FAREWELL CORETTA KING

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil rights leader, dies

Coretta Scott King, who turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, has died at the age of 78.

Flags at the King Center were lowered to half-staff this morning.

"We appreciate the prayers and condolences from people across the country," the King family said in a statement. The family said she died during the night. The widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. suffered a serious stroke and heart attack last August.

"It's a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it's a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was," poet Maya Angelou said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"It's bleak because I can't — many of us can't hear her sweet voice — but it's great because she did live, and she was ours. I mean African-Americans and white Americans and Asians, Spanish-speaking — she belonged to us and that's a great thing."

Click here for the rest.

She kept the militants from holding up her husband as a symbol of violent change and kept the establishment from erasing his strong stance against poverty and war. She made sure that we remember MLK every January. She was an effective activist in her own right, doing everything she could to keep the values of the civil rights era alive in today's more materialistic and self-serving climate. The left is definitely weaker for her loss.

Farewell Coretta King.



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Alito sworn in as Supreme Court justice

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The swearing-in came only hours after the Senate voted 58-42 to confirm Alito — a former federal appellate judge, U.S. attorney, and conservative lawyer for the Reagan administration from New Jersey — as the replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a moderate swing vote on the court.

All but one of the Senate's majority Republicans voted for his confirmation, while all but four of the Democrats voted against Alito.

That is the smallest number of senators in the president's opposing party to support a Supreme Court justice in modern history. Chief Justice John Roberts got 22 Democratic votes last year, and Justice Clarence Thomas — who was confirmed in 1991 on a 52-48 vote — got 11 Democratic votes.

Click here for the rest.

I already knew it, but now I'm more sure than ever: the Democratic Party is absolutely useless. This kind of thing is supposed to be the entire point as far as progressives voting for Democrats goes. "Vote Democrat or we'll lose abortion rights." Well, I've been supporting Democrats, and it pretty much looks as though they've failed. I'm pretty convinced that with a little more arm twisting they could have gotten a filibuster together. But they didn't. And now we're fucked. Things won't change overnight, but, trust me, they will change. I'm disgusted. Not by the Republicans; they're simply being true to who they've been for decades. No, I'm disgusted with the Democrats. Sure, they may be liberal, but so what? They're clearly not willing take any risks when push comes to shove. Liberals and progressives have been played for suckers. The Democrats do not represent them. And now we're all totally screwed.

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POLITICAL CORRUPTION: NOT JUST ABOUT ABRAMOFF

From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:

A state commission to curb homebuilder
abuses proves to be a deck stacked in favor
of the industry it is supposed to regulate

When Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn issued a report last week criticizing the Texas Residential Construction Commission as a shield for politically-connected homebuilders, she could have been reading from a column the Chronicle's Clay Robison wrote last March.

Headlined "No place like home for this cuddly Austin lapdog," Robison's piece characterized the creation of the TRCC as a boon for homebuilders who had contributed millions of dollars to state lawmakers. In return, the law creating the commission required aggrieved homeowners to go through a costly, time-consuming arbitration before they could take legal action against contractors. It also limited damages that plaintiffs could receive.

The commission itself has no enforcement powers to discipline industry violators. Law requires the nine-member body to include four industry representatives and two "public" gubernatorial appointees. Gov. Rick Perry chose to appoint as a public member an executive of Perry Homes, owned by Houston megabuilder Bob Perry. He's not related to Gov. Perry by blood but linked through a $100,000 campaign contribution he gave the state's top executive less than a month before the TRCC appointment.

Click here for the rest.

And from the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Millions in Iraq aid squandered

Iraqi money gambled away in the Philippines. Thousands spent on a swimming pool that was never used. An elevator repaired so poorly that it crashed, killing people.

A U.S. government audit found American-led occupation authorities squandered tens of millions of dollars that were supposed to be used to rebuild Iraq through undocumented spending and outright fraud.

In some cases, auditors recommend criminal charges be filed against the perpetrators. In others, it asks the U.S. ambassador to Iraq to recoup the money.

Click here for the rest.

From the local level, to the state level, to national and international issues, our political leaders are wildly corrupt. That is, the nation's business is now such an enormous criminal enterprise that it would make Vito Corleone blush. The homebuilder regulatory board in Texas is par for the course. Across the board, across the country. For the last thirty years or so, businesses have made it their business to buy their way into the agencies that are supposed to watch over them, not only making them useless from a regulatory standpoint, but turning them into cash bonanzas for the very industries they are supposed to regulate. Insurance, health care and pharmaceuticals, music, film, cars, oil, you name it, all of them have more governmental power over what they do than voters, and, lest I offend any libertarians with such a statement, I'm talking about the power to rip people off, to sell them unsafe products, to pollute the environment. The wasted millions in Iraq is no surprise either. From the moment the Pentagon started handing out no-bid contracts immediately after the illegal invasion of Iraq to White House friends and cronies, it was utterly clear that the US had no intention of actually rebuilding the war devastated nation. No, this was all about the spoils of war. Unfortunately, innocent Iraqis weren't the only victims; the American taxpayer has also been conquered, raped and pillaged. Just think about how many billions have gone to well connected interests when you're doing your taxes next month. That's your money. Our vaunted "democracy" is a total joke, and we're all the punchline.

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Tests show political thinking is emotional

From the New York Times via the Houston Chronicle:

Liberals and conservatives can become equally bug-eyed and irrational when talking politics, especially when they are on the defensive.

Using MRI scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them.

The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.

Click here for the rest.

Of course, anybody with half a brain already knows this, but it's nice that there is now some solid scientific evidence to prove it. As the article observes, it doesn't absolutely have to be this way, but it takes a truly intellectually disciplined individual to overcome emotional bias. Lord knows, I try, but I'm quite certain that I'm very much at the mercy of my own physical nature, that is, my brain, just as everybody else is--I feel like I'm maybe a step ahead of most people if only because I've had some really fun conversations about politics with the polite conservatives I've known over the years; maybe my high school debate days sent me down a path that affords me a bit more cold rationality when considering political questions. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself. I don't know.

I do know that the schools could do far more in the way of training people to rationally deal with controversial issues. But then that's not what the schools are really about, after all.

But this knowledge, that people are extraordinarly emotional about politics, brings me back to a question I've asked here a few times before: given the loud and abusive rhetoric coming down from the right wing these past couple of decades, given that such rhetoric seems to be wildly effective when it comes to results, shouldn't the left attempt to emulate this approach? Shouldn't the left abandon the "moral high ground" of civilized debate just as the right has done? This study shows that anybody who tries to be fair, who tries to persuade with facts and calm argumentation, is at a distinct competitive disadvantage when debating those who rely heavily on emotional appeals in order to win. In other words, it seems to me that the left, although this is changing to some extent, continues to brings knives to the proverbial gun fight. Now that we know for sure how utterly devastating emotionally based arguments can be, I'm very tempted to give into this approach to politics.

Hell, I give into it here at Real Art at least once a week already. Should I go further?

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Documents show US military in Iraq detain wives

From Reuters via ABC News courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

U.S. forces in Iraq, in two instances described in military documents, took custody of the wives of men believed to be insurgents in an apparent attempt to pressure the suspects into giving themselves up.

Both incidents occurred in 2004. In one, members of a shadowy military task force seized a mother who had three young children, still nursing the youngest, "in order to leverage" her husband's surrender, according to an account by a civilian Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer.

In the other, an e-mail exchange includes a U.S. military officer asking "have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?"

Click here for the rest.

Interesting headline: "detain wives." I have a better word for this than "detain." It's kidnapping. It doesn't matter that these are our soldiers doing the kidnapping. It doesn't matter that this is the "war on terror." Kidnapping is wrong. Really wrong. Of course, this comes as absolutely no surprise. Continual revelations, from widespread torture to spying on American citizens, have already shown that our leaders are truly horrible, awful people. If we don't, as a people, stop this shit now, it's all over. America is ending before our eyes. And it's our fault if we let it happen.

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Teacher Awaits Day in Court

From the Progressive:

At the end of the meeting, Hahn insisted that the principal, Victoria Rogers, make Mayer refrain from talking about peace again in the classroom. “I think she can do that,” Principal Rogers responded, according to Mayer’s deposition. “I think she can not mention peace in her class again.”

“I was just floored,” Mayer says, “but I said OK because we had a parent out of control, and I didn’t want to be insubordinate. I thought that would be the end of it.”

It wasn’t.

At the end of that day, Principal Rogers circulated a memo, entitled “Peace at Clear Creek,” that said: “We absolutely do not, as a school, promote any particular view on foreign policy related to the situation in Iraq.” And she cancelled the annual “peace month” that the school had been holding.

On February 7, 2003, Rogers also sent Mayer a letter telling her to “refrain from presenting your political views.”

Mayer and her lawyer, Michael Schultz, contend that this illegally infringed on Mayer’s First Amendment rights.

At the end of the spring semester, the school district did not renew Mayer’s contract, and she and Schultz allege that this was in retaliation for her political expression.

Click here for the rest.

You know, after my two posts bashing Baytown, I have to slightly contradict myself and admit that I feel like I was afforded a great deal of latitude when it came to discussing political issues as a teacher in my classroom at Sterling High School. When the Bush administration started beating the drums of war about Iraq, I was pretty scared to talk about it on the job--post 9/11 hyperpatriotism was in full swing at that point, and I really did fear losing my job if I advocated peace, which is one of the reasons I started this blog. But after a while, I realized that pretty much every other teacher was talking about the war and offering their opinions about it to their classes. So, very carefully, I started talking about it, too. For me, the key was to allow dissenting voices, and to give legitimacy to opinions that differed from mine. Heh. High school students are told to shut up so often that it's usually a breath of fresh air when a teacher allows a student with whom he disagrees to speak freely. Many of my kids thought I was crazy for opposing the invasion, but were thankful for the unbridled atmosphere of free speech that I tried to facilitate when I taught. We had some rousing discussions.

But the teacher in the article excerpt above, apparently, didn't go nearly as far as I did in voicing her opposition to the war. If I had been judged by the same standard, I would have been tarred and feathered, and run out of town. Pretty outrageous, if you ask me. I hope she wins her case.

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Polls Show Many Americans
are Simply Dumber Than Bush

From CounterPunch:

Despite the media's failure, about half the population has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq has not made them safer and that the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties is not a necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, thus, lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the population.

Consider the New York Times/CBS poll. Sixty-four percent of the respondents have concerns about losing civil liberties as a result of anti-terrorism measures put in place by President Bush. Yet, 53 percent approve of spying without obtaining court warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."

Why does any American think that spying without a warrant has any more effect in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Bush is disobeying, requires the executive to obtain from a secret panel of federal judges a warrant for spying on Americans. The purpose of the law is to prevent a president from spying for partisan political reasons. The law permits the president to spy first (for 72 hours) and then come to the court for permission. As the court meets in secret, spying without a warrant is no more effective in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant.

Click here for the rest.

Really, the ignorance of the general US population is only a symptom of the overall problem: Americans, for whatever reasons, simply have no understanding of their responsibilities as citizens. Ideally, all Americans would, by their own initiative, already fully understand the problems of media bias and the astounding misdirection of political debate, and factor all that into their overall analysis of important issues. Ideally, all Americans would see the concept of seeking out the truth as a patriotic imperative, and would fully realize that they cannot simply sit on their couches watching CNN to get an honest picture of the world: ideal Americans would devote a significant portion of their lives to studying politics and the ins and outs of how information is created and shaped by forces that have a stake in how voters perceive them and what they do.

Obviously, we don't live in the ideal America. Being an ideal American isn't easy, and most people don't even understand what an ideal citizen is, anyway. Most people don't understand that democracy is much more difficult for the average citizen than, say, dictatorship. Democracy means individual responsibility for the nation's direction. Democracy means work. Democracy means that the people rule, and you can't do that by ceding your leadership responsibilty to guys in suits who may or may not have your best interests at heart. Democracy is waaay more than simply voting. Of course, most people don't do that, either.

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THE WEIRD WORLD OF BAYTOWN, TEXAS part II

Well, I've finally figured out how to get people to comment more here at Real Art: trash their hometown. I got some pretty good comments after my scathing attack on Baytown yesterday, and it only seems fair to bump the responses up from Haloscan, where they are eventually erased after a couple of months, to the main page, especially because they raise some good points that deserve my response. So without any further ado, let's look at those comments.

I was amazed and honored for my blog to be visited by someone at the center of the controversy about which I wrote in the post mentioned above. No, not the Exxon emission controversy; I'm sure those oil lords don't even know I exist. I'm talking about the woman who pastors Baytown's one-and-only gay-friendly congregation, Eklektos, which, by using the worship space of the Southern Baptist church Faith Harbour, roused the ire of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention enough to revoke the membership of Eklektos' generous host:

Not all of Baytown supports the disaffiliation of Faith Harbour from the SBTC. Read today's editorial in the Baytown Sun:

http://baytownsun.com/

and the letter to the editor titled "Heroic People" on Jan 23.

http://baytownsun.com/

and "WWJD" on Jan 22.

http://baytownsun.com/

BTW, I found your site by doing a blog search on Faith Harbour and Eklektos. Some of us are doing our best to help Baytown see itself for what it is.

