CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM
From AlterNet:
The mass movement I've described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the "Christian worldview." The phrase is based on the conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all -- government, science, history and culture -- must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology -- I call it Christian nationalism. It's an ideology adhered to by millions of Americans, some of whom are very powerful. It's what drives a great many of the fights over religion, science, sex and pluralism now dividing communities all over the country.
I am not suggesting that religious tyranny is imminent in the United States. Our democracy is eroding and some of our rights are disappearing, but for most people, including those most opposed to the Christian nationalist agenda, life will most likely go on pretty much as normal for the foreseeable future. Thus for those who value secular society, apprehending the threat of Christian nationalism is tricky. It's like being a lobster in a pot, with the water heating up so slowly that you don't notice the moment at which it starts to kill you.
If current trends continue, we will see ever-increasing division and acrimony in our politics.
Click here for the rest.
I think this guy's got a good handle on the issue: we're not in danger of imminent theocracy, but we are in danger. The leaders of this fundamentalist movement have power and influence that dwarf the percentage of the population they lead, and they're not going to go away. Look, I have no problem with religion in and of itself. I have no problem with people believing any kooky thing they want to believe, from UFOs to ghosts to resurrection, and I definitely have no problem with people organizing in order to persuade others to adopt their beliefs. But these guys want to use the government to force adherence to their beliefs on our entire nation, whether we believe or not. That's not only a direct attack on the Constitution, and therefore unAmerican on its face, but it's also stupid and dangerous. I don't think it's necessary to rant about why a secular government and society are best for America. Suffice it to say, knowledge and understanding do not progress when tied down by unchanging dogma. The Renaissance, and then the Age of Enlightenment, could not begin without the Protestant Reformation happening first, which greatly shook up the Catholic dominated power structure in Europe during the Middle Ages, allowing free discussion and inquiry to flourish. These fundamentalists want to turn back the clock, and, thus, retard humanity greatly. They've got to be stopped.
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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Big Brother Bugs Portland
From the Nation:
Moreover, in April 2005, the City Council voted, along with the mayor--and with overwhelming support from the citizenry--to withdraw Portland's participation in the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force project.
Upon Portland's withdrawal from the task force, NPR's Larry Abramson noted, "Portlanders seem proud of their bluer-than-blue reputation, of the bumper stickers that proclaim 'Keep Portland Weird.' So maybe it was predictable that the city mocked as Little Beirut by conservatives is considering a symbolic declaration of independence." And tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, with no Jerry Garcia or Kurt Cobain to worship, Portland has made its commitment to progressive politics the city's calling card. The mayor's seat is officially nonpartisan, and where major policy is concerned, the mayor has little more power than anyone else on the four-member City Council. With a robust public referendum system that presents voters with potential tax proposals, constitutional amendments and bond issues, Portland's political system does Montesquieu proud.
By state law, police officers in Oregon are barred from investigating citizens based solely on their political, religious or social leanings, and Portlanders will be quick to point out that it was the Feds, and not local cops, who erroneously arrested local attorney Brandon Mayfield in connection to the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in May 2004. After the bogus fingerprint evidence used to arrest him fell through, the only credible "reason" behind the police action turned out to be Mayfield's religion, which happened to be Islam.
"In the absence of any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing," wrote Mayor Potter in an open letter to the city, "I believe the FBI's recent actions smack of 'Big Brother.' Spying on local government without justification or cause is not acceptable to me. I hope it is not acceptable to you, either."
Click here for the rest.
I had no idea that Portland was so liberal. Some place to think about moving to someday. At any rate, given the NSA domestic spying disclosures recently, this is no surprise, totally believable. It's also evidence that all this domestic spying isn't about terrorism: rather, it's obviously about using the massive security apparatus at the Oval Office's command to keep tabs on, intimidate, and generally harass the political opposition. Never mind, for only a moment, that such a thing is wildly illegal. This undermines democracy itself. You can't have democracy without, or with a handicapped, opposition; our very system of government absolutely depends on competitive viewpoints. Needless to say, this is an ominous sign, indeed.
