Watergate figure Dean at hearing on Bush censure

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

John W. Dean, Richard Nixon's White House lawyer, told senators today that President Bush's domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss.

Bush, Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee, should be censured and possibly impeached.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented," Dean said. "Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

Republicans and their witnesses rejected the comparison between Watergate and Bush's wiretapping program, and attributed Sen. Russell Feingold's censure resolution to posturing in a year of midterm elections.

And

In fact, only two Democrats have co-sponsored Feingold's resolution: Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California. The rest have distanced themselves from the proposal, with many saying the resolution is premature because a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of the eavesdropping program has not concluded.

Click here for the rest.

This whole censure thing amazes me. Not the resolution itself, mind you, I'm really happy that Feingold's massive juevos continue to be a force with which to be reckoned. No, what gets me is how the two parties are reacting to it. I guess the GOP response is no surprise, but it's a wonder that they don't realize that conservatism itself, as the dominant American political philosophy, is now on the line--Bush's criminality and incompetence threaten to discredit right-wing ideas for at least a decade if not more. Why are Republicans so willing to drown with their leader? But if the Red State guys make me wonder, the Blue State guys piss me off. At this point, as the war in Iraq continues, perhaps indefinitely, after Katrina has made clear to the whole country that the Bush administration is simply incapable of providing us with "homeland security," and on and on, it ought to be clear that opposing the White House is nothing but a winning strategy. But, no, Senate Democrats continue to play it safe, which means, for them, losing, and are running away from Feingold's resolution as though...well...a good simile evades me, just fill in the blank with something really bad. What a bunch of pathetic losers. We'd all be much better off if both parties were disbanded and replaced by parties with real liberals and real conservatives. Ah, the stuff of dreams.

You know, it's ironic. The Republicans are dismissing the censure resolution as midterm electoral "posturing," but at the same time Democrats are criticizing Feingold because they feel his resolution is going to hurt their chances for taking back Congress in November; they think he's posturing for a Presidential run in '08 at everybody else's expense. Obviously, it can't be both. Here's my take on it. This has nothing to do with electoral politics: Feingold is pushing this because it's the right thing to do. I guess the politicians in Washington are so jaded they just can't believe that one of their own would do something on principle alone. Sickening.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



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LETTING THEIR XENOPHOBIA FLY
Opinions split over red, white and green

From the Houston Chronicle:

Reagan High School Principal Robert Pambello was ordered to remove a Mexican flag Wednesday morning that he had hoisted below the U.S. and Texas flags that typically fly in front of his school — a symbol he agreed to fly to show support for his predominantly Hispanic student body.

At nearby Hamilton Middle School, a child was asked to wipe off Mexican and U.S. flags painted on his face. Hundreds of other students carried Mexican flags during walkouts Wednesday — acts of protest that they vow to continue until Congress rejects legislation that would further restrict immigration.

"There's no other way to be heard ... It's not the best way or the right way, but it's our way," Reagan freshman Jose Lopez, 14, said of the effort.

The Mexican flag has become a lightning rod in the immigration debate that's consumed the city and the nation this week. Students say the flag represents their pride in the contributions Mexicans make to this country. Critics, though, said watching young Hispanics in the streets with the red, green and white flags is more than they can stand. These youngsters are in the United States and should — at the least — carry the U.S. flag, they argue.

"The whole thing just makes my blood boil," said Bruce R. Wing, a 52-year-old Missouri City resident. "I want them all out of here."

Wing said the Houston Independent School District should fire Pambello.

Click here for the rest.

I know both Reagan High School, where one of my education certification classes met, and Hamilton Middle School, where I interned. They're both in Houston's Heights neighborhood, a mix of Mexican-Americans and gentrifying white yuppies: it's not surprising that the Chronicle had to go all the way out to Missouri City to get a critical quote; the two racial factions in the Heights seem to coexist quite well. Indeed, the Heights, where my wife Becky lived for over a decade, and Houston's east side, where I lived for six years, and where whites, African-Americans, and Mexican-Americans live virtually side by side with very little visible strife, serve as a model of ethnic and racial tolerance. It is indeed possible for us to "all just get along."

The problems associated with illegal immigration are difficult enough to solve by themselves--the vested business and political interests which conspire together to exploit cheap illegal labor are powerful and not easily challenged. However, the xenophobia creeping into the debate makes a difficult problem that much more difficult. I don't think it's necessary to explain why fear of Spanish speakers is downright foolish, but I will observe that all of my interactions with Hispanic communities in the Houston area were always positive--obviously, very obviously, Spanish speakers are just like English speakers, some are cool, some are jerks, but they're all human beings. Yeah, it's fucking stupid that I even feel compelled to write that. I just don't get why so many non-Hispanic Americans get so stirred up about things like dual language ballots or the Mexican flag.

I think it's fair to say that mainstream American culture is facing no threat of extinction; the only thing I can conclude is that there is no rational basis behind opposition to Spanish speaking. It's just fear.

I have to admit, however, that I'm glad I'm not teaching anymore. I firmly support all these student walkouts--I displayed a Mexican flag in my classroom for most of my tenure. I haven't heard about any activism at the school in Baytown where I taught, although the above article does mention a walkout at the district's other high school, but if there was one, and I was still teaching, I would have found myself having to balance career concerns with moral concerns. That is, upon seeing so many teenagers taking to the streets in support of a just cause, I would have been majorly tempted to join them. Given the arrests and disciplinary responses coming down against these student activists, it's probably safe to say that any teachers joining in the fun would be dealt with harshly.

Anyway, good for Principal Pambello. Heh: "Principle Pambello." This is exactly the kind of man we need more of in public education.

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Turning almost 12 million illegal
immigrants into felons will aggravate
the problem and solve nothing

From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:

AFTER an intense debate that saw an unusually high level of Republican infighting, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected proposals that would have turned the 11 million or more illegal immigrants in the United States into felony fugitives. Members of the U.S. House, however, did not flinch: They passed a similar proposal by a wide margin last December.

Should such a large segment of the U.S. population be turned into criminals, how would their arrest, imprisonment and deportation be accomplished? The draconian antidrug laws passed in the 1980s should serve as a warning example.

Click here for the rest.

The Chronicle is absolutely right to observe that criminalizing illegal immigration will result in packed prisons along with ruined lives and families. I might also add that, because US prison conditions are racist and violent, such a law will also serve to create real criminals who did not previously exist. What this essay is missing, however, is the strongest argument that can be used against this bill: it's just plain wrong. The flood of illegal aliens into the US exists, by and large, because the federal government refuses to prosecute the crooked capitalists here who violate immigration, labor, and tax laws when they hire cheap workers, while at the same time doing business with and giving support to numerous corrupt crony-capitalist governments south of the border. We could end this issue right now without passing a single law--all we need to do is enforce already existing laws and inject some good sense morality into our foreign and economic policies. These poor, vulnerable people are being exploited, back at home where US supported government policy makes their economic prospects grim, and here where they are preyed upon by exploitative businesses. They're not criminals; they're victims.

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DeLay says he sees war on Christianity in U.S.

From the Houston Chronicle:

The Sugar Land Republican said some commentators — the "chattering classes" — will argue that there is no war on Christianity in this country.

"But in a sense, there always has been and always will be," he said. "Our faith has always been in direct conflict with the values of the world. We are, after all, a society that provides abortion on demand, has killed millions of innocent children, degrades the institution of marriage and all but treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition."

Despite those factors, DeLay said, "we have been chosen to live as Christians at a time when our culture is being poisoned. ... God made us specifically for it. ... Jesus Christ himself made us just so that we could live in this nation at this time."

Click here for the rest.

Okay, that's just too rich. Never mind the irony of a criminal like DeLay trying to take some moral high ground. The exact opposite is true; Christianity is waging war on America. Or perhaps I should say that Christian fundamentalism is waging war on the US, rather than Christianity in general--I know there are many moderate and relatively silent Christians who are sickened by what people like DeLay are doing in the name of Christ. America could really use the help of those quiet Christians now: the fundamentalists are wired into the GOP, which runs everything at the federal level, and are finding success in forcing their twisted values on everybody else through legislation. They really are at war, or, at least, understand what they're doing in terms of combat metaphor: they speak of donning "spiritual armor" while going to fight the good fight for Jesus. Man, just yesterday here at LSU I had a frothing-at-the-mouth evangelist screaming at me, and many other passers by, that we are "God haters," and condemned to Hell. They're the hostile ones; they're the ones who are literally trying to take over and remake this country into a theocracy. Sounds like war to me. And unless sane Americans figure this out, now, we may be all wearing birkas in the not too distant future.

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Abramoff sentenced to 70 months in prison

From the Houston Chronicle:

Assuring the judge he is working to become "a new man," disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced today to nearly six years in prison for committing fraud in the purchase of a fleet of gambling boats.

He will remain free while helping prosecutors with a vast bribery investigation involving members of Congress.

Abramoff, 47, and former business partner Adam Kidan, 41, received the minimum under federal guidelines: five years and 10 months.

And

He also agreed to cooperate in a corruption probe that could involve up to 20 members of Congress, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas. No date has been set for his sentencing in that case.

Click here for the rest.

Abramoff is a criminal of the highest order. Five years seems not enough. His crimes attacked the very nature of democracy itself, bending the will of the people by bribing their representatives. In my opinion, what he did is almost as bad as murder; he helped move the country further down the slippery slope toward plutocracy. And that's pretty damned sick. Of course, Abramoff is only one part of the overall plot to destroy America, a plot that has, by and large, already succeeded. Thousands of people are in on this--and I'm not talking conspiracy; this is done openly (see my post yesterday). The real fun's going to happen soon when Abramoff starts naming names. Maybe when a few of these guys go down we'll start hearing about some real reform. Nothing like fear to make the rats scurry. I guess the lenient sentence is well worth it, if only for that.

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Divide and Conquer

Another good post on illegal immigration from Greg Saunders over at This Modern World:

So the findings seem to suggest that there’s a nugget of truth in the xenophobic “they’re stealing our jobs” line in that unskilled workers are forced to compete with their immigrant counterparts, but the only “stolen” jobs are taken by greedy employers who want to skirt our labor laws and make a few extra bucks. The total lack of price reductions additionally supports the fact that there is no great economic incentive for this shift in the workforce. Sure, immoral businesses are saving money, but those savings are being put into their pockets, not passed onto consumers.

And

The struggle in the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere isn’t one between immigrants and Americans, but between the working class and the business/government entities that are looking for new avenues to cheap labor, even if it means exploiting ethnic tensions to turn people against each other.

Click here for the rest.

This echoes both what I and Mike over at This is not a compliment have been saying the last couple of days: the illegal alien issue has been constructed by businesses trying to make more money by exploiting the poor, both American and foreign. American because these businesses refuse to pay US workers what they're actually worth; foreign because they're preying on desperate vulnerable people. When you get right down to it, the interests of American xenophobes and the foreign nationals they hate are exactly the same. They both want to earn a living. It's the greedy and corrupt US capitalists, and the politicians who support them, that are their enemy, not each other. Classic capitalist exploitation; classic race baiting. They walk hand in hand.

Also, just for good measure, don't forget the US plays a role in the dire economic circumstances abroad that send so many people here illegally for work: our government supports both corrupt governments south of the border and the pirate capitalism which thrives in those countries. It's quite a good thing that so many socialists are coming to power in South America. It sounds like they're sick of this shit, too.

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How to Be a Lobbyist Without Trying

From Rolling Stone courtesy of Working For Change:

The activist handed me a printout with the details: "Please join us for Senator Burns's Birthday!!!" It was $1,000 a ticket for organizations, $500 for individuals. RSVP Amy Miller, the Bellwether Group.

It sure would be interesting to go to that party, I thought.

"So go to the party!" said my Friend in Politics. "Just say you're a lobbyist and go. Who's stopping you?"

We hashed out a plan. All I needed to do, he said, was print out a few business cards, and maybe -- for just-in-case verisimilitude -- type out a jazzy-looking fact sheet with a plan for some bogus project my "clients" would be pushing. "But make it as ridiculous as possible," my Friend insisted. "The magic words are: 'My clients will be seeking some regulatory relief' and 'Our project has an energy-independent profile.' Trust me, a guy like Conrad Burns will pop a boner in ten seconds flat."

Click here for the rest.

This is as funny as it is depressing. It's classic Rolling Stone political reporting, the kind I remember reading when I was a teenager, irreverent, personal, guerilla. It's important to note that it was written in the post Abramoff era: this shit is still going on, and apparently none of the hooplah and reform rhetoric amount to anything at all. This guy goes in with a fake story about drilling for oil in the Grand Canyon and actually makes some headway, gets a little "access" as they say in the business. This story is like something out of The Simpsons, but, sadly, completely true. Go check it out.



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THE JOBS AMERICANS WON'T DO

Responding in comments to my post yesterday on illegal immigration, my buddy Mike, who blogs over at This is not a compliment, had this to say:

the solution could be as simple as enforcement of current labor laws...

if firms hiring illegal immigrants were charged with not only hiring illegals but with a host of other labor violation s (minimum wage, reporting, tax, etc.) and we really made this a priority it wouldn't be long before the economic advantages of hiring illegal workers would disappear...

and it wouldn't be hard...

anyone who knows their own city even fairly well could point you to a few places to start looking for violations...

of course if the companies are forced to make good with back pay for violations of minimum wage laws, that $$$ should go to the worker, legal or not.