Wendy Bailey Homepage

I responded to Wendy earlier today:

Sorry, Wendy, I mean no offense. No doubt, you are among the intelligent and enlightened subpopulation that I mentioned. That's actually a weird thing: on an individual level, Baytown really isn't such a bad place; it's the group dynamic that seems so bizarre. Keep up the good work. Changing culture and conventional wisdom is not an easy thing to do.

Ron

Of course, when I wrote that this afternoon, I had no idea who she is--I only figured that out after clicking through the links she posted. Now that I know what kind of trouble she's causing in Baytown, I want to add this: Wendy, you totally rock!!!! I have a pretty good idea of what you're up against in Baytown, and I think that you're a true hero. It's not easy, I imagine, to establish a gay-friendly church anywhere in the state of Texas, including areas like Montrose. But to fight the good fight in Baytown...like I said, you rock. If there were more Christians like you in the world, maybe I would still count myself as a believer. Well, probably not, but it's absolutely wonderful to see somebody who not only swims against the current by taking Christ's words seriously, but who also is willing to do so publicly. I'm sure there are quite a few people there who think you're doing Satan's work, so watch your back. But then, didn't Jesus say something to the extent that those who are persecuted in his name are blessed?
Anyway, thanks for dropping by.

The next comment is from my successor at the high school where I used to teach, Kyle, who writes Great Blogs of Fire:

Okay. Wow. That's pretty harsh, I would say, but not surprising. For people who didn't grow up in a town like Baytown it can seem like a very strange place. I never thought of it as anything other than a working class suburb of Houston. It wasn't until I moved back here almost 3 years ago that I realized that it is less of a suburb and more of a nearby city, like you said. I spent the 4 years I was in HS (at the school you taught at and I teach at) wanting to leave. The first song I ever wrote when I learned to play guitar was about the pollution and filth of Baytown. Since moving back I've adopted a slogan for my hometown: "Big City Filth, Big City Crime, Small Town Boredom." My wife is from a very conservative town in west Texas where I attended college. The first year we lived here she probably cried a couple times a month about having to live here. While I have to disagree with the racism claim (I don't think that racial tension is any better or worse here than other towns this size) I think that you paint a fairly acurate, however blunt, picture of our fair city.

Then, why, if I felt this way when I left, did I come back? The short answer is because I had contacts that lead to jobs that didn't exist in the D/FW area where I was living. The long answer is more complex to an extent I don't even think I can answer satisfactorily. People like Wendy above (whom I know very well from the BLT and her daughter being in the theatre program here at Sterling, among other things) exist here. People like my dad and grandparents and people at the Baytown Little Theatre and the Harbour exist here. We have our fair share of town neglect and issues that get swept under the rug, but like Wendy said, some people want to change that. Why? I don't know. I grew up here, I guess. I want to see it thrive as a more intellectual and diverse city, instead of the town that it is now, whatever that is. I won't live here forever, that's for sure. My wife wouldn't have it. But, my parents will always be here and so will many people I love and respect. Baytown is like an annoying brother. I can talk bad about it all day long, but it really hurts when someone else does.

And Did you know?

The Baytown Sun endorsed John Kerry for President, and caught some flack about it, to boot?

Kyle

Ah, Kyle, I apologize for the kick in the gut. You're right; I was blunt, and perhaps I should have tempered my criticism by emphasizing more all the cool people I got to know while I was working there. All communities are complex, and it is unfair for me to paint any community with such broad strokes. You seem to understand where I'm coming from, but just to make sure, let me emphasize that I'm talking far more about prevailing cultural attitudes than about any particular individuals. And just so you know, I've been far more harsh on the community where I grew up--I'll say this about Baytown: the people there are far more interesting and individualistic than the bland cookie-cutter yuppies among whom I came of age in Kingwood; there are some bizarre folk in your hometown, and that's worth a few points in my book.

As for the issue of racism, you may be right; it's hard to gauge exactly how racist an area actually is. My sense of that probably comes more from my associations with African-Americans there, many of whom, both adults and teenagers, in my opinion, seem to firmly believe that there is definitely a racial heirarchy of some sort in Baytown, and, by and large, don't talk much to white people about it, if only to avoid arguments that they feel they couldn't win anyway. As far as what I observed in the way of white people's behavior, well, I heard students talk, and can only assume that their attitudes reflect their famlies' attitudes: at Sterling, at least, there is certainly a segment of the white student population that harbors racist tendencies.

But, then, it is fair to ask if that makes Baytown any more racist than any other east Texas town. I don't know. Maybe I'm still pissed at the white girl who tried to get me fired for trying to explain to a class why it is socially acceptable for black comedians to make fun of whites but not the reverse. "You're acting like you're not white!" she said. Next thing I knew I was in the principal's office trying to explain that I did not, in fact, give students recommendations on what drugs they should take.

Ah, good times.

Of course, now I'm in Louisiana, and Texas seems to have nothing on this state in terms of race relations. That is, the racism here is much more visible; I've encountered much more of what I consider to be racist behavior and language in Baton Rouge than I ever did in the Houston area. Then there's New Orleans' Ninth Ward neighborhood...

And Kyle, I don't think it's so strange that you've returned to Baytown for the time being. I returned to Kingwood when I was in my twenties for pretty much the same reasons. It is my home, after all, and, despite my loathing for the place, I also have to admit my love for it. Like you said, hometowns are like family. It may suck, but it's mine.

Nonetheless, I, myself, feel a great need to be consistent with my criticism. That is, I see, in both Baytown and Kingwood, the same kinds of issues taking place nationally against which I rail away on my blog every day, played out on the local level, and because of my personal connection with these two communities, I feel more responsibility to criticize them than, say, Jasper or Vidor.

By the way, that's pretty damned cool about the Sun. I didn't know they had it in them.

Kyle also noted that he's written at length about the Eklektos/Faith Harbour controversy on his blog. We're in tech rehearsals for the show I'm in right now, so I haven't had a chance to check it out, but Kyle's a good blogger, so I'm planning on making my way over there soon. And you should too.

Finally, my young friend Adam, also from Baytown, and who writes the blog Shattered Soapbox, comments:

The WEIRDEST thing, I'll say this again, is that I haven't heard ANYONE talking about either of those things ANYWHERE.

There are some kids here that actually want to work at Exxon for the rest of their lives...

You know, the fact that so few people seem to be discussing extraordinary events there is as good an explanation as any for why such extreme attitudes dominate Baytown's overall culture. That is, apathy rules. Of course, I could say the same thing about the whole country, too. And, given the bleakness of job prospects overall, I can't say that I blame these Exxon kids. I mean, they are pretty good jobs when you get right down to it. But what a sad option: work for Wal-Mart for crap wages and no benefits, or sell your soul and have an evil multi-national oil giant take care of you for life.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



Frankie



Paz



Phil



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THE WEIRD WORLD OF BAYTOWN, TEXAS

I worked for six years in Baytown, from 1998-2004, as a high school theater teacher, and got to know the place and it's people pretty well. And let me tell you, it's one weird town. For starters, it's in complete denial about what it is: the working class community thirty minutes east of Houston on I-10 is a large town, around 75,000 or so in population, that seems to think it's still a small town. That is, they have real urban issues with which to contend, like poverty, racial divisions, and gang violence, and they do deal with that stuff, but it's as though people there want to pretend they're all on Leave It to Beaver. It's a conservative place politically, which is no surprise given that it fringes on east Texas, but it is surprising given it's working class majority demographic and the huge non-white populations there--there are sizable African-American, Hispanic, and Pakistani communities in Baytown. All of this weirdness takes place under the shadow of Exxon, which essentially built the place decades ago to house their plant workers. If I understand correctly, nothing happens there politically that hasn't been blessed by the multi-national oil giant. Really, the place belongs to Exxon; it's just that nobody wants to admit it.

And people there are happy with the arrangement because it provides them with good, life long union jobs with benefits and retirement--very few places in America have such a good deal as far as jobs go these days. But the proximity of the plants brings problems along with the good jobs.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Delay in oil-spill notification probed

Residents, who were told in a letter from the company delivered to their homes Tuesday morning that the appropriate agencies had been contacted, expressed shock Wednesday that authorities had not been informed initially.

"Oh, my god. I am really scared," said Patricia Robinson, 55, who has lived in Archia Courts for 40 years, and watched Wednesday as Exxon Mobil contractors continued to wash cars and dig up the complex's playground.

The excavation, according to the company, had nothing to do with the spill, but, rather, was to improve the playground, which was missing seats on swingsets and was too close to power lines.

"Exxon must be hiding something," Robinson said. "They are trying to get it cleaned up so fast."

The delay, according to state officials who arrived on scene Wednesday, resulted in little evidence being available to reconstruct what happened. Investigators as of Wednesday afternoon still were having trouble deciding whether to classify it as an air pollution event or an oil spill.

"When we got there today, everything was clean," said Indest. "They had more than 24 hours to do their work. There was nowhere ... to take a sample.

Click here for the rest.

Crap like this happens all the time in Baytown. There was more than one occasion where we had to "shelter in place" for a while at the school where I taught, while the latest emission scare was being sorted out. I haven't seen any studies on the topic, but, from personal experience with the people there, it strikes me that the town has more than its fair share of weird cancers, birth defects, and other strange health maladies--pollution in Baytown, toxins in their environment, have got to be off the scale.

But everyone seems to be cool with the risk. I guess they feel like that's the price they have to pay to live in their fantasy 1950s world with such good jobs.

Of course, reality can never be completely swept under the carpet. I said above that Baytown deals with some heavy urban issues. Gay churches, for instance.

From the BP News, courtesy of my buddy Adam, who still attends the high school where I taught, and who writes the blog Shattered Soapbox:

SBTC removes church over homosexuality controversy

The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s executive board has acted unanimously to disaffiliate a church for violating the convention’s constitutional provision concerning churches that “affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior.”

The SBTC credentials committee and two SBTC staff members met Dec. 20 for one hour and 45 minutes with the pastor of Faith Harbour -- previously an SBTC congregation in Baytown -- with a redemptive aim, SBTC minister-church relations director Deron Biles wrote in a summary of the meeting.

Biles recounted that the committee hoped to clarify Faith Harbour’s stance toward a church it is helping sponsor and allowing to meet in its facilities, which bills itself on its website as welcoming and affirming of homosexual, bisexual and trangendered people.

Additionally, the new church, Eklektos, has a female senior pastor. Biles said the committee and Faith Harbour pastor Randy Haney were unable to resolve their differences over Faith Harbour’s involvement with Eklektos.

Click here for the rest.

Heh. It wasn't simply the gayness of this congregation; it was also that they had a female pastor! God, I love Texas. Even though this excommunication is coming down from a state organization, I have no doubt that the overall attitude in Baytown is in wholehearted agreement--Baytown, like everywhere else in the world, has plenty of gay people, but is, I would assert, more homophobic than other towns its size. Did I mention the racism boiling beneath Baytown's 1950s facade? While I met more than a few there who I consider to be wonderful, enlightened, and intelligent people, I have to say that if I lived there, I would be doing everything I could to get out. And if I had children, I wouldn't let them within fifty miles of the place. The prevailing culture there is simply insane, much more fit as a setting for a David Lynch movie than as a place to spend your life. It's really not even worth visiting.

The best thing I've ever done for myself was to quit my job there. Because if you stay there long enough, the insanity creeps into your brain, and you start to see the world through Baytown's weird lenses, which is just no good.

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A JUDICIAL TWOFER FROM WORKING FOR CHANGE

Nasty cold. Busy, busy, busy. Late. Read these two essays on the Supreme Court.

Roberts Court's first split decision
shows politics trumping principle

One decision doesn't make a career, but an alarm should have sounded when Chief Justice Roberts joined Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in overriding the will of Oregon voters and attempting to overrule Oregon's Death With Dignity law. Although the Court's current majority sustained the law, this was the first major split decision of the Roberts court. And by contradicting all his fine-sounding phrases about Federalist principles (much as the five justices did in Bush v. Gore) Roberts made clear that his political beliefs will guide his interpretations. If there are doubts about his agenda, and where his loyalties lie, I'd suggest that this should bury them.

Click here for the rest.

Judicial activism coming from the right

I believe that legalizing physician-assisted suicide is a mistake. I also believe that having federal courts and bureaucrats decide the issue is a mistake. This is a question that should be debated by the people and their representatives.
That's why the Supreme Court was right this week to uphold Oregon's assisted-suicide law — a law I would have voted against had I been an Oregon citizen, and would vote to repeal.

Oregon passed the law in a referendum. Six justices on the Supreme Court rejected sweeping claims by the Bush administration (originally put forward by former Attorney General John Ashcroft) that it could interpret federal laws in a novel way to usurp Oregon's power to regulate the practice of medicine. This, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared, represented a “radical shift of authority from the states to the federal government.”

In this case, I found myself in the odd position of agreeing with the sentiments expressed by Justice Antonin Scalia on the underlying issue, but bewildered by his willingness to impose his view (and mine) by judicial fiat.

Click here for the rest.

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GOOD LOCAL WRITE-UP ON THE SHOW I'M IN

From the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Swine Palace gets rare opportunity to present
unique show, Tennessee Williams in Quarter Time

The show, written and directed by John Dennis, will play Feb. 1-18 at the Reilly Theatre on the LSU campus. It will incorporate performances of excerpts from about a dozen plays.

