I think it’s because he’s profoundly delusional. Here’s Kasich praising Pink Floyd and Roger Waters specifically.

But…but…but we know what Waters thinks of the Republican party.

I watch the workings of politics [in the US] and particularly the Republican Party. They work with the axiom that you can tell as many lies as you want – and often the bigger the better – and eventually they will believed.

Or this:

Because your electorate, and it’s only the Republican electorate that we’re taking about now, are kept entirely in the dark by a malignant mainstream media lead by Fox News, but closely followed by all the other talking heads that just want to kind of smile at you and toe the party line and never question anything seriously, especially about the United States or what it is and what its aspirations are or what it wants to be, except that it wants to be a major imperial power all over the world. You have bases in 135 countries, which is extraordinary, though nobody ever seems to question it.

You pour huge amounts of your national resources into the Pentagon and use it, basically, to push around the rest of the world and make yourself unpopular with everybody else. And nobody seems to address any of this. This is a silence hovering over this great nation, and I think it’s a silence that is about to be broken.

This is not to say he approves of the Democrats — he’s such a strong pacifist I imagine he looks on all American politicians with disgust. Have you seen Kasich’s positions on the military? I would like to see Waters’ response to an invitation from a Republican to get Pink Floyd back together again.

Watching Iowa’s preferences rule my electoral opportunities again makes me pine for the truths in this graphic.

Iowa was submerged in the Late Cretaceous. Kinda wishing we could immerse it again. Or at least the gabby noisy news crews there.

It’s good to see someone mention that the Democratic party has deep progressive roots. He mentions a lot of names that stirred up sad memories. Jesse Jackson, presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988; I supported him, although his campaign fizzled out in the primaries before I got to have a say out in Oregon (I really detest our system that gives Iowa and New Hampshire an undeserved excess of privilege in electoral politics). Howard Dean in 2004; he was my preferred candidate then, too. I have a long history of support for failed candidacies, I’m afraid.

I keep making these choices, and will keep on doing it, though. He quotes Jackson’s speech before the Democratic Convention, and yeah, it reminds me why.

We find common ground at the plant gate that closes on workers without notice. We find common ground at the farm auction, where a good farmer loses his or her land to bad loans or diminishing markets. Common ground at the school yard where teachers cannot get adequate pay, and students cannot get a scholarship, and can’t make a loan. Common ground at the hospital admitting room, where somebody tonight is dying because they cannot afford to go upstairs to a bed that’s empty waiting for someone with insurance to get sick. We are a better nation than that. We must do better. Common ground. What is leadership if not present help in a time of crisis? So I met you at the point of challenge. In Jay, Maine, where paper workers were striking for fair wages; in Greenville, Iowa, where family farmers struggle for a fair price; in Cleveland, Ohio, where working women seek comparable worth; in McFarland, California, where the children of Hispanic farm workers may be dying from poisoned land, dying in clusters with cancer; in an AIDS hospice in Houston, Texas, where the sick support one another, too often rejected by their own parents and friends.

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The authorities have finally done what they ought to have done in the beginning: deprived the occupiers of the Internet.

David Fry, one of the four remaining militants, said the FBI made it so the occupiers can’t make outgoing calls on their cellphones. Fry said he can receive incoming calls, but that the other three in the refuge appear unable to receive calls on their cellphones. The militants also said they’ve lost access to the internet.

Without the ability to post self-aggrandizing youtube videos of themselves, ridiculous as they made themselves look, the whole thing wouldn’t have been able to snowball to the size it reached. And now it’s down to four who are trying to negotiate complete amnesty for themselves. Guys, you’ve got nothing to bargain with!

He has ten things he wants to tell you about the Flint water supply. They’re rather appalling.

I really don’t understand what’s going on in Michigan, but I know I wouldn’t want to live there. Their governor ought to be in jail right now for what he’s allowed to happen — they’ve been poisoning an entire community for months, knowingly and with no concern at all for the citizens…all while bringing in uncontaminated water for General Motors and state employees. The entire goddamn administration ought to be facing court dates for criminal offenses.

Here’s another level of fucked-up-edness.

According to the NY Times, Snyder was informed in one email that a state nurse told one young mother to not worry about the damage being done to her child when her son’s blood showed an elevated lead level.

“It is just a few IQ points. … It is not the end of the world,” the nurse reportedly told the worried mom.

We’ve been watching too many super-hero movies. While we weren’t paying attention, petty villainy that wouldn’t be credible in a comic book has become a reasonable life-style choice.