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Monday, May 29, 2006
Paul Krugman: Swift Boating the Planet
From the New York Times, via yet another cyber-renegade who farts on the Times' pay-per-view firewall around its opinion columnists, courtesy of BuzzFlash:
Leading the charge was Patrick Michaels, a professor at the University of Virginia who has received substantial financial support from the energy industry. In Senate testimony, and then in numerous presentations, Dr. Michaels claimed that the actual pace of global warming was falling far short of Dr. Hansen's predictions. As evidence, he presented a chart supposedly taken from a 1988 paper written by Dr. Hansen and others, which showed a curve of rising temperatures considerably steeper than the trend that has actually taken place.
In fact, the chart Dr. Michaels showed was a fraud... The original paper showed a range of possibilities, and the actual rise in temperature has fallen squarely in the middle of that range. So how did Dr. Michaels make it seem as if Dr. Hansen's prediction was wildly off? Why, he erased all the lower curves, leaving only the curve that the original paper described as being "on the high side of reality." ...
Dr. Hansen has been trying to correct the record for years. Yet the claim ... has remained in circulation, and has become a staple of climate change skeptics, from Michael Crichton to Robert Novak. There's a concise way to describe what happened to Dr. Hansen: he was Swift-boated.
Click here for the rest.
Last week when I was in Houston I got to hang out with a good friend of mine, an articulate and polite conservative, passionate about his beliefs, and a grand debater. He's also really intelligent, and reads more political stuff than I do; relative to me, he has a superior command of details and facts. Well, his "facts," anyway. Generally, in political debate, I tend to accept most of what he offers as facts, focusing instead on principles and overall themes. It's just too damned difficult to know if the numbers and whatnot that he rattles off are true or not. Besides, it's no fun to contest facts in a friendly little argument; discourse generally dissolves into "yeah it is" and "no it's not" contrarianism. Consequently, by challenging his underlying assumptions, I've managed to keep a guy who I've seen flabbergast an endless parade of liberal debaters on his toes. We love our arguments.
Unfortunately, for our most recent meeting, I found myself falling into that previously mentioned contrarianism. My conservative pal was offering "facts" that I just couldn't play with. "There is no scientific consensus that man is causing global warming," he said. Not being up to date on the latest right-wing quackery on this issue, I knew I was wading into a nasty bog when I told him that he was wrong, and had no idea what he was talking about. He referred to some study of a huge number of scientists that found that attitudes were mixed. I asked what kinds of scientists comprised the sample, to which he replied simply that it was scientists.
"Look, this is just a right-wing talking point," I said. "You can easily get together some sort of survey of scientists, say, chemists and biologists and physicists, but unless you're talking about the scientists who matter, climatologists, guys who study the atmosphere, it doesn't matter. Every two bit high school biology teacher in the Bible-Belt has his own pet theories about why evolution is flawed science, but they don't matter; they're not authorities in the field."
That got him, and he moved to a different tactic.
"It's basic chemistry: co2 and cfc's actually cool things, not warm them up."
"But it's not basic chemistry!" I retorted. "We're talking about massive climate systems that do, indeed, involve basic chemistry at their most rudimentary levels, but we're talking about the big picture here, which is wildly complex. To say it's all about basic chemistry is to insanely distort and simply the issue as to render it meaningless."
Fortunately for both of us the people in our company decided to move to a different topic, so we never resolved our disagreement. But I was left with a strong reminder of the way that conservative discussion of most issues isn't so much about winning the debate as it is about introducing flawed lines of reasoning to muddy the discourse such that...well, as Fox News likes to say, the viewer is left to decide. I don't think my buddy was trying to muddy the debate himself, he's simply reflecting what he's read, which is decidedly screwed up when you really dig into it.
There is an entire industry on the issue of global warming alone which tries to distort the debate. Check out this one group's page of crap, all assembled by a right-wing think tank on whose board Jack Abramoff served until recently: obviously, the money and power behind global warming skepticism come from lobbyists, which ought to say something in and of itself.
Krugman is absolutely right to compare the disinformation campaign about global warming to the Swift Boat Veterans' campaign to turn John Kerry from war hero to draft-dodging hippy. Except there's a lot more money on the line with global warming. How the hell can truth prevail here when so much power is in favor of lies?
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MEMORIAL DAY, 2006
Deaths in Iraq of US military personnel, according to today's World News Tonight on ABC:
2,467
I would personally go so far as to say that these young men and women have been murdered by the Bush administration. You can quibble if you want, but, if you're a Christian, I refer you to King David's sin: he murdered Uriah by sending him to the front.
