Once-proud branches of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are now rushing to shed that video-stung ACORN tag:

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

The former close association with President Obama — which prompted the conservative targeting against ACORN in the first place — seems to have been lost in this rebranding scramble. Or, more likely, it’s long since worn off, and the taint of scandal has wiped out any lingering positive vibes that the brand might have retained.

Among the predictable anti-1960s culture-war changes proposed by the newly-reactionary Texas State Board of Education for school textbooks is an almost out-of-place targeting of the nation’s third President:

- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment.

Despite a rationalization that Jefferson’s ideas were derivative of others’ (and thus are curriculum-redundant), it’s pretty clear that his lack of devotion to strict Christian ethics puts him out of favor with modern-day conservatives.

As it turns out, this makes for strange bedfellows. A long-standing argument on the left that Jefferson was too much of a socio-political extremist to merit continued reverence basically aims for the same result: A marginalization of Jeffersonian ideals within American political culture. While there hasn’t been a concerted push from the liberal side to excise the Sage of Monticello from U.S. history, an unexpected impetus from across the political aisle could prompt a critical reappraisal that transcends ideology.

Considering all this, I guess it’s a wonder that Jefferson hasn’t been purged from his founding-father perch yet. The notion of his ideals might be just about correct, considering that they incur offense from both sides of the political divide, might be what’s saving him.

Rielle Hunter is back, with a tell-all interview in GQ Magazine about her Presidential-quashing paternity affair with John Edwards.

Not that I care much for political scandal, even one as sorted as this one. I am happy to see that Hunter took a little time in the interview to acknowledge her antecedaneous 1980s fictional depiction:

There’s been one time period in my entire life that I would qualify myself as promiscuous. There’s this Jay McInerney book ["Story of My Life," narrated by a character based on Hunter, who briefly dated McInerney], and let’s correct a part of that right now. In my early twenties, there was a time period when I, in the late ’80s, did cocaine. And partied. I was living in New York City… But the point being, I was never, as it’s been reported, a drug addict. The word “addiction” means inability to stop. I stopped doing drugs in my twenties. As for being promiscuous, I would say that I was a bit promiscuous for about six months. But it was because I was partying, and there were a lot of very good-looking available 20-year-old men around that you’d be partying with, and there was a lot of, you know, hooking up going on.

So Hunter confirms that she was the inspiration for Alison Poole. At least, the Alison Poole character in “Story of My Life”. Maybe not so much for Poole’s crossover appearance in another, contemporary literary setting:

It must have also impressed fellow ’80s lit sensation Bret Easton Ellis, because he wrote McInerney’s Alison Poole right into the cultural earthquake that was “American Psycho.” Being “American Psycho,” Poole’s scene was short and includes brutal sodomy — and the Kentucky Derby, if memory serves.

No need for Hunter to deny ever attending the Kentucky Derby. Or hooking up with Patrick Bateman — because let’s face it, Edwards was close enough.

UPDATE: I guess I need to reread “Glamorama”, because I’d completely forgotten that Ellis had revived Poole-slash-Hunter in that later novel:

In “Glamorama”, Poole’s characterization is amplified, but only slightly more nuanced. She’s the coke-addled, sex-fiend girlfriend of a jealous club owner who happens to also be sleeping with the protagonist of the novel, Victor Ward, who is a model and promoter. Once again, the first time readers meet her is during a sex scene. After which, she berates Ward for not breaking up with his other girlfriend, a supermodel… Later, Poole loses it at her boyfriend Damien’s club opening after a rival for Ward’s affections, Lauren Hynde, sets her off.

As with the “American Psycho” appearance, no surprise that Hunter wouldn’t have brought up this later, even more unflattering portrayal. All told, I still go with the late truth about Hunter, because it’s easily stranger than either Ellis’ or McInerney’s fiction.

