Party activists arrived. [emphasis mine]

Buses. They always come in buses. Whether it’s town halls or student protests, the people doing what tea Partiers don’t like are usually locals, fighting for what is right for the community. But when the Tea Partiers come, it’s always on buses. They were bused in to disrupt town hall meetings a few years ago, and now they’re being bused in to try to kill off unions.

I’d like to know who is arranging for all the buses these people use. Because for a supposedly unorganized mishmash of widely disparate people, they seem to have an incredibly fast-acting and well-organized transport network set up.

And note that when they get bused in, it’s usually to try to kill off something that Democrats are doing–not just anything central to the Tea Party principles. They don’t bus in to districts where Republicans are funneling billions in pork to their districts; nor do they get bused in to protest Republicans reneging on promises made to the Tea Party faithful. No, only when it’s a something aimed to destabilize a Democratic power base.

I mean, gee whiz, how about that.

There are severe complaints against Apple regarding its new terms for magazine subscriptions:

The Justice Department and the FTC are both interested in examining whether Apple is running afoul of U.S. antitrust laws by funneling media companies’ customers into the payment system for its iTunes store—and taking a 30% cut, the people familiar with the situation said. The agencies both enforce federal antitrust laws and would have to decide which one of them would take the lead in the matter. …

Under Apple’s terms for the new service, companies that sell digital subscriptions to content on Apple devices would be required to make it available for sale through apps at the company’s iTunes App Store at the best available price.

Buying magazine or other subscriptions through the iTunes store would require just a few clicks and use billing details already on file, giving users an incentive to use Apple’s system. Apple would prohibit media companies’ apps from linking to stores outside its App Store or from offering better terms to subscribers elsewhere, making it difficult for them to attract buyers to their own sites. Legal experts say some of those rules could pose antitrust problems.

Banning apps from linking to external sites “sounds like a pretty aggressive position,” said Eric Goldman, director of Santa Clara University’s High Tech Law Institute. “It seems like that’s purely in the interests of Apple trying to restrict people doing transactions they don’t get a cut from.”

Sorry, but this sounds rather biased against Apple. For example, in that initial paragraph, the reference to a 30% cut is made to sound somewhat insidious: “a 30% cut, the people familiar with the situation said.” The writer is suggesting that the 30% cut is some dark secret, when it’s a very open policy of Apple to take 30% of all sales through its iOS stores.

Later in the article, the 30% commission is referred to as “excessive” and “obviously anticompetitive.” However, Apple is in the position of a retailer here, and retailers often take far more than 30%. It perhaps depends upon the industry–some retailers might mark up items by a few percent, but some do it by far more. Significantly, digital sales are new and so a new standard is being defined. This is really just the publishers whining and trying to strong-arm their way into defining standards to suit them best, using the claims of anti-competitiveness as a tool to accomplish this.

The fact that Apple is a retailer, and that the iOS platform is the equivalent of a store, makes most of the objections seem rather ridiculous. For example, the publishers complain that Apple is demanding the “best available price,” Of course Apple wants to be able to offer an item for sale at the best available price–it would be objectionable only if Apple demanded that they get to sell at a lower price than anywhere else. Asking for the same price as elsewhere is the opposite–Apple is demanding that it not be unfairly undercut by others.

As for Apple’s convenience, requiring just a few clicks, that’s not unfair either–it’s simply Apple’s efficient setup. Is a supermarket violating antitrust by having an express checkout lane, or a bank by using ATMs?

The stronger objection seems to be related to the rules prohibiting apps from linking to stores outside of Apple’s, but frankly, that’s another very understandable policy. Combined with the demand that Apple not be undersold elsewhere, effectively, that’s like a store not wanting to carry a product bearing an announcement that a buyer can get a lower price by walking to the competitor’s shop next door. Would Safeway carry a brand of milk which, on the carton, advertised that a customer could “Go to 7-11 and get a better price” for the exact same product?