Mike's entirely right of course. The problem is entirely manufactured. The reason there is a demand for cheap labor is because employers are allowed to get away with ripping off a vulnerable population. And this is extraordinarily illegal. But why should I fumble through this when Greg Saunders over at This Modern World has already explained it much better than I can:

The key to unraveling this bullshit is that the anonymous laborer quoted above likely ended his gripe with “unless you pay me more”. The President wants you to think this is because American workers are shiftless elitists, but it’s the employers and their shills who are the assholes here.

What people like the George W. Bush don’t understand is that capitalism is not a one-way street. When the demand for workers is high and the supply of laborers is low, the rational solution would be for employers to raise wages, increase benefits, or both to ensure that supply catches up to demand. But that would mean actually spending more money, and we can’t have that.

Instead, employers have found a way to get around their obligations by employing “undocumented” workers (and thus creating a demand for illegal labor). Why are these men and women willing to do the same job that Americans are unwilling to do for less money? Well, they’re here illegally, for one. They probably don’t speak English well and have little familiarity with existing labor laws. They’re doing a job that’s unskilled while under the constant threat of deportation. Sounds like the new face of indentured servitude to me, but the President and his allies are trying to figure out ways to make it acceptable.

Click here for the rest.

This is a big rip off, of both foreign and American workers. You can put up walls, throw people in jail, and on and on, but the flow of illegals into the US will not end until American businesses are forced to obey the law like everyone else. But given the mainstream rhetoric on this issue, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Wisconsin Officers Stand Trial in Beating Case

Black residents were incensed when four months went by before charges were filed against white police officers accused of punching, kicking and choking a biracial man outside a house party.

The 2004 incident intensified racial tensions in this city that is 37 percent black and has some of the nation's most segregated neighborhoods.

With the trial of three officers accused of the beating set to start Monday, some say the animosity has eased. And the defendants and nine other officers have been fired.

And

In October 2004, Frank Jude Jr., two white women and a black friend went to a party at the home of police officer Andrew Spengler in a mostly white, working-class neighborhood on the city's south side.

One officer at the party accused Jude of stealing a badge. The four left, but prosecutors say a group of off-duty officers followed them out to the street and some of the officers beat Jude severely while using a racial slur. Defense lawyers say Jude fought when confronted outside.

Click here for the rest.

This is a classic Quis Custodiet story: arrogant cops, believing that their authority has been somehow disrespected, beat the crap out of somebody, showing that, for many of them, their elite status is far more important than the laws they are sworn to protect. Stories like this are pretty much why I do these kinds of posts. As I've said many times, there are countless good cops who take their roles seriously, but the police culture in which they operate creates circumstances, again and again, where they end up either helping bad cops do bad things or helping to cover up their brethren's misdeeds. Cop culture is corrupt and out of control. It is ruled by a sense of us-versus-them, where pretty much anybody, especially people of color, might qualify as "them." Furthermore, cop culture posesses a sense of arrogance born of the belief that putting on a badge clearly makes one a good guy; with arrogance comes a sense of infallibility, which is why so many officers think it's okay to break the law. They're cops--they are the law. I readily admit that we need police, but not like this. Cops are supposed to protect us, not prey on us.

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L.A. marchers voice support for immigrants

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Joining what some are calling the largest mobilization of immigrants ever in the U.S., a crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched here Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border.

Spirited marchers — non-affiliated immigrants alongside labor, religious, and civil-rights groups — stretched more than 20 blocks to City Hall.

It was believed to be the largest protest march in Los Angeles history, far surpassing the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants. Police said there were no arrests or injuries.

The demonstrators included both longtime residents and the newly arrived.

Click here for the rest.

And there were large rallies around the country on Friday as well, with more to come if I understand correctly. These bills being considered are real stinkers, and I wholeheartedly support these protesters' opposition to them. I mean, what does it mean to criminalize the aiding of illegal immigrants? Will I be busted for giving someone directions or a band-aid? That's bullshit, of course, and if this crap becomes law, I have no intention of obeying. I'm not a cop, god forbid, and I will not lift a finger to report anyone I think is here illegally. I don't believe it's a crime to want to feed your family. On the other hand, I think there are some legitimate grievances about illegal immigration. I know that many illegals pay taxes, but because so many of them make such low wages, there probably is a strain on social services. I also believe that illegal immigrants put a downward pressure on wages--personally, I don't believe the old adage that they'll do the jobs nobody else will; plenty of citizens will do shit-work if it pays well enough. But then, I guess I'm really arguing for universal health care and a massive hike in the minimum wage. Maybe these grievances are misplaced; maybe they're actually about the brutalities of cut-throat capitalism, which affect all workers in the US, citizen and non-citizen alike. One thing's for sure, as long as the US economic and political elite continue to deal with the corrupt crony-capitalists in Mexico and other Latin American nations without pressuring heavily for reform, the flow of illegals north of the border will not end. Because that's where the problem really lies, not with poor souls who are simply trying to survive. The US has some responsibility here, and the problem won't be solved until it lives up to that responsibility.



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SOME REPUBLICANS REALLY ARE LUNATICS

From the New York Post courtesy of the Daily Kos:

A Republican challenger to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is bizarrely claiming that the former first lady has been spying in her bedroom window and flying helicopters over her house in the Hamptons, witnesses told The Post yesterday.

Former Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen "KT" McFarland stunned a crowd of Suffolk County Republicans on Thursday by saying:

"Hillary Clinton is really worried about me, and is so worried, in fact, that she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures," according to a prominent GOP activist who was at the event.

"She wasn't joking, she was very, very serious, and she also claimed that Clinton's people were taking pictures across the street from her house in Manhattan, taking pictures from an apartment across the street from her bedroom," added the eyewitness, who is not involved in the Senate race.

Click here for the rest.

I don't much like Hillary Clinton myself, but I certanly don't think she has either the resources or the gumption to pull off what this weirdo is accusing her of. Clearly, this McFarland person is a real nut, paranoid even, and may want to get some therapy, or at least some good meds. But, oh my, how far we've come since the 90s. It is interesting that this report comes from the New York Post, owned by the same guy behind Fox News, Rupert Murdoch. Needless to say, the Post is as much of a shill for the GOP as Fox is. Back in the day, the Post, as well as Fox, was completely willing to take at face value pretty much any crazy claim about the Clintons that came along. Murder, wild drug orgies, bizarre witchcraft and lesbianism, child molestation, you name it, it was all fair game if the accusations were directed at Bill or Hillary. So what's the deal now? Helicopters and spying strike me as being much more credible than the mud being slung in the 90s. I wonder why they've decided to take the moral high road with this one. I guess they just don't care anymore: maybe the guy in the White House now has actually made them miss the peace and stabilty we enjoyed a decade ago. Who knows?

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Country star Buck Owens dies

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

His career was one of the most phenomenal in country music, with a string of more than 20 No. 1 records, most released from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

They were recorded with a honky-tonk twang that came to be known throughout California as the "Bakersfield Sound," named for the town 100 miles north of Los Angeles that Owens called home.

"I think the reason he was so well known and respected by a younger generation of country musicians was because he was an innovator and rebel," said Shaw, who played keyboards in Owens' band, the Buckaroos. "He did it out of the Nashville establishment. He had a raw edge."

Click here for the rest.

It's weird: even though I've never really been into Buck Owens, he's been a part of my life, all my life. When I was a kid, I watched him on Hee Haw with my Dad. His weird, goofy facial expressions and natural comic timing always made me laugh. When I was a bit older, approaching my teenage years and shunning everything country, I was blown away to find out that the Beatles had covered his hit "Act Naturally." A couple of years after that, I was further blown away when I discovered that the 60s garage band Creedence Clearwater Revival had referenced him in their song "Looking Out My Back Door." It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I started to get over my silly hatred of country and western music, which was really only about not wanting to be identified with hicks and rednecks, rather than the music itself. That's when I started taking Owens more seriously. Taking his work at face value, I was blown away again. His sound epitomized, to me, the classic country that had been playing in the background of my childhood years. It's great stuff, simple and unadorned, honest and cool, proving that an artist doesn't have to delve into T.S. Eliot territory in order to verge on greatness.

Here's a one minute sample of his song "Tiger by the Tail," courtesy of his website--god, it's great.

It's a damned shame that my cultural elitism, that is, my juvenile hatred of rednecks, kept me from really getting into his work over the years. It's time to change that. I think I'm gonna go get me some Buck Owens records as soon as I can make it to the mall.

Farewell Buck.


Johnny Cash and Buck Owens from an episode of Hee Haw

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Texas out with 70-60 loss to LSU

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Glen Davis scored 26 points, including a decisive 3-pointer in overtime, and Tyrus Thomas added 21 points and 13 rebounds today, leading LSU to its first Final Four since 1986 with a 70-60 victory over Texas in the Atlanta Regional final.

Click here for the rest.

Well. I would have preferred Texas, but LSU works okay. I guess. I don't even like basketball. For some reason, however, even though my current school made it to the Final Four, I feel the bitter taste of defeat. At least my Longhorn buddy Matt, who bet against his own school in his office pool, might have gotten a few bucks out of it. Man, that overtime period was hard to watch. Texas just fell apart.

Ah, hell. Geaux Tigers!

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
RON'S COLLEGE SPORTS NIGHTMARE SCENARIO

In basketball, that is, a sport which, admitedly, I don't really like that much, if only because I totally sucked at it when I was a kid. But very cool things are happening right now, cool things that have the potential to divide my scholastic loyalties.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Tigers surprise top-seeded Duke by
forcing Redick into 3-for-18 night

Tyrus Thomas high-stepped to half-court, turned to the LSU crowd and took a few swings with his fists.

Down goes Duke!

Down goes Duke!

LSU continued its magical ride through the NCAA Tournament on Thursday night, upsetting No. 1 seed Duke 62-54 in the semifinals of the Atlanta Regional at the Georgia Dome.

Click here for the rest.

Also from the Chronicle:

Paulino rescues Longhorns

In the season celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Texas basketball, Kenton Paulino etched his name in the history books.

Paulino drained a 3-pointer as time expired, sending the second-seeded Longhorns to a thrilling 74-71 victory over No. 6 West Virginia in the Atlanta Regional semifinals on Thursday night at the Georgia Dome.

As the shot swished through the basket, Paulino stood in a daze for a few seconds before he was mobbed by teammates. Game officials briefly reviewed the play, but the Longhorns already had begun to celebrate one of the biggest victories in school history.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, cool, Texas and LSU have both advanced to the NCAA Basketball Tournament quarterfinals. As longtime Real Art readers know, I got my two undergraduate degrees from Texas, so I'm a Longhorn from way back, but I currently attend LSU as a graduate student--it's been pretty difficult to not get caught up in Tiger mania here; this place is pretty spirited. So I should be really stoked about all this, right?

Here's why it's a nightmare scenario:

The immediate significance for the Longhorns: Texas is one victory away from its second trip to the Final Four in four years. The Longhorns (30-6) will play No. 4 seed LSU (26-8) at 3:40 p.m. Saturday at the Georgia Dome for the right to advance to the Final Four in Indianapolis.

Yes, that's right. The potential situation that had me slightly worried all football season long has come to pass during basketball season: Texas is playing LSU, and the stakes are extraordinarily high. They're playing for admittance to the Final Four. I want them both to win, but, of course, that's impossible--only one team will make it. So what am I supposed to do? Hope that everybody has a good time?

Nah. I figured this all out almost as quickly as I learned that I had gotten into grad school. Back in May of '04 when I announced here that I had gotten into LSU, and threw in an obligatory "Geaux Tigers" for good measure, my old buddy Matt, with whom I attended UT, reminded me of my heritage in comments:

Congratulations!

However, remember something. You are a Texas Longhorn. You do not cheer for crawfish-sucking, swamp-dwelling, Ricky-Williams trading, Gold-and-Purple clad foreigners!

Where's your head, man?!?

Momentarily shamed, I immediately understood what I'm about:

Matt is, of course, absolutely right. I'll go watch the Tigers play some good football next fall, but my blood is burnt orange, and that's the way it'll always be. I am, indeed, a Texas Longhorn, and I promise to not let weird, LSU mania go to my head during my tenure in the swamps.

Uh huh.

So you see, there really is no conflict, no nightmare scenario. I'm a Longhorn, damn it, always have been and always will be. I'm rooting for Texas tomorrow, and I hope to god the running 'Horns gore the intestines out of the Tigers, and leave their entrails all over the Georgia Dome, grossing out tens of thousands of hapless LSU fans. That's what I want to see.

Understand, however, I only want to see that when LSU plays Texas. Otherwise, geaux Tigers!

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Paz



Frankie and Sammy



(All photos today taken by my wife Becky. It's also her birthday today.)

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Don’t buy The Professors by David Horowitz

From This Modern World:

Seriously, it’s the same “radical professors” crap that conservatives have been whining about for years. We’ve seen this argument a million times before and it’s still as simple-minded as it was forty years ago. To conservatives like Horowitz, liberalism on college campuses is the result of political bias and intolerance for alternative views. While cherry-picked examples of political correctness run amok can certainly be strung together to support that thesis, there’s a more obvious answer that’s being overlooked by the egomaniacs on the right. When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you’re wrong. If Horowitz and his peers had the slightest bit of humility, they’d take the unpopularity of their views among intellectuals as a sign that they might need to reevaluate their views. But that would require flip-flopping and we all know how wingnuts feel about that.

Click here for the rest (which is essentially a plug for Tom Tomorrow's new collection of This Modern World strips, and worth checking out if only because he's great).