Now that the Supreme Court has OKed unbridled corporation spending on political campaigns, one intrepid company is cutting out the middleman:

In a soothing voice, a narrator bemoans that “as much as corporate interests gave to politicians, we could never be absolutely sure they would do our bidding.” The ad includes images of gleaming office towers and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and promises Murray Hill will bring “enlightened self-interest and corporate accounting” to Congress.

It concludes with a rousing call to action: “Vote for Murray Hill Incorporated for Congress — for the best democracy money can buy.”

Yep, Murray Hill Inc. for Congress is dripping with sarcasm, right down to a franchising program for other corporate-politico aspirants:

The first corporation to enter into a franchise agreement with Murray Hill Inc. is Computer Umbrella Inc. of Sterling Virginia. Computer Umbrella’s own Designated Human, Jonathan Stewart, is charting the corporation’s run for U.S. Congress in Virginia’s 10th District.

“We are proud to embrace the Murray Hill Inc. Brand,“ Stewart says. “From steel to silicon, it’s America’s entrepreneurs who find and exploit the new markets. The democracy market in Washington DC today looks like Silicon Valley 30 years ago. CUI wants to position itself as early leader in this emerging market along with Murray Hill Inc.”

There are pesky electoral and Constitutional requirements to overcome before corporate entities start stumping for office. But imagine the possibilities:

- Individual office-seekers setting up their candidacies as corporations, so that any irregularities or scandals later on can be deflected from them personally (“I didn’t hire those hookers, it was my limited liability partnership!”)

- Launching single-purpose business ventures every election cycle

- Watching mergers and acquisitions consolidate a fragmented corporate-constituent landscape

- Initial public offerings and stock market indexes for tracking incumbent performances

And if Murray Hill Inc. doesn’t make it to Capitol Hill, maybe the plucky PR firm could run for a local position in New York. I’m thinking a certain Manhattan neighborhood would be a good fit.

While Manhattan has just successfully spurned the potentially-disruptive Federal trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, my upstate hometown is ready to take the rebound as the new venue.

The offer is not driven by a sense of justice, so much:

“If they want to have it here, we’ve got the state-of-the-art courthouse,” [Newburgh, NY] Mayor Nicholas Valentine — a Republican — told radio host Curtis Sliwa this morning. “I’ll offer it to them, but there’s got to be money attached.”

He cited the figure of $200 million floated by New York City officials.

“Two hundred million and something dollars to Newburgh would completely change this city around. It would double my police force. It would pay off my debt,” Valentine said. “Maybe it’s just crazy enough that we could pull something like this off.”

Given the town’s previous brush with quasi-Islamic terrorism, I’d say the “crazy” rating is pretty high in this instance. A money-grab for hosting a media-circus public tribunal? I think we can slot this proposal under the “this is why the terrorists hate us” category.

I was quite amused today to see a copy of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue: An American Life” sitting on dashboard of my morning bus, obviously in possession of the bus driver.

Because it was all too obvious that he was practically brandishing the hardcover, making sure that every rider that got onboard had a good view of it. Between that, and the staredowns he was administering, I’m pretty sure the driver was daring someone, anyone, to challenge him on it. Given the well-known proclivities of a good cross-section of New Yorkers, I’d imagine the odds are good that he got into more than one verbal joust with various passengers during his shift.

All I can say is that, during my half-hour trip, no one took the bait. Not that you could tell the difference by the driver’s customarily crabby demeanor.

Not only did New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow make an overt comparison between Sarah Palin and Lady GaGa in the headline of his “Lady BlahBlah” piece today; he also weaved some GaGa-ness into the body of his writing:

I embedded as many of her song/cd titles as possible in my column. How many can you find?

I’m a sucker for word games! Especially pop-cultural ones. In descending order, starting from the top of the column, I find:

1. She’s never speechless.

2. And, she has one of the best poker faces in the game…

3. She continues to command the spotlight while they dance in the dark.

4. The race for the nomination may not be given to the slick or to the strong, but to this fame monster who seems to have the stamina to endure until the end.