“It was one thing to have the idea, and quite another to get permission,” laughed Tick. “The agent said ‘absolutely no. You’ve got to produce a full-length play or nothing.’

“I called the literary agent in New York and was turned down. The Tennessee Williams estate is controlled by a British literary agent. I called the literary agent in London and he said no way.

“That’s when I wrote that long letter.”

The letter turned the trick and gave LSU the go-ahead to stage a once-in-a-lifetime production.

“I described the devastation of the hurricanes and wrote about how important New Orleans was to Williams, and how important it is to do everything we can to bring the city back,” Tick said.

“I reminded them about all the regional theater companies that closed after 9-11, and I went through all we suffered during Katrina and how it was to go through Katrina and told them we needed to do everything we could to preserve New Orleans. They wrote back and gave us permission to do the show.”

Click here for the rest.

And I'm having a lot of fun with this. On the other hand, I fear that I'm starting to be typecast: I'm playing a gay crossdresser for the second show in a row. Ah well. It takes a real man to wear a dress, and it's a fabulous role. The director, John Dennis, head of LSU's MFA acting program, is giving me a new love for Williams. Like Chekhov before him, Tennessee Williams has gotten a bad rap for being boring and/or melodramatic; the reality is that much of his writing was meant to be funny--Blanche from Streetcar, for instance, made Williams giggle numerous times while he was writing the play. The scene I'm in, from the little known Kingdom of Earth, is hysterically funny; I'm having to bite my lip to keep from laughing during rehearsals.

At any rate, if you're in the Red Stick during February, try to check it out.


(Advocate staff photo by KERRY MALONEY) From left, Shawn Halliday, Andrea Frankle and Anna Richardson perform a key moment in Quarter Time.

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HOW THEY SCREWED UP THE OCCUPATION

From the New York Times courtesy of This Modern World:

Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report Finds

The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft.

The document, which begins with the secret prewar planning for reconstruction and touches on nearly every phase of the program through 2005, was assembled by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and debated last month in a closed forum by roughly two dozen experts from outside the office.

A person at the forum provided a copy of the document, dated December 2005, to The New York Times. The inspector general's office, whose agents and auditors have been examining and reporting on various aspects of the rebuilding since early 2004, declined to comment on the report other than to say it was highly preliminary.

"It's incomplete," said a spokesman for the inspector general's office, Jim Mitchell. "It could change significantly before it is finally published."

In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I've been reading some fairly recent interviews with Noam Chomsky, and one theme that keeps coming up is how puzzled he is by how badly US forces did during the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. He, too, thought it was going to be a "cake walk," that Iraq was weak, which is why he pretty much assumes that it was all a case of gross incompetence on a historic level. Turns out that he's absolutely right. If we had all known this before Katrina hit, nobody would have been surprised by the "heckuva job" Brownie did leading FEMA. At this point, I think it's pretty clear that opposition to the White House has nothing to do with ideology or the conservative/liberal dichotomy: Bush and his cronies should be opposed by all Americans because they simply don't know how to do anything in the way of running the nation's business. In short, the White House is occupied by major losers no matter how you look at it.

Is anyone serious about impeachment yet?

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HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS ARE STUPID!!!

From TAPPED courtesy of Eschaton:

The idea here is simple. Conservatives believe Americans have too much health insurance, that they spend heedlessly and wastefully on care, procedures, and medications they would simply forego if insurance plans didn't pick up the tab. Ergo, HSA's, which end risk pooling, forcing care to come directly from pockets. Newly responsible for their medical bills, consumers will be spurred by the Magic of the Market to make smarter decisions, show more prudence, lead healthier lifestyles, smile more often, and smell springtime fresh. It's gonna be awesome.

At least if you're healthy. Because what HSA's really do is separate the young from the old, the well from the sick. Currently, insurance operates off of the concept of risk pooling. Since health costs tend to be unpredictable and illness isn't thought a moral failing, we all pay a bit more than we expect to use in order to subsidize those who end up needing much more than they ever thought possible. The well subsidize the sick, the young subsidize the old, and we all accept the arrangement because one day we will be old, and one day we will be sick, and no one wants to shoulder that alone.

But HSA's slice right through this intergenerational, redistributionist arrangement: they're a great deal for young, healthy folks because they don't force subsidization. Just don't get sick. And if you're already sick, don't think you can hide by remaining in traditional insurance plans: when the healthy rush towards HSA's, older plans will hold only the ill, and insurance companies will send premiums skyrocketing to recoup the difference.

Click here for the rest.

This nutty idea, the health savings account, has been floating around for a decade or so, but nobody's really taken it seriously until now--apparently, Bush is going to be pushing it pretty heavily during his upcoming state of the union address. As far as I've been able to tell, the idea is something of a right-wing think tank reaction to the very real issue of exploding health care costs and decreasing access. The problem is that health care saving accounts won't work, or, at least, they're not going they won't do what they're supposed to do. Actually, HSAs will make things much worse. There about a billion reasons why this is the case, but probably the most obvious is that Americans currently have a negative savings rate--that is, nobody's saving any money now, so why does anybody seriously believe that they're going to participate in this ill-conceived plan? The biggest problem is that HSAs just won't do any good for anybody with serious health problems, like cancer or HIV, or chronic issues like lupus or arthritis. In short, HSAs are just so much rhetoric. There's nothing to them, just some more smoke and mirrors to cover the rich while they fuck everyone else.

And for the next few months we're going to have to listen to reporters, pundits, and politicians on TV talk about HSAs as though they had some kind of legitimacy. It'll be as though people are suddenly like "hey, maybe the world really is flat!" Why are our leaders so fucking stupid?

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NATIONAL GORILLA SUIT DAY

From POVonline courtesy of my buddy Mike over at this is not a compliment:

National Gorilla Suit Day, which mysteriously falls on January 31 of each year, is perhaps the important holiday of the year. Every National Gorilla Suit Day, people of all shapes and colors around the world get their gorilla suits out of the closet, put them on and go door-to-door.

That's really all there is to it. You don't have to buy gifts. You don't have to fast, although some Orthodox Gorilla Suiters do. If you want to have a parade, fine. Just make sure all the marchers are wearing gorilla suits and that all the balloons are giant, inflatable gorillas.

Click here for the rest.

People who really know me know that I totally dig gorilla suits. Actually, I'm into pretty much all kinds of animal suits, especially gigantic chickens. But the gorilla suit is my favorite. Indeed, I was totally tickled back when Becky and I were married in 2001 by our old pal Jim showing up to be the maid of honor...in a gorilla suit!!! We had the best wedding. Also, I must observe, the Real Art theme song, "Solfeggio," comes from the old Ernie Kovacs TV show where it was performed by the Nairobi Trio, three guys in gorilla suits.

Yep, I just love gorilla suits. I really need to get one someday.

By the way, if you're into this sort of thing, POVonline, the site with the skinny on National Gorilla Suit Day, belongs to a non-superstar comic book writer named Mark Evanier: he had a pretty good run on a mid 80s incarnation of Jack Kirby's New Gods that I really enjoyed back in the day; the site's packed with all kinds of comic info and general geek stuff, well worth checking out. If you're into that sort of thing.

One final note, according to the article, NGSD was the brainchild of my favorite Mad Magazine artist, Don Martin.



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HOW CAPITALISM UNDERMINES THE "FREE MARKET"

I noticed a comment today that I had missed, for this post I made last week on Martin Luther King's seething indictment of American capitalism and consumerism, which he believed is directly related to poverty, racism, and aggressive war. It's worth noting the short statement here on the main page if only because it gives me an opportunity to articulate something that's been bothering me for years about our economic system.

So here it is, from reader A.B. Dada who writes the gold-investment blog Dada Says...:

I just wanted to correct a misconception I noticed in some quotes and in the general post.

The definition of capitalism it its true sense is "The voluntary cooperation of two parties for the mutual profit of both."

Capitalism is not being followed in NYC or in the US or in any country that forces mandates, regulations, taxes, tariffs and/or subsidies. I prefer to call those economies "cartel mercantilism" not capitalism.

Capitalism is voluntary without force and offers every party a profit during a trade. Capitalism is not class warfare or the abuse of the poor by the wealthy.

And my response:

Okay, good point, but I think you're describing an ideal conceptualization of the "free market" rather than capitalism, which strikes me as being more about using economic power to squeeze the "free" part of "free market."

Here's a definition of capitalism from Merriam-Webster Online:

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Owners of capital are able to use that ownership to create an economic advantage that skews wildly the "competition" part of capitalism in their favor--generally, the only real competition taking place under a capitalistic system is between various owners of capital, and not between capitalists and labor and consumers. Because this unfair advantage is built into capitalism, it really is class warfare--workers and consumers do not meet capitalists on an equal playing field. And big capitalists are able to do the same thing, to a lesser extent, in competition with little capitalists.

Furthermore, the inherent power of capital ownership doesn't simply disrupt the "free market" in terms of rigging competition: the power of capital transmutes itself into political power, as the recent Jack Abramoff scandal has clearly illustrated, which means, especially under the current White House administration, that the "mandates, regulations, taxes, tariffs and/or subsidies" you mention are often written by the capitalists themselves, for their own benefit, further destroying the "free market."

In short, capitalism, as actually practiced, makes free trade problematic at best.

Just as a final note, don't think I'm necessarily suggesting that we totally do away with capitalism: rather, my belief is that government should do what it can in the way of regulation in order to level the playing field as much as possible. Of course, the first step in that direction is acknowledging the problem in the first place. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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DISPELLING THE GOP "BIPARTISAN"
LIES ABOUT THE ABRAMOFF SCANDAL

Since it became clear that evil lobbyist Jack Abramoff was going to flip and testify against lawmakers about his bribery-for-legislation scam, the Republican Party has been working overtime to limit the political damage by trying to brand the scandal as "bipartisan" in the media--that is, the GOP continues to assert that Democrats, too, were on the take. Even though not a single Democrat took money from Abramoff himself, some did take campaign contributions from his clients, principally the three Indian tribes he bilked out of millions of dollars. Does that really make the scandal "bipartisan?"

From Bloomberg courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Abramoff's 'Equal Money' Went Mostly to Republicans

Mostly Republicans

Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff joined with his former partner, Michael Scanlon, and tribal clients to give money to a third of the members of Congress, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, according to records of the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service. At least 171 lawmakers got $1.4 million in campaign donations from the group. Republicans took in most of the money, with 110 lawmakers getting $942,275, or 66 percent of the total.

Of the top 10 political donors among Indian tribes in that period, three are former clients of Abramoff and Scanlon: the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians of California. All three gave most of their donations to Republicans -- by margins of 30 percentage points or more -- while the rest favored Democrats.

Abramoff faces allegations that he bilked the casino-owning tribes out of millions of dollars and attempted to corrupt public officials. E-mails released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee during a year of hearings offer evidence that he directed the tribes to donate funds to specific lawmakers.

Continued to Give

Abramoff's tribal clients continued to give money to Democrats even after he began representing them, although in smaller percentages than in the past.

The Saginaw Chippewas gave $500,500 to Republicans between 2001 and 2004 and $277,210 to Democrats, according to a review of data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Bristow, Virginia-based company that tracks campaign-finance reports. Between 1997 and 2000, the tribe gave just $158,000 to Republicans and $279,000 to Democrats.

Click here for the rest.

Well, that's a lot of words, but Kos contributor Armando puts it all into perspective:

Abramoff pushed his Indian tribe clients AWAY from Dems and TO Republicans. That is, Abramoff DIRECTED his Indian tribe clients to give LESS or NOT AT ALL to Democrats and to give MORE OR ALL of their contributions to Republicans.

There you have it. Couple what Armando says with the fact that these three tribes were already contributing heavily to Democrats, and that the seven other top contributing Indian Tribes favored Democrats as well, and it appears that there's nothing amiss. In other words, it sure does seem that Indians, like most other non-white ethnicities in the US, tend to favor Democrats because the party, a traditional supporter of civil rights, tends to support their interests.

Of course Indians give money to Democrats. What's surprising is that some tribes ended up giving more money to Republicans, as if they were the party of good ethnic vibes, which is almost funny. Obviously, the factor that blows the curve here is indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff; he's the one who directed these three tribes to donate to Congressmen from a Party that really couldn't care less about Indian affairs.

Clearly, the right wing is having some success in capitalizing on the confusion. But confusion is all it is: make no mistake; this is a Republican scandal, and no amount of rhetorical obfuscation is going to change that.

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BOGUS "CHOCOLATE" NEW ORLEANS
CONTROVERSY SPAWNS REAL RACISM

Am I the only person in this country who thinks that this image...



...bears an uncanny resemblance to this image?



The first picture is, of course, part of the bullshit controversy about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin telling an audience of mostly African-Americans that he is determined to do what it takes to ensure that their city will regain its majority black status. If you haven't heard by now, Nagin referred to the Big Easy as being "chocolate," which has gotten a lot of white people pissed off. The picture is, apparently, some sort of protest.

Ha ha. I get it. Nagin talks about chocolate, so he must be like Willy Wonka. Very funny and clever. Gotta love those socially concerned cyber-pranksters.

The second picture is a 1906 postcard advertising a minstrel show. And minstrel shows, at one point the overwhelmingly dominant form of American popular entertainment, were extraorinarily racist.