Whether in his 1960s guise as a Stalinist radical or his current one as a paranoid conservative extremist, David Horowitz has always been the same thing, a professional bully. His latest crusade is to root out the "intolerance" of conservative academics by colleges and universities. His central premise is that most professors are liberal, which is probably true if one excludes business schools and economics departments, and that the reason why is that schools systematically discriminate against conservative teachers. A corollary of this premise is that all these liberal professors are brainwashing millions of American students year after year into becoming wild eyed communist America-haters. This proposition is obviously absurd. Never mind the fact that most college educated Americans are not radicals. Most colleges and universities, especially the big state supported ones in "red" states, are run by conservatives who are well connected to business and government interests. There's just no discrimination to speak of.

Tom Tomorrow hits the nail on the head when he says, "When educated people disagree with you, it has nothing to do with political bias. They disagree with you because you’re wrong." Simply put, the reason there are so few conservatives in academia is because their views just don't cut it intellectually--the only place these guys can find employment is with right-wing think tanks or as propagandists for corporations. That is, there's really no such thing as a conservative "intellectual." The people who call themselves that are simply con men.

What Horowitz's crusade amounts to, then, is simply neo-McCarthyism. That is, bullying. And that's what Horowitz does best. I'm glad he's found his niche.

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SCIENTOLOGY'S UPSIDE?
Can't We All Just Get Along?

The always wise Rob Salkowitz over at Emphasis Added has found something good about the snake oil and bullshit "religion" known more popularly as Scientology:

That's why I'd like to take this moment to publicly thank the Church of Scientology for providing us with some common ground.

Liberals distrust Scientology because it's a weird authoritarian cult. Conservatives distrust Scientology because it's a weird authoritarian cult that isn't Christian. Conservatives are suspicious of anything embraced openly by Hollywood celebrities. Liberals are concerned about anything that has driven more than a few Hollywood celebrities visibly insane.

Click here for the rest.

And that's the only good thing I've ever heard about Scientology: they're so darkly screwy that opposing them creates common ground between conservatives and liberals. But then, what else can one say about a group that bases most of its teachings around the use of the pseudo-scientific device known as an e-meter? Just so you know, an e-meter is essentially a polygraph hooked up to a biofeedback machine, the kind of thing ten year old boys used to make out in the garage with spare radio parts. I'm personally much more comfortable with snake handling or speaking in tongues. The Scientologist rank and file are just plain nuts; the Scientologist elite are con artists, ripping off these poor souls for as much as they can take. They make Fred Phelps look good. Fuck 'em.

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The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil,
and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

From Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviews former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips about his new book that shows in exhaustive detail how the religious right's influence over the Republican Party affects, well, pretty much everything:

AMY GOODMAN: The war in Iraq was over oil?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: I think it was principally over oil. If you – and let me qualify that by saying I think a certain amount of the reason for the war in Iraq was a larger geo-strategic situation in which we were going to have to leave Saudi Arabia. And the way to develop an alternative oil supply and base was to aim at Iraq. Now, that went beyond purely oil as a consideration.

Another facet of the invasion of Iraq, in 2002, George W. Bush gave a speech in Texas, in which he talked about how Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate his father. So there you have sort of the family aspect. And lastly, the Middle East is a battleground of biblical Armageddon and everything. And that's swimming into play. A number of the religious right people talked about Saddam Hussein as the anti-Christ, and the Left Behind series, which is the Tim LaHaye 60 million sold context of the end times and Armageddon, while the Antichrist comes from New Babylon and Iraq, and the attempt was to portray Baghdad, Babylon, as the focal point of the end times, so that a whole lot of supporters of the administration, they didn't care about weapons of mass destruction. This was part of the unfolding biblical epic of the end times and the war between good and evil. And this is something that I get into in the book; it’s hard to explain it just in a short conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ve got some time.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, this is very central to the whole Republican constituency. What you’ve got is that 45% of American Christians believe in Armageddon, and the more religious ones, the fundamentalists and evangelicals more than anybody else. So, my assumption is that the Bush electorate is probably 50 to 55% people who believe in Armageddon and probably more or less the same numbers who believe that the Antichrist is already on earth. And when you have this backdrop and you have a president who got his start in national politics as his father’s liaison with the religious right back in 1987 and ‘88, you just have an enormous exposure to this whole psychological context and an awareness on the part of people in the White House that this huge constituency interprets the Middle East in this very unusual way.

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

Phillips moves seamlessly from subject to subject, from politics to banking and credit to history to the judiciary to oil, always carefully illustrating how fundamentalist Christianity lurks in the background, and finally concludes that the United States is facing for numerous different reasons several massive crises. The short version is that the religious right appears to live in a different reality where deficits, oil shortages, fiscal collapse, and the future itself have no importance. And they have massive influence over the Republican Party. And the Republican Party runs everything now. We're screwed.

Years ago my buddy Vince, an atheist, flat out rejected my assertion that the fundamentalists were a dire threat to our very way of life. "No they're not," he said, "they're just a bunch of lunatics, and I think most people realize that." Of course, my belief at that time, the early mid 90s, was probably coming more from the fact that I had recently quit being a Southern Baptist, and had (and still have) an axe to grind, than from any sort of political brilliance on my part. Nonetheless, it turns out I was right. The GOP play to these people hardcore; the religious right is one of their most reliable voting blocs. We're now at the point, after years of incremental increases in their political power and influence, where the fundamentalist vision for America is becoming a reality, and as my pal Vince correctly observed years ago, these people are, indeed, lunatics. Consequently, America is increasingly in a state of dangerous lunacy. That's not good at all.

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Scientology: Funny and scary
from msn.com
This is a little long, but it was all too good to cut.

The battle between Tom Cruise and Scientology and its foes is heating up.

Cruise and Scientology have been in the news lately because of an allegedly censored “South Park” parody of the religion— and now Scientology and the “Top Gun” star are being blamed for a woman’s death.

“Thanks, Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology, for your expert advice on mental health,” blasts an ad in LA Weekly. The ad goes on to say that a woman was killed “by the schizophrenic son she was told to treat with vitamins instead of psychiatric care.”

The ad refers readers to a Web site, which provides details on the case of Jeremy Perkins, a 28-year-old schizophrenic who stabbed his mother to death. Perkins was a staunch Scientologist and his mother was a counselor in the church — which opposes psychiatry and psychiatric drugs and “believes modern psychiatric medicine derives from an ancient alien civilization’s plot to drug and enslave humanity,” notes the site.

A spokesman for the Celebrity Center of the Church didn't respond to requests for comment by deadline.

So, I know this is tabloid crap and we shouldn't waste our time even thinking about the Hollywood rumor mill, but this religion is getting scary. Let's start with the rumor:

Unnamed "inside" sources have claimed that Tom Cruise threatened Viacom with refusing to participate in the publicity campaign for MI3 (let's pause for a minute and think about what a bad idea that is) if they re-aired the episode of South Park called "Trapped in the Closet." This episode apparently shows Nicole Kidman, John Travolta, and R. Kelly trying to talk Tom Cruise out of a closet (get it), as well as including other stuff that Ron post a few days ago. This episode was not re-aired, instead something about Chef's Salty Balls was re-aired.

This would be funny, if not for the allegation that one person's money can interfere with another person's freedom of speech. I mean, yes, this is kind of a trivial thing-- the episode has aired the first time, portions of it are on the internet (maybe the entire episode), the creators are not being told to stop saying anything, but something strikes me as really wrong. It seems to me Scientologists are starting to get REALLY out of hand. Maybe more than my favorite out of control religious group, the Southern Baptists. I couldn't (in a full two minute search) find the Southern Baptists trying to stop any episodes of South Park.

I hesitate to continue without saying that I think everyone has the right to believe (or not believe) whatever they want. And if Scientologists want to boycot South Park-- then more power to 'em, but when Scientologist (or Southern Baptists, or Catholics, or whomever) start to demand that the rest of the country live accoording to the belief structure held by that group, they have gone entirely too far.

This is why I get angry about Tom Cruise's constant public abuse of celebrities and their use of pharmaceutical and talk therapies. I know drugs aren't always the answer, but to tell others that using doctor prescribed anti-psycotic drugs makes them pawns in an ancient alien plot to enslave humanity is wrong! Does anyone else remember Oprah getting sued by the beef people for saying mad cow stopped her from eating burgers? Can't the pharmeceutical people sue Tom Cruise and Scientology for being public menaces? I am infuriated by this. And now it seems as though there could be some kind of suit for the death of the mother at the hands of her schizophrenic son. Ahhh... America. The land where you can sue a religion, but can't talk smack about it on an animated TV show. What will we think of next?

Bush: Troops to Stay in Iraq for Years

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of Eschaton:

Bush has adamantly refused to set a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Asked if there would come a day when there would be no more U.S. forces in Iraq, Bush said, "That, of course, is an objective. And that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."

Pressed on whether that meant a complete withdrawal would not happen during his presidency, Bush said, "I can only tell you that I will make decisions on force levels based upon what the commanders on the ground say."

White House officials worried Bush's remarks would be read as saying there would not be significant troop reductions during his presidency. They pointed to comments Sunday by Gen. George W. Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who said he expected a substantial troop reduction "certainly over the course of 2006 and into 2007."

Click here for the rest.

Wow. I've been asserting frequently lately that the US will never leave Iraq, most recently here. But I never expected the President to just come out and admit it. It's possible, I suppose, that some "future presidents" may defy my expectation and decide to get out, but that would surprise me a great deal--the ability to control the world economy by influencing oil markets with Iraq's massive deposits is just too damned tempting, to both Republicans and Democrats. There is historical precedent for this, too: it took the US ten years of brutal war against Filipino insurgents to stabilize American control over the Philippines, and then we stayed there for nearly forty years afterward. That took us through eight Presidents, from both parties. And there was no oil there, either! Anyway, Bush's admission is weird; his staffers certainly seem to agree with me on that.

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GLOBAL WARMING:
GOING DOWN LIKE NOLA
Rewriting the Science

From 60 Minutes courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

And Cicerone, who’s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.

"Climate change is really happening," says Cicerone.

Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: "Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all — the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple."

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled "not sufficiently reliable." It’s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And

Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.

"The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians."

And

"We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions," Hansen explains. "And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we’ve got to be on a declining curve.

"If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don’t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we’re going to, that there’s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can’t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can’t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control."

But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: "straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here."

Click here to read the rest. Video here.

This is all very frightening. So frightening that it's pretty difficult to imagine it actually happening. But we don't have to imagine. Here in Baton Rouge, we've got a real life model of how this is all going down just an hour and a half drive east on I-10. Most of New Orleans still lies in ruins after the devastating flooding caused by levee breaks during Hurricane Katrina, and it still remains to be seen if the political and economic will exists to bring my favorite city back to some semblance of normality. This situation, New Orleans in ruins, is the future of the world.

Global warming will not simply cause a few floods, won't simply make us all move inland a few miles: it will cause massive destruction on a Biblical scale, not just to property, but to the world economy, and virtully all political structures. Unlike the Big Easy, where there is at least hope for a comeback, there will be no rebuilding. The eventual loss of countless miles of heavily developed coastal areas will ripple into continental interiors as the people who live there, at an enormous disadvantage due to the devastated economy, deal with countless numbers of displaced people. There will be no place to put them, and nothing to feed them. Chaos will ensue, starting first with riots, then, most likely, civil war around the globe. It will be every man for himself, and the people with the most guns will win. But I don't think their prize will really be worth having. We're looking at Escape from New York conditions, a real Mad Max reality, complete with warlords and such.

Of course, all this will happen much more slowly than the drama that unfolded down the road, but the effects will be the same. It really doesn't matter how much warning we'll get, how much time we'll have to prepare. Because, like I said, New Orleans is a pretty good glimpse into the future. Everybody knew the "big one" was eventually going to happen there. But no one prepared. Everybody just tried not to think about it. Then it came. And because everybody was in intense denial mode, except, of course, for the people in the city dealing with the disaster's effects first hand, the only institution in this country that had the ability to do anything to help out, the federal government, did nothing for days.

That's what we're looking at with global warming. Everybody knows; everybody's in denial. We've got about a decade to take drastic steps to reverse this, but my gut instinct is that nothing will happen. And as we start to feel the first effects gradually creeping in, even then I bet nothing will happen. The first victims will most likely be left to fend for themselves, branded as being stupid for living in flood zones. The feds won't react until the hunger riots begin, but by then it'll be too late. We'll all be living in Hell.

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Stories

Atrios over at Eschaton offers a rare piece of extended commentary:

News, current events, whatever, is an ongoing story about the state of reality. It's an ongoing story with a cast of characters, a set of plotlines, a backstory. It's story told by thousands of different unreliable narrators, and every individual hears some combination of these narrators and then roughly synthethsizes it all into a basic narrative about what's going on. For a long time conservatives have had a very large and loud narrative generation machine, which has for its viewers and listeners been able create the narrative by emphasizing certain facts (true or not), by creating bad guys and good guy, by determining what the important stories of the day were, by inserting certain basic assumptions into the debate, etc. In other words, to write the story. And, this machine has been loud enough to have a big impact on how the less partisan media told their story, too.

Click here for the rest.

I hit on this subject only last month myself. The point, for me, is that, while most mainstream journalists honestly believe that they are trying to report objective reality, the truth is that they are only contributing to an overall narrative that is constructed, shaped, and molded by numerous influences, conservatives being one of the stongest, but reporters do their fair share as well, skewing factual events toward their own subjective understanding of that overall narrative. This idea isn't at all a new one; it's been understood in academia for a couple of decades at least. Strangely, well educated journalists either just don't get it or purposely ignore it--I'm not sure which. As long as journalists stay away from consideration of this sense of constructed narrative and how it is used in political debate, as long as they pretend that what they report doesn't play a part in this game, they're pawns of opinion manipulators. That screws America. Bigtime.