One might argue that Safeway does sell magazines at newsstand prices and that the magazines, within the product, offer much lower subscription rates–but, ironically, that’s a different issue. Safeway is not trying to sell subscriptions, but rather the newsstand version–very different products. It’s like Safeway selling a carton of milk advertising a tour of a dairy farm, something Safeway would have no part of.

Apple is offering subscriptions, so the outgoing links are not for a qualitatively different sales method. Now, if Apple only offered one-shot sales and not subscriptions, that would be different, the objections might be valid, especially if the publisher were trying to sell at a lower price but Apple both refused any part of it and denied the publisher from advertising it. But as it is, Apple is not doing so, and is simply saying that it doesn’t want its own product used to steer customers away from its own store.

Many times I have seen similar claims against Apple–that it is monopolistic because it has high market share in some areas. Certainly there are grounds to grumble about how Apple is rather controlling and protective of its playground. However, a monopoly is not just when a company enjoys good sales, it is when a company abuses its market share to cut off the competition.

People point to Apple having huge market shares in music sales, phone sales, tablet sales, app sales, etc. However, when Apple enjoys having the lion’s share of the market in these cases, it is because Apple was the first to come out with a qualitatively new product well before anyone else, and maintained a popular brand image as well as an excellent if not superior design. That’s not being monopolistic. A monopoly is not when you get 99% of the sales, it’s when you get 99% of the sales by using your 85% market share to beat down others.

If Apple threatens music companies to cut off their sales unless those companies agree to unfair practices–like letting Apple have lower prices than anyone else, or prohibiting sales via other retailers–then that’s a fair claim of monopolistic practices. But if Apple simply says, let us have the same price as others and don’t use our store to steer customers away from us, that’s not an unfair demand. Nor does Apple having the biggest slice of the sales pie make it any more monopolistic.

Sorry to be away so often nowadays; my school schedule is killing me recently.

However, this has got to be worth something–John Boehner is being even more of a hypocritical ass than normal.

Boehner was a leading force behind the push to call Health Care Reform by the name “Job Killing Health Care Law,” claiming that the reform act would cause 1.6 million jobs to be lost. That, of course, was not true; the 1.6 million number was based upon a provision that was not part of the health care act, which the CBO says will have only a minimal impact on jobs. Boehner only doubled down, calling the reform “Job Crushing” and “Job Destroying.”

So what was Boehner’s next big idea? The GOP’s own bag of spending cuts. The cost in jobs? As many as a million people will lose their jobs under the GOP plan.

When Boehner was asked about the jobs lost, his response–albeit to a lower number than the 1 million that could potentially be lost–was callous: “So be it.”

Apparently, saving a billion here and a billion there was worth killing off at least hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But Boehner was not finished being a hypocrite. There’s a third leg to his recent actions which ties into this.

Boehner was trying to slip some pork back into the budget, a classic example of government waste: a jet engine that the Pentagon didn’t want but would bring money to Boehner’s district. The engine was seen as unnecessary and could have cost taxpayers as much as $3 billion.

So, let’s recap: Boehner falsely calls the Health Care Reform Act “Job Killing” whilst being cold-hearted about killing off enough jobs to send us back into a recession so he could save money that he would then try to waste as pork for his state.

That’s a pretty impressive week.

It’s a national holiday in Japan today (National Foundation Day), and the first snow day in Tokyo this winter (late again). I’ve commented before about how even a little snow will shut things down in Tokyo. Back in Toyama, where it really snows, where we’d get a meter or two on the ground sometimes, we’d laugh at news footage of Tokyo being paralyzed by a few centimeters, watching video of people on the street struggling to walk straight on icy patches, and train lines being shut down right and left. In fact, this nearly nixed a flight back to America for me once, as it snowed earlier than usual (in the first or second week of December) about a decade ago, dropping several centimeters just on the morning I was to leave. Half the train lines in Tokyo shut down.

Today, it doesn’t seem too bad. Frankly, I like snow. A lot better than winter rain, that’s for sure.