From Wikipedia:
David, infatuated with the beautiful Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, commits adultery with her. Bathsheba conceives, and David tries to cover up his sin. Uriah is brought home from the army in order to report to David. David then sends Uriah home, so that he might have sex with his wife and claims of adultery would never surface. However, Uriah refuses to go home, and sleeps with David's servants in the palace, as it would be unfair for him to enjoy the comforts of home when his comrades are still at war. David tries getting Uriah drunk the second night, but this ploy fails as well; Uriah still retires in the servant quarters of David's palace. Finally, David sends Uriah back to the front, with orders to the commanders that they should abandon him in the midst of the enemy. And so it is done, Uriah dies in battle, and David marries Bathsheba and has a son by her.
Click here for more about King David.
David, for his own personal gain, with secrecy and lies, knowingly sent a man to die in battle, which is exactly what the neo-con cabal in the White House has done to 2,467 US service men and women. As longtime Real Art readers know, I'm certainly no Christian, but I'd be a fool to assert that there is no wisdom in the Bible. It's one thing to defend the nation, and by that I mean really defend the nation, not this bullshit in Iraq where they say we're fighting for freedom even though it's all just a bunch of imperial gaming, but it's quite another to send troops into harm's way for crackpot theories about American dominance, glory, and oil. Let's not euphemize: the White House didn't make mistakes, they rolled the dice with some very special American lives and lost bigtime; further, they knew we were going to lose troops and did it anyway, all to advance American, and therefore their own, power. It doesn't matter that this is war. It doesn't matter that most Americans thought it would be a good idea at the time. It doesn't matter that Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator. 9/11 doesn't matter. Bush and his cronies are fucking murderers thousands of times over. The only thing that can save this country's soul after all this isn't just an impeachment, it's hardcore time in prison for the people who instigated it.
Murderers belong behind bars.
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Sunday, May 28, 2006
ENRON CONVICTIONS: BUSINESS AS USUAL
From ZNet, an essay by my favorite journalist, Greg Palast:
Lay Convicted, Bush Walks
Lay, co-convict Jeff Skilling and Enron did not act alone. They connived with half a dozen other power companies and a dozen investment banks to manipulate both the stock market and the electricity market. And though their co-conspirators have now paid $3 billion to settle civil claims, the executives of these other corporations and banks get a walk on criminal charges.
Furthermore, to protect our President's boardroom buddies from any further discomforts, the Bush Justice Department, just days ago, indicted Milberg, Weiss, the law firm that nailed Enron's finance industry partners-in-crime. The timing of the bust of this, the top corporation-battling law firm, smacks of political prosecution -- and a signal to Big Business that it's business as usual.
Lay and Skilling have to pay up their ill-gotten gains to Enron's stockholders, but what about the $9-plus billion owe electricity consumers? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Bush's electricity cops, have slapped Enron and its gang of power pirates on the wrist. Could that have something to do with the fact that Ken Lay, in secret chats with Dick Cheney, selected the Commission's chairmen?
Team Bush had to throw the public a bone -- so they threw us Lay and Skilling -- for the crime, note, not of ripping off the public, but ripping off stockholders, the owner class.
This limited conviction, and the announcement of only one more indictment -- of the crime-busters at Milberg-Weiss -- is Team Bush's "all clear!" signal for the sharks to jump back into the power pool.
Click here for the rest.
Great point. But then, that's what I love about Palast; he's able to cut through the bullshit right to an issue's true meaning. And in this case, he does that swimmingly: the Enron prosecution was never really about justice; instead it was about making sure that the corporate class could get back to business as usual. Enron's shareholders were indeed ripped off, and it's good that there are some consequences for that. But remember the rolling blackouts in
It is also important to observe that business as usual also means that the cutthroat capitalist conditions and culture that necessarily gave birth to Lay and Skilling's misdeeds still exist. There will definitely be more Enrons in the future. Maybe even right now.
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'Ex-Gays' Seek a Say in Schools
From the LA Times courtesy of AlterNet:
Unable to stop it, they have turned to a new strategy: demanding equal time for their view in public schools and on college campuses.
Conservative Christians and Jews have teamed up with men and women who call themselves "ex-gay" to lobby — and even sue — for the right to tell teenagers that they can "heal" themselves of unwanted same-sex attractions.