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Bill O’Reilly’s baroque period

The New Yorker writes a nice piece about my favorite asshole, Fox New's Bill O'Reilly, courtesy of Eschaton:

O’Reilly has been playing O’Reilly so successfully for so long, and has developed such a substantial library of hooks, tics, and subplots, that he sometimes seems to be parodying himself, or parodying Colbert’s parody of him; “The O’Reilly Factor” and “The Colbert Report” are a matched pair. Both shows air twice most weeknights—the rebroadcast of the previous night’s “Colbert Report” is on during the broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor,” and the broadcast of “The Colbert Report” is on during the rebroadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor.” With those hours, plus the regular anti-O’Reilly sallies of Olbermann and other hosts, and the relentless promotion of O’Reilly on other Fox shows, O’Reilly dominates cable news as much as Walter Cronkite dominated network news during his heyday, if not more so.

Click here for the rest.

While the essay is definitely an attack piece, and how I hope O'Reilly whines about it on his show, the one thing that comes through in this article more than any other is that the big butthole is wildly successful in terms of ratings. As far as the commercial television industry goes, that means he's a major money-maker for his employers. I've got to admit some small bit of admiration for him because of that. And not just because of all the cash he's generating for himself and Fox: there is a reason O'Reilly has so many viewers; he's great at what he does. He is, in short, an excellent showman, on the scale of PT Barnum, and he really knows who his audience is and how to work them. Hell, I really love hating him. He's a great villain, as good as Doctor Doom or Darth Vader in his own way. Let's face it, O'Reilly may be a nut, but he's damned good TV.

Too bad so many viewers take him seriously. That's why, ultimately, he's a threat to the entire nation.

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DROWING IN GRAD SCHOOL

Only temporarily, I hope. I mentioned yesterday that I'm working on a paper, and I'm totally exhausted by it tonight. I'm not even finished, which is okay, I guess, because it's not due until Wednesday, but I wanted to finish this weekend in order to have the next couple of nights free to work on other projects. So much for that. Anyway, I've got nothing for Real Art tonight; maybe one of my team mates, Tara or Miles, will jump in tomorrow morning and bail me out. Otherwise, Monday sucks here at Real Art this week.

Really, I'm kind of surprised that it's taken me this long to get into such a bind.

I did manage to do one thing. I listened to a podcast when I was showering of Friday's episode of Now: it's an hour long special dealing with the rise of governmental secrecy, covering the NSA wiretapping scandal, a couple of mothers who lost their sons in Iraq and have dealt with Pentagon stonewalling about it, and a mayor in a New England town who's getting the run-around about a liquid natural gas terminal being placed there. They don't have the video up yet, but they do have transcripts and supplemental articles, so go check it out.

Hopefully, I'll have a fuller post on something or other tomorrow.

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TWO FROM WORKING FOR CHANGE

Another busy homework day; I'm writing a paper on a book for my movement class and I don't even know if I'll have time for any commentary here tomorrow, either. Anyway, to keep the content coming, here are excerpts from and links to a couple of good essays from Working for Change.

Will 'censure Bush' bomb hurt Dems in midterm elections?

But Democrats, unlike Republicans, have yet to develop a healthy relationship between activists willing to test and expand the conventional limits on political debate and the politicians who have to calculate what works in creating an electoral majority.

For two decades, Republicans have used their idealists, their ideologues and their loudmouths to push the boundaries of discussion to the right. In the best of all worlds, Feingold's strong stand would redefine what's "moderate" and make clear that those challenging the legality of the wiretapping are neither extreme nor soft on terror.

That would demand coordination, trust and, yes, calculation involving both the vote-counting politicians and the guardians of principle among the activists. Republicans have mastered this art. Democrats haven't.

Turning a minority into a majority requires both passion and discipline. Bringing the two together requires effective leadership. Does anybody out there know how to play this game?

Click here for the rest.

Why are we sick of George W. Bush? Pick a reason

I don't know about you guys, but I am so sick and tired of these lying, thieving, holier-than-thou, right-wing, cruel, crude, rude, gauche, coarse, crass, cocky, corrupt, dishonest, debauched, degenerate, dissolute, swaggering, lawyer shooting, bullhorn shouting, infrastructure destroying, hysterical, history defying, finger-pointing, puppy stomping, roommate appointing, pretzel choking, collateral damaging, aspersion casting, wedding party bombing, clear cutting, torturing, jobs outsourcing, torture outsourcing, "so-called" compassionate- conservative, women's rights eradicating, Medicare cutting, uncouth, spiteful, boorish, vengeful, noxious, homophobic, xenophobic, xylophonic, racist, sexist, ageist, fascist, cashist, audaciously stupid, brazenly selfish, lethally ignorant, journalist purchasing, genocide ignoring, corporation kissing, poverty inducing, crooked, coercive, autocratic, primitive, uppity, high-handed, domineering...

And it just goes on from there. Click here for the rest.

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY
War-Loving Pundits

From CounterPunch courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe, an essay by media critic Norman Soloman looking back on the absolute certainty of the pundit class about the rightness of the US invasion of Iraq:

The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible.

Continuing with long service to the Bush administration's agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy in the weeks before the invasion. At the Washington Post, the op-ed page's fervor hit a new peak on Feb. 6, 2003, the day after Colin Powell's mendacious speech to the U.N. Security Council.

Post columnist Richard Cohen explained that Powell was utterly convincing. "The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them," Cohen wrote. "Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."

And

One of the most gleeful commentators on network television was MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews. "We're all neo-cons now," he crowed on April 9, 2003, hours after a Saddam Hussein statue tumbled in Baghdad.

Weeks later, Matthews was still at it, making categorical declarations: "We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."

Click here for the rest.

My first thought when looking back on the specifics of how virtually all mainstream pundits did as much as anybody to get the US public to support the invasion is something like "what were they thinking?" As though this was all some sort of aberration from some sort of normal state of media sanity. Of course, the steady drum beat in favor of the invasion was the normal state of media "sanity." It happened with Yugoslavia before Iraq, and Iraq before Yugoslavia, and Panama before Iraq, and Grenada before Panama, and Vietnam before Grenada--the US effort in Vietnam, I must admit, did lose the press' support, but only after it was utterly clear that the war was total folly, when public support was already waning; for the first few years, however, the media loved it.

The conventional wisdom, if anybody really even believes it anymore, is that the press is the "fourth branch" of government, serving the public by keeping them informed about what the other three branches are up to, and whether or not what they're doing is good for the country. The reality, however, is that the mainstream news media are owned and operated by enormous corporations, pillars of the US power establishment, and tend to reflect the views of that establishment. That is, the news is not at all a "fourth branch" governmental watchdog; it's real function is to perpetuate the political and economic elite's narrative about the way the world works--unsurprisingly, such a narrative always supports whatever the elite decides the country needs to do. The parade of pundits who "knew" that invading Iraq was a good idea is a perfect example, if only because the US military failure there is on such a monumental scale that only a fool, or possibly a Republican, would still believe these guys were right.

This is no conspiracy theory: Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann studied the inner workings of the news industry in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent and found that business structure and practices, rather than a conscious desire to lie to the public, results in what amounts to pro-government and pro-corporate propaganda. The journalistic travesties that Solomon describes in his essay will happen again. We've all figured out that they were wrong about Iraq, but the career incentives and business practices that resulted in such a colossal mistake in punditry are still in place, and no change is on the horizon. Give it a few years for the public's distaste over Iraq to fade. The lemming-like idiocy of the pundit class will be in full force, and the US public will again take at face value their pro-war assertions.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz, Frankie, Sammy, and Phil together at last!


(From back to front, counter clockwise)

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OPERATION BUSH SUCKS
Air assault targets insurgents

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

In a well-publicized show of force, U.S. and Iraqi forces swept into the countryside north of the capital in 50 helicopters Thursday looking for insurgents in what the American military called its "largest air assault" in nearly three years.

The military said the assault — Operation Swarmer — detained 41 people, found stolen uniforms and captured weapons including explosives used in making roadside bombs. It said the operation would continue over several days.

There was no bombing or firing from the air in the offensive northeast of Samarra, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. All 50 aircraft were helicopters — Black Hawks, Apaches and Chinooks — used to ferry in and provide cover for the 1,450 Iraqi and U.S. troops.

And

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied the offensive was tied to the new campaign to change opinion about the war. "This was a decision made by our commanders," he said, adding that President Bush was briefed but did not specifically authorize the operation.

And

The Pentagon said there were no reporters embedded with U.S. troops, and it released video and a series of photos of preparations for the assault.

Click here for the rest.

It is very interesting to obverve that the AP quotes no witnesses who actually saw the attacks, only Pentagon statements, and witnesses who weren't really there; there were no "embedded" reporters, either. What I'm getting at is that only a fool would trust what the Pentagon has to say these days. It is now clearly understood that the US military is every bit as image conscious, that is, completely willing to bend, stretch, and alter the truth, you know, lie, in order to look good to a skeptical US population, as the White House is. Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, and the US use of napalm and other chemical weapons against Fallujah, all lied about by the Pentagon, serve as ready examples of what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, Abu Ghraib, too.

Anyway, the point is that, given the Pentagon's reputation for lying, it's probably a good idea to doubt their stated motivations and look for more reasonable ones. Like Bush's low approval ratings: even though the White House declared that the attack has nothing to do with their latest pro-war publicity campaign, which obviously is an attempt to boost Bush's abysmal approval ratings, I think it's pretty safe to say that today's action has everything to do with opinion polls. Nothing like some good old fashioned war to hep everybody to the White House's coolness.

But there's more. As New Yorker reporter Symour Hersh, the guy who broke both the My Lai story during the Vietnam era and the Abu Ghraib story two years ago, has observed, the insurgents are guerilla fighters; the US military doesn't really know how to find them. These "search and destroy" styled missions can't possibly be aimed at fighting the insurgency. Rather, they're about going in and blowing the hell out of civilians who are suspected of helping the insurgents: today's attack was about striking terror into the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, attempting to make them more afraid of us than of the insurgents. That is, the attack was US sponsored terrorism.

Furthermore, I speculate that the use of so many helicopters to ferry in troops is simply a model for how the US military will exist in Iraq for the next couple of decades. That is, as I've observed several times before, the ability to heavily influence oil markets to America's overall economic advantage by sitting on top of Iraq's oil reserves is so tempting a prize that no future president, Republican or Democrat, is really ever going to pull out. It is increasingly looking like the plan is to purposely keep Iraq in a near civil war state, in total chaos, in perpetuity, while our five soon-to-be-completed permanent bases respond only to perceived threats to US control of Iraqi oil, using rapidly deployed massive force, pulling out of the crisis zone as quickly as they came.

Just some thoughts.

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Military Jailing Vietnam War Resisters
40 Years After They Refused to Serve

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: Tod Ensign, you are Buck McQueen's attorney? How uncommon is this?

TOD ENSIGN: Well, there appears to be a unit within the Pentagon called the AWOL Apprehension Unit, and they have been going out and actively searching for people like Buck and Jerry and others, and when they find them or locate information, they send local police after them. So they're very aggressive in finding people and prosecuting them. Jerry was actually under court-martial charges down at Camp Lejeune. So it appears to us that what they're trying to do is say, look, these guys have been gone a long time. They're obviously of no use to us as soldiers, but we want to let young people in Iraq know that if they leave now, we will pursue them and criminalize them for the next -- for the rest of their lives. That's the message I believe they're trying to send.

AMY GOODMAN: Is it happening more now than a year ago, than five years ago, than before the invasion?

TOD ENSIGN: Well, the Pentagon says that the desertion rates are lower than they were before we invaded in 2003. I don't have other figures. I would really question the accuracy of those figures. They claim it's lower, but it's definitely growing now, as the U.S.A. Today story said. There are more people deciding, “I just can't go back.” There was a story just yesterday that some people are facing their fourth tour over there. That's an incredible amount of combat burden on people.

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

Even though this tactic, harassing old soldiers with consciences in order to intimidate young soldiers with consciences, seems to be simply that, harassment, it's pretty low-down and dirty. This obviously has nothing to do with these individual Vietnam era soldiers, and everything to do with how much it sucks to be caught up in the unwinnable quagmire of the immoral and illegal war in Iraq: before the rate of Iraq war resisters picked up to what appear to be alarming levels, the Pentagon could have cared less about the guys who ducked out of our last quagmire. In short, these poor guys are now disposable pawns in the neo-cons' global strategic game; they're being screwed over, having their lives majorly disrupted, for no good reason at all. Pretty unjust. Sounds like the military is getting desperate.

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TWO FROM ALTERNET

Bunch of homework tonight. Here's a lazy twofer from AlterNet, instead of my usual sparkling commentary.

Impeachment Talk Reaches the Mainstream

The groundswell for President Bush's impeachment is growing, and last week the establishment media finally took notice.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story analyzing how a planned impeachment of President Bush will play out as an "election issue," including a helpful pie chart showing 51 percent of Americans support Congress in considering Bush's impeachment if he "didn't tell the truth about the reasons for the Iraq war."

The Washington Post published a commentary acknowledging that support for impeachment is now "reaching beyond the usual suspects," and the Associated Press covered the spike in pro-impeachment resolutions from local officials across the country. Resolutions recently passed in Vermont and California, and this weekend Democratic Party officials in Michigan voted to urge local officials to pass another. Meanwhile, 14 Democratic candidates for Congress have announced their support for impeachment.

These local efforts are beginning to advance impeachment at the national level.

Click here for more.