From Wikipedia:

However, in the 1850s minstrelsy became decidedly mean-spirited and pro-slavery as race replaced class as its main focus. Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.) The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and of largely white origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful, and some of these are still popular today, such as "Dixie", "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", and "My Old Kentucky Home". The message was clear: do not worry about the slaves; they are happy with their lot in life. Moreover, figures like the Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that African Americans did not belong, nor want to belong, in Northern society.

Minstrelsy's reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin is indicative of plantation content at the time. "Tom acts" largely came to replace other plantation narratives, particularly in the third act. These sketches sometimes supported Stowe's novel, but just as often they turned it on its head or attacked the author. Whatever the intended message, it was usually lost in the joyous, slapstick atmosphere of the piece. Characters such as Simon Legree sometimes disappeared, and the title was frequently changed to something more cheerful like "Happy Uncle Tom" or "Uncle Dad's Cabin". Uncle Tom himself was frequently portrayed as a harmless bootlicker to be ridiculed. Some troupes, known as "Tommer" companies, came to specialize in such burlesques, and theatrical "Tom shows" integrated elements of the minstrel show and competed with it for at time.

Minstrelsy's racism (and misogyny) could be rather vicious. There were "comic" songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes.

Click here for the rest.

Perhaps the makers of the "Willy Nagin" images circulating around the internet these past few days meant no racist harm. After all, Wonka, featuring the bland but beautiful superstar Johnny Depp in the lead role, was remade only last year--it's on people's minds, and an easy connection to make. Indeed, it's probably a stretch to assert that these guys were thinking about the minstrel shows of the 19th century at all when they booted up their Photoshop programs and got to work; I especially doubt that they were intentionally trying to create a racist caricature of Nagin because the ostensible purpose of these images is to protest what they deem to be some kind of bigotry towards white people.

On the other hand, cultural memory is powerful, and the racist stereotypes created during the minstrel era persist to this day. The stupid and inarticulate black "dandy," personified today by Hollywood's over-the-top portrayals of flamboyant pimps, bling-laden rappers, and flashy African-American leaders, is a stock character that goes straight back to minstrelsy. The "Willy Nagin" pictures make pretty much the same racist point: a black man gets some power but he's too stupid to wield it correctly.

I must again state that I don't believe that this was the conscious intention of these cyber-pranksters. But the unconscious usually finds a way to break through to the surface, especially in art. And because the whole "chocolate" controversy totally reeks of being yet another manifestation of white resentment of diversity, or multiculturalism, or the concept known as being "politically correct," whatever you want to call it, I feel pretty safe asserting that these "Willy Nagin" artists are, indeed, racists.

You know, the more I think about this whole thing, the more my stomach hurts.

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ABC/DISNEY'S HOMOPHOBIC BUSINESS MOVE

From AMERICAblog courtesy of Eschaton:

The NYT article below provides a lot of evidence that the religious right got "Welcome to the Neighborhood," a reality TV show, killed before it even aired a single episode because ABC/Disney thought the religious right would pull its support for the movie Narnia if the gays were shown to win the reality show (the gay couple did win).

What's worse, a bit part of the religious right's problem with the reality show is that many of the neighbors of the gay couple in the show were quite homophobic Christians and by the end of the show they ended up loving their gay neighbors. The religious right objected especially to the fact that real Christians embraced their gay neighbors.

Click here for the rest.

I guess it's been a while since the evangelical nuts were howling in outrage about "Gay Day" at Disney World. Indeed, it strikes me that their boycott of Disney, which only ended last year, may very well have been the event that ultimately led to what's described in the excerpt above. The Jesus freaks apparently have Mickey Mouse on the run.

I expect more of this BS in the future. One thing that makes media companies quake in their boots is organized flak like the Baptist boycott, and it seems like the fundamentalist flak machine is running full speed ahead. Consequently, look to see the increasing posivitive portrayals of gays and lesbians in the media over the last few years reverse itself to some extent. From the corporate end, it's all about business. Will and Grace, for instance, may be a big money maker by itself for NBC, but if the military-industrial giant that owns the network, General Electric, decides that it stands to lose more money overall if the Christian right chooses to target the silly gay themed show, you can bet your Judy Garland record collection that they wouldn't hesitate to cancel it.

Noam Chomsky has been saying for forty years that the only way change happens in this country is when people are organized. But he's talking about the left: it's a damned shame that the right-wing religious nuts understand this concept waaay better than we do.

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"I think my record, the level of taint is
dramatically different than either of them."

Above quote from an interview on Fox News with the Republican House Policy Chairman John Shadegg, who is running for Tom DeLay's majority leader position, in reference to the fact that he and his two competitors also have ethics problems. It's an amusing comment by itself, in a sort of Bevis and Butthead way. However, in the hands of the Daily Show, it becomes one of the funniest television moments I've ever encountered. I'm sure you can guess what kind of jokes such a statement evokes, but, believe me, John Stewart and Ed Helms take it to a sublime level. Really it's all Helms, while Stewart plays Harvey Korman to his Tim Conway, holding on for dear life trying not to crack up himself.

Really, I haven't laughed this hard since I first saw the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles when I was in the fourth grade.

Go check the clip out over at Crooks and Liars.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



Phil



Paz



Frankie



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RACIAL HYSTERIA

From CNN:

Nagin apologizes for 'chocolate' city comments

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday apologized for urging residents to rebuild a "chocolate New Orleans" and saying, "You can't have New Orleans no other way."

"I'm really sorry that some people took that they way they did, and that was not my intention," the mayor said. "I say everybody's welcome."

Nagin added that he never should have used the term "chocolate."

Across the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged city, many voiced their displeasure with the mayor's Monday remarks at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. One Web site even began peddling T-shirts showing Nagin with a top hat along with the caption "Willy Nagin and the Chocolate Factory."

Resident Alex Gerhold called Nagin's remarks "stupid" and "pitiful."

"He used the wrong dairy product to describe us. We're more Neapolitan, not chocolate," Gerhold said. "It doesn't do the city any kind of justice."

Click here for the rest.

You know, this controversy is just plain nuts. There's nothing offensive about Nagin's use of the term "Chocolate City," a term that has been around for at least twenty five years, used by African-Americans to describe majority black US cities, principally Washington, D.C., especially given the context that there is a well substantiated fear that many people of color may not be able to return to the Big Easy, and may not have homes there if they do. New Orleans' vital cultural heritage is overwhelmingly black and there can be nothing wrong in wanting to maintain that cultural heritage in the post-Katrina era.

But I think this essay below from CounterPunch makes the point much more clearly than I do, as well as offer an explanation of what's really behind the hysteria:

DC, New Orleans and the Phony Outrage Over Ray Nagin

When either ethnic progress or progress in ethnic relations are stymied, arguing over words becomes a substitute. It's the upper class bias towards civility over activity as transferred to the media and politics.

Thus it's not surprising, in the midst of America's second post-reconstruction era, that Howard Dean gets attacked in the white media for saying that he wants the votes of southern whites who drive around in pickups with Confederate flag stickers even though he got applause when he said the same thing to a heavily black audience in the south. It's not surprising that Hillary Clinton is excoriated for using the word 'plantation' in front of black audience even though Newt Gingrich once said the same thing of the House of Representatives and no one said a mumblin' word. And it's not surprising that Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans should get in trouble for aspiring to keep New Orleans - formerly a two-thirds black town - "chocolate" even though he stole the term from DC where it was applied with love and honor for quite a few years.

Click here for the rest.

You know, as far as I can tell, the only people who have a problem with this "Chocolate City" thing are pussified whites. What could possibly be threatening about a desire to keep New Orleans' status as a thriving center of black life and culture? I applaud Mayor Nagin's statement and intent: as a white American who has visited New Orleans many times, I have never felt unwelcome there; indeed, one of the great things about the city is it's "chocolate" status.

For god's sake, doesn't anybody remember that jazz was born there? That the blues has a strong presence there? That incredible Creole food has been prepared there for nearly two hundred years by people of color? That countless fantastic and wonderful stories come out of the city's black neighborhoods? That there are all these weird and cool African-American people hanging out on the streets?

Fuck these "We Are the World," p.c., bullshit, crocodile tears.

The only mistake Nagin made was in saying that God wants the Crescent City to be majority black--how could he possibly know that? But I'm willing to cut the man some slack. Becky says to chalk it up to post-traumatic stress disorder, which is currently a very real phenomenon in the Big Easy. He's been through a lot, so I'm personally willing to forgive some kooky talk about "God's will." But then, it seems that disgruntled whites are waaay more concerned with the "Chocolate City" remark, anyway.

Man, what's really amazing is that I'm still amazed by how stupid some people are.

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CHOCOLATE CITY

Lyrics to the Parliament song "Chocolate City" (G. Clinton, W. Collins, B. Worrell) 1975:

Uh, what's happening CC?
They still call it the White House
But that's a temporary condition, too.
Can you dig it, CC?

To each his reach
And if I don't cop, it ain't mine to have
But I'll be reachin' for ya
'Cause I love ya, CC.
Right on.

There's a lot of chocolate cities, around
We've got Newark, we've got Gary
Somebody told me we got L.A.
And we're working on Atlanta
But you're the capital, CC

Gainin' on ya!
Get down
Gainin' on ya!
Movin' in and on ya
Gainin' on ya!
Can't you feel my breath, heh
Gainin' on ya!
All up around your neck, heh heh

Hey, CC!
They say your jivin' game, it can't be changed
But on the positive side,
You're my piece of the rock
And I love you, CC.
Can you dig it?

Hey, uh, we didn't get our forty acres and a mule
But we did get you, CC, heh, yeah
Gainin' on ya
Movin' in and around ya
God bless CC and its vanilla suburbs

Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya! (heh!)
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
What's happening, blood?
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!

Yeah!
What's happening, black?
Brother black, blood even
Yeah-ahh, just funnin'

Gettin' down

Ah, blood to blood
Ah, players to ladies
The last percentage count was eighty
You don't need the bullet when you got the ballot
Are you up for the downstroke, CC?
Chocolate city
Are you with me out there?

And when they come to march on ya
Tell 'em to make sure they got their James Brown pass
And don't be surprised if Ali is in the White House
Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure
Richard Pryor, Minister of Education
Stevie Wonder, Secretary of FINE arts
And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady
Are you out there, CC?
A chocolate city is no dream
It's my piece of the rock and I dig you, CC
God bless Chocolate City and its (gainin' on ya!) vanilla suburbs
Can y'all get to that?
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Easin' in
Gainin' on ya!
In yo' stuff
Gainin' on ya!
Huh, can't get enough
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Be mo' funk, be mo' funk
Gainin' on ya!
Can we funk you too
Gainin' on ya!
Right on, chocolate city!

Yeah, get deep
Real deep
Heh
Be mo' funk
Mmmph, heh
Get deep
Bad
Unh, heh
Just got New York, I'm told

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THE IMMORALITY OF PERSONAL WEALTH

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Preaching a Gospel of Wealth in a Glittery Market, New York

"Remember," said Mr. Dollar, a familiar figure across the country because of his "Changing Your World" television show and best-selling books, "if you sow a seed on a good ground, you can expect a harvest."

Mr. Dollar, whose Rolls-Royces, private jets, million-dollar Atlanta home and $2.5 million Manhattan apartment, furnish proof to his followers of the validity of his teachings, is a leading apostle of what is known as the "prosperity gospel."

It is a theology that is excoriated in many Christian circles but is becoming increasingly visible in this country, according to religious scholars. Now, it is beginning to establish a foothold in New York City, where capitalism has long been religion.

Mr. Dollar - his real name - is the most prominent among a host of prosperity preachers that have put down roots in the city. He is quick to insist that he warns Christians to "love God, not money" and teaches "total life prosperity," meaning prosperity not only in finances but in everything from health to family life.

Click here for the rest.

I don't think I need to spend any time or energy arguing that this kind of thing is completely antithetical to everything Jesus stood for. In short, from a Christian perspective, this is blasphemy. However, I'm not at all surprised by this crackpot "Gospel of Prosperity." It's simply another sign of the times in which we live. The wealthy elites, who have owned and run this nation from its founding, have spent, for over a century, a great deal of effort in seducing American culture into abandoning it's traditional, anti-materialistic, Protestant work ethic, all in order to justify their own bacchanalian and brutal pursuit of mammon. Their efforts have succeeded wildly. Now, everybody thinks they're going to get rich; everybody thinks that's their right. Now, the most important of morals for Americans is the acquisition of wealth, which is so important that it generally trumps all that old fashioned stuff about compassion for the poor and the suffering.

Of course, the great irony here is that the vast majority of Americans will never be rich. (Hell, figuring that out about myself was probably the biggest factor in my political turn toward the left; it's way more difficult to support tax cuts for the wealthy when you're pretty certain that you will never be among their number.) They've been conned, dazzled by dollar signs and easy credit, into thinking that when push comes to shove, they're just like Bill Gates or Michael Eisner.

Which is just so not true.

From the Houston Chronicle:

CEO salaries now 400 times that
of an average worker's check

While SEC officials stressed the proposed rule does not limit how much companies can pay their top executives, commission members made clear they are mindful of the heights reached by executive compensation packages.

Commissioner Roel Campos of Houston pointed to studies that suggest chief executive officers now make about 400 times the salary of the average worker, up from 40 times a few decades ago.