They argue that schools have an obligation to balance gay-pride themes with the message that gay and lesbian students can go straight through "reparative therapy." In this view, homosexuality is not a fixed or inborn trait but a symptom of emotional distress — a disorder that can be cured.
And
Even the most ardent champions of ex-gay therapy acknowledge that it's not always possible to banish unwanted attractions. Nicolosi says only one-third of his patients are ever "cured" — and even then, "that doesn't mean they never have a homosexual thought or feeling again."
Embarrassing lapses have plagued the ex-gay movement: In the 1970s, two of the men who founded Exodus fell in love and left their wives to live together. In the 1980s, the founder of Homosexuals Anonymous was caught having sex with men who sought his help going straight. In 2000, a leading ex-gay speaker with Focus on the Family was photographed leaving a gay bar.
When Dr. Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, interviewed 200 people who had sought to change their sexual orientation, he concluded that many of them had succeeded and were happier for it. But many of his subjects for the 2001 study had been referred by — or worked for — ex-gay groups, and Spitzer relied entirely on their self-reporting of thoughts and desires. He now says that some of his subjects may have been deceiving themselves or lying to him.
Click here for the rest.
You know, I'm not particularly sure myself that homosexuality is some sort of inborn or genetic trait, like blue eyes or dark skin. To the best of my knowledge, the "evidence" for such a concept is pretty weak, and it strikes me that most of the research in this direction is driven by a need to prove to religious homophobes that homosexual behavior is not chosen, and therefore not a sin. On the other hand, I don't really know why there needs to be biological evidence that being gay is not a "lifestyle choice," or why intolerant religious people even need to be persuaded of that. Even in the 21st century, sex is still very mysterious. I think it's safe to say that no one, gay, straight, or bisexual, is able to explain why they like what they like. No one is able to say that what turns them on was freely chosen at some earlier point in their lives. Why do I like super-short hair on women? I have no idea. What is it about belly buttons that gets me wild? You got me. Why are some people into feet, or S and M? You get the idea. It's pretty obvious to me that gay people never chose what turns them on, just as nobody ever chooses what turns them on. Maybe there is some sort of genetic or biological component that makes people tend toward gayness, despite the lack of evidence, but it doesn't really matter. Gay people are gay, and that's that.
Consequently, this whole "ex-gay" therapy nonsense is very troubling. These people assert that they know all about what makes people gay, but, of course, they can't possibly know that because nobody knows that. It strikes me that claiming an ability to "cure" gay people is like claiming an ability to "cure" people who love the Beatles or fried chicken or James Bond movies. In other words, this whole thing is about suppression. That is, there is no such thing as curing a gay person of homosexual desire; the best they can do is help people to stop thinking about it. But then, that's the kind of thing that, demonstrably, leads to depression, anxiety, suicide, all sorts of pathology. Suppression of natural, healthy sexual desire, suppression of identity, because that's what we're ultimately talking about here, is a horrible thing.
And these motherfuckers are insisting on spreading their dangerous bullshit in the public schools, which are already the most homophobic environments in the country. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; they've been pushing for creationism for years. Creationism in science class is pretty awful, but the effects are more long-term and diffused: preaching bullshit about sexuality has an immediate negative payoff--teens are already confused and overly emotional; gay kids even more so. Ex-gay "philosophy" is already a bad idea. Putting it in the schools would be an atrocity.
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Saturday, May 27, 2006
CORPORATE MEDIA AND TRUTH:
LIKE BELIEVING IN SANTA CLAUS
A nice long rant posted by one of the Media Matters people about the significance and blatant anti-liberal double standard of the New York Times' recent front page story on the Clintons' marriage is all the rage on the left side of the blogoshpere today. It's actually an interesting read, so go check it out if you want. On the other hand, it suffers from the chronic tendency of establishment liberals to go after the mountain of damning details, point-by-point, while staying the hell away from a more succinct and overall institutional criticism of the news media of the Noam Chomsky variety--generally, that's the problem with the liberal-left, as opposed to the progressive-left or far left; their mindset tends to value the institutions that make up the overall power establishment, and, consequently, are only able to criticize their actions, rather than their existence or how they are structured.
At any rate, one of Tom Tomorrow's blog team, Jonathan Schwarz, who cross posts at This Modern World the stuff he does at his own blog, A Tiny Revolution, immediately saw the deficiency of the Media Matters piece, and adds to it this golden nugget:
Of all the things that drive me crazy about my progressive compatriots, it’s this belief that you can change the corporate media with accurate criticism of it. They believe at some point the people within the media will realize they’re wrong, and their behavior will improve.