We Are What We Buy

Rather, it's hard, she comes to realize because -- like it or not -- what we buy defines us. It gives us status, it creates a space for us, and it allows us to commune with others. To stop buying, Levine discovered, leaves one in a sometimes shadowy -- and occasionally even boring -- netherworld.

There was the time Levine's niece graduated and she and Paul had to come up with a gift for her. (The origami animals they tried to fold were just too pathetic.) Then there was day Levine had to ask for wax from a fellow skier (she had forgotten hers) and realized how uncomfortable she felt as a supplicant.

There were the many times, both Levine and Paul discovered, when others wanted to meet them for dinner, movies, or coffee and saying "no" seemed to put a crimp in both friendships and professional relationships. (Here I thought Levine was pretty brave. I'm not sure I'd be ready to test my personal appeal by limiting time spent with others to talks and walks.)

And even Levine, who describes herself as a "desultory and uncommitted consumer at best," cheated twice and bought new clothes.

Click here for the rest.

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My Love/Hate Relationship with the Democrats
-or-
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Tolerate the System

I'm a liberal. Very liberal.

My senior year, my Government teacher had us take some sort of political quiz, and then actually had us stand up in a big line from wall to wall, in order of our "liberalism" to "conservatism." I was the farthest to the left, easily. I hadn't answered the questions for shock value, but simply in defense of civil rights and strict interpretation of the Constitution.

You would think that someone who was referred to as "the liberal" of the class would be some bratty kid who shaves his head, wears black, and tattoos an anarchist "A" on his shoulder where Mom and Dad can't see. That's not the case. I'm just a Democrat. How anti-climactic was that revelation?

I call for playing by the rules. Wearing a tie. Kissing babies. Campaign commercials with old folks, apple pie, steel mills, and a big fat American flag in the background. I don't believe that America will ever accept a third party as a viable alternative. Things are much too disorganized, both ideologically and practically, outside the two-party system to seem like a very attractive choice.

The Democratic party has a history to be proud of. Civil Rights in the sixties was very much a hot topic, and there were voters to be lost with drastic legislation. LBJ, JFK, FDR... these are the guys who we have to thank for some of America's bright spots - integration, Social Security, countless government regulations of business.

Those guys had backbone, and today's Democrats have... polls. Polls they don't even pay attention to, actually. Ron's asked if I'm frustrated with how the Democrats have failed to capitalize on the current administration's scandals. He has no idea. It's like watching a rival pitch a no-hitter against your favorite team while they swing aimlessly at hanging curveballs. These guys have no idea how to play politics, it seems.

But before you write off my team, remember this: the Republicans control all four branches of government - including the media. Any mistakes by the Republicans are minimized by the media, and any dissent will be scrutinized. Any time a Democrat speaks, their words are invariably twisted into characterizing them as either a flip-flopper, far-left liberal, or a Bush supporter.

I'm still convinced, though, that there is awesome power to be wielded by the Democrats. They're half of a two-party system, and there are charismatic leaders. Barack Obama will be the first black president and Nancy Pelosi is a fearless leader. The Republicans are doing us huge favors. McCain, once considered to be a disaster card for the Dems, is losing all his support within the party by clinging onto Bush, who is certainly no real friend of his. Anyone currently serving the administration is guilty by association. Frist is the front-runner as the next face of the Republicans, and he's already been a goldmine of campaign-jeopardizing quotes.

So maybe from 2006 to 2008, it really is best to let the Republicans defeat themselves. There are rifts so great within the party that I halfway expect the centrists to start calling themselves the Bull-Moose party. The far-right zealots are becoming more and more marginalized, and the centrist Republicans are bonafide swing voters. I say let the Republicans destroy themselves, take back the media, and when we're in power, play their game. After taking back those three branches (we won't regain the Courts for decades), I believe you'll see a new side of the Democrats. We won't be the Clinton democrats of pandering past, we'll be the "Fuck You" liberals I know are inside there, somewhere.

With any luck, I'll be a part of it all.

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GET TOUGH ON CRIME
New autopsy in boot camp death
indicates boy died of beating

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Prosecutors say a teenager who collapsed after a boot camp beating did not die of natural causes, but stopped short of saying he was beaten to death.

A noted pathologist said earlier today that results from a second autopsy seem to indicate a 14-year-old boy died from a beating by guards at a juvenile boot camp, not from a blood disorder as a medical examiner initially ruled.

"My opinion is that he died because of what you see in the videotape," said Dr. Michael Baden, referring to a surveillance tape showing guards kicking and punching Martin Lee Anderson's limp body the day before he died.

After seeing the videotape, the boy's parents agreed to have his body exhumed and asked Baden to observe a second autopsy.

Click here for the rest.

If Abu Ghraib was no surprise because we already knew that US citizens are treated the same way in American prisons, then this is no surprise because we know about Abu Ghraib. I'm so sick of this shit: in America we have this chronic mentality that dehumanizes anyone society has branded a "bad guy." That's the same psychological motivation behind a quarter century of "get tough on crime legislation," which throws the convicted into hell holes of torture and rape, and the same psychology behind the mass torture of POWs held by the US military. Our nation is sick in many ways, but this is perhaps the sickest of all. I wholeheartedly agree that society has an absolute need to keep dangerous people off the streets, but this business about kicking their asses for extended periods of time not only makes no sense because it heightens pre-existing anti-social attitudes, but also because it's totally immoral. Convicts are human beings just like you and me. Torturing one means torturing all. Fucking sick.

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Isaac Hayes quits South Park, citing
religious 'intolerance and bigotry'

From the AP via the Houston Chonicle:

Last November, South Park targeted the Church of Scientology and its celebrity followers, including actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, in a top-rated episode called "Trapped in the Closet.'' In the episode, Stan, one of the show's four mischievous fourth graders, is hailed as a reluctant savior by Scientology leaders, while a cartoon Cruise locks himself in a closet and won't come out. Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker "never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin.''

Click here for the rest.

So the show's been running for, what, nine years, and Hays only now decides that it's over the top. As much as I love the singer of "Shaft," the man who played the "Duke of New York" in Escape from New York, I've just got to call him a big pussy. That is soooooo like a Scientologist: freak out when your "religion" is criticized. Good thing there's not a lawsuit, or one hundred lawsuits, which is also soooooo like a Scientologist. Scientology is a big fucking joke, a total sham rip-off. If any religion deserves scorn and ridicule, it's Scientology. Too bad Hays feels he's got to go; I damned sure hope they continue on without him. Frankly, they're probably better off.

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HATE THE SIN, NOT THE SINNER
Bigotry From Cradle to Grave

From AlterNet:

The Texas Observer, a liberal newspaper, conducted interviews with several fundamentalists as part of an effort to understand the support in the state for the recent anti-gay marriage ban.

Mary Ann Markarian of Sugar Land, who described herself as an ordained minister for M.A.P. Ministries, Inc., explained that she would encourage people to vote for the constitutional amendment. "But not," she said, "because I dislike homosexuals. I know a lot of homosexual people who are wonderful people, who are very kind and gracious, who are my friends. "But sin is sin. We're not animals," Markarian said. "The proof is in the pudding."

Here comes Cameron: "Ninety-two percent of all gay males engage in rimming, the process of licking the rim of the anus and ingesting various amounts of fecal matter. Forty-seven percent of all males engage in fisting, the act of placing their fist in their partner's rectum for sexual pleasure." Markarian went on in the interview about other practices, and then turned to mortality rates, which again clearly mimic Cameron's discredited research. "The median age of a homosexual dying with AIDS is 39 years old; that's wrong, not natural. The median age of all other homosexual men dying from other causes is forty-two," she said. "The median age of death for lesbians is 45 years old--of lesbians.... Think about it and then tell me that God doesn't have some problem with this whole thing."

All of this nonsense, of course, is purportedly about protecting the family. And all of the organizations and leaders mentioned heretofore also resist reproductive freedom; opposition to legal and accessible abortion formed the core of much of their organizing, fundraising and lobbying throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Click here for the rest.

I am continually amazed by how the fundamentalists obsess about homosexuality. At first glance, it makes no sense: homosexuality, according to the Bible, is one sin among many; traditional fundamentalist dogma asserts that no one sin is worse than any other--they're all bad in God's eyes. So why all the attention to homosexuality instead of say, murder or theft or exploiting the poor? The answer, as suggested above, is the more generalized concern with sexual morality. Or, I should say, their sexual morality. Again, the same principle applies, that sexual sin is no better or worse than any other sin, but since human beings are fairly obsessed with sex generally, it is no surprise that fundamentalists are too.

I think it's safe to say, because there is no Scriptural basis for holding up one sin as worse than any other, that fundamentalists are simply jealous of the free-wheeling sexuality of gay folk. Well, gay men, who tend to be more promiscuous, to be precise, but you just know these right-wing Christians have also got to be intrigued by some of that hot lesbian action, too. Anyway, my point is that, even though I agree that the Bible is pretty clear about homosexuality being a sin, fundamentalists' anti-gay attitudes have little to do with the Bible, which is ultimately, in this case, simply a justification to bitch and moan about the sex they aren't having.

This doesn't even get into the fact that, to fundamentalists, following the law doesn't get anyone into heaven--one must be "saved" first, that is, become a Christian. It makes no sense to insist that people who aren't believers should do what the Bible says. Maybe they've got a good point with gay Christians, but, otherwise, it's really none of their damned business, and the Bible essentially says so: go save 'em first, and then you can castigate them.

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



Spock, Kirk, and McCoy facing V'Ger at the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

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Woman Claims She Was Fired for Bumpersticker

From the Progressive:

She and her boss were speaking in a parking lot when her boss noticed the bumpersticker.

“Isn’t that the Al Franken leftwing talkshow?”

Laroca says she thought maybe this was a trick question so she hesitated and then said yes.

“Don’t you know our country is on high alert?” her boss responded, according to Laroca. “For all I know you could be Al Qaeda. You’re fired.”

Schultz asked Laroca what she did next.

“I picked up my jaw and drove home,” Laroca said.

Click here for the rest.

My acting teacher, who is liberal and very interested in politics, made a poignant observation last week: after everything, Iraq, multiple scandals, Katrina, you name it, there are still around forty percent of the country who continue to support Bush. I corrected his 40% figure with the number I like better, CBS's 34%, but he still made an incredible point. To many Americans, reality is what they choose to believe it is, and Bush is their leader no matter what happens. That's really not so surprising. To this day there are Nixon supporters who believe he got a raw deal; some still even believe that Vietnam was a good war, and that we were hounded out, not by the VC and NVA, but by hippies at home. It sounds like the fellow above is one of those types. He's still stuck in post 9/11 hysteria and hyper-patriotism--he supports his President no matter what happens, supports him to the point that vital democratic concepts such as free speech and dissent are overruled. Yeah, it's amazing. How the hell do we get through to these people?

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The town that pizza built

“Because the University’s leadership, in accordance with Catholic teachings, opposes the sale of contraceptives, retailers in the town have been asked to refrain from selling contraceptives. However, it is critical to note that no restrictions will be enforced on contraceptives or any other inventory. In fact, we are using the same lease for Ave Maria as the BCC uses elsewhere in Collier County (which prohibit certain uses that are inconsistent with traditional family values). Neither will there be restrictions enforced on programming on cable television." from avemaria.com

That's right ladies and gentlemen, Tom Monahan, founder of Domino's Pizza (he does not actually own any share of Domino's now), is building a town near Naples, Florida around the university he founded (Ave Maria University). The town is going to have real family values. Besides the request for pharmacies to refrain from selling ANY FORM of contraceptives, the town of Ave Maria, will also ask retailers to refrain from selling pornagraphy and, of course, abortions will not be allowed inside the 5000 acre town. But it is okay, because there will be walking paths and good old Catholic values. I do not understand how this is okay. I heard recently about a member of a home owner's association (completely separate from Catholic-ville) suing the association for infringing on her first amendment rights, by not allowing her to campaign for a seat on the board in front of her own house. How far can town councils/home owners organizations go? Will Ave Maria check peoples homes to make sure that birth control pills and porn haven't been smuggled over the border? Will you have to sign something agreeing to the terms set up by the leader of the fiefdom? And does this mean that families who are not Catholic will be discouraged from moving to the town? What about Catholics for Condoms? And think about the generation of seriously disturbed teens we are about to see come from that town. Oh dear. The questions!!!

Enough of the D.C. Dems

From the Progressive, uber-Texan Molly Ivins explains why the Democrats suck:

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.

I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.

Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.

Click here for the rest.

Real Art blogger Miles writes in comments in response to what I wrote yesterday about how the Democrats seem ineffective at best and self-defeating at worst:

I have faith. You'll soon see why I'm still a Democrat.

Miles

Well, I hope so. However, I don't see anything happening at the national level to give me faith. The so-called liberal party continues to run like frightened rabbits from what they believe to be the successful right-wing demonization of the word "liberal." They may be right about the word itself, but not the principles for which the word stands: in poll after poll Americans support liberal ideas and policy, for everything from better wages and universal health care to withdrawal from Iraq and less corporate influence on government. Strangely, the Democrats seem to believe that most people are conservative, and strongly urge candidates to pander to the right. And most of them take that advice. What the hell kind of liberal party is that? The Democrats may very well be considered the opposition party, and that's nice and all, but how, exactly, do they oppose? In the grand scheme of things, a little rhetorical opposition doesn't really amount to much. A lot of rhetorical opposition might get them somewhere, but I'm just not hearing it. Why the hell are these guys so damned timid in their criticism of Republican America? Why aren't they breathing fire? Now is clearly not the time to worry about offending people--for that matter, such a fear has never held back the GOP, and its amazing that the Democrats haven't seen how successful that strategy's been.