Really not that many embeddings, even considering how short Blow’s column is. Overall, I prefer comparing Palin to G.I. Joe’s Baroness…

For Americans, today’s month-day-year timestamp works in reverse:

That’s because it’s only the second palindrome day of the 21st century, meaning that if you flip the day over it reads the same: 01/02/2010. (And, no, this is not another story about Sarah Palin, though it could be since “Harass Sarah” is sort of a cool palindrome…

The rest of the world, with its alternate (and, I think, more logically progressive) day-month-year method of dating, misses out on this palidromic sensation (even though they’ll get their version on February 1). Then again, they also miss out on having Palin on the poli-cultural scene for at least the next four years. So it’s an even trade-off.

In the wake of the attempted Christmas Day plane bombing in Detroit, the predictable (and largely pointless) overreaction has made flying that much more laborious in these United States.

And, as luck would have it, I’m due for some cross-country travel in the next few days. So, from a purely selfish perspective, that wannabe al-Qaeda jerk has really put a crimp in my schedule. And not solely through delays that everyone else on the boarding calls will get, but also because past experience tells me I’ll likely get extra-special “security” scrutiny, thanks to rough profiling.

I’ll reiterate my objections from nearly five years ago, because the logic-illogic swirl still applies:

On the one hand, I understand the need for vigilance. On the other hand, it’s happening to me. And it’s happened enough times now that I’ve gotten past seeing any bright sides to the process. Instead, I do a look-through of the rest of the boarding party and wonder, for instance, why the red-headed pasty-white fellow didn’t have to endure the same treatment I got — because after all, he looks Irish, so there’s a chance he could be IRA. (That the Irish Republican Army is unlikely to carry out operations against American targets is beside the point.)

What especially aggravates me is the hollowness of the whole procedure. It’s not going to prevent a single terrorist who’s worth his skills from getting on a plane. It’s just about entirely cosmetic: Other passengers see someone who fits an ethnic profile, so having that person pulled aside and cleared (or not) is designed to put everyone else’s mind at ease.

At least this time, it’s a late-afternoon flight, so I’ll have plenty of time to burn if needed. I don’t suppose a blogged pre-admission of no guilt would save both me and the TSA some time, would it? Didn’t think so.

After teetering on the brink of collapse a year ago, the big banks are suddenly coming up with billions of dollars to put toward TARP repayments.

And it’s not hard to figure out why:

Look what’s happened in the past two weeks. First, Bank of America agreed to pay back $45 billion in TARP funds. Bank of America found that the pay restrictions were complicating the search for a new boss to replace Ken Lewis. It raised $20 billion from the public and agreed to sell $3 billion in assets. The smaller, leaner, better-capitalized bank was able to hire a new CEO on Wednesday.

Citigroup, which is keeping its CEO but which wants to retain its legions of highly paid investment bankers, also sprang into action. Earlier this week, it announced it would pay back $20 billion in TARP funds and terminate an agreement under which taxpayers were guaranteeing losses on a big chunk of its loans. Citi raised $20.5 billion of capital, said it would give employees $1.7 billion in stock rather than cash for bonuses. Once the money was paid back to the Treasury, Citi noted, “it will no longer be deemed to be a beneficiary of “exceptional financial assistance” under TARP beginning in 2010.” Translation: [TARP executive pay czar] Ken Feinberg won’t be allowed to tell us how much to pay our folks.

In other words, the megabanks are paying back in order to pay out. That’s one way to maneuver around a salary cap — and it doesn’t even involve getting mired in some sort of messy financial-world caponomics.

…Well, “plunge” is a real stretch. But I’m invoking alliterative license — four P’s in a row, zing! — to headline the news that the number of inmates in America looks to go down this year, for the first time since 1972.

Not surprisingly, it’s not because there are fewer crimes being committed:

Instead, the economic crisis forced states to reconsider who they put behind bars and how long they kept them there, said Kim English, research director for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.