Right-wingers are angry about how taxes are so high, despite the fact that taxes are pretty much as low as they have been for a very long time. They’re also agitated about inflation, despite the fact that inflation is as low as it has been for a long time, and shows no signs of increasing. They’re fearful of Muslims and Sharia Law taking over America, when there’s pretty much zero chance of that happening. They are perennially up in arms about a “War on Christmas” which just isn’t there. They fear a New Black Panther Party which is nothing more than a phantom. They fear that gays getting married will destroy the institution of marriage itself. They fear Death Panels. They fear a communist president born in Kenya who is robbing us of our freedoms and will confiscate all our guns as he imposes a fascist dictatorship.

Exaggerated fears are one thing. But right-wingers today seem fearful of things that mostly just don’t even exist.

But don’t try to tell them that global climate change is anything to worry about. There’s simply no conclusive evidence for that. I mean, really, folks, let’s not get carried away.

TPM’s slideshow of high-speed rail in Europe and Asia demonstrates how far behind America has fallen in this regard. But hey, you can’t blame us–rail projects like this are socialist, maybe even communist!

After all, anyone who knows anything about American history knows that Capitalism and Railroads have never gone hand-in-hand, and Americans were never associated with those socialist-communist train-thingies. Nope. Never did, never will.

I’ve liked Gizmodo’s content, despite some of their more outrageously invasive ad setups. But now they’ve completely lost me. I often open up the site as one of many links opened at the same time–click click click click click, then visit the opened pages one by one. When I got to Gizmodo recently, however, I thought it was an error–it was a single article with a huge ad at the top. I figured it was some kind of page opened up by another page as a kind of ad, or that I had clicked on some errant link somewhere and not realized it.

But no, it was Gizmodo’s new site: instead of its classic list of stories you can skim and choose from, the new site opens on a single full article, with its sponsors’ giant ad flashing across the top. The list is still there, but now it’s an independently-scrolling sidebar, and kinda awkward to scroll through at that. You can return to the “classic” list view (there’s the giant ad again), but now the list is far shorter than before, and each time you go to a new page, you get–surprise! the giant ad again.

Not worth it, Giz. I was already fed up with trying to get the ability to post comments (verification emails didn’t come through, and once when I did get it, after a short time my account stopped working, and then later my data got stolen as part of your database hack–way to go). I had been frustrated by the site’s “helpful” localization “feature.” But this is just too far. I know you gotta make money, but there’s such a thing as becoming too obnoxious about it. Way too obnoxious.

Seriously, sites: static ads–better yet, text ads, Google-style, and you won’t find me even trying to bother with ad-blocking plug-ins. Make them contextual to the story I’m viewing and I’ll probably even click through from time to time. But making your site a morass of crap shoved in my face just won’t cut it.

Reagan cut taxes, but raised others; in the end, more people wound up paying more in taxes. However, people mostly believe that Reagan only cut taxes.

Obama raised some taxes, but cut others; in the end, more people are now paying less in taxes. However, people mostly believe that Obama only raised taxes.

Such is the effect of the right-wing PR machine.

This comes up via Obama’s second interview with Bill O’Reilly. Only two interviews? Obama must be afraid of Fox News “journalists,” I guess. Remind me, though: how many times did Bush go on Olbermann? Hell, Palin won’t even go one some Fox News shows herself, much less any other media outlet.

You know that someone is definitely playing games with this one:

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was scheduled to speak at an event for a Colorado nonprofit group May 2, but the event was canceled the day after it was announced due to “an onslaught of personal attacks” against Palin.

Palin was to speak at the Patriots & Warriors Gala at the Infinity Park Event Center in Glendale, Colo., which was billed as an awards banquet and fundraiser for military families in need and for a grief camp for children who had lost loved ones in combat.