Personally, I would love it if the Dems found some backbone and started really fighting the good fight, really became a liberal party. But as far as I can tell, these days the Democrats are simply an institution concerned mostly with preserving itself as an institution, the proverbial self-perpetuating bureaucracy--their inoffensive robotic technocrats are the perfect manifestation of such an institution. In the same way that Disney World has it's animatronic hall of Presidents, the Democrats offer animatronic candidates and policies, good enough to function publicly and sometimes even win, but without any life or soul.

Miles, how can you not be totally outraged with these guys? Every day that they don't call for Bush's impeachment is a kick in America's progressive crotch. Every day that they don't call Bush a criminal is a lie of omission. How can you support that?

Of course, you know, Miles, I still think you're a great guy.

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Republicans fret as Bush's popularity sinks

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

"Obviously, it's the winter of our discontent," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

Republican Party leaders said the survey explains why GOP lawmakers are rushing to distance themselves from Bush on a range of issues — port security, immigration, spending, warrantless eavesdropping and trade, for example.

The positioning is most intense among Republicans facing election in November and those considering 2008 presidential campaigns.

"You're in the position of this cycle now that is difficult anyway. In second term off-year elections, there gets to be a familiarity factor," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a potential presidential candidate.

"People have seen and heard (Bush's) ideas long enough and that enters into their thinking. People are kind of, 'Well, I wonder what other people can do,'" he said.

The poll suggests that most Americans wonder whether Bush is up to the job. The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday of 1,000 people, found that just 37 percent approve of his overall performance. That is the lowest of his presidency.

Click here for the rest.

Well, okay, I'm totally loving this. It's proof to me that in the long run, Americans always realize that conservatives don't have their best interests at heart--of course, I must admit that Bush's incompetence plays heavily into what's going on now as well. But I'm going to relish this while I can. As the article goes on to observe:

In addition, strategists in both parties agree that a divided and undisciplined Democratic Party has failed to seize full advantage of Republican troubles.

Ain't that the truth. In my opinion, the Republicans have a very good shot of holding onto Congress this November. They know they're in trouble. They're disciplined. They've got more money and they cheat. They're going to campaign like their lives depend on it. Meanwhile, the Democrats are going to campaign like John Kerry did in '04. That is, cautiously, trying to outflank the GOP by pandering to the right, which will do nothing but make people want to vote for the real deal, that is, for Republicans. It's kind of a drag. This is the Democrats' best chance in over a decade to get back both houses, but I have this awful feeling that they've learned nothing from being pushed in the mud repeatedly--I should rephrase that; I mean, from voluntarily jumping in the mud repeatedly. I guess I can hope, at least.

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Retired Supreme Court
Justice hits attacks on courts
and warns of dictatorship

From NPR's All Things Considered via the Raw Story courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn’t name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O’Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress’ onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O’Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O’Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.

Click here for the rest.

This serves as yet another reminder that the leaders who call themselves conservative these days are anything but. Historically, conservatives have well understood, better than liberals, I think, that the basic Constitutional breakdown of our Federal government structure was, for various reasons, extremely well designed, and not to be tampered with. They're not called "conservative" for nothing, after all. But these guys today, the ones riding the strange stampede called by some the "Conservative Movement," seem much more interested in power, absolute power, liberals-have-no-business-running-the-country power--indeed, in their rush to make manifest their vision for America, they've also ignored the importance of diversity of political views, the so called "marketplace of ideas," which has also been valued traditionally by conservatives. In short, in their drive to ram a few conservative ideas down America's throat, they've decided to throw out some of their most important beliefs, embracing change-at-all-costs, essentially selling out the entire notion of conservativism in the process. That's why I keep saying that I don't understand what conservatism is anymore. But now that I'm thinking about it, it seems to me that I do, indeed, know what conservatism is: it's the conservatives who have no idea what they are these days.

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Controversy Breeds Controversy as
My Name Is Rachel Corrie
May See NY Stage

From Playbill:

The London play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, penned by actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner, about the death of an American protestor killed in the Gaza Strip, may now see the New York stage, according to The New York Times.

Amid dueling press statements between London's Royal Court Theater and the New York Theatre Workshop — where a planned Off-Broadway run of the work was scheduled then postponed — the UK-based company has fielded offers from other stateside producers interested in transferring the work.

And

"We always try to minimize the distractions around the production so our constituency can hear the artist's voice. This takes a great deal of planning and listening to accomplish. In the less than two months we had to mount the proposed production of the Royal Court's My Name Is Rachel Corrie, we found that there was a strong possibility that a number of factions, on all sides of a political conflict, could use the production as a platform for their own agendas. We were not confident that we had the time to create an environment where the art could be heard independent of the political issues associated with it."

Click here for the rest.

On the surface, this whole controversy makes very little sense.

Rachel Corrie was a young American activist protesting Israeli brutalities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: in 2003 she was standing in front of a Palestinian home to prevent if from being demolished by the IDF; the Israeli soldier operating the bulldozer ran her over and killed her. My bet is that it was an intentional act of murder, but, of course, Israel's government calls it an accident. Anyway, good old Alan Rickman, a.k.a. Severus Snape from the Harry Potter movies, wrote, produced, and directed a one-person show about her life, based on her diaries and letters.

It did well in London and was about to open in New York, but was abruptly cancelled for vague and mysterious reasons--the final paragraph from the excerpt above is one of the various explanations offered by the artistic director of the theater that was going to perform it. Another explanation offered had something to do with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's recent stroke, and Hamas' gaining control of the Palestinian Authority, and how doing the show right now would be perceived as being in bad taste. Or something to that effect. (More on the controversy, as explained by Vanessa Redgrave in an interview by Democracy Now, here.) Anyway, it's obviously all bullshit. Clearly, something has happened behind the scenes that's intimidated the hell out of the New York Theatre Workshop. There are rumors, apparently, that the mayor's office had something to do with the cancellation, but we'll probably never know what the deal is.

But here's something I do know, which makes me speculate. The pro-Israel lobby in the United States is extraordinarily strong, stronger than the NRA, strong even when compared to the lobbying efforts of major corporations. Further, these organizations' strength isn't simply directed toward Congress: they're also bigtime into public relations activities, and have been fairly successful in muting criticism of Israel by branding it as anti-Semitism--obviously, Jews and the government of Israel, while related, are not at all the same thing, and criticizing a state is perfectly reasonable political and artistic speech, but that matters little to the pro-Israel lobby, which is as vicious and relentless as Karl Rove in smearing their opponents. Coincidentally, the pro-Israel lobby has a strong presence New York, with a lot of political influence and money at it's disposal. See where I'm going? I'm not saying they made this theater company "an offer they can't refuse" or anything like that. But if NYC's mayor really did intervene in the situation, it was either at the request of the pro-Israel lobby, or Bloomberg was simply trying to placate some potential political upheaval.

Anyway you look at it, this whole thing stinks. I understand political pressure and I understand how difficult it is to keep a theater company on its feet and functioning even without that pressure. But this company shouldn't have chickened out; they've failed in their mission as artitsts and dealt their own credibility a serious blow. After all, the political heat makes this show all the more significant. It means they're dealing with extraordinarily important issues. Instead of being inspired by the controversy, they backed down. What the hell kind of artists are these people?

Good thing there are other offers to produce it.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie



Phil



Sammy



Paz



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Evidence of water found on Saturn moon

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The orbiting Cassini spacecraft has spotted what appear to be water geysers on one of Saturn's icy moons, raising the tantalizing possibility that the celestial object harbors life.

The surprising images from the moon Enceladus represent some of the most dramatic evidence yet that water in liquid form may be present beyond the Earth.

Excited by the discovery, some scientists said Enceladus should be added to the short list of places within the solar system most likely to have extraterrestrial life.

Scientists generally agree several ingredients are needed for life to emerge, including water in liquid form and a stable heat source. But so far, the evidence of any large amounts of water in liquid form on celestial objects beyond Earth is circumstantial and indirect, based on scientists' analysis of rocks and other data.

Click here for the rest.

Needless to say, if this pans out, it will be monumental. Not only would the discovery of extraterrestrial life right here in our solar system most likely motivate a massive pouring of money into NASA, but there is also the potential for great numbers of fundamentalist Christians being forced to reevaluate their beliefs. That is, the book of Genesis says nothing about life being anywhere but Earth, and fundamentalists, who assert that the Bible should be interpreted literally, would spin their heads around and around being confronted with hard evidence that their version of creation can't possibly be true. On the other hand, fossils are easily rationalized away by these types, so maybe I'm being too optimistic. But, man, liquid water...that's pretty big news. At this point, I'd bet a hundred dollars that we find, at least, microscopic life there. And if we find microscopic life so close to home, there's a much bigger chance that intelligent life exists somewhere else. This is pretty damned cool.

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Company backs off on port deal

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Bowing to ferocious opposition in Congress, a Dubai-owned company signaled surrender today in its quest to take over operations at U.S. ports.

"DP World will transfer fully the U.S. operations ... to a United States entity," the firm's top executive, H. Edward Bilkey, said in an announcement that capped weeks of controversy.

Relieved Republicans in Congress said the firm had pledged full divestiture, a decision that one senator said had been approved personally by the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.

The announcement appeared to indicate an end to a politically tinged controversy that brought President Bush and Republicans in Congress to the brink of an election-year veto battle on a terrorism-related issue. The White House expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

Click here for the rest.

Well, that's a good thing, I suppose. Thing is, the questions I and many others had about the deal were never answered. That is, the problem with allowing a United Arab Emirates state-owned company to take over operations for several key US ports seemed foolhardy because of allegations that the Middle Eastern nation's royal family is fairly close to Osama bin Laden and that their government participated in transferring nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Is that really true? I mean, never mind the port deal, these guys are officially listed as allies in the "war on terror." Are these the kind of allies we want?

I guess neither the White House nor the UAE really wanted the discussion to head in that direction.

Actually, looking back on most of the press' coverage of the deal, it appears that nobody else really wanted to talk about it either, which leads me to a mea culpa. My buddy Matt, when I first posted on the issue a couple of weeks ago, commented that he agreed with Bush when he said that the outcry over the deal was racist. I now must reverse myself and agree with my pal Matt. Which, I suppose, means that I also agree with the President. Yikes! It's pretty clear from the absolute bipartisanship and fury of the criticism that something more than honest questions about the UAE's links to terrorism were motivating opposition to the deal. As quite a few pundits have observed at this point, the White House has been fostering anti-Arab hysteria since 9/11, so the hysteria about the port deal should come as no surprise. That is, I've come to believe that most Americans opposing the deal probably didn't know the specifics of the actual criticism, the alleged links to bin Laden and nuke tech transfer. No, it seems pretty clear now that most Americans were freaking out over this because it's an Arab company. That is, the primary factor here probably is racism.

So, the deal isn't happening because of fierce public and political outrage about it. Like I said, that's good, I guess, but I don't really know one way or the other, to be honest, because nobody seemed to want to press the White House on the terrorism links. And, damn it, now I really want to know what the truth is. I'll probably never know.

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THE NUTS BEHIND SOUTH DAKOTA'S ABORTION BAN

From PBS's The News Hour via Crooks and Liars, Bill Napoli, a state senator and strong supporter of the new law, explains how "except where the life of the mother is threatened" can be liberally interpreted to include rape, incest, or threat to the mother's health:

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Click here to see the video.

Okay, obviously this guy's a total lunatic. I might have thought that he's simply stupid, but the "she was religious" thing takes him into insanity. Clearly, going on with the hypothetical pregnancy in this situation would not be threatening to the life of the mother. Extraordinarily traumatic, yes, but not life threatening. In other words, Napoli is full of shit--what makes him crazy is that he appears to really believe what he's saying. And what he's saying is a pretty clear indicator of where his mind is: bad girls can't get abortions, but good girls can, and Napoli and his ilk get to decide what "good" and "bad" mean. It's not simply about life with these people; it's about controlling sexuality. And don't get me wrong, by the way. I'm not saying the ban would be acceptable if it included the rape, incest, and health exceptions; my position is in support of what the pro-lifers call convenience abortion on demand, no questions asked. But my point about this guy's way of thinking is that the people behind this law are freakin' nuts. Not even Texas is acting this quickly--there are more than a few in the pro-life movement who believe that this SD law might backfire somehow, either because of its over-the-top brutality, or because of its hastiness. This doesn't even get into the Orwellian doublethink these people have to employ in order to stake out such bizarre political positions. I know that there are plenty of rational people who oppose abortion; ultimately, it's a pretty tangled issue, ethically speaking, but it seems that the movement has more than its fair share of absolute lunatics. Looks like a lot of them live in South Dakota.

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Study: Law has reduced abortions in Texas

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Abortion rates dropped for girls ages 15 through 18, even though the 18-year-olds were not subject to the law. But the drop was more pronounced among the younger girls. Their rates fell 11 percent to 20 percent more than the rate among the 18-year-olds did.

"The law has definite behavioral effects," said lead researcher Ted Joyce, a Baruch professor of economics.

And

In the study, girls 17 1/2 or slightly older were one-third more likely to have an abortion in the second trimester than girls already 18 when they became pregnant, indicating many waited until they turned 18 to escape the notification requirement.

Abortion later in pregnancy carries a much higher rate of deadly complications, though the overall risk is still extremely small.

The study "draws attention to the way that these kinds of laws can put teens in a compromised position that puts their health at risk," said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group that specializes in reproductive issues.

Click here for the rest.