In Texas, parole rates were once among the lowest in the nation, with as few as 15 percent of inmates being granted release as recently as five years ago. Now, the parole rate is more than 30 percent after Texas began identifying low-risk candidates for parole.

In Mississippi, a truth-in-sentencing law required drug offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences. That’s been reduced to less than 25 percent.

California’s budget problems are expected to result in the release of 37,000 inmates in the next two years. The state also is under a federal court order to shed 40,000 inmates because its prisons are so overcrowded that they are no longer constitutional, [prison-issues advisor James] Austin said.

Not that a sub-one-percent drop in incarcerations is going to dent the U.S.’s distinction in having the largest prisoner population among the world’s nations — some 1.6 million people behind bars in Federal and State institutions. And I’m sure a re-crackdown on crime will gain steam as soon as recovery-fattened tax rolls are able to pay for it.

Still, it seems counter-intuitive that a slow economy would lead to fewer jailings. When business is bad, it gets bad all over, it seems.

News of former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton getting engaged triggered this never-before-realization by me:

Everyone’s heard of New York’s a-little-too-hip Chelsea neighborhood. And everyone’s heard of (in one way or another) the nearby Hell’s Kitchen section of town.

What not everyone might know is that these two zones are, in fact, adjacent to one another. And furthermore, efforts to gentrify Hell’s Kitchen have led to a mostly real-estate bred movement to replace the colorful moniker with “Clinton”, which is in fact the historical name of the area.

So, you can see where this is going. Yes, you can indeed stroll from the 20s to the 50s on the West Side, and correctly claim to have taken a “Chelsea-Clinton walk”. Or a “Chelsea-Hell’s walk”, either way.

From the same state that saw a cessation of marriage-license granting due to same-sex union fears comes a movement to outlaw all Golden State divorces.

Relax. It’s decidedly tongue-in-cheek, albeit with serious undertones:

The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act is meant to be a satirical statement after California voters outlawed gay marriage in 2008, largely on the argument that a ban is needed to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage. If that’s the case, then [organizer John] Marcotte reasons voters should have no problem banning divorce.

“Since California has decided to protect traditional marriage, I think it would be hypocritical of us not to sacrifice some of our own rights to protect traditional marriage even more,” the 38-year-old married father of two said.

Makes just as much sense as does getting married in the first place.

Live (make that “posthumously”), from Baghdad (make that “Europe”, or more likely “location undetermined”), it’s the Saddam Channel, satellite-beaming into Iraq:

The Saddam Channel debuted on Friday, the first day of this year’s Eid for Sunnis. The holiday started Saturday for Shiites. The station’s official name alternates between “Al-Lafeta” (“the banner”) and “Al-Arabi” (“the Arab”).

It is mostly a montage of flattering, still images of Saddam – some of him dressed in military uniform, others in a suit, even one astride a white horse. One image shows his sons Odai and Qusai smiling with their father, and another their bodies after they and Saddam’s grandson, Mustafa, were killed in a July 2003 gunfight with U.S. troops…

All the pictures are set against audio recordings of Saddam making speeches and reciting poetry. Patriotic songs urge listeners to “liberate our country.” None of the pictures appear to be recent, and no announcers or commentators appear or speak.

The motive appears to be to influence the upcoming national parliamentary elections. If so, it’s hamhanded propaganda on the cheap. I’m guessing the all-Saddam all-the-time audiovisual is intended to conjure up the “good old days” of Hussein’s dictatorship, along with whatever martyrdom he now holds among segment of Iraqi society. But without some original commentary to drive home that concept, the old photos and recordings amount to soft messaging, and less chance at any measurable electoral/political result. For all this lack of production values, the mystery backers might as well have tossed this up online — except, of course, that even a boring TV feed like this still has more reach and impact than an even more anonymous website.