"Are executives today 10 times better?" Campos asked.

Some compensation experts have warned that forcing companies to disclose such details will actually drive executive salaries higher, as top managers point to their rivals' compensation packages and demand similar deals.

But others predict the investor outrage when these totals are released will put the brakes on executive and director pay. That's not to say executive pay will decline.

Click here for the rest.

It's almost amusing that the above excerpted article is written in terms of "investor outrage," rather than in terms of "that ain't right;" that is, it's all about wealthy people's problems instead of everybody else's. Like I said before, from any serious Christian perspective, this 400 to 1 ratio is simply obscene. But then, I'm not a Christian myself, and I suspect that most of these wealthy people aren't either--after all, Jesus told the rich man that the only way he could go to Heaven was to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor; I don't see that happening anytime soon. So why do I think personal wealth is immoral? Simple: one only needs so much money, so many things, before one gets to a point of absurd redundancy; meanwhile, so many millions in the world go without. That's immoral. "But wait!" you might say, "people worked for that money! Don't they deserve compensation?" Well, yes, people deserve to be compensated for their time and energy, otherwise they're being ripped off. But why should one get so much compensation that it starves masses of people? Or makes them die because they didn't have access to medicine? Etc., etc., etc.

Look, I'm not saying that we do away with the profit-motive, which seems ultimately to be the engine that runs the economy. But the drive for profit has become an all-consuming cultural imperative which now overrides all other cultural imperatives. Profit ought not to be our religion. Do we really want to be like Star Trek's capitalist race, the Ferengi?


A real American

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TWO FROM UBER-TEXAN MOLLY IVINS

Well, it's the first day of class and I'm already loaded down with homework and rehearsal--in addition to the Tennessee Williams project we're doing at Swine Palace, I've also got to prep a new monologue and read the Bacchae by Thursday; man, it just never stops. At least it's all great fun.

Anyway, read these two essays from the always great Molly Ivins, via AlterNet:

Making Incompetence a Reality

In the case of the Internal Revenue Service, the problem appears to be more malice than incompetence.

Right-wing conspiracy theorists used to enjoy frightening themselves with the possibility that the IRS would somehow become politicized and be used as a tool by some nasty socialist like Jimmy Carter to go after their ill-gotten gains stashed illegally offshore. Always seemed like a good plan to me. Unfortunately, the only people who ever tried to politicize the IRS were on the right -- first Richard Nixon and now George W. Bush.

Hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have had their tax refunds frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, according to the IRS's taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson. Testifying before Congress this week, Olson said the average income of these taxpayers is $13,000. Olson and her staff sampled the suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.

Click here for the rest.

Hang in, and Raise Hell

Meanwhile, it's heartening to note that political nincompoopery is not limited to Texas. A couple of recent quotes out of Washington, D.C., cause the jaw to drop. Our very own Tom DeLay, upon announcing he would quit as majority leader, said: "During my time in Congress, I have always acted in an ethical manner, within the rules of our body and the law of our land. I am fully confident time will bear this out." Good grief, the man was sanctioned three times by the House ethics committee last year alone.

Equally stupefying is the attempted emergence of Newt Gingrich, of all people, as an arbiter of ethics. Gingrich has been going about the media, holding forth on the shortcomings of today's Republicans.

Let's see, that would be the same Newt Gingrich who originally started using the lobby as an arm of the Republican Party, right? Same Gingrich had the distinction of being the only House speaker to be reprimanded by his colleagues for ethical wrongdoing? Same Gingrich who was accused of misusing nonprofit organizations for political purposes, personally benefiting from political contributions, cutting a sleazy book deal and giving false statements to ethics investigators? Same Gingrich who was fined $300,000 for said lying? I thought it was that Gingrich.

They must really think we're morons.

Click here for the rest.

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So, the Abramoff mess is a GOP scandal after all

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page on the media myth of this "bipartisan" scandal. From the Houston Chronicle:

"There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff," Dean answered. "Not one. Not one single Democrat. ... There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money and we've looked through all those FEC (Federal Election Commission) reports to make sure that's true."

He's right, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps track of such things. Their analysis of FEC records shows that Democrats received about a third of the $4.2 million donated between 1998 and 2005 by tribes that had hired Abramoff to represent them in Washington, but none from Abramoff's own wallet.

By all indications, donations from the Indian tribes were no less legitimate than the donations any other individual, organization or industry with an interest in legislation gave to candidates. That's a shortcoming of campaign donation reports: They tell you how much money someone gave to a candidate but not why they gave it.

If anything, the tribes are one of the true victims in the Abramoff saga. Investigators say Abramoff referred to his Indian clients with racist slurs in his e-mails and represented some tribes while also representing their rival tribes who were competing for the same casino turf — the mother of all conflicts of interest!

Click here for the rest.

Here's something I wrote in Real Art comments last week during a friendly little argument with my pal Tara about whether the Democrats are involved in this or not:

It's hard to say exactly what, if any, Abramoff money made it's way toward Democrats--I don't think it's fair to say that the Indian tribes he ripped off are part of his machine. Now, having said that, let me state, for the record, my overall position. I think that Abramoff would have definitely been giving money to buttloads of Democrats if they were the majority party instead of the GOP. And buttloads of Dems would be lined up with their hands out, just waiting to be bribed. I feel certain that this particular scandal is Republican in nature, but Abramoff is just one lobbyist. What he represents, then, is a political system that is fully corrupt, which includes the so-called "liberal" Democrats, for whom I have little love. Really, they just got lucky on this one. Fuck them, too. However, given the extreme hostility and polarity of the politics here, for the moment I'm pushing GOP guilt.

In other words, I essentially agree with you: the Democrats are also mired in corruption and corporate cash. But you've got to admit that this whole Abramoff thing looks waaay worse for the Republicans.

So while the Democrats aren't at all off the hook for playing the same kind of game in their own way, this one is all about the Republicans, and, boy, I'm just loving it!

For the entire exchange between me and Tara, click here.

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Worries about Iraq, politicians grow

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

But the violence in Iraq has continued, before and after the latest round of elections in mid-December. And high-profile politicians in this country have been ensnared by scandal.

When people were asked in an open-ended question to name the nation's top problem, 25 percent named war, close to the level in October, but up from 19 percent in July. The number of people who named political leaders as the most important problem has almost tripled, from 5 percent in July to 14 percent as the new year starts.

Click here for the rest.

I've also read that Bush lost his recent "amazing" five percent bump in the polls and is now back in the thirties. I must admit that it's pretty weird for the general public to be catching up with where the left has been for several years now. The article seems to be trying to frame this shifting of priorities as being a function of an improved economy, but I don't buy it: wages are stagnant during this "recovery," jobs are still lagging way behind where they ought to be by now, and lack of access to health care continues to force middle income families into bankruptcy. No, this shift in public opinion has nothing to do with the so-called "improving" economy. Rather, people are starting to see the writing on the wall. Iraq rages on with no end in sight, and it's more clear than ever that our reasons for being there are totally bogus. The Abramoff scandal, the DeLay scandal, the NSA scandal, the CIA leak scandal, and all the bullshit associated with them make it obvious that we are being led by a pack of crooks and liars; remember all the trouble Kerry got into back in '04 for getting caught on tape calling the Bush administration a bunch of criminals? Turns out he was absolutely right, and it's not just Republicans in the White House, either. And now people are starting to figure it all out. Cool.

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MLK Day: Dreams and nightmares

From ZNet, the text of a speech by University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen about Martin Luther King Jr.'s true legacy:

So, we find ourselves today in an odd place: In a country in which we routinely repeat the phrase “God bless America” with no sense of shame; in which conventional politicians all clamor to be “tough” on national security and support bloated military budgets; in which the shopping mall is the real temple where people go to worship -- in that country, King is a hero. That means the King who condemned not only racism but nationalism, militarism, and materialism has to be pushed aside, forgotten -- “whitewashed,” if you’ll allow the term. King’s radical political analysis and vision have to be rendered invisible if we are to name a holiday after him. After years of calling him a traitor and a troublemaker, white America is willing to allow King is to serve as the icon for a national quest for racial justice, but only so long as we don’t actually listen to what he had to say or take it seriously.

None of this is surprising; it’s the nature of power: When faced with demands for justice by a movement of oppressed people, dominant groups tend to concede only as much as necessary to relieve the pressure. When enough time has passed and the threat to the system has been contained, then the importance of the movement and some of its leaders can be acknowledged, but only if their legacy can be constructed in a way that doesn’t undermine the existing distribution of power.

Click here for the rest.

Make no mistake about it, King wasn't simply a great speaker who said nice things about black children and white children holding hands: rather, he was, by the end of his life and career, a total radical who understood that you cannot truly have racial justice if it is not accompanied by social justice in general. That's why conservatives in the 60s branded him as a communist. That's why the FBI illegally tapped his phone (which is a damned good reason why we have to nail Bush on this NSA thing; it's just too tempting for Presidents to use such power against political opponents). Many believe that's why he was murdered.

I think that a lot of white people think of King as being a great man, but also kind of believe that revering him is more of a black thing. Not true. King was, is, a hero to all people, especially to the oppressed and downtrodden. You'll probably hear on radio and television tomorrow King speak that well known phrase "I have a dream" at least a couple of times. Don't forget that his dream also included ending the ravages of war, the savage inequities of modern capitalism, and the spiritual vacancy of American materialism.


Arrested at a sit-in, Montgomery, Alabama, 1958.

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HOUSE OF CARDS ECONOMY
Danger time for America

From the Economist courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

The economy's greater flexibility may indeed provide a shock-absorber. A spurt in productivity has also boosted growth. But the main reason why America's growth has remained strong in recent years has been a massive monetary stimulus. The Fed held real interest rates negative for several years, and even today real rates remain low. Thanks to globalisation, new technology and that vaunted flexibility, which have all helped to reduce the prices of many goods, cheap money has not spilled into traditional inflation, but into rising asset prices instead—first equities and now housing. The Economist has long criticised Mr Greenspan for not trying to restrain the stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s, and then, after it burst, for inflating a housing bubble by holding interest rates low for so long (see article). The problem is not the rising asset prices themselves but rather their effect on the economy. By borrowing against capital gains on their homes, households have been able to consume more than they earn. Robust consumer spending has boosted GDP growth, but at the cost of a negative personal saving rate, a growing burden of household debt and a huge current-account deficit.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I don't post these anti-capitalist bits of info in order to show that I know of a better system. Indeed, it strikes me that pretty much any economic orthodoxy is prone to a great deal of error. Rather, I post this stuff to show that, for much of the subject matter that we collectively call "economics," the experts literally have no idea what they're doing, despite all their titles and degrees. "Trust us," they say. "We know better than you." And most Americans do trust the experts, because most Americans understand very little about the field--thank you very much, shoddy indoctrinational public schools.

Consequently, many of the most important questions facing the public are answered by a class of people who are often just winging it. Even when the experts do seem to have the economy humming along nicely, most of the benefits from that are gained by those who are already quite wealthy, and that's where the biggest part of the problem lies: most economists are theologians and missionaries for free market fundamentalism, a.k.a. neo-liberalism, a.k.a. capitalism. That is, their worldview is shaped by the class of wealthy elites they serve, which usually means that their assumptions, conclusions, and priorities are heavily skewed in that direction. In other words, their analysis is screwed up because they don't really think, work, and live in the real world.

So, I guess my bottom line here is to ask, if American economists work exclusively for the minority of the opulent, and, in doing that, tend to offer bogus policy recommendations that ultimately sow the seeds of recession a cycle or two down the line, which screws over average citizens all the more, why the hell do economists have any clout at all?

For more on my love-hate affair with economics, click here.

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DELAY'S MACHINE
If You Don’t Know About
the K Street Project,
You Don’t Know Jack

From Think Progress courtesy of BuzzFlash:

In 1994, the right wing gained control over the House of Representatives on the strength of a series of reforms embodied in the so-called “Contract with America.” The contract ostensibly “aimed to restore the faith and trust of the American people in their government” and end the “cycle of scandal and disgrace” in government. A year later, then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) was already plotting to breach that contract by undertaking a project to develop cozier relations with Washington, D.C. lobbyists.

High-minded policy goals would take a backseat in DeLay’s pay-to-play system where the success of lobbyists would be dictated not by how compelling a case they could make, but rather by how willing they would be to line the pockets of DeLay and his colleagues. Conceptualized as a tool for the right-wing preservation of power, the “K Street Strategy,” as it became known, created the culture in which Jack Abramoff’s criminal activity was encouraged and rewarded.

Click here for the rest.

This brief essay is must reading if you want the context for all these DeLay and Abramoff scandals. I first read about the K Street Project back in 2003 and was pretty amazed by what was going on. My first thought was that the whole scheme was more complicated than I was willing to write about, so I just let it lie for a few years, but now that crooked lobbying has taken center stage in the mainstream media, it's probably time for me to comment on it. The reality is that the essence of the scam isn't so complicated: Tom DeLay managed to turn lobbyists into fundraisers by way of extortion. That is, under his leadership, Republicans in Congress refused to even talk to lobbyists who didn't fork over tons of cash to their campaign coffers and provide lucrative jobs for Congressional cronies--insisting that lobbying firms hire only Republicans served to shore up the system over the long term. In return, GOP Congressmen passed the laws the lobbyists wanted, making the whole thing, ultimately, a mutually beneficial bribery machine.

