And Some Links

* The theme for MLA 2014 is “Vulnerable Times.”

* NCAA Reform Gone Wrong.

A decade has passed since the National Collegiate Athletic Association rolled out its academic reform package. In that time, there is strong evidence that the reforms designed to open access to higher education to more athletes and punishing coaches and institutions failing at academics came at the expense of the integrity of the academy.  The landscape of the NCAA’s program is scorched with scandals surrounding admissions, academic fraud, major clustering and clever gaming of the system for the wealthiest institutions to avoid penalties. We conclude that it has significantly damaged higher education.

* Kennesaw State to add football. I’m shocked any Board of Trustees would volunteer to take on this kind of liability, knowing what we know…

* Tesla catches the New York Times deliberately tanking its review of its Model S electric car, while at the same time revealing the truly staggering amount of data they can log while you’re driving.

* Apocalypse now:  “Think of carbon as a global pollutant that affects the ocean everywhere it touches the sky,” explains Stanford University marine science professor and Hopkins Marine Station director Steve Palumbi. What does ocean acidification mean for sea life?

* Sad coda to the Oscar Pistorius story: Olympic Hero Oscar Pistorius Charged With Murder in Shooting Death of Girlfriend.

* Abolish the states watch: Scott Walker edition.

Yesterday Scott Walker finally announced his much-awaited decision about how to deal with the Medicaid expansion provided for in the Affordable Care Act. And he managed to come up with a “solution” that simultaneously lets him express solidarity with his nullification-minded soul-mates in the Deep South while increasing federal involvement in health insurance in his state and also costing Wisconsin taxpayers some serious money! Quite the triple-gainer, eh?

* Woman Says She’s Had the Same Song Stuck in Her Head for Three Years.

* New Atlanta Braves Logo Features Gruesome Depiction Of Trail Of Tears.

* Can the Republicans be Saved From Obsolescence?

* And some love poetry at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Tuesday Night

* The combined effects of storm climatology change and a 1 m SLR may cause the present NYC 100-yr surge flooding to occur every 3–20 yr and the present 500-yr flooding to occur every 25–240 yr by the end of the century.

* As I looked at these pictures of the babies being evacuated, I had a depressing thought. What are the financial situations of these babies’ parents? Are they poor? Do they have insurance? Are they on Medicaid? Medicaid is a health program that pays for medical services for those who cannot afford them. It is jointly funded by the federal and state governments. In some ways, I’d be happy if you were learning this information for the first time right now; the reason being that you don’t have to rely on Medicaid. Regardless, I suspect that if you had some “Medicaid” in your pocket last night, you’d have gladly given it to these precious babies to ensure their health and safety. It’s a good thing. If one of those babies were poor, I don’t suspect you’d want to punish her because her dad got laid off from his manufacturing job or because leukemia killed her older brother and bankrupted her parents just in time for her birth. If you don’t like these examples, tough shit; they’re how people get poor in the United States of America in 2012. I don’t want you to like them.

* This is a climate emergency. It is a moment of crisis, which is also a point of leverage. What should happen is a collective call for an immediate crash course on the climate crisis. Repairs combined with a hardening of infrastructure, acceleration of the build-out and installation of clean energy systems that are robust (including feed-in tariffs), a shut down of all high carbon emitting sources of energy within the next ten years, and massive outlays for research. It should be branded and aggressively promoted by every environmentally aware politician, activist, celebrity, and business leader. This requires institutional backing from the environmental groups, and a willingness to prioritize policymaking in the face of emergencies over business as usual.

But don’t worry, if we blow it this time, we’ll get another chance. And another. And another.

* Yes, Hurricane Sandy is a good reason to worry about climate change. Why Democrats Are Right to Politicize Sandy.

* More on the Nate Silver Backlash. And more. BREAKING: All the major election models continue to agree Obama will win.

* In endorsement after endorsement, the basic argument is that President Obama hasn’t been able to persuade House or Senate Republicans to work with him. If Obama is reelected, it’s a safe bet that they’ll continue to refuse to work with him. So vote Romney!

* And from the always-look-on-the-bright-side department: How Disney Could Make Star Wars Episode VII Awesome. I don’t think a recast or Pixarification is really viable, so I think we’ve got to skip ahead to Star Wars: The Next Generation. #bargaining

Tuesday Night

* Following up on today’s diappointing Supreme Court news: Obamacare’s Supreme Court Disaster. Well, That Could Have Gone Better. Brian Beutler says it wasn’t as bad as it looked. So does Ian Millhiser. The battle over a limiting principle. Medicaid as sleeper issue. Kennedy, Roberts Likely To Determine Fate Of Mandate. Lyle Denniston says it’s all Kennedy. Klein reads Roberts. Kerr reads Kennedy. Even more at MeFi.

* Rachel Maddow: 4,000 days of war in Afghanistan?