Can’t wait to see what becomes of Saddam TV after the election-time blitz blows over. If it’s anything like the typical American single-purpose cable channel, it’ll soon abandon the one-note format in an attempt at broadening the audience (and attracting more advertisers, natch). Think in terms of MTV no longer playing its signature music videos — along with about a jillion other cable TV examples. So Iraqi tube-watchers can look forward to The Saddam Channel morphing into TSC, with a slate of reality shows, classic made-for-TV movies, and maybe a half-hour of Saddam retrospectives per day…

Well, Sarah Palin just blew it with one key constituency — hardcore Scrabble junkies, who object to this seemingly family-friendly passage from her new autobiography:

“Everybody in the family played Scrabble and took great pride in hoarding Ks and Qs and slapping them down in long, fancy words on triple-letter scores.” — “Going Rogue”, p. 12.

The problem? Not only can’t you hoard those particular letters (since there’s only one of each in a Scrabble set); but furthermore, even if it were possible, it’d be bad gameplay strategy to do so:

K doesn’t mesh well with most other letters and so you should try to dump it quickly. Q is paralyzing unless you have a U to go with it. If you are happy because you could lay down “quit” on a double word score, for 26 points, I would say you are not a very ambitious Scrabble player, all the more if you hoarded letters and waited turns to do that. (You have some chance of “aliquot” or “quaeres” or “quinoas,” but do you really expect to score “obloquy,” “quassia,” or “qigongs”?, keeping in mind that if you build upon an already-laid tile you need an eight-letter word with q to score the bonus.)

Sounds like somebody’s still stinging over that Katie Couric newspapers question, and slipped in this anecdote to suggest a homespun-smarts intellectual foundation. Palin should have vetted the editing to someone more familiar with the tile-slapping, triple-word-scoring tradition.

If you think that gay marriage opponents’ objections end at “’til death do us part”, think again: In Rhode Island, gender-spousal issues extend beyond this mortal coil.

An opponent of same-sex marriage, Governor [Donald] Carcieri has vetoed bill that would have added “domestic partners” to the list of people authorized by law to make funeral arrangements for each other.

In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: “This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.

Way to draw a line in the boneyard. Because you know that, once you allow permissiveness in the cemetery, it’s a short hop to guy-on-guy French kissing in Providence’s state capitol.

If you think Daylight Saving Time is a big hassle, consider the clockwork tyranny inherent in Russia’s proposed downsizing of its 11 timezones:

[Russian President Dmitry] Medvedev didn’t say how extensive any cut would be, but Vladivostok Economics University rector Gennady Lazarev told the RIA Novosti news agency it would likely mean shrinking to just four time zones: One each for Kaliningrad, Moscow, the Ural Mountains region and the vast reaches of Siberia and the Far East…

Cutting down to four zones would likely mean reducing the seven-hour time difference between Moscow and Vladivostok to just four hours, Lazarev said. In that case, residents of the Pacific coast city would see the sunset before 3 p.m. at this time of year.

The justification is economic efficiency and fostering closer ties to the central government. Apparently by instilling nocturnalism in Siberians. All told, I’d rather turn the clock backward or forward every few months…

Since he’s being term-limited out of office next year anyway, California’s “People’s Governor” is dropping governmental decorum and letting it rip in Sacramento. Arnold is being creative about it, though:

To recap: on Tuesday a hidden message was detected in a note accompanying a veto Governor Schwarzenegger sent to California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. When read like an acrostic poem, the first seven letters in seven consecutive lines spelled out “FUCK YOU.” The message was not without precedent — earlier Ammiano had told the governor to “kiss my gay ass.”

And here’s the line-by-line dis-missive, by necessity presented as a fixed-positioned image:

When presented digitally as below, the proper vertical line-up suffers, hard-returns or no; so I’ve {brackted} the pertinent letters:

{F}or some time now I have lamented the fact that major issues are overlooked while many {u}nnecessary bills come to me for consideration. Water reform, prison reform, and health {c}are are major issues my Administration has brought to the table, but the Legislature just {k}icks the can down the alley.