In short, this Texas law causes unwanted pregnancies among younger teenagers and maneuvers older teens into potentially life-threatening situations. Sounds like a good law to me. No, wait, I mean the exact opposite: this law is fucking stupid. I understand the pro-life rationale behind this, that parents have a say in every other medical procedure that their children may or may not have, but that's simply a rationale. In no way does this point of view take into account the emotional issues or parent/child power dynamic involved that make parental control of their children's medical decisions problematic as far as abortion is concerned--that is, it's not a very compelling argument they have, and I think they realize it. But that doesn't matter; it worked well enough to get the bill passed. What's really going on with this parental consent law is that it's part of an overall strategy of incrementally chipping away at abortion rights until they exist on paper only--this same strategy also includes terrorism against abortion providers in order to scare them out of business and froth-mouthed protesters ramming bloody fetus pictures in the faces of every individual entering a clinic where abortions are provided. Sadly, this strategy has been, to date, pretty darned successful in some parts of the country. People are worried about the new right wingers on the Supreme Court reversing Roe. The more I think about it the more that seems unlikely; the right wing has just had too much fun bashing the 1973 landmark decision--they've gotten a lot of political mileage out of it. How nice it would be for them if they could have their cake and eat it too, create a de facto situation where abortions are impossible to get, but still legal, and therefore worthy of teeth gnashing.

These anti-abortion people are damned treacherous.

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Are you kidding me?!?

My big question is: "Why hasn't the 'liberal' media run with the news of South Dakota's attempt to ban ALL abortions?" Where are you journalists? I checked The New York Times, as I do everyday to find out what is being said about this full-frontal attack on a woman's right to choose what is best for her and her body, and .... NOTHING. I had to do a search to find the AP overview of what was happening. And it was third on the list after ski reports and a roll call vote!! Abortion is a hot-button issue with me as a woman and a liberal.

I know, I know, if Roe v. Wade is overturned abortion doesn't immediately become illegal-- it reverts back to the states to decide. I know, I know there will always be places in this country where a woman can go. I know, I know there are hundreds of important issues, but why isn't there more fury? I get emails daily from the DNC, John Kerry (not personal-- I only get those once a week), MoveOn, etc. and the only organization who has even mentioned the attack is Planned Parenthood. I have been anxiously awaiting our fearless leader's comments and he posts about Madonna!!! (Please note: No offense is meant! It only illustrates my point, which is...)

We women are on our own in this matter. Yes, there are male advocates (our previously mentioned fearless leader is a huge advocate of abortion rights, women's rights, etc.), but when it comes down to it, Our Bodies, Our Choice means more then waiting around for our male counterparts to step up. Which takes me to the next point in my rant...

Where are we? What are we waiting for? Women, students, bohemians, anyone who is not a rich, white, male (no offense to all of you rich, white, males reading this, but your time is up)-- what has to be done to us before we say, "Enough is enough!" Okay, I am going to wind down before this becomes a full-scale call to revolution leading to the shut down of Real Art. The point of all of this is what are we doing? What are we actually doing? A question for the ages that can only be answered by each of us individually before we can even think of what we are doing collectively. Now I am going to sit and cry and wish I was a strong person capable of great things instead of a weak-willed pile of flesh only capable of self-pity. (Uhhh... Ron? Was that a bit over the top?)

Madonna says her daughter is obsessed with gay people

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The pop diva, considered by some to be an icon in the gay community, tells the magazine her 9-year-old daughter likes to guess who is gay: "Oh, and the other thing she likes to do when we go out, she says, 'Mom, do you want me to point out who the gay men are?' And I say, 'Okay, but I think I already know.'"

Click here for the rest.

Wow. Is Lourdes already nine? Time flies.

Somehow, the news that Madonna's daughter is obsessed with gay people comes as absolutely no surprise. Like mother, like daughter. Madonna's been drooling over gay folk for almost as long as I can remember, putting their images in her videos and movies, including homoerotic fiction in her sterile coffee table book of "erotica," 1992's Sex, and depending on the gay community for CD sales as her musical output becomes ever more bland. For Madonna, "gay" means money and fun. Of course she's teaching her daughter the facts of life as she understands them: always suckle at the gay teat, Lourdes, it won't ever let you down.

All kidding aside, my personal bet is that Lourdes will probably end up having particularly healthy attitudes about homosexuality. In that respect, Madonna's bound to be a pretty good mother. Good for them.


(MAX NASH: Associated Press)

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Good night and get lost! Chris Matthews exhumes McCarthy

From Attytood courtesy of Eschaton:

Ironically, the topic was the Oscars. Smerconish and Matthews -- whose brother is a GOP candidate for lieutenant governor here in Pennsylvania -- were running down the list, and they came to "Good Night and Good Luck." A casual listener might expect broadcaster Matthews -- who has pretty much the same job, if not the same gravitas, as Edward R. Murrow some fifty years later -- to praise the flick -- but think again. Here -- with an assist from Smerconish's producer, the fabulous T.C. Scornavacchi -- is what he really said (and you can listen to the actual clip here):

You know, one-sided, to some extent liberal propaganda. Because you know there Communists – I’m sorry…there were Communists in the government…I could go through the whole list – Elizabeth Bentley, Harry Dexter White, and of course Alger Hiss – there’s a whole gaggle of them.

And the biggest nonsense of this sort of revisionist history is that there wasn’t a Communist threat and that McCarthy was just a drunken fool. Well, he may have been a drunk – he certainly was – and he may have been unable to shoot straight, but there were lots of targets there. He just didn’t hit any.

Click here for the rest.

Yesterday's communist is today's terrorist. That is, the potential presence of Soviet spies in the US didn't even come close to justifying the vicious witch hunt Senator Joseph McCarthy unleashed in the in the early 1950s, just as the potential presence of terrorists in the US doesn't justify depriving tens of thousands of their civil rights today. I'm sick of this right-wing attempt to turn McCarthy into a force for good: along with new support for the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, this whitewash of McCarthyism serves only to create a bogus historical narrative in support of some of the more psychotic manifestations of Bush's "war on terror." The Senator from Wisconsin was a force for evil, destroying the careers of some of America's best and brightest artists for their perfectly legal political views and associations, while at the same time turning Cold War fears into a national hysteria. And here's the kicker. McCarthy didn't really know whether our nation was overrun by communists or not; he simply took advantage of the times in order to advance his own political power. Pretty much like a lot of politicians do today. The bottom line here is that anybody who in any way asserts that McCarthy was good for this country is a total lunatic, automatically disqualifying himself from any serious discussion about the welfare and direction of America.

Like I said, I'm sick of this shit.

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A COUPLE OF GOOD ANTI-BUSH RANTS

Both by Seattle Weekly columnist Geov Parrish, both from Working For Change:

Forget Dubai Ports; look at the rest of Bush's record

So it has come to this. After two stolen elections, a secret energy task force, Enron and assorted other corporate scandals, massive tax cuts for the rich, the largest federal debts and trade deficits in world history, blowing up the ABM treaty, killing stem cell research, laughing off global warming, allowing 9-11 to happen, stonewalling its (and every other) investigation, failing to catch Osama bin Laden, the PATRIOT Act, still-unsolved anthrax attacks, launching a secret prison system, denying due process to both foreigners and Americans, engaging in torture, monitoring Americans' phone calls, e-mails, and faxes without a warrant, launching unprecedented foreign and domestic propaganda campaigns, blurring the line between church and state, trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez, using lies to launch an illegal invasion of Iraq, badly mishandling both the occupation of Iraq and the resulting insurgency, outing Valerie Wilson (and lying about it), grandstanding on Terri Schiavo, pushing through a miserable Medicare prescription drug law, privatizing public lands, trying to privatize Social Security, securing CAFTA, appointing two reactionaries to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Abramoff scandals, and botching Katrina's aftermath as well as its rebuilding, among many, many other things -- after all that -- the tipping points that bring Cheney and Bush to this abysmal public standing are shooting a lawyer and defending an ordinary transnational corporate deal.

Click here for the rest.

New Orleans drowned, and Bush really didn't care

Does George Bush have any ideas? Does he care about anything other than power and his own political fortunes? (And, of course, the less ethereal fortunes of the backers who have made his power possible?) Forget ideology. Has there ever been this inept a president in this country's history? Has there ever been this negligent -- criminally negligent -- a president in this country' history?

When the head of FEMA is bracing for "the Big One," he doesn't call the mayor and ask, "Ray, everything under control?" He calls the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the universe, the man who with a few orders and signatures can mobilize unimaginable resources in a matter of minutes.

Bush didn't. And for agonizing days, while New Orleans flooded and thousands drowned and many thousands more begged the world, on camera, for shelter, food, water, and safety, the entire federal apparatus under the command of one man went about its business and then went home and watched the disaster unfold on the evening news.

And then, not only did Bush try to shuffle off blame with his levee comment and the White House insistence that it was really the fault of local (Democratic) officials, but for the next six months all that promised federal relief and assistance has turned into a quagmire of Republican cronyism and broken promises. Everything, to these people, is about sound bites in service of power and enriching friends.

Click here for the rest.

When I first started blogging, I spent a lot of energy trying to make it clear that Bush was a bad guy, either evil or incompetent. Or both. Back then, late 2002 and through the Iraq invasion in 2003, I was amazed at how insane our country seemed. The whole 9/11 narrative about how Bush was a strong leader going after the "evil doers" simply blew my mind. For anybody with an open mind it was just as obvious then as it is now: George W. Bush is the worst President this country's ever had. It's strange how things change so quickly. Bush was a superhero only three years ago; now he's polling as badly as Nixon during Watergate. I'm really happy that most of the country has finally figured it out. But it's all still so strange. We go on with our lives, go to work, eat, hang out, etc., while America continues to face perhaps its biggest crisis since the Civil War. I don't feel like I'm in a crisis--okay, Katrina felt like a crisis, but I'm talking about the overall picture, about how Bush is running this nation through the sewers with virtually every move he makes. Anyway, I figured it was time for some plain old fashioned Bush-bashing. Go check out Parrish's essays; they're very satisfying.

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"IT'S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP"

I don't usually watch the Oscars myself, but Becky does. Only moments ago, as I was walking from the kitchen with a Dr. Pepper to my computer in our study, I noticed rapper Ludacris introducing the stage performance of the Oscar-nominated song from Hustle and Flow, "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp." I just had to check it out. And lemme tell ya, it was one of the most amusing performances I've ever seen.

The set was a ramshackle inner city home interior. Inside was a diva style singer in a Seven Year Itch style Marilyn Monroe dress singing the title line, alternating with three thuglike rappers who took the verses while they danced in an intensely masculine and hip hop way. Downstage, in front of the set, were about fifteen fly dancers, both male and female, of several races, gettin' jiggy with it, metaphorically speaking of course. The overall effect was four totally different kinds of images coming together in an awkward and funny, but somehow pretty groovy, whole. Never mind the fact that it's kind of hard to have any sympathy at all for a pimp, the sympathetic character in Hustle and Flow not withstanding: feeling sorry for sexual exploiters of women has its own gallows humor about it.

Anyway, Becky just told me that it got the Oscar.

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WAS PAT TILLMAN KILLED FOR HIS POLITICS?

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Case of former pro football player's
friendly-fire death to be reopened

Gen. Peter Pace said the Army was launching a criminal investigation into the April 2004 death of Tillman — an Army Ranger shot by fellow soldiers in what previous military reviews had concluded was an accident — because the Defense Department's inspector general determined it was an additional step that needed to be taken.

A Pentagon official told The Associated Press on Saturday that a criminal investigation would focus on possible charges of negligent homicide. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the new investigation had not formally begun.

And

Tillman died on April 22, 2004, when he was struck by gunfire during a firefight along a canyon road near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Army said at the time that the barrage of bullets came from enemy fire.

A report by the Army later found that troops with Tillman knew at the time that friendly fire had killed the football star. Officers destroyed critical evidence and concealed the truth from Tillman's brother, also an Army Ranger, who was nearby, the report found.

Click here for the rest.

Right after he was killed, I was reading comments about it over at Eschaton and one guy, a Vietnam vet, was asserting that Tillman was fragged by his fellow troops. I pointed out that he was engaging in speculation, that there was no known evidence to even suggest such a thing. He agreed with me, but said fragging was a distinct possibility: Tillman, we all believed at that point, was a hyperpatriotic, gung-ho, fightin' he-man, the kind of reckless nut who might endanger his entire unit with his get-them-ragheads behavior. After all, the press releases coming out of the Pentagon painted the guy as some sort of modern day Rambo, all badass and ready to kill or die for his country; the fragging scenario certainly seemed possible.

That was then. Now I wonder if this vet guy had it right but for the wrong reasons.

It seems that the Pentagon willfully covered up the circumstances surrounding Tillman's death; important evidence was destroyed almost immediately, and news of that didn't come out for months. Of course, they're calling it all a mistake, but then these are the same guys behind the Jessica Lynch show, and are not to be trusted. Compounding matters is that Tillman turned out to be not some sort of Rambo, but a patriotic left-winger who read Noam Chomsky and believed that the Iraq war "is so fucking illegal."

Is it possible that Tillman was fragged by fellow soldiers, not because of a wild blood lust, but because of a perceived lack of loyalty to his unit, that is, because of his left-wing politics? This is, of course, pure speculation. But there are many unanswered questions about his death, and the institution reopening the investigation, the Pentagon, has already lied about it. There's a good chance we'll never know, exactly, what happened, but I think I've managed to show that there were motive, means, and opportunity, the three pillars on which all murder prosecutions stand, suggesting that Tillman's death may have been more than a "negligent homicide."