Now, from reading that, it sounds as if they announced the event, with Palin as the headliner, but then were deluged with angry emails and death threats. Certainly that is how right-wing “news” sites are running with the story. However, if one continues reading:

But the event, sponsored by the Sharon K. Pacheco Foundation, was canceled Saturday, a day after it had been announced to the media. A press release posted on the sponsoring organization’s Facebook page reads, “Due to an onslaught of personal attacks against Gov. Palin and others associated with her appearance, it is with deep sadness and disappointment that, in the best interest of all, we cancel the event for safety concerns.”

The press release goes on to say that no direct threats were made against Palin, nor were any made against members of the organization’s staff, but in light of the shooting rampage in Arizona last month, the negative rhetoric “raises concern for her safety and the safety of others despite the call for civility in America.”

“The organization deeply respects Sarah Palin,” reads the release, “and appreciates her willingness to come and honor our military. The organization plans to host the event at some point in the future, featuring another speaker.”

In short, there were no threats. The claim is that they were concerned about her security because of the pre-existing tone of criticism against Palin since the Arizona incident. Which, of course, is BS–if that were the case, they wouldn’t have booked her in the first place.

I looked up the “Sharon K. Pacheco Foundation,” and had a very hard time finding anything. While they do have a web site (“Supporting Military Families & At-Risk Youth”), but it is a flash site on Wix under the name “LP Enterprises,” and is “currently under revision.” A Google search reveals very little. HuffPo describes the organization as a “faith-based foundation” (their graphic reads “For God and Country”) founded in 2002. Their Facebook page (Google cached here and here) won’t come up, maybe taken down for some reason.

So, what the heck is up with this? Palin is not known for making appearances for free and the Pacheco Foundation does not seem to be the kind of organization that could afford her. It would seem odd that an organization which would appear to arrange local toy drives and such would make what seems to be a blazing political game-playing move and then yank itself off the web.

So why cancel the engagement so suddenly with an announcement which sounds like it was written by a rookie spin doctor on Palin’s staff?

It is pointed out in the news stories that the date for the engagement conflicted with a planned NBC/Politico Republican presidential primary debate at the Reagan Presidential Library in California. Which suggests that the Pacheco Foundation may have jumped the gun in publicizing the engagement–and then Palin’s people got angry and told them to roll it back, demanding that the foundation give the bogus press release, forwarding Palin’s idiotic PR stance that she is in mortal peril from left-wingers.

Another explanation is evidenced in a Denver Post political blog:

Further examination of the organization’s tax records show a nonprofit that had barely collected any money over the past five years — raising only $1,000 in 2008 and having net assets of only $2,204 in 2009.

The Palin event had been announced a month ago on the organization’s Facebook page. The $185-per-person tickets had gone on sale Jan. 16.

On Jan. 30, the website offered a $15 off deal. And on Wednesday the organization had slashed tickets in half.

Friday, a press release went out to media outlets to announce the Palin appearance. The Denver Post ran a story about the event in Saturday’s newspaper. Later on Saturday, the event was canceled due to “threats.”

Calls to area authorities on Saturday found that no threats were reported to law enforcement agencies from the organization.

This makes it look like the event simply couldn’t sell enough tickets, with again the same results in how the press release got made.

I swear, if Palin gets past even the earliest hurdles of nomination in the GOP, it will be the mother of all jump-the-shark moments for the Republican Party.

Moderator: OK, let’s ask our vice-presidential candidates what they will be doing a few years from now should they not win the election.

Senator: Well, I intend to continue to serve in the Senate, focusing on my post in the Committee on Foreign Relations, working with the opposition to improve our standing in the world.

Moderator: And you, governor?

Governor: Oh, if I lose then I’m just gonna quit as governor mid-term, so I can, you know, concentrate on book deals, giving commentary for Fox News–and oh yeah, I’m gonna have my own reality TV show! As for interviews, I’m gonna only let Fox–the friendlier people on Fox that is–interview me, because I just can’t stand that lamestream media and their “Gotcha” journalism. For the most part, though, I’ll stay in politics using Facebook and Twitter, establishing my credentials so I can become a kingmaker in the midterms, and possibly a presidential candidate in the next election.