{Y}et another legislative year has come and gone without the major reforms Californians {o}verwhelmingly deserve. In light of this, and after careful consideration, I believe it is {u}nnecessary to sign this measure at this time.

Schwarzenegger insists this was just a coincidence, but the laws of probability disagree:

How likely is that? According to Stephen Devlin, the chair of the math department at the University of San Francisco, not very. The odds are one in 10 million he said, and added, “Not surprisingly, it’s virtually impossible for this to happen.”

Alternately, he could have knocked down the odds and delivered the secret-decoder message in his native German (which, I believe, would have spelled out “FICKE SIE”). It probably wouldn’t have been caught, and he’d still have his laugh. Stay classy, Governator.

Here’s an interpretation of the lovely Sienna Miller’s recent work in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra that I hadn’t picked up on:

For half the movie she’s the Baroness, a brainwashed villain in glasses and dark hair who looks unnervingly like Sarah Palin.

What’s the official backstory on The Baroness? Does she happen to be descended from a clan of exiled Russian royalty who have a centuries-old estate in — wait for it — Alaska?

Otherwise, the character’s long dark hair and rimless sunglasses certainly do evoke everyone’s favorite former Alaskan governor. I’m sure this is just an outcropping of the New York Times’ stealth bias against the fringe Republican sweetheart. Still, I feel a bit unclean now, since Miller as a brunette badass in skintight leather actually made me consider going to see the flick.

Muscovites will see a lot less of the wintry white stuff this year, if their mayor’s weather-control scheme flies: Paying the Russian Air Force to do cloud-level snow patrol.

The air force will use cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide to spray the clouds from Nov. 15 to March 15 — and only to prevent “very big and serious snow” from falling on the city, said Andrei Tsybin, [head of the Department of Housing and Public Works]. This could mean that a few flakes will manage to slip through the cracks. Tsybin estimated that the total cost of keeping the storms at bay would be $6 million this winter, roughly half the amount Moscow normally spends to clear the streets of snow.

This doesn’t prevent snow from falling — it just jumpstarts the snowfall so that approaching clouds dump all their stuff on Moscow’s surrounding suburbs. Maybe the metropole can rent out the under-utilized snowplows to the hinterlands, thus making even more money on the deal!

This didn’t flash through my mind when I learned of President Obama’s stunning Nobel Peace Prize win last night, but it should have:

Did the Nobel committee get their nominations mixed up with those of the Ig Nobel Prizes?

Not to hop on the knee-jerk negative backlash, which looks to warp this Nobel into a paradoxically damaging liability to Obama’s policy efforts. But truly, awarding it on the basis of promises and (at best) building-blocks amounts to draping dead meat on a skeleton. Not to mention the overarching motive:

“The Prize has to be seen as a political statement by the Nobel committee – meant to hail the change in U.S. policy represented by President Obama’s approach to foreign policy as opposed to that of his predecessor George W. Bush,” says [CBS News White House correspondent Mark] Knoller, who notes that Mr. Obama took office less than 10 days before the Feb. 1 deadline for Nobel Prize nominations.

“This is a Prize meant as an expression of hope that President Obama’s speeches and policy statements will translate into actual accomplishments,” adds Knoller. “The Prize is honoring an expression of aspirations for peace, rather the achievement of it.”

So really, this is less an award for Obama than it is an award against George W. Bush. There’s some irony in wielding a peace prize as an ideological weapon.

It always kills me when these international processes are “revealed” as “political statements”, much like last week’s 2016 Olympics site selection. News flash: Such events always involve politics, because they are, at root, political actions…

Does this set a precedent — that good intentions and rhetoric, when delivered from the most powerful political position in the world, count for more than any finished product? If this gives Obama added incentive/pressure to follow through — without giving him a Federal deficit-sized ego — then the Nobel folks will deserve an assist. If the U.S. is still in Afghanistan and other hotspots a year from now with no prospect of resolution, then the Nobel will have lost some of its luster (to be restored by several subsequent years of safe choices like scientists, missionaries, etc.).