An unpleasant week, and it ain't over

Weekly mop-up of chaos and unpleasantries:

Some Plain Dealer  non-union support staffers lost their jobs last week in what they will surely remember as their 90-minute date with destiny.  That's how the PD's front office arranged their painful departure from the payroll.  The company had told a hand-picked group of uncertain numbers to sit by their telephones for 90 minutes and await a possible phone call.  If the phone rang, the staffer was informed  he or she had drawn the unlucky straw in Newhouse's Advance Publications' mission to  "realign " the workforce.   The owners are using the same torturous  tactic at its other papers.  I'm told the next cuts  will come by Aug. 1 as the paper nears the launching of a  three-day home delivery plus a Saturday "bonus" in early August. Not much  else is known about the PD's game plan. Guild President Harlan Spector says he's told very little by the company, and doesn't even know how many people got pink slips in the latest round.  Anybody recall the newspaper crowd's faux Scout motto to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted"?

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It's been mind-blowing  to see the wingers' reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court 's decision to widen democracy's space for same-sex marriages.  Justice Scalia,who dissented, said the 5-4 decision was "jaw-dropping", which for him, is a lot of jaw to drop.  But the most stupendous non-sequitur from the gallery came from forever hyperactive  Bill Donahue, the head of the Catholic League,  who accused the court of engaging in an attack on "religious liberty" while fuming that the ruling was a "malicious effort to  punish people of faith".  Religious liberty?  Until now I had thought that such liberty was the accepted  catalyst of so many different faiths in America.

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Poor Justice Clarence Thomas, the morose  silent majority of one on the hard right who doesn't even speak when spoken to.   Here's a beneficiary of affirmative action who once again voted to keep blacks in their place when he joined the white guys on the bench who shot a big hole in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Do you think he  ever has a sleepless night?

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Still reeling from Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican  who asserted  that fetuses can start masturbating  in 15 weeks. Who knew?  

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 July's Harper's Index  reports that the highest paid public employe in 37 states is a sports coach.  Note to parents: Do you really want your kid to study to be a doctor?

Palin Aboard the Traveiing Circus

INDOOR COOK-IN for hot spring day:

Andrew Sullivan reports in the Daily Dish this fragrant quotable from Sarah Palin at her Rolling Thunder bike appearance in Washington:

"I love the smell of the emissions."

Now that she's found a way for the media to mention her, has there ever been an over the top national politician who has made so much money purposely doing silly things. Next: a bungee jump without a bounce? Or maybe Medea-like, to soar aloft in a magic chariot!

Finally, did you happen to see the the full-page spread on traveling circuses in today's New York Times. The headline told us: No Elephant Left Behind: On the Road With the Circus.

Although I'm sure it was coincidental, the paper's facing page carried a large photo and story about biker Palin's bid to be.... the elephant that wasn't left behind.

Harper's June Index had this report re religiophiles:

Amount of federal money that went to National Public Radio in 2010: $2,700.000.

To Jerry Falwell's Liberty University: $446,000,000.

John Boehner and others in his crowd are complaining that the reason a majority of Americans oppose the wonderful Ryan Medicare proposal is that they don't understand it. Peter the Great had the same problem with his subjects who were not on the same page with some of his ideas, lamenting: "They understand everything erroneously."

Say hello to, eh. Gary Johnson, prez candidate

JUST READ THAT Gary Johnson has announced his candidacy for president. Whooo. Gary Johnson? No, not the Gary Johnson who is your cousin Mamie's mailman, although it couldn't hurt. This one is the former governor of New Mexico. He says he's qualified. Besides, he needs a good job like a lot of other people these days. His decision to join the crowded field leaves only you and me and Joe the Plumber who haven't entered the race, and there's still time for Joe.

The Plain Dealer's front page spread on school vouchers and charter schools ("Kasich championing school choice") contained not a word about the ongoing court case in Columbus against Ohio charter King David Brennan's for-profit White Hat Management. The boards of ten charter schools under White Hat's management have accused the company of refusing to account for $230 million in state money that has been poured into White Hat since 20o8. In an earlier article by ProPublica, White Hat lawyer Charles Saxbe defended the company's secrecy about where the money goes, insisting that when it arrives from the state, it becomes private money for White Hat. There's a way to explain everything, even where it explains nothing. So let the good times roll!

How generous of the airlines. Their new rules will refund to the passenger the baggage fees if baggage is lost. Once when Pan-Am separated us from our luggage in a flight to Athens, Greece, the company blamed it on Olympic Airlines and said, "We're outta here." Not a dime. The luggage eventually turned up in Frankfurt, Germany, where it had remained for weeks without a single Greek having ever laid a hand on it. That's my sad story. I'm sure you have one, too.

From Harper's Index:

Minimum number of birds that die from crashing into New York City windows each year: 100,000

Date on which Glenn Beck hypothesized that an attempted assassination of Sarah Palin "could bring the republic down": 1/10/11

Rich and poor: some frightful neighborly statistics

HERE'S A STIRRING glimpse of Americana from the Harpers Index:

The median income in the New York's 14th Congressional District, which includes Manhattan's East Side, is $60,099 - the richest in the U.S. Less than a mile away is the 16th Congressional District, the Bronx, whose median income is $17,979 - the nation's poorest.

How do you get a job like this?

FROM THE DECEMBER issue of Harper's Index:

"Projected amount that lawyers and other advisers will earn from the bankruptcy proceeding of Lehman Brothers: $1,398,000,000"

That's nearly $1.4 billion, folks! Even these days, life can be beautiful on Wall Street.