This is insane.
Click here for the rest.
That is so true. He briefly explains why such criticism is likely to have no effect, but the real punchline is in a piece to which he links that he wrote on his own blog last December:
There Is No Santa Claus
One thing I repeat is that the mainstream media does a FANTASTIC job. Day in and day out, they turn in an extraordinary performance—at what they exist to do. And that is to make as much money as possible.
Of course, in terms of helping people learn about the world, they are an eternal catastrophe. But why would we ever expect any different? The mainstream media is made up of gigantic corporations. Like all corporations, they manufacture a product, which is their audience. They sell this product to their customers, which are other huge corporations.
Informing people about the world is not just irrelevant to the purpose of making money, but in many ways actually HURTS a corporation's profitability. No business goes out of its way to piss off its owners and customers.
Now, obviously it's true you hear constantly about the media's Unending Fight For Truth. But you also hear constantly that a fat man wearing a red suit breaks into America's homes at the end of each year to distribute new X-boxes. Neither of these things is real.
Click here for the rest.
Again, that is so true. The corporate news media is simply not in the business of providing the news: they provide audiences for commercials and ads, and they attract those audiences by giving them programs and articles called "news," which may or may not actually have some correspondence to reality. For the life of me, I just can't figure out why liberals don't pound away on this concept 24/7 when criticizing the obvious rightward slant of the corporate news media; it seems like such a natural place to begin the debate. The only answer I have is what I mentioned above, that liberals favor the power establishment, and are utterly unwilling to really go after it in a way that might ultimately achieve the goals they say they want.
It's maddening, I know, but until American liberals, who far outnumber progressives, begin to realize that supporting the institutions of power which comprise the US establishment plays utterly into the hands of conservatives who, in the end, are the real ideological face of of American power, it's all going to be pointless debate. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. You can't be a part of the establishment and oppose it at the same time.
I learned that while I was teaching high school.
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Enron Bosses--Guilty; George Bush--Guilty
From the Nation via AlterNet:
Lay, who President Bush affectionately referred to as "Kenny-boy" when the two forged an alliance in the 1990s to advance Bush's political ambitions and Lay's business prospects, contributed $122,500 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns in Texas. Lay would later explain to a PBS "Frontline" interviewer that, though he had worked closely with former Texas Governor Ann Richards, the Democrat incumbent who Bush challenged in 1994, he backed the Republican because "I was very close to George W."
And
All told, it is estimated that, over the years prior the company's bankruptcy, Lay, his company and its employees contributed close to $2 million to fund George W. Bush's political rise.
And
As Waxman explained in a 2001 interview, "The fact of the matter is that Enron and Ken Lay, who was the Chief Executive Officer of Enron, had an extraordinary amount of influence and access to the Bush Administration. Lay was called a close friend by both the President and the Vice President. When the Vice President chaired an Energy Task Force, Ken Lay had an opportunity to meet privately with the Vice President and to have a great deal of influence in their recommendations."
Click here for the rest.
I had almost forgotten the now classic Bush statement a week or so after Enron's collapse in late 2001 that it was a business scandal, not a political scandal. And, after Bush distanced himself from "Kenny-boy" Lay by insisting repeatedly, and falsely, that they barely knew each other, after a few show-laws were passed by Congress to illustrate how the GOP frowns on corporate corruption, after the corporate news media happily took the bait, a business scandal is what Enron turned out to be. Of course, that's not really true--that's simply what became of public discussion on the matter. In an era where there seems to be very little practical difference between corporate America and American government, Enron was always a political scandal.
It is impossible to say what political favors Bush spooned from the Oval Office out to the convicted businessman before his company fell; after all, one of the first major and successful political battles waged by the administration was to keep secret the discussions and members of Cheney's energy task force. Remember that? However, judging from the way that business has been done in Washington in the Abramoff era, it's probably safe to say that Ken Lay got back much more than the two million he invested in Bush over the years. If we'd had a real Congress at the time of Enron's collapse, and I'm including the Democrats who had a slim one-vote majority in the Senate for the first two years of Bush's reign, there would have been Whitewater style investigations out the wazoo for months on end. Instead, there was a scramble to make sure that the popular-among-elites business establishment was able to continue uninterrupted. Pathetic.