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How the Economic News is Spun

From CounterPunch, another essay by the conservative former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts:

When the US Department of Labor, for example, releases the monthly payroll jobs data, the press release will put the best spin on the data. The focus is on the aggregate number of new jobs created the previous month, for example, 150,000 new jobs. That sounds good. News reporters report the press release. They do not look into the data to see what kinds of jobs have been created and what kinds are being lost. They do not look back in time and provide a net job creation number over a longer period of time.

This is why the American public is unaware that higher paid jobs in export and import-competitive industries are being phased out along with engineering and other professional "knowledge jobs" and replaced with lower paid jobs in domestic services. The replacement of higher paid jobs with lower paid jobs is one reason for the decline in median household income over the past five years. It is not a large decline, but it is a decline. How can it be possible for the economy to be doing well when median household income is not growing and when economic growth is based on increased consumer indebtedness?

Click here for the rest.

The above excerpt is but one example of the rhetorical playground known as "economics." The long and the short of this is that, even though economics as a field of study has a great deal of social value, economic pronouncements most certainly do not have the same kind of credibility behind them that real sciences do--economics, like psychology, depends on way too many assumptions to come to any clear and concrete conclusions. Nonetheless, politicians and the news media behave as though the economic conventional wisdom is as authoritative as science. Compounding this problem is that the field, when compared to physics or chemistry, is extraordinarily undisciplined in that there is no objective standard for fact-checking. That is, in a real science, if one scientist issues a fantastical statement about how the universe works, hundreds of other scientists then try to recreate whatever experiment led the first scientist to his fantastical conclusion in the first place. If it checks out, then it's no longer fantastical; if not, that scientist is a crackpot. While economists can recreate statistical studies, there is no way to really do the same thing with ideas about what those numbers mean; there are better and worse arguments, of course, but, ultimately, interpreting economic data is usually very subjective, and because most Americans are unaware of the field's lack of objectivity, there is very little skepticism when the oracles of Wall Street speak. Obviously, people with power and agendas take great advantage of the confusion. Consequently, Americans continue to struggle to stay afloat, often slipping under, even though "the economy improves."

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The AIDS "myth"

from The Nation

The latest issue of Harper's Magazine contains a stunning 15-page article by well-known AIDS' denialist Celia Farber (formerly of Spin magazine) that extensively repeats UC Berkeley virologist Peter Duesberg's discredited theory that HIV does not cause AIDS. Among the claims that Duesberg makes (and Farber recounts approvingly) are:

AIDS is actually a "chemical syndrome, caused by accumulated toxins from heavy drug use." "Many cases of AIDS are the consequence of heavy drug use, both recreational (poppers, cocaine, methamphetamines, etc.) and medical (AZT, etc.)"

"HIV is a harmless passenger virus that infects a small percentage of the population and is spread primarily from mother to child, though at a relatively low rate."

More later, but right now all I can muster is: "WHAT?" Shame on you Harper's for giving a nut a serious platform to spew nuttery. And maybe endanger some lives in the process.

FUNDAMENTALISTS SHREDDING FIRST AMENDMENT

From KMOV TV courtesy of Eschaton:

State bill proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official religion

The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."

Click here for the rest (you may have to register to read).

And from the Louisville Courier-Journal courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Survey questions politicians on Jesus

Stein, who is Jewish, called the survey an "intimidating, bullying letter."

"This is doing what the constitution prohibits, and that is offering a religious test for public officials," she said. "That's the long and short of it."

Sharp disagreed.

"Anybody can vote for whoever they want to," he said. "You can't restrict us from participating."

He said he was "shocked that all this is going on over a simple little survey."

Sharp said he sent out the survey Saturday and used his own time and money. He said he has two goals -- to get people thinking about whether to accept Jesus, and to let candidates know "we're watching them and watching their votes on things."

Click here for the rest.

Whether it's an end-run around it, like the attempt to impose a popular religious test on Kentucky politicians, or a direct attack on the Constitution, like the attempt to create a state religion in Missouri, Christian fundamentalists appear to have nothing but comtempt for the first amendment's "wall of separation between church and state." That is, the Constitution clearly states that the government shall make no law establishing a state religion, the so-called "establishment clause." This is a mandate deeply embedded in both US law and American philosophy and culture; to so flagrantly and openly defy it is to be either anti-American or so hopelessly deluded so as to disqualify one from serious discourse about our government's functioning. That these people are taken seriously is a sad testament to the state of the nation.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really think either of these initiatives, the bill in Missouri or the born-again survey in Kentucky, by themselves, will threaten the Constitution in the long run. After all, the survey is sponsored by private individuals, who have the right to do such a thing, and the state religion bill, if passed, will be struck down as soon as it makes its way into a Federal court. What bothers me, however, besides the proud and willful ignorance of these religious weirdos, I mean, is that these two separate events are playing out in an overall context of incremental fundamentalist social engineering. From school board stealth candidates who push abstinence-based sex ed, creationism, and school prayer, to anti-abortion activists who have successfully run many abortion providers out of business, the religious right has been chipping away at the secular society for at least a couple of decades now, and, over the years, they have been startlingly successful. Many social concepts that were unthinkable back in the 80s are now common, mainstream ideas: organized fundamentalism has pushed America toward a more religious existence, whether we want to admit it or not.

That's why what appear to be isolated instances of Christian lunacy are, in fact, not that at all. The President's approval ratings are almost as low as Nixon's were six months before he resigned, but that matters little to American fundamentalists. They've got their man in the White House, which emboldens them, and now they're pushing harder than ever. They really do want to remake this country in their own image. And if sane people don't start pushing back harder, America as we know it may not exist by mid-century.

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Wal-Mart forced to carry "morning after" pill

Yahoo! News - Officials of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Friday the company will reverse its earlier policy and stock emergency contraception pills in all of its pharmacies effective March 20, saying the giant retailer could not justify being the country's only major pharmacy chain not to carry the morning-after pill. The announcement comes after Massachusetts last month ordered the world's largest retailer to stock the so-called Plan B pill, following a lawsuit by three Boston women against Wal-Mart.

Illinois also requires pharmacies to carry the prescription drug, and those are the only two states where Wal-Mart has so far stocked emergency contraception.

"We expect more states to require us to sell emergency contraceptives in the months ahead," said Ron Chomiuk, vice president of pharmacy for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart.

"Because of this, and the fact that this is an FDA-approved product, we feel it is difficult to justify being the country's only major pharmacy chain not selling it," Chomiuk said in a statement.

Chomiuk said the company will maintain its conscientious objection policy, which it said is consistent with the tenets of the American Pharmaceutical Association. The policy, except where prohibited by law, allows any Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacy employee who does not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy.


Uh-oh. The kids are gonna fuck like crazy now. I'm sure Ron's said it before, but it bears repeating - emergency contraception isn't a priviledge, it's a right. For whatever reason, this is often the only option. It's still outrageous that a pharmacist can still put an already distraught woman/girl through more strife by saying, "I won't sell this to you. Ask my co-worker, she may help you." Let's forget for a minute that Wal-Mart has already done everything in their power to destroy the real American way of life, thus making them hypocrites for taking some sort of moral stand with their "conscientious objection." There's something fundamentally wrong with controlling and judging a complete stranger's personal life.


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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie and Sammy



Paz



Phil



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FRANK ZAPPA ON CNN'S CROSSFIRE, 1986

From Crooks and Liars:

Zappa: The biggest threat to America today is not communism; it's moving America towards a fascist theocracy and everything that has happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe.

Click here for a link to the video.

Wow, that's almost prophetic at this point. This was shortly after FZ testified before Senate hearings, which were spurred on by a special interest group composed of Senators' wives, about obscenity in rock music lyrics. If you don't already know the story, the long and short of it is that Zappa proved himself to be a capable orator and brilliant debater--indeed, FZ spearheaded the music industry's defense against what was then a very real possibility of government censorship of lyrics, and was probably the biggest factor in diffusing what appeared to be a growing senatorial mob of political self-righteousness. Hot off his debate win on Capitol Hill, Frank took his newfound debating skills on television. In short, he kicks these pundit guys' ass. These days, and probably then too, one rarely hears an absolutist free speech point of view so well articulated in the mainstream media. This video is well worth watching, not only for its entertainment value, but also for the argument itself. Go check it out.



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Gay Adoption

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are approximately 600,000 same-sex couples in the United States (Simmons & O'Connell, 2003). More than 30% of these couples have at least one child, and over half of that 30% have two or more children. Therefore, parents of the same sex are raising at least 200,000 children--possibly more than 400,000--in America (these numbers do not include single lesbian or single gay parents). for the rest: http://cwla.org/programs/culture/glbtqposition.htm

So again I was listening to NPR. Two minutes into the program I started yelling at the radio (it sounds much more dramatic than it actually is-- I yell at the radio a couple times a week). The issue at hand was gay adoption and the 16 states that are looking to restrict or ban adoptions by gay couples. The only state to actually have one of these outright bans is Florida. The arguement for the ban is that the ideal home environment has a mother and a father and that same-sex partnerships are more likely to break-up than a marriage between people of opposite sex. It is a "child welfare issue." Now, I am not even going to mention the higher than 50% divorce rate among straight couples that exists in the US now. The way I see it is an ideal home is where you have people who love you enough to provide you a stable home with positive influences of all kinds. I cannot see how living in multiple foster homes or orphanages can be viewed as better than living with two mommies or daddies. Most studies (I should find one) show no difference in the health and welfare of children raised by same-sex parents. As NPR does, they had people on each side of the issue and from what I heard in today's debate, there is no real reason to adopt such a ban except to deny rights to people who are "different." It makes me so angry to think people in this world will listen to the bigotry that is spouted in the name of children's advocacy. I suggest we ask a kid in their tenth foster home if they would mind being adopted by a gay couple, my guess is they would be happy to have a stable, loving home of any kind. But what do I know?

Bush approval rating nearing Nixon's levels

From Knight-Ridder via the Houston Chronicle:

President Bush's job-approval rating fell to an all-time low — 34 percent — in a poll published Tuesday. That puts him not far above Richard Nixon's Watergate-era nadir and raises questions about how effectively he can govern in his remaining years in office.

Click here for the rest.

Heh.

You just gotta love that headline, pairing together Bush with Nixon. That's what we need more of in the press, tying those two names together. Of course, Bush's level of criminality puts Nixon's to shame--tricky Dick never even imagined trying to do much of what Bush has already gotten away with.

You know, it's kind of lame: much of the mainstream reporting that I've encountered puts Bush's abysmal ratings into a second term context. That is, the news narrative is along the lines of "Presidents always stumble during their second terms." That may be true and all, but I think Bush is something of a special case. He sucked just as much in his first term; it's simply take a few years for people to figure that out. What's actually happening here is not some kind of traditional "sophomore slump;" rather, it's about his horrendous policies over the years coming home to roost.

'Bout time.

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MOCK THE NAZIS

From Seattle area journalist Dave Neiwert, who specializes in writing about far right hate groups, and who lately has been dealing with neo-Nazi recruiting in his own neighborhood:

Springtime for Hitler

Rick at OlyBlog proposed this as a constructive way to deal with our recent local infestation of the National Socialist Movement's recruitment drive:

I've been considering the following diabolical plan, and I ran it by my class this morning and got a big thumbs up. Here's what we do:

-- Make lots of costumes of Nazis, only make them outrageous, cartoonish, and fantastic.

-- We wear these costumes to the next NSM rally that is scheduled in July at the State Capitol.

-- We prance around in our surreal nazi costumes, making statements about how persecuted and abused we are.

This strategy of mockery has several attractive features. Our presence will deter those who may be vulnerable to recruitment, but would change the dynamic of the demonstration from one of confrontation to one of humor and farce. The comical approach will make their claims about being an abused minority look hysterical. It will make it very hard for them to spin any photos taken from the event. Finally, it will be great fun for us to think of creative ways to dress like Nazis. (The more like Village People, the better!)

Click here for the rest.

I wholeheartedly agree. As my buddy Vince once observed to a mutual friend who just couldn't seem to get her hands around Nazis-as-comic-relief, "While the Nazis were probably the most horrible manifestation of human society in history, they were also the funniest group of humans in history." Or something to that effect. Indeed, most people from my generation grew up alternating between Nazis as villains and Nazis as buffoons for just about every other film or television show we watched. This isn't really a weird concept. On any given day when I was a kid, I might have watched an episode of Hogan's Heroes, with it's dual goobers Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, or a Laugh In rerun featuring Arte Johnson's immortal cigarette smoking Nazi, always saying in an outrageous German accent, "Very interesting," and then turn right around and watch the Nazi episode of Star Trek or a cool WWII movie, where Nazis were portrayed as worse than Darth Vader.

Yeah, Nazis are very disturbing, but, c'mon, how can they not be really funny, too? For starters, those uniforms are just plain ridiculous. And all that bullshit about "the master race" and "the thousand year reich." And don't get me started on how funny goose stepping is. For my money, the best comic portrayal of Nazis is in The Blues Brothers. The single minded pursuit of Jake and Elwood by neo-Nazis who take themselves extraordinarily seriously is perhaps the best plotline in the film. Ultimately, that's why it's so fun to make fun of Nazis: they have absolutely no sense of irony; they take themselves waaaay too seriously. It doesn't at all hurt that they deserve to be ruthlessly mocked. There's nothing more satisfying than a crying Nazi.

So I'm all for this campaign of mockery. Next time I end up at a neo-Nazi counterdemonstration (okay, I've only been to a couple of these, but it's bound to happen again), I'll definitely be there as a Nazi buffoon, speaking with a bad German accent, goose stepping everywhere I go: "I know nothink!!!"


Hogaaaaaan!!!

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