Anyway, it's all explained much better, with lots of links to evidence, by the essay excerpted above. Go check it out.

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Troubles erode DeLay's support in 22nd District

From the Houston Chronicle:

A criminal indictment and continuing investigations have severely eroded support for U.S. Rep Tom DeLay in his district, most notably among Republicans who have voted for him before, according to a Houston Chronicle poll.

Only half of those who cast ballots for DeLay in 2004 said they will do so again. And while a fourth of the 2004 DeLay voters still aren't sure whom they will vote for this year, almost 20 percent have defected to other candidates.

Responding to the poll this evening, DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty said the result is "contrary to the strong support we're seeing for Congressman DeLay throughout the district."

Click here for the rest.

Oh my god! This is great!

Of course, I'm very happy that DeLay, who recently lost his House leadership position, now stands a very good chance of losing his seat outright. But there is more significance to this poll than meets the eye: it shows that Texas Republicans, the staunchest of the staunch, have their breaking point. Tom DeLay has safely held his seat in Sugarland, a bland and materialistic suburb of Houston, for twenty years. They've loved this guy, and the Republican majority there really loved him. And they've supported his loony right-wing extremism for that long, too. For years, it seemed like there was no position too bizarre that DeLay could take that would alienate his constituents. Even while his corruption scandals have bubbled up over the past two years, voters there have written it all off as politics.

But not now.

It appears that the triple whammy of multiple admonitions by the House Ethics Committee, multiple indictments in Austin for campaign finance corruption, and his close relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff have finally made the people of Sugarland come to realize what all sane Americans already know--Tom DeLay is a criminal, and his "conservatism" is simply a fraud.

So. Right-wing Americans can be persuaded, apparently. All it takes is about a hundred times more evidence than it would take to convince anybody else of anything else. The evidence must be flamboyant, obvious, over-the-top, and whatever other extreme adjectives you can imagine. The corporate media must pound away at that evidence, day after day, until even the left wing is bored with it.

And that's how you can change a conservative's mind. It's a lot of work, I know, but it is possible, and that's something. Right?

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"Reid drops a giant stink bomb in DeLay's hometown paper."

Above quote and below excerpt courtesy of Eschaton. From the Houston Chronicle opinion section, an anti-DeLay essay by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:

In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.

Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family's station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.

My term on the gaming commission came to an end in 1981, and when it did, I thought I had seen such corruption for the last time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. It is not quite the mafia of Las Vegas in the 1970s, but what is happening today in Washington is every bit as corrupt and the consequences for our country have been severe.

Our nation's capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style.

Click here for the rest.

Well, my hometown's TV stations chickened out, but kudos go out to the Chronicle for not being intimidated by DeLay's Mafia style tactics. And good thing Atrios picked up on this essay; while I generally keep up with the Chronicle online, I haven't been reading the editorials lately--this flew in right under my radar.

And what a great essay it is. The DeLay/Abramoff style of political corruption is, indeed, very much like organized crime. The whole bribery-for-legislation thing totally depends on everybody involved keeping their mouths shut; likewise, if one of the central players does talk, the entire racket comes crashing down. Compare Michael Corleone's successful efforts to keep Frankie Pentangeli from testifying before Congress in The Godfather: Part II with the GOP's utter failure to accomplish the same thing with Jack Abramoff in real life. The only difference is the Corleone family's competence. And sense of honor.

Hell, at this point, I'd be willing to settle for rule by Godfather. I don't see how it could be any worse than what we have now.




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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Phil



Frankie



Sammy



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THE "N" WORD FOR WHITE PEOPLE

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Alito's wife leaves hearing room in tears

After sitting behind Samuel Alito for two days of intense questioning at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, she left the room during questioning of her husband by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

And Graham was trying to vouch for him.

Mimicking questions from Democrats, Graham asked Alito: "Are you really a closet bigot?"

The nominee said no.

Graham said, "No sir, you're not."

With that, Alito's wife began to cry. Then she left.

"Judge Alito, I am sorry that you've had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this," said Graham.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I'm sure that the overall stress from a couple of days of watching her husband being grilled like a tuna steak contributed to her breakdown, but it's very interesting that the straw that broke the camel's back was the suggestion that Alito might be a racist. Full disclosure: I very firmly believe that Alito is a racist. However, I also acknowledge that he's also probably the kind of guy who has no issue with race on an interpersonal level; Alito is an institutional racist. That is, he supports governmental policies which result in continued difficulties for people of color trying to advance their social status. He may very well just loooove black people, but clearly his legal philosophy is that they are essentially on their own, despite the fact that they didn't end up in their current position on their own--don't look to the government to help you out; it's not our problem.

It's amazing how so many white people refuse to acknowledge this kind of racism. To them, to us, the word "racism" is synonymous with Simon Legree, and white people just don't want to think of themselves that way. Thing is, at this point, I think most white people really aren't that way. Sure, there are still pockets of vile racial hatred here and there, but that sort of thing is far less of a threat today than it was fifty years ago. Why, the fact that whites so fear being called racist is evidence that American social norms no longer accept plain old fashioned racial hatred. But that fear has consequences: it enables the institutional racists to do their thing without criticism.

It works like this. Whenever some governmental or corporate policy is criticized for having racist consequences, the authors and executors of such policies shreik with outrage and indignation. "What do you mean? Let me tell you, I'm no racist." And they mean it. They're just fine with people of color. And their outrage is genuine--they don't want anybody thinking of them wearing robes and hoods. So the debate then becomes about whether or not the institutional racists like or dislike people who aren't white, rather than about how their policies screw people over. All substance is lost while the angry white people work out their emotional issues on cable news shows. This is a pretty fucked up dynamic, and this country's never going to get anywhere as far as racial healing is concerned until we can find a less cartoonish way to talk about race.

And that's not going to happen as long as "racist" amounts to the "N" word for white people. It's time to get over it, admit to this country's racist history, it's racist present, and get on with the task of changing things for the better. It's much better to ask "why do you think I'm racist?" than it is to freak out and say "I am not a racist!!!"

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HISD officials investigate strip-search of student

From the Houston Chronicle:

Houston Independent School District spokesman Terry Abbott confirmed today that a student at Harper Alternative School was strip-searched but said school officials had "reasonable cause" to conduct the search. The student, however, has complained that the search was inappropriate.

Click here for the rest.

When is there ever "reasonable cause" for a school official to strip search a student? The answer is clearly "never." Teachers and principals aren't cops, for god's sake. However, this rather extreme example shows that, institutionally, there are massive incentives to make these people think that they are, indeed, cops. I've written exhaustively about how the authoritarian culture of public schools overwhelms any true educational concerns and results in what amounts to zones of American totalitarianism. That is, schools are mini police states, even though most people don't think of them that way. As a teacher, I, myself, all the while understanding the institutional dynamic taking place, found myself often seized by a strange rule-enforcement zeal: it's pretty infectious in that atmosphere, and "educators" often cross ethical lines while trying to live up to the strong mandate of obedience and authoritarianism. I'm sure that the HISD employee behind the strip search believed he was just doing his job, and trying to do it well. This time it looks as though laws were broken, but what about the countless humiliations and years of anti-democratic social conditioning that aren't illegal? Why isn't anybody reporting about that?

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BIG EASY JUNK FOOD RETURNS
And Hubig's Said, Let Them Eat Pie

From the New York Times:

This city savors some pleasures not so much for what they are as for what they were.

Thus the local esteem for the Hubig's Pie, a glazed turnover of fried dough and fruit filling, sugary-sweet, palm-size, modest in its aspirations but, since the 1920's, unaltered. And, until Hurricane Katrina, never absent.

But for four months now, New Orleans has done painfully without: Hubig's lost half its employees and a third of its trucks, and returned to huge cracks in its ancient bakery.

Monday, the pies were back. All over town, any driver the Simon Hubig Company could find walked into whatever grocery stores were open, bearing cardboard trays of pies, palm up.

Click here for the rest.

I can't wait until they start shipping to Baton Rouge again.

Since Katrina, each trip to a convenience store here, seeing that there are no Hubig's Pies for sale, has been a sad reminder of what's happened to New Orleans . It's like Scrooge's vision of Tiny Tim's empty stool in the corner reminding the Cratchit family of his death. For a while there it was particularly poignant. Back in September, I would be like, "I'll just pick me up a Hubig's and...oh yeah...there aren't any Hubig's Pies anymore; there's not a New Orleans anymore." But as the Big Easy rebuilds, things are getting back to normal. Very slowly.

This is a good sign.

You might wonder why I even give a crap about a cheap-o fried pie in the first place. Well, obviously, these fried pies are pretty damned good. I mean, it's not like they're the greatest pastries known to man or anything, but they beat the hell out of any prepackaged dessert item I've ever had by miles and miles. Really. Look, I know that you may have the urge to write my assertions off as coming from the kind of nerdy weirdo you knew in high school who had a strange taste for Twinkies or Ding-Dongs, but it's not like that at all. Prepackaged desserts suck bigtime. That's why Hubig's Pies are so amazing: they don't suck. And for 89 cents a pop...well...that's just one of the fringe benefits of living so close to New Orleans--apparently, this is the only area where they're available.

So this makes me happy. It's a visible and eatable symbol of my favorite city's struggle to rebuild. Hooray! Hubig's is back!


Yum.

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THIS MONTH'S STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE IS...



Captain Kirk! "Above all else, a god needs compassion!"

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FAREWELL HUGH THOMPSON JR
A Real American War Hero

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai.

They landed the helicopter in the line of fire between American troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pointed their own guns at the U.S. soldiers to prevent more killings.

Colburn and Andreotta had provided cover for Thompson as he went forward to confront the leader of the U.S. forces. Thompson later coaxed civilians out of a bunker so they could be evacuated, and then landed his helicopter again to pick up a wounded child they transported to a hospital. Their efforts led to the cease-fire order at My Lai.

In 1998, the Army honored the three men with the prestigious Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy. It was a posthumous award for Andreotta, who had been killed in battle three weeks after My Lai.

And

For years Thompson suffered snubs and worse from those who considered him unpatriotic. He recalled a congressman angrily saying that Thompson himself was the only serviceman who should be punished because of My Lai.

Click here for the rest.

The My Lai Massacre was horrible, but it was only one atrocity performed by US servicemen in Vietnam among many. Given that killing civilians was so commonplace there, it was an act of extreme bravery for Thompson and his comrades to do what they did--there was a very good chance that the troops they were confronting might shoot them; after all, "fragging" was on the rise at this point, so there's no reason to believe that they were safe just because they were Americans. But that's what morality is all about. Don't ask "what would Jesus do?" Rather, ask "what would Jesus do with a gun at his head?" Morality isn't safe or comfortable, isn't about doing good if you feel like it. It's about risking everything in order to do the right thing. I hope that, if I'm ever in such a situation, I'm as much of a man as Thompson was.

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IF THE DEMOCRATS DON'T FILIBUSTER
ALITO THEY'RE TOTALLY WORTHLESS

Here's only part of what's on the line; from Democracy Now, former NARAL leader Kate Michelman talks about her own abortion story during the days before Roe v Wade:

But I was told by a doctor that I could apply to a hospital for a therapeutic abortion. But to get this therapeutic abortion, I had to be rendered unfit. I had to be medically designated as needing an abortion in order to get this hospital abortion. I went through a hospital board review, a panel of four men, two different interrogations that probed the most intimate details of my life. It was humiliating and degrading. They finally granted me permission to have this therapeutic abortion. And just as I was about to have the procedure, almost, I was told that they had forgotten one more legal requirement, and that was that I needed the permission of my husband.

I was -- I said, “You can't be serious. My husband has left us. I don't even know where he is.” And they said, “That is the law. You need the permission or we cannot do the procedure.” I had to leave the hospital and find my husband, who did give me his written permission, but it was a further humiliation and degradation. And so, when Judge Alito, in his opinion in the Casey decision in 1991, you know, wrote that the state requiring women to notify their husbands imposes no burden, no undue burden on women, and what does it matter anyway, because most women do involve their husbands voluntarily, so it would only be a few women who would be affected, I found that, obviously, personally and deeply disturbing, but outraged over his, again, lack of understanding about how these laws impact on the dignity and the self-respect of women and on our rights and our freedoms.

Click here to read, watch, or listen to the rest.

Alito is on record, again and again, as being opposed to abortion rights, not to mention a host of other civil rights, like, oh say, the right not to be wiretapped without a warrant. His assertion during nomination hearings earlier today that he firmly supports the concept of stare decicis is not at all compelling: he's also said that his anti-abortion statements in the past were lies on job applications. Well, he's essentially applying for the biggest job of his life now; why on earth should anyone believe that he's not lying today? The more you look at this guy, the worse he gets. He's also big on allowing corporations to pollute the environment, to save money by disregarding safety regulations for workers, and to pay sub-minimum wages. He's straight-up evil. If the Democrats in the Senate don't have the balls to filibuster this guy if that's what it comes to, then they're totally worthless, and so is the entire party.

They'd better do the right thing.

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Sago Mine Disaster Indicts Deregulation

From the Progressive:

But this mine disaster is an indictment not just of a company but of a philosophy—the philosophy of deregulation, which Bush and the Republican Party and libertarians have been promoting at every turn.