Just think: if everyone had been doing their jobs, Bush might have felt penned in, might not have ever felt that he had the "political capital" for launching the ill-fated invasion of Iraq. Actually, a Congressional investigation of Bush and Lay's relationship might have also kept Bush from doing all sorts of stupid shit, like suppressing information about global warming and birth control, psychotic tax cuts for the rich, you name it. In the end, Enron is as much about the collapse of one corporation as it is about the collapse of our entire political system.
That's why it's all going to happen again, sooner or later.
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REAL ART THEME
SONG EXPLAINED
The Nairobi Trio
You know, at this point, I'm not one hundred percent sure how I first encountered jazz artist Dick Hyman's tune "Solfeggio," which I've been using for nearly three years as Real Art's theme song. I think that I first found it on the Ernie Kovacs tribute site from which I link the song here, or maybe I first heard it years ago in a history of radio and television class when we were covering Kovacs. I just don't recall. But that's not as important as why I picked the song: in addition to being cool, quirky, and just plain weird, it was originally performed on Kovacs' brilliant old TV shows by three people in gorilla suits, the Nairobi Trio.
From Wikipedia:
The Nairobi Trio was a skit Ernie Kovacs performed several times for his TV shows. It combined many existing concepts and visuals in a new and novel way, and is probably the first comedy bit people think about when Kovacs' name is mentioned.
People in gorilla suits have always been a comedy staple. The notion of well-known or predictable music pieces gone awry has long been practiced by artists as diverse as Stan Freberg, Spike Jones or P.D.Q. Bach. The "slow burn" of one character annoying another resulting in eventual retaliation was not new. But the combination of all those ingredients, combined with impeccable timing, produced a very unique and memorable result.
It was a live-action version of a child's animatronic wind-up music box, performed to the tune "Solfeggio." Allegedly, when Kovacs first heard a recording of the tune, he immediately came up with a mental image of what would become The Nairobi Trio: three gorillas (wearing derby hats and long overcoats) mechanically miming to the music like wind-up toys. In the middle sat the "head gorilla," always played by Kovacs (with a cigar, of course), conducting with a baton or (sometimes) a banana. To the viewer's left another gorilla stood, holding two oversized timpani mallets. (The identity of this ape varied, but among Kovacs' celebrity friends both Jack Lemmon and Frank Sinatra are known to have performed in the skit.) And seated at screen right at a piano was a female simian (often Kovacs' wife, Edie Adams), robotically thumping up and down on the keys.
Click here for the rest.
As longtime Real Art readers know, I think gorilla suits are kickass, almost as funny as rubber chickens. Of course, I've explained most of this before. What makes this explanation different is that I managed to dig up some actual video of the Nairobi Trio doing their thing. And, yeah, it's pretty darned funny.
You'd really be a fool to not go check it out right now.
A Nairobi Trio screen-capture from the Ernie Kovacs show
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Friday, May 26, 2006
Officials: Hastert "In the Mix" of
Congressional Bribery Investigation
From the ABC News blog the Blotter courtesy of Crooks and Liars:
Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.
Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.
The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.
Click here for the rest.
Okay, this is one weird story. Of course Hastert immediately denied that he's being investigated, and a DOJ spokesman agreed with him. But then, ABC decided to stick to its story, claiming that their law-enforcement source says it doesn't matter what the DOJ is saying, Hastert is being investigated. To further complicate matters, NPR today suggested that the whole spat has something to do with the weird Congressional furor over the FBI search of alleged bribe-taker Representative William Jefferson's office in the Capitol. This is really confusing. But then, that's no surprise at all when conservatives are concerned: they don't debate these days as much as try to muddy the argument--I think they learned a lot from President Clinton's definition-of-is style of sophistry.
Anyway, what's the deal with this? Is Hastert under investigation or not? As far as I can tell, both answers are technically true. Hastert does not appear to be an official target of the overall Abramoff lobbying investigation, but he is, as ABC's source says, part of the mix. That is, they're looking at him, but haven't yet decided to go balls-to-the-walls after him yet. My bet is that he's well aware of what's going on, and is consciously parsing the official/unofficial line, and bringing in the FBI thing, all for the purpose of confusing you and me, that is, the citizens of these United States.