Moderator: [Pause] Are you fucking kidding me?

Georgia is considering buying an iPad for every middle school student in the state. The deal with Apple would include setting up WiFi in all the schools, loading the textbooks onto the devices, and training the teachers. A test program at a private school worked well, and so they’re looking into it statewide now.

This really is what we need to be seeing. Tablets have been a long time in coming, and they really do have enormous potential. Many people I have spoken to in education are excited at the prospects. An iPad app, Inkling, is getting off to a slow start but now offers two textbooks we use at my college branch here in Tokyo. Whenever I demo the app to students, they are blown away. All of my textbooks on that little thing? I can highlight, take notes, share notes wirelessly, listen to audio and watch video? I can buy only the chapters I need? They love the idea.

The problem: publishers. Of course. They have a sweet deal with college textbooks, charging a steep premium and limiting used-book resale with constant edition updates, most of which are really not needed. Ironically, tablets could increase their profits even more–no more paper printing or shipping, no more unsold textbooks to deal with, no textbook resale at all, and they can probably sell with less taken out by the sellers than bookstores currently take. The problem is, they’re afraid to try something new, afraid that piracy will prevail and they’ll lose their sweet deal.

News flash, idiots: textbooks are already being pirated. And a lot of piracy takes place because publishers don’t make a good deal available as an alternative. If they don’t move to set the trend before the pirates (inevitably) will do, they’re going to pay the price. Hell, already in Japan, publishers are seeing businesses pop up–like this one, called BookScan–which scan books for people for as little as ¥100 ($1.20) a pop, maybe double that for an OCR’ed version.

I am pretty sure that if they opened the floodgates or flipped the switch or whatever, and got downloadable textbooks going full-speed, that a lot of students in my school would get an iPad right fast and start using that. hell, the ability to search text alone would be a big plus.

But no, instead we’re going to see the same crap we saw from the music industry, and now the movie and TV people. Like I said: idiots.

Good news, bad news–unemployment dropped rather sharply to 9.0%, following an identical 0.4% drop from 9.8% from November to December. Unfortunately, it’s not such great news. Only 36,000 jobs–an anemic number–were added in January, and while that’s still significantly better than the -740,000-job hole Bush left us with in January 2009, it’s not nearly enough.

Last month, Republicans laughably tried to take credit for the drop in unemployment after taking the reins of the House for only 19 days. Being consistently inconsistent, they are now claiming that a second similar drop is not enough. Make up your minds already.

Something is interesting about the news articles on this, and maybe one reason why people can’t see the Republican claims as being ridiculous lies. From the AP:

The unemployment rate dropped sharply last month to 9 percent, based on a government survey that found that more than a half-million people found work.

The Washington Post:

The jobless rate fell to 9 percent in January from 9.4 percent in December and 9.8 percent in November. In a promising sign, the improvement in January reflected the success of nearly 600,000 more people in finding work. By contrast, the rate fell in December in part because people had dropped out of the labor force, too discouraged perhaps to even look for work.

Funny how none of these articles mentions that the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, which allowed me to predict the current changes in the unemployment rate last October. What we’re seeing now reflects the pop we saw about nine months ago when jobs went in the black for the first time in a few years. A few months later, the number of new jobs dipped, and though we haven’t gone negative on average, we’re more or less trading water–meaning that, in all likelihood, the unemployment rate fall will slow or stop soon (maybe the reason why Republicans stopped trying to take credit for it).

And while Obama has been trying to get us back on track with new stimulus spending, Republicans have countered with demands for cuts (except their massive increase in the form of the tax deal, mostly for wealthy people who don’t need them). A lot of those cuts–aside from the usual stabs at “liberal” spending like for PBS–are for infrastructure, job creation, education, scientific research–some of the best values in both short- and long-term investment. A great deal of what the Republicans are trying to cut represent lots of jobs–in short, they say we can create jobs by cutting jobs. Some of their proposals are painful–like the one-time sale of federal properties which are unused, with not a whisper of charging for public resources the government currently gives away to big business.