I guess the good news for us in Minnesota is that after the botched, self-destructive experiment in libertarian/Republican greed in Wisconsin started torching that state to the ground, the crony capitalists marched east to Michigan rather than west to my state.

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David Gorski, a native and resident of Michigan (I’m so sorry!), also addresses the fuckery behind the Flint water crisis. You should read that, too.

That’s a good idea: when other countries do something better than we do, we should learn from them, try to emulate their successful parts, and avoid their failures. Here in the United States of America, though, our citizen’s bizarre and obstinate fixation on American “exceptionalism” holds sway, and suggesting that another country, like say Norway, has some better ways of doing things is regarded as unpatriotic, just shy of treachery. In a recent debate, Bernie Sanders might well be the only one able to suggest that we could learn from Denmark (but he doesn’t follow through), while Clinton rejects the thought with a smug “We are not Denmark”, and I would love to hear the squeals and shrieks if the Republican menagerie were asked to contemplate the idea, but it’s something we should take more seriously. We should try to understand what the Scandinavian countries are doing better.

What is it, though, that makes the Scandinavians so different? Since the Democrats can’t tell you and the Republicans wouldn’t want you to know, let me offer you a quick introduction. What Scandinavians call the Nordic model is a smart and simple system that starts with a deep commitment to equality and democracy. That’s two concepts combined in a single goal because, as far as they’re concerned, you can’t have one without the other.

Right there, they part company with capitalist America, now the most unequal of all the developed nations, and consequently a democracy no more. Political scientists say it has become an oligarchy, run at the expense of its citizenry by and for the superrich. Perhaps you’ve noticed that.

In the last century, Scandinavians, aiming for their egalitarian goal, refused to settle solely for any of the ideologies competing for power—not capitalism or fascism, not Marxist socialism or communism. Geographically stuck between powerful nations waging hot and cold wars for such doctrines, Scandinavians set out to find a middle path. That path was contested—by socialist-inspired workers on the one hand, and by capitalist owners and their elite cronies on the other—but in the end, it led to a mixed economy. Thanks largely to the solidarity and savvy of organized labor and the political parties it backed, the long struggle produced a system that makes capitalism more or less cooperative, and then redistributes equitably the wealth it helps to produce. Struggles like this took place around the world in the 20th century, but the Scandinavians alone managed to combine the best ideas of both camps while chucking out the worst.

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It looks like the Malheur occupation is ending with a whimper. Ammon Bundy has asked everyone to surrender and only 5 4 people are left in the refuge (on additional left since that last link). They’re sitting around, drinking beer. One person has died, and there’s apparently video on the way to show whether it was suicide-by-cop or an execution — given the police record on this kind of thing, I’m not even guessing whether it was one way or the other.

So…four frustrated, angry people sitting around, complaining bitterly about the evil big guvmint. It could still get bloody. They have lots of guns, and they’re stupid enough to use them.

Maybe what we need to do is just wait for the beer to run out.

I don’t think any Bush is qualified to understand how higher education works. Jeb!s latest gaffe:

There are a lot of beautiful buildings being built on college campuses, but you can’t get a course on Friday afternoon. And a professor, tenured professor, may not be teaching many more courses than one per semester.

Those lazy liberal elites! Except that he’s all wrong.

Some professors do teach one course, or even less, per semester. But those faculty have instead exchanged teaching responsibilities for greater research, lab management, and grant-writing responsibilities. Many universities allow you to buy out of teaching obligations with grant funds, but that isn’t escaping any work at all.

Anybody who knows anything about how universities work would know that what matters in the accounting is contact hours — I’m supposed to have a certain number of hours working with students directly every week, in class or in lab. It doesn’t matter when those hours happen, although we try to distribute them to meet student demand. We teaching faculty, in the hours we aren’t engaged with students, are tied up in lecture prep, grading, etc. (also, office hours don’t count as contact hours). If I get a lighter class load on Friday, it means I’ve got a heavier load other days of the week.

My current load is: two 65 minute lectures on Monday and Wednesday, three 50 minute lectures on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and two 3 hour labs on Tuesday and Thursday. I also work with our senior seminar students, which is an additional two hours a week. All those classes require additional hours of prep, and fluctuating amounts of work on grading. The lab requires lots of set up time — I started setting up fly crosses back in December. I was doing prep work on Christmas.

This is also work that gives many people the heebie-jeebies — public speaking? Seven times a week? That would horrify a great many Americans. One of the few jobs that probably requires more public speaking is politician, but there’s a difference between that and professorial work. We’re required to know what we’re talking about, and be accurate.