So, in short, Hastert is under investigation; he's simply not yet a "target." And may never be a target if nothing damning comes up. But if I was a betting man, I'd definitely put money down on Hastert being targeted. He's a DeLay loyalist, after all, and all those guys are rotten to the core.
(Thanks to the Houston Chronicle's new editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson, and the new comment feature for his cartoons, for a couple of these links.)
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ENRON JURORS FIND LAY, SKILLING GUILTY
From the Houston Chronicle:
A federal jury convicted former Enron chiefs Ken Lay on all counts and Jeff Skilling on most counts today, marking the climax of one of the most notorious corporate scandals in U.S. history and nearly ensuring prison time for two of Houston's best-known executives.
The jury heard 16 weeks of testimony and arguments and made its announcement early on its sixth day of deliberations. The eight-woman, four-man panel found Lay guilty of all six counts. They convicted Skilling on 19 of the 28 counts against him.
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake set a sentencing date of Sept. 11. The two men remain free on bond.
In Lay's separate personal banking fraud trial, Lake found Lay guilty on all four counts.
And
When asked whether he could admit that he had broken the law, Skilling replied, "No. I didn't.''
"We fought the good fight,'' Skilling said. "Some things work; some things don't.''
Shortly before 3 p.m., Lay also made a brief statement to the media outside the courthouse: "Despite what happened today, I'm still a very blessed man. At my left is this beautiful lady that's my wife. I have a very warm, loving family. And, most of all I believe God, in fact, is in control and that, indeed God works all things good for all who love the lord. We love our lord, all this will work for good."
Click here for the rest.
Well, I don't have much to say about this other than that I'm glad these two corporate scumbags are getting their comeuppance. But this is no victory for the common man. The conditions that created the context wherein Lay and Skilling's crimes took place still exist, by and large, because the Congressional and SEC reforms enacted in the wake of the wave of corporate and accounting scandals a few years ago essentially amounted to a band-aid over an open artery. That is, Lay and Skilling broke the law because of a business and political culture that rewards and respects vicious corporate behavior. The awful thing is that most white collar crimes like theirs are not even illegal because the cozy relationship between corporate America and Capitol Hill is such that corporations write the laws and staff the agencies that govern them--the Enron gang simply crossed a line, and, given the favorable climate, thought they could get away with it. Indeed, Lay and Skilling still believe that they did nothing wrong. This attitude, that it's not only okay but desirable to shaft rank and file Americans, continues to infect Washington, both the politicians and the law itself. This is definitely going to happen again because nothing has changed.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Indiana Male, in a Dress, Barred From Prom
From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
A male student who has worn women's clothes to school all year was turned away from his high school prom because he was wearing a dress.
Kevin Logan, 18, went to the West Side High School prom on Friday in a slinky fuchsia gown and heels. He believes officials discriminated against him by not allowing him inside.
"I have no formal pictures, no memories, nothing. You only have one prom," he said.
Click here for the rest.
Despite all my views about how the authoritarian nature of the public school system tends to undermine its ostensible mission to educate young Americans, I do believe in dress codes: I think students should wear clothes to school. Any restriction beyond that stifles creativity and personal expression, and in a society that increasingly insists that creativity is something to be consumed, at the mall or on television, rather than lived, self-adornment is currently the lone major bastion of artistic expression for most Americans. It is a moral crime to restrict the way that people dress--unless, of course, one is paid for such a restriction, that is, at work.
Anyway, it's obvious that the schools have no idea how to deal with cross-dressing students. The main objection, no doubt, to such behavior is that it causes disruption to the heavily regulated school environment, and that's completely true. But so what? The schools should just deal with it. Cross-dressing goes beyond simple artistic expression; it is an expression of the self, a statement of identitiy on an extraordinarily deep level. To insist that a student who desires to cross-dress refrain from doing so is every bit as destructive to the psyche as insisting that the non-cross-dresser take a walk on the wild side him or herself.
The article says this kid is considering a lawsuit. I hope he wins.
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NET NEUTRALITY
Pending Internet neutrality
legislation is vital to preserving
independent Web content and expression
From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:
Previously, Federal Communications Commission regulations required telecom companies to provide open access to the Internet. Last year, the FCC eliminated those restrictions. As a result, there are currently no laws to prevent providers from controlling their customers' Internet access.