Even if they were actually serious and could really cut spending–doubtful–we would still be sinking further into this deep pit, and it probably would not have a positive effect on jobs–just like continuing the Bush tax cuts won’t have a positive effect.

The good news is, at least now they’re coming out with proposals, actual ideas–a significant change from before. The bad news is, they’re mostly the wrong ideas, ones that will likely hurt more than help, many of them simply having no effect at all.

Want to be a conservative hero? Here’s how: first, get a hidden video camera. Second, choose an organization that is or seems liberal to you, especially one doing good things for people in need–providing medical service, legal counseling, voter registration, job creation etc. Then, create a ludicrous false identity for yourself–you’re a pimp, a child pornographer, a rapist, a sex trafficker, or something like that. And then go into the organization’s offices under your false identity and see if you can create enough footage where you talk to them about seriously ludicrous and unbelievable crap. You might have to go to a whole bunch of different offices until you can get some workable material. Then, when you get back, see how you can edit the video footage and add commentary with the right spin to make it look like the organization was doing something questionable.

Voilà! Instant right-wing champion! Fox News will love you, and your new career as a creative muckraker is born! If you’re lucky, you might win the James O’Keefe Award for Slimeball Hit-and-Run “Journalism.” If you’re really lucky, maybe you will succeed in sliming the liberal organization so successfully that it will have to shut down, leaving thousands or even hundreds of thousands of poor people without medical services, legal representation, voter assistance, or some other service that could help them get a slightly more fair shot at equality and justice. Super hero!

The latest scumbags lining up for a nomination: Live Action, a pro-life group which visited at least a dozen Planned Parenthood offices and apparently found one employee who may have fallen for the scheme–but not before the organization reported a possible sex-trafficking operation to the FBI. Still, several major “liberal media” outlets have fallen for the ploy, reporting it just like Fox News would, as if Planned Parenthood, as an organization, were officially “covering up” a sex trafficking ring. Mission Accomplished!

The most recent case:

Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old Army veteran from California who was reportedly angry at the U.S. government, was arrested by police in Michigan and charged with allegedly threatening to blow up a Mosque in Dearborn.

Dearborn police allegedly found Stockham inside his vehicle outside the Islamic Center of America with a load of M-80s in his trunk and other explosives, the Detroit News reported.

Note the common thread in virtually every homegrown terrorist or gunman over the past couple of decades: angry at the government. Often picks a target disliked and/or smeared by the right wing.

Just in the past year:

• January 8, 2011: Jared Lee Loughner shoots U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others; angry at government.
• December 9, 2010: Charles Turner Habermann made death threats against U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA); is arrested January 12; angry at local and federal governments, especially about taxes.
• November 3, 2010: James Patock arrested in D.C. when police find several guns and ammunition, as well as propane tanks wired to four car batteries in his truck and trailer; angry at government, hated Obama.
• July 30, 2010: Camp Hill prison guard Raymond Peake murdered a man for his gun, claiming he and another were stealing guns “for the purpose of overthrowing the federal government.”
• July 18, 2010: Byron Williams captured in shootout in Oakland on his way to “start a revolution” against the government by killing people of the ACLU and Tides Foundation in San Francisco.
• March 4, 2010—John Patrick Bedell fires on police officers at the entrance to the Pentagon; a Truther who is angry at the government.
• February 18, 2010—Joseph Stack flew a plane into an IRS building; angry about taxes and at the government in general.

You will note that going back, from the man who shot three policemen in Pittsburgh in 2009 back to Timothy McVeigh and before, most cases of domestic terrorism are linked to people who are angry at and usually paranoid about the government.

So, naturally, right-wingers spouting such incendiary, vile, ridiculously fantastic accusations about the U.S. government (when controlled by Democrats) have nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. It’s just pure coincidence that this kind of violence spikes when a Democrat occupies the White House. The violent rhetoric and insane rantings about left-wing conspiracies has, we can be absolutely certain, no effect on these people at all. Yes. Right.