* An interview with the creator of You Can’t Do That on Television. Via MeFi.

* The headline reads, “Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible.”

* Look on the bright side: The speaker of the North Carolina House says the state’s coming anti-gay Amendment One will probably be struck down in a mere twenty years.

* More Scott Pilgrim? Maybe someday.

* Life in the Retreat at Twin Lakes after the Trayvon Martin shooting.

* And are these the rules of Roadrunner and Coyote? I choose to believe.

1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “meep, meep.”
2. No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products. Trains and trucks were the exception from time to time.
3. The Coyote could stop anytime — if he were not a fanatic.
4. No dialogue ever, except “meep, meep” and yowling in pain.
5. The Road Runner must stay on the road — for no other reason than that he’s a roadrunner.
6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters — the southwest American desert.
7. All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
10. The audience’s sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
11. The Coyote is not allowed to catch or eat the Road Runner.

Wednesday, Right?

* Save the Bottle Rocket Motel.

* Alternate history watch: Gizmodo remembers when Kennedy proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to the Moon.

* 40 Senate Republicans just voted to kill Medicare. And now the GOP wants to cut Medicaid by 25%, too. More here, here, and here.

Keep in mind that Medicaid pays for 40 percent of all births and that children comprise half its beneficiaries. But the real cost drivers are older Americans. Medicaid provides financing for 60 percent of nursing-home residents and pays 43 percent of America’s long-term care bill. Ryan’s reform would stick states with the bill and would likely leave many of the most vulnerable without coverage.

* Now even Floridians realize Rick Scott is horrible. And Wisconsin hates Scott Walker.

* The New Jersey Supreme Court just spanked Chris Christie on education.

* There’s so much Prozac in the Great Lakes it’s killing off the bacteria.

* China rips off Cory Doctorow and then does him one better: they’re forcing prisoners to gold farm.

* MSNBC really should just give Chris Hayes Ed Schultz’s timeslot, especially after this. One week’s suspension hardly seems sufficient punishment. But then I’ve always found his show unwatchable.

* And MetaFilter’s starting up another Nomic game. Get in on the ground floor!

Wrong About Everything

Top 10 Disastrous Policies From The Wisconsin GOP You Haven’t Heard About.

Sunday Morning Wisconsin Links!

* Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca lets the GOP majority have it. Via the latest incarnation of the MeFi thread, which also offers up the picture at right.

* 12 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in Wisconsin.

* Succinct primer from Rortybomb: Wisconsin Draws the Line on Austerity Opportunism and Class War.

* More reasons why the Green Bay Packers are the only football team to support.

* Wisconsin Union Battle: A Convenient Distraction From the Real Culprit in State Budget Woes.

Corporations repeated at the state and local levels what they accomplished federally. According to the US Census Bureau, corporations paid taxes on their profits to states and localities totalling $24.7bn in 1988, while individuals then paid income taxes of $90bn. However, by 2009, while corporate tax payments had roughly doubled (to $49.1bn), individual income taxes had more than tripled (to $290bn).

As long as raising taxes on corporations and the rich is off the table states will continue to face these sorts of manufactured budget crises. A functioning government costs money.

* Wisconsin’s union employees are upset about a loss of collective bargaining and a mandated increase in benefit payments, including for health insurance. But at least these employees would still have health insurance. What has been widely ignored about Walker’s bill (in part because of the speed with which he’s fisting it down Wisconsin’s gullet) is a sneaky provision that paves the way for him to cut, or eliminate, Medicaid and BadgerCare healthcare benefits for low-income people.

* No unions on the teevee. I don’t watch the sunday morning shows, but I hear on the Twitter that there were no union members on television to discuss the issue today, either.

* The latest protests have drawn 80,000 people.

* How Abraham Lincoln wrote the breaking quorum playbook.

* If you want more links, zunguzungu’s got ‘em, including a great little piece on a taxicab co-op that has joined the protestors in solidarity.

Five for Sunday Night

* True Crime murder pamphlets, 1600-1800.

* The tunnel people of Las Vegas.

* Bill Moyers delivers the first Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at Boston University.

* The death of the university, LSU edition.

* And Texas Republicans are actually talking about killing Medicaid in their state.

Monday Night Linkdump #1

* Spider-Man 4 has apparently completely imploded; Raimi has quit and the next film will be a reboot instead.

* The New Jersey legislature has approved a medical marijuana bill. I learned this from—who else?—@jonhurwitz.

* Because I don’t just assume everything I don’t like is unconstitutional, I suspect Thomas Geoghegan is probably wrong and the filibuster is probably constitutional. But I’d be very happy to turn out to be wrong.

* Paul Krugman defends Europe.

* Feingold says Nebraska’s long-cherished right to permanent Medicaid reimbursement will probably be stripped out of the final health care bill.

* The New Yorker slums it at the Jersey shore.

* And Jonathan Chait has your daily dose of things that could have been phrased better.