This is what happens when you deregulate industry.

People die.

This is what happens when you let companies act as their own watchdogs.

People die.

This is what happens when the penalties for safety violations amount to the gentlest of pats on the wrist.

People die.

“The Mine Safety and Health administration issued a total of 208 citations for alleged violations at the site last year,” reports The Boston Globe.

“Most of the citations were issued before the current owners took over the mine in November, but International Coal Group Inc. was cited by the federal government three times in five days in December for allowing flammable coal dust to collect in a work area.”

Still, the Bush Administration didn’t shut the mine down.

Click here for the rest.

It's often difficult to see how government action affects one's own personal life. Washington is far away, and the people there argue about and struggle over issues that seem entirely unrelated to plain ordinary folks. But make no mistake about it: government actions affect your life. Oftentimes it takes decades for the effects to be seen, and even then it's hard to see what actually caused them. The guys who wrote Freakonomics assert that the dramatic crime rate drop in the 90s resulted from the legalization of abortion during the 70s, rather than from the economic boom, the bounty from which was mostly limited to a select few Americans anyway. A history professor I had at UT in the late 80s attributed the rise in numbers and visibility of street people to Reagan administration funding cuts for inpatient care at psychiatric hospitals. Deregulation of the banking industry, also during the 80s, has ended up with tens of millions of Americans up to their necks in credit card debt today. It remains to be seen what the long term effects are of Clinton's "ending welfare as we know it" ten years ago, but, rest assured, something bad will come of it.

Clearly, this mining disaster is the twisted bastard child of two decades of neo-liberal philosophy guiding governmental economic decisions. Yes, the mining company made more money because of deregulation and a lack of will to enforce existing safety regulations, but now twelve citizens are dead. And all the politicians who made this possible are just as responsible as the company itself. That includes Democrats. "Good for business" is a slogan whose time has ended. To be sure, business is an important part of the overall equation for making our nation function, but it's not the only one, and it's definitely not the most important. Really, it was stupid in the first place to reduce the nuances of important political debate to mindless platitudes that kind of sound reasonable.

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DEMOCRATS TOOK NO MONEY FROM ABRAMOFF

From MyDD courtesy of the Daily Kos:

No Democrat has taken any money from Jack Abramoff. Not one. To say that any Democrat is "keeping Jack Abramoff's money" is a lie, plain and simple. It would be one thing if it was a lie coming from a rightist squawking head like Michelle Malkin, but it's absolutely outrageous coming from the office of the Speaker of the House.

The pressure is on for the media to parrot the Republican talking point that the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. It's not. As Howard Dean did a beautiful job of pointing out to a disappointed Wolf Blitzer on yesterday's Late Edition, the Abramoff scandal is Republican, through and through.

And

But the reality is that Democrats in Washington, DC haven't been worth bribing for quite some time. They lost control of the House in 1995, with no serious indication (until this year) that they might win it back. They lost control of the Senate that same year, only to win it back briefly in 2001 before losing it again in 2003.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I guess I was wrong. I had been assuming that the reports that some Democrats had taken money from Abramoff were greatly exaggerated, but probably true, because much of the party went corporate back in the early 90s when Clinton's DLC showed them how to do it. Silly me. Apparently the money they did take came from the same Indian tribes that Abramoff had bilked out of millions of dollars--I think it's fair to assume that the Democrats, with their forty year history as a serious supporter of civil rights, were supporting Native American issues already, and, furthermore, it's pretty obvious that a hardcore GOP lobbyist who is on record as referring to Indians as "troglodytes" is not the same thing as an Indian tribe. So, like I've been saying, this is a Republican scandal. I'm just saying it more strongly now.

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A Dialogue with Donahue

From AlterNet, an interview with one of my favorite liberals, Phil Donahue:

KLUGER: Is it possible to be anti-war in this country and have your own show?

DONAHUE: Yes -- if you're a comedian. You can't report on the war and have your own show unless you're funny. It's got to be "I oppose this war….ba-duh-bum!" Don Imus is against the war, Jon Stewart is against the war. Bill Maher and Al Franken are against the war. They all have good consciences -- and God bless them all, I wish we had more of them. But what distinguishes them from the rest is that they're all funny, so they can have their own show. Bill Moyers can't.

Click here for the rest.

That's just one of the many reasons that I still love Donahue: this is a brilliant observation. Like the fools of the Middle Ages, who were able to speak truth to power only because nobody took them seriously, the only liberal voices allowed to speak plainly in the corporate media today are those that also tell jokes. I guess that's what happens when you have a king instead of a President.

But that's just a tease. This interview, mostly about the media, is all over the place and well worth reading. I've loved Donahue since I was a kid, and I have no doubt that he was a part of the gumbo of cultural influences that ultimately made it impossible for me to maintain my youthful conservative views. Today, I see him as a sort of liberal elder statesman. He doesn't have his own show now, but he's just as sharp as ever, and as a former media insider, has remarkable insight about just how bad things have become.

Go check out the interview. It's good stuff.



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Economists say cost of war could top $2 trillion
Tally exceeds White House projections

From the Boston Globe courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion after factoring in long-term healthcare for wounded US veterans, rebuilding a worn-down military, and accounting for other unforeseen bills and economic losses, according to a new analysis to be presented today in Boston.

The estimate by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes far exceeds projections made by the Bush administration.

The figure is more than four times what the war was expected to cost through 2006 -- around $500 billion, according to congressional budget data.

The new study is billed as a detailed analysis not only of the potential costs of sustaining the operation in Iraq for at least several more years, but also the expenses likely to be incurred by taxpayers long after US troops withdraw.

The government will have costly obligations to a new class of veterans, be forced to make new investments in stressed military ranks thinned by multiple tours of duty, and withstand the enduring impact of the war on the nation's overall financial outlook.

For example, the study attributes a portion of the increase in oil prices -- $5 per barrel -- to instability in the Middle East caused by the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and sparked a bloody insurgency.

It estimates that the shock to the oil industry has already added at least $25 billion to the price tag of the conflict.

Click here for the rest.

Why does this come as no surprise to me? I know: I am now infinitely accustomed to learning that the Bush administration is worse than I thought. Two trillion is waaaay more than what they told us it was going to cost, but it doesn't really do justice to simply state it. I mean, going a million dollars over budget is difficult to truly comprehend in terms of visualizing what the number represents, let alone a billion or a trillion. Look at it this way. Imagine being told that you're going to probably get a bit wet if you were to ride Thunder River at the now defunct Astroworld in Houston, but then finding out that the ride actually takes you to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and leaves you there. Without a wet suit or submarine or whatever. That's what this study is essentially reporting about the cost of the war. Bush told us all that we were going to get a bit wet in Iraq, but he actually chained weights to our ankles and dropped us to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. That's what two trillion versus 500 billion means.

And let's not forget that before the invasion, the White House claimed that the entire thing would cost only a fraction of what we've actually spent on it so far.

Just another reason to get the hell out of there right now.

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STILL THE SAME 95 YEARS LATER
George Bernard Shaw on Education

Looking for audition monologues earlier today, I happened upon a 1910 Shaw treatise called "Parents and Children." Overall, the essay appears to deal philosophically with the problem of raising children in an industrial society. Interesting, but not enough to get me to read the entire piece--it's longish. But then a section on eductation caught my eye, and I just had to check it out. I found myself amazed that his criticisms of schooling then are so extraordinarily similar to my own today.

Look:

And this is what happens to most of us. We are not effectively coerced to learn: we stave off punishment as far as we can by lying and trickery and guessing and using our wits; and when this does not suffice we scribble impositions, or suffer extra imprisonments--"keeping in" was the phrase in my time--or let a master strike us with a cane and fall back on our pride at being able to bear it physically (he not being allowed to hit us too hard) to outface the dishonor we should have been taught to die rather than endure. And so idleness and worthlessness on the one hand and a pretence of coercion on the other became a despicable routine.

And

To my mind, a glance at the subjects now taught in schools ought to convince any reasonable person that the object of the lessons is to keep children out of mischief, and not to qualify them for their part in life as responsible citizens of a free State. It is not possible to maintain freedom in any State, no matter how perfect its original constitution, unless its publicly active citizens know a good deal of constitutional history, law, and political science, with its basis of economics. If as much pains had been taken a century ago to make us all understand Ricardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world would have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the greatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive knowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either place-hunters, anarchists, or sheep shepherded by wolves.

Click here for the rest, and if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, scroll down to the section entitled "School" to get the bits on education.

Education is not about learning as much as it is about subservience to an institution or system which is hopelessly laden with the dual imperatives of authoritarianism and obedience. Indeed, the system itself is authoritarian, and "obedient" is the best thing that can be said of a student inside that system. Everybody involved in the public schools, from students to teachers to administrators to staff, believes that what they all do is for the purpose of learning. So pervasive is this view that many students don't think they're being educated if they're not slaving away on meaningless "worksheets" or other equally torturous, dead-end assignments--it doesn't matter if they're actually learning; it's the work that matters, getting tasks done in the specified way in a timely manner. Comprehension plays a role in that, yes, but a rather minor one in the grand scheme of things. Getting it done in the right way is what counts. That's what "learning" means to all these people.

But then, the day-to-day moment-to-moment reality belies such a belief. One has to realize that what actually happens in schools has very little to do with learning as popularly understood, that is, the mastery of certain bodies of knowledge and facility in analyzing and evaluating such information.

If school really was about learning, then all those days and moments would add up to an enlightened population. They do not. What they do amount to is a docile, self-interested public that knows nothing of our democracy or its role in it, but fully understands that if one is to get anywhere in life he must do as he is told. Just as we did in school. Education, as Americans know it, is simply a fiction: the reality is that the schools' main purpose is to indoctrinate children into the culture of obedience and authority.

You can call it whatever you want, but titles and names don't change what actually happens. And one of the most brilliant English speakers of the last couple of centuries knew this unsettling truth 100 years ago.

Why has nothing changed since then?

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LIZARD KING DEPOSED
DeLay quits top House post

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Embattled Rep. Tom DeLay today abandoned his bid to remain as House majority leader, clearing the way for leadership elections among Republicans eager to shed the taint of scandal.

In a letter to rank-and-file Republicans, DeLay said, "During my time in Congress, I have always acted in an ethical manner within the rules of our body and the laws of our land. I am fully confident time will bear this out."

At the same time, "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention," the Texas Republican wrote.

DeLay is battling campaign finance charges in Texas and was forced to step aside temporarily as majority leader last fall after he was charged in his home state. He has been trying to clear his name and, until Saturday, resume his leadership role.

And

DeLay acted hours after a small vanguard of Republicans circulated a petition calling for leadership elections and citing DeLay's legal problems as well as his long ties to Abramoff.

Republican rules permit an election to fill the vacancy, and aides to Reps. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Charles Bass of New Hampshire said on Friday that the lawmakers' petition would allow the rank and file to pick new leadership quickly.

"The developments with Abramoff have "brought home the fact that we need not just new leaders but a course correction," Flake said.

Click here for the rest.

Back in the 90s, before Bush stole the 2000 election in Florida, before 9/11 gave the conservatives a handy justification to rape and pillage the nation, Tom DeLay was riding high. Already a powerful Republican, he became even more powerful when the "Radical Republicans" came and took over Congress in 1994: that's when he kickstarted his illegal and corrupt money and influence-peddling machine that made scores of GOP politicians beholden to him. One can argue that by the time the House was impeaching President Clinton, he was at the arrogant apex of his strength. Around that time my old pal Brad and I ended up watching some CNN together while I was visiting Austin or he was in Houston. DeLay appeared on the screen, being interviewed about the impeachment.

Brad spoke from his heart, "I want him to die."

I countered with something to the effect, "No, that's bad karma. We should want him to be stripped of power and humiliated."

My old friend agreed that's much better than wishing death on someone, but to this day I totally understand where he was coming from. Tom DeLay has made a mockery of democracy. But now the chickens are coming home to roost. And it looks like the deposed Lizard King has egg all over his face. In effect, DeLay is now stripped of power and humiliated.

That's gotta be good karma. Or, at least, instant karma. Heh: DeLayed karma.

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LETTERMAN STICKS IT TO O'REILLY

From Media Matters for America courtesy of Eschaton:

LETTERMAN: I'm not smart enough to debate your point to point on this, but I have the feeling -- I have the feeling -- I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap. But I don't know that for a fact.

PAUL SHAFFER (Late Show music director): Sixty percent.

LETTERMAN: Sixty percent, that's just a -- I'm just spitballing here now.

O'REILLY: Listen, I respect your opinion, you should respect mine.

LETTERMAN: Well, I -- I -- OK.

O'REILLY: Our analysis is based on the best evidence we can get.

LETTERMAN: Yeah, but I think there's something, this fair and balanced, I'm not sure that it's -- I don't think that you represent an objective viewpoint.

O'REILLY: You have to give me an example if you're going to make those statements.

LETTERMAN: Well, I don't watch your show, so that would be impossible.

Click here for the rest, complete with video.