Barack Obama, in his State of the Union Speech:

What we can do — what America does better than anyone else — is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. … America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We’re the home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any place on Earth. …

I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth. …

[W]e believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything is possible. … That dream is why [John Boehner] can preside as Speaker of the House in the greatest nation on Earth.

John Boehner, the next day, said:

[Obama and others on the left] have refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. … We’ve got more innovators, more entrepreneurs, and that is exceptional but you can’t get the left to talk about it. They don’t — they reject that notion.

Dude, you were sitting right behind him. He was talking about you just before saying America was the greatest nation on Earth. Weren’t you listening? Or were you too absorbed in thinking of useless, grandstanding stunts to get rid of budget-reducing health care reform that would cover tens of millions more people?

During the Bush years, Republicans made their usual big deal about supporting the troops. When it comes to actual support though, the right wing really only supports the military contractors, who are, after all, among those paying the bills. Despite their talk about cutting spending, they won’t touch Defense, despite there being a lot to cut; Lockheed Martin alone receives an average of something like $260 from each taxpaying American family.

When it comes to the soldiery, the support from the right is not quite so strong. Oh, yes, the words come out. Support the troops and all that. But actions speak louder than words, and during the Bush years, much of the action was abusive. Lengthening tours of duty, employing stop-loss, scaling down pay increases, cutting benefits, failing to outfit them properly–basically chintzing the soldiers on nickels and dimes while pouring billions into the pockets of firms like Halliburton. When a veteran’s organization ranked senators on how they voted on veteran’s issues, the disparity was striking: Democrats occupied the top of the list, while Republicans uniformly failed to support the troops themselves where it counted.

There is one aspect in which Bush and the Republicans liked the troops: as a prop to help them politically. How many times did you see Bush–the AWOL draft-dodger–give speeches before uniformed audiences, helpfully arranged behind him for effect; how many times did we see him reviewing the troops, a purely PR-related activity?

Whenever Bush’s decisions were questioned, the reply very often was to use the troops as a human shield. Anyone who criticized Bush was accused of attacking the troops–an act of hatefully vile cowardice which I personally despise.

When a selflessly patriotic man gave up a lucrative personal career and volunteered to serve, and then was killed in “friendly fire,” the details of his death were covered up while the Bush administration shamelessly used him as a poster boy for their PR campaign after their disgrace at Abu Ghraib.

But people believe that liberals are the ones who abuse the troops. After all, wasn’t it liberals who spat on soldiers on the airport tarmac as they returned from service in Vietnam? Well, no. It’s an urban legend, another lie generated to discredit liberals. In fact, during the Vietnam War, liberals supported the soldiery just like they do today; it was the administration they despised. Again we see the tactic of using soldiers as a human shield, to very great effect–so many people even today believe the image of liberal hippie protesters spitting on deplaning soldiers, despite the fact that it would have been physically impossible for that to even happen.

Whenever a bill to support the actual soldiers came through, it was almost always a Democratic effort, and was usually opposed by Republicans, who, after throwing billions at contractors, could not see themselves clear to tossing a few million to actually support the troops. Take this GI Bill for example. The only time Republicans assented to spending more on the troops was in order to bring more people in the door–enticements for signing on or staying on. When it came to helping the troops without an ulterior motive, simply because it’s the right thing to do, Republicans suddenly had other things to do, leaving the Democrats to pick up that particular ball.

That continues today. From the White House:

President Barack Obama on Monday announced a governmentwide series of 50 programs and proposals to increase support for U.S. military families.

The 50 initiatives — including more counseling to prevent suicides, increased education grants and expanded child-care assistance — resulted from efforts by first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, to address concerns of military families.

Seriously, do you ever recall Bush doing anything even remotely like this during his eight years in office?

Me neither.

None of the reports indicate that this will have to pass through Congress. Let’s hope not, because you know who would most likely decide that it’s not worth doing, or should be pared down somewhat.