This transcript simply doesn't do justice to the exchange: Letterman tore him apart, which, of course, I loved. There is a valuable lesson here. O'Reilly, and pretty much anyone of his ilk, simply fall apart when they leave their carefully controlled media home turf. I'm reminded of how O'Reilly turned into a raving madman when he "debated" economist Paul Krugman last year on Meet the Press, or how, before that, he freaked out at some book event covered by C-Span because he didn't like what Al Franken was saying. What was surprising was that he kept his cool on the Late Show--I guess Letterman intimidates him; well, he intimidates me, too, for that matter. Anyway, the bottom line here is that these right-wing pundit guys are totally full of shit and can't even debate comedians away from their Oz-like reality-warping media machines. These guys are all smoke and mirrors, as is the vile conservative rhetoric vomiting out of their mouths every day.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Frankie and Sammy



Phil



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GLORIOUS!
TEXAS LONGHORNS WIN
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP


Texas QB Vince Young scrambles past three USC defenders.

From ESPN, who seemed to have the best overall article about the game:

Vince Young bounced on his toes, trying to buy himself some time and searching frantically for a way to win a championship.

And then he took off.

With the national title down to a final play, fourth down and 5 yards to go, Young scrambled untouched for an 8-yard touchdown with 19 seconds left and the No. 2 Longhorns stunned No. 1 Southern California 41-38 in the Rose Bowl on Wednesday night.

"Do whatever it takes," Young said.

He did it all -- and made sure that Texas was second no more to USC and its Heisman Trophy twins, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.

It was the ultimate revenge for Young, the bitterly disappointed runner-up to Bush for the Heisman Trophy last month.

Click here for the rest.

Personally, I think that a national championship beats the Heisman any day of the week--after all, football is a team sport. On the other hand, UT's quarterback Vince Young made an extremely compelling statement that Heisman voters really screwed up this year. Keeping in mind that Young couldn't perform his magic without very solid backup, I'm pretty much on the side of the countless sports writers who are calling his performance in the Rose Bowl the best ever in college football, maybe in all football, maybe in all sports.

That final drive was truly glorious. Actually, UT's last two drives were glorious. When they were down twelve points with only six minutes left, I was fighting an urge to change the channel in disgust. USC's offense had been virtually unstoppable in the second half. Even if we managed to pick up a touchdown, fast, how could we stop them and get the ball back with enough time to score again? How glad I am that I watched it all unfold--that fourth and two call by USC, along with Texas' defense stopping them six inches short really blew me away. Then the offense went to work, and it was over in a minute and a half. Masterful.

When Leinart threw that last incomplete pass and time ran out, it took me a moment to realize that it was over. I turned to Becky, who also went to the University, and said, "I bet Austin's freaking out right now." Seconds later, my older brother, also a Texas Ex, called me from Austin where he lives to share the glory with me. He told me that he was near campus, driving home from where he watched the game: it was hard to hear him through all the horn honking and joyous shouting in the background. Austin was, indeed, freaking out.

And they certainly deserve to celebrate. And so do I. So does my buddy Matt, also a Texas Ex, who sometimes comments here. So does every Longhorn in the world. It's been 35 years since our last national championship--when I arrived at the University back in 1986, those glory days were long gone by; the Longhorns at that point were but a shadow of their former selves. Now, after last night's dramatic victory, we're looking at what I believe is the best team in school history. Never have I been so happy about something that affects my life not at all.

Here's what I'm talking about:


Longhorn fans whoop it up before the game.

If you don't get it, I can't explain it any better than that picture.

Dude! We're the freakin' NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!!!

Here are some more stories worth checking out.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

Longhorns win first national championship since 1970

Longhorn victory jolts President Bush from sleep

UT Tower to get No. 1 treatment

Texas Grabs No. 1 Rank After Rose Bowl Win
(This also notes that my current school, LSU, finished with a very respectable #6 ranking.)

A glorious day-after for Horns fans

From the Houston Chronicle:

Texas stuns USC to win Rose
Bowl and national championship

On biggest stage, UT's quarterback steals show

HOOK 'EM 'HORNS!

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Texas 41 USC 38

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ABRAMOFF SCANDAL
Case Bringing New Scrutiny
To a System and a Profession

From the Washington Post courtesy of Eschaton:

Jack Abramoff represented the most flamboyant and extreme example of a brand of influence trading that flourished after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives 11 years ago. Now, some GOP strategists fear that the fallout from his case could affect the party's efforts to keep control in the November midterm elections.

Abramoff was among the lobbyists most closely associated with the K Street Project, which was initiated by his friend Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), now the former House majority leader, once the GOP vaulted to power. It was an aggressive program designed to force corporations and trade associations to hire more GOP-connected lobbyists in what at times became an almost seamless relationship between Capitol Hill lawmakers and some firms that sought to influence them.

Now Abramoff has become a symbol of a system out of control. His agreement to plead guilty to three criminal counts and cooperate with prosecutors threatens to ensnare other lawmakers or their aides -- Republicans and possibly some Democrats. At a minimum, yesterday's developments put both sides of the lawmaker-lobbyist relationship on notice that some of the wilder customs of recent years -- lubricated with money, entertainment and access -- carry higher risks. In the post-Abramoff era, what once was accepted as business as usual may be seen as questionable or worse.

And

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who with Weber's help effectively used issues of corruption to wrest control of the House from the Democrats in 1994, said the Abramoff scandal should trigger a broader review in Congress of the way politicians finance campaigns and deal with lobbyists.

"I'm going to talk at length about the need for us to rethink not just lobbying but the whole process of elections, incumbency protection and the way in which the system has evolved," he said. "Which is very different from the way the American system is supposed to be like. I think Abramoff is just part of a large pattern that has got to be rethought."

Click here for the rest.

What this article shows, and it's an article not an op-ed essay, which brings it much closer to fact, is that the US political system is rotten to the core--even Newt Gingrich thinks so. The successful GOP drive to take control of corporate lobbyists, "the K Street Project," essentially amounts to a mutually beneficial bribery machine. Couple that with the corporate money just hemorrhaging into political campaigns and it becomes absolutely clear that actual voting, the voice of the people, is now simply a formality: corporations choose the candidates and then bribe them into passing preferential legislation. More than anything else, Jack Abramoff symbolizes the end of American democracy.

One more thing. This article, like many other mainstream news media articles about this Abramoff scandal, observes that some Democrats are likely to get caught up in the storm. The implication, of course, is that this is a bipartisan scandal--well, okay, if "bipartisan" means a ratio of like 20 to 1, which it doesn't. This is a Republican scandal, and any Democrats stupid enough to be involved should get what they deserve.

Let's put all the criminals in jail.

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Bush returning funds linked to Abramoff

From the Houston Chronicle:

All told, Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for Bush-Cheney '04, earning him the title of Bush "pioneer.'' The campaign will redirect $6,000 contributed directly from Abramoff and his wife, Pam, and an Indian tribe Abramoff represented, to the American Heart Association.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan sought to put some distance between the White House and the scandal, saying Bush and Abramoff were not acquainted.

"The president does not know him and does not recall meeting him. It is possible that he could have met him at a holiday reception or some other widely attended event,'' the spokesman said.

Several lawmakers, including DeLay and more than a dozen congressional staff members, are under scrutiny in connection with the Abramoff case, federal officials acknowledged.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I've gotta say that my buddy Tara from LSU called this one in Real Art comments earlier today:

Just read about Bush sending $3000 to charity that may be connected to Abramoff. Muahahahahahahahahaha.

My sentiments exactly. I think the fact that even Bush has to make some sort of distancing gesture toward Abramoff shows the massive scope of the scandal: this is freaking out the entire right wing in Washington. Furthermore, it's total bullshit that the President claims to not know him. "Pioneer" means elite fundraiser, which means access, real access. Bush knows Abramoff for sure, as well as he knows former Enron CEO Ken Lay, and probably even has one of those stupid little nicknames for him. McClellan is lying through his teeth about how the President "could have met him at a holiday reception." God, I'm loving this.

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THE ROSE BOWL...

Starts in about thirty minutes. I'm getting my head ready--I don't want to have all the nervous excitement that I've had for big games in the past, so I'm making it okay for Texas to lose.

But I really, really, really want them to win.

Hook 'em 'Horns!

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BEGINNING OF THE END FOR GOP RULE?
Abramoff pleads guilty to federal charges

From the Houston Chronicle:

Prominent lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who had several ties to former House majority leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion charges,bringing a wide-ranging corruption probe to the doors of Congress.

As part of his plea bargain, Abramoff is expected to cooperate with prosecutors in their examination of the actions of several congressmen and their top aides. The charges could carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

The charges mentioned gifts and contributions to an unnamed House member who has been identified as Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Administration Committee, allegedly in return for favors.

Ney has not been charged. He and DeLay have denied wrongdoing.

Abramoff agreed with U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle when she said that he had engaged in a conspiracy involving "corruption of public officials." The lobbyist also agreed when she said he and others had engaged in a scheme to provide campaign contributions, trips and other items "in exchange for certain official acts."

Click here for the rest.

Truly, this plea bargain has the potential for being the Rosetta Stone of right-wing political corruption in Washington. That is, quid pro quo, or simply bribery, is almost impossible to prove in these cases without one of the players cooperating with prosecutors. But now that's exactly what we have. Don't let the mainstream media fool you: they're talking about this as though it is a bipartisan scandal, but the amount of money taken by Democrats, as well of the numbers of Democratic politicians and political hacks involved, pales in comparison to Republican involvement. This is a GOP scandal that stands to collapse their power structure like a house of cards--the real question is if the Democrats are willing to take advantage of such a gift; I'm still iffy on whether or not they're brave enough to do the right thing. Maybe the prospect of Tom Delay facing some serious prison time--the article notes that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle issued subpeonas earlier today looking for info that could connect Abramoff with the former House Speaker--will give them some courage. Even if the Democrats do fail as usual to jump into the fray, I feel pretty certain at this point that some truly bad guys are going down.

Now that's a birthday present!

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THE LAST HOLIDAY OF THE SEASON IS...

...my birthday, which is today, January 3rd. Actually, my older brother claims that the last holiday of the season is Elvis' birthday, which is January 8th. He may be right, but I think that's just too far away from the Christmas/New Year's Axis, so my money's on me.



Happy birthday to me!

(Velvet Jesus and Elvis painting courtesy of The American Mind.)

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Big Easy Sends Off 2005 in Style

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Ringing out one of the worst years in its colorful history, New Orleans put on a rollicking New Year's Eve of memorials and merrymaking, from a traditional jazz funeral procession in honor of hurricane victims to an after-dark party.

"Thank God it's over!" folk singer Arlo Guthrie said from the French Quarter, where he performed for the crowd.

"I'm so ready for 2006," Mayor Ray Nagin said.

Despite the widespread destruction still evident four months after Hurricane Katrina, the city welcomed the New Year with concerts, and in a twist on the Times Square ball drop, the lowering of a giant gumbo pot to mark the start of 2006.

As the countdown began, Nagin asked the thousands gathered to "just take a moment to remember all those people who did not make it to 2006."

Click here for the rest.

I was there. I didn't see the gumbo pot drop--Becky and I rang it in at our favorite place on Bourbon--but we did get to see Arlo Guthrie play, which was pretty cool. Among other songs, he covered Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin'" and finished with "City of New Orleans" which, predictably, received a huge round of applause. I'll write about all this later, especially because I've got lots of cool pictures, but for now I just wanted to say that there was a spirit of hope in New Orleans on New Year's Eve the likes of which I've never encountered. Most of the city still lies in ruins, but the will to rebuild, no matter how difficult, is definitely the prevailing attitude.

This was the most meaningful New Year's celebration I've ever been a part of.


Coolbone Brass Band plays for New Year's Eve in Jackson Square. (photo from the AP)

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
PEACH BOWL BLOWOUT
LSU stomps Miami, 40-3

From the Baton Rouge Advocate:

The Tigers (11-2) made amends to their fans and each other for a 34-14 loss on the same field 27 days earlier against Georgia in the SEC Championship Game, and they became the third team in LSU history to win 11 games.

They did so by scoring the most points allowed this season by Miami and by holding the Hurricanes (9-3) to their fewest points of the season.

That combination produced LSU's largest margin of victory in a bowl game, Miami's largest margin of defeat in a bowl game, and the biggest blowout in Peach Bowl history.

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I really thought I was going to be able to watch this game. As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, I've got what Cox calls "limited basic" cable, which means I don't get ESPN, which means I've missed a lot of cool games these last couple of seasons. But I knew that we would have cable at our guest room in New Orleans, and pretty much every place to which I've paid money to stay for the last ten years has had ESPN. Except this room. Yeah, I know, I was in the Quarter. Why the hell would I hang out in my room watching a football game when my own fun and games were waiting for me just a few blocks away? Well, LSU football is infectious, plain and simple. I suppose I could have found a bar somewhere showing the game, but I don't really get into that kind of scene. Instead, I monitered the stats in real time on ESPN's website, as I have for several other big games I've missed, and let me tell you, this game was kickass.

You know, I had pretty much developed the opinion that LSU's 10-2 record was a fluke, that they had gotten lucky. There were too many turnovers, too many close scrapes, too much sloppy play for them to be ranked as high as they were going into the SEC championship game which they lost to Georgia. But maybe the rattled-by-Katrina theory is more correct: perhaps the Tigers are great; perhaps all the hurricane spawned craziness caused the sloppiness. I don't know.

But how 'bout them Tigers!!!

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