Officials of some companies recently have suggested policies favoring some content providers over others and restricting users' ability to avail themselves of the full range of the Internet. Telephone companies have sought to prevent broadband customers from utilizing cheap, Internet-based long distance service.
In the face of these encroachments, congressional action is needed to preserve Internet competitiveness. Fortunately, there are several bills percolating in the House of Representatives that could fill the regulatory vacuum.
Click here for the rest.
I'm no tech-head, but the way I understand the situation, internet access providers now have the legal ability to cut lucrative deals with certain bigtime websites, like the Time-Warner owned AOL stuff, which allow those sites to be loaded by you and me, consumers, at a normal speed, while greatly slowing down the load times for all other websites. In other words, this could conceivably spell the end of the free-wheeling free speech oriented nature of the internet for good. And that's a very bad thing. Decades ago when radio technology first hit the scene, and then later with television, there was, at first, the promise of technology revolutionizing communications for the better in America. At that point, free speech had the potential to really take off in this country, making our historically weak democracy much stronger, allowing rank and file citizens to truly have a voice in national affairs. Obviously, that didn't happen. Big businesses, such as General Electric, stepped in, and using their many government contacts, stifled the whole thing before it had a chance to get going. We are in great danger of repeating history. If that happens, the promise of some real democracy will once again be broken.
I don't think I've ever recommended writing your congressman here at Real Art, generally because I don't think it does much good: this has the potential to be a rather desperate situation; write your congressman on this.
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OLD SCHOOL CORRUPTION
Jefferson: Raid ‘outrageous’
From the Baton Rouge Advocate:
Jefferson’s appearance was the first since a search warrant affidavit was released Sunday that contends Jefferson was captured on camera accepting a $100,000 bribe. The money was planted by an FBI informant from northern Virginia who also recorded bribe conversations with Jefferson, the affidavit said.
Jefferson said Monday he would answer the allegations and added that he intends to seek re-election in November. “There are two sides to every story,” Jefferson said. “I plan to carry out my responsibilities here as I have since the time I’ve been here.”
And
Two men already have pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson or abetting in a bribe. Jefferson has not been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The affidavit states that the informant planted the $100,000 with Jefferson on July 30. On Aug. 3, agents raided Jefferson’s Washington and New Orleans homes and found $90,000 in $100 bills wrapped in aluminum foil in a freezer, the document says.
Click here for the rest.
Ninety grand in the freezer? This certainly is old school corruption, almost Simpsons-like in its brazenness, not at all the complicated, underground, major lobbying conspiracy infecting the GOP, but just as illegal, just as fucked up. There are, indeed, two sides to every story as the Democratic Representative from New Orleans has observed. But he's going to have one hell of a time explaining how he was caught on tape accepting a whole lot of money in exchange for legislative favors. I look forward to his marvelous story. Maybe it involves fairies or leprechauns; I sure hope so. At any rate, this is bullshit, despite the fact that he's dealing with chump change relative to the K Street gang. This guy needs to go down hard and fast. Fuck him.
Damned Democrats are just as money-grubbing as the Republicans. They're just not as good at it.
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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Some Iraq war vets go homeless after return to US
From Reuters courtesy of Eschaton:
When the single mother was discharged in April, after her second tour in Iraq, she was 24 and had little money and no place to live. She slept in her son's day-care center.
Gamboa is part of a small but growing trend among U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- homelessness.
On any given night the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helps 200 to 250 of them, and more go uncounted. They are among nearly 200,000 homeless veterans in America, largely from the Vietnam War.
Advocates say the number of homeless veterans is certain to grow, just as it did in the years following the Vietnam and Gulf wars, as a consequence of the stresses of war and inadequate job training.
Click here for the rest.
Obviously, this is inexcusable. As somebody quoted in the article observes, it's not a lack of money that's behind this: we're spending billions a week over in Iraq; it would take only a tiny fraction of that money to make sure vets are taken care of. I don't think I really need to go into a lengthy explanation as to why the government owes these people. In short, they've put their lives on the line for this country and deserve special status. Period. You know, I just don't understand how the GOP and their supporters can go on and on about how everybody should "support the troops," and then turn around and allow this to happen. How does it support the troops to continue slashing VA budgets? Clearly, "support the troops" is just a political slogan that amounts to a bunch of bullshit.
And why the hell are there 200,000 homeless vets from the Vietnam War?!?
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NAGIN WINS IT
From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina swamped his city and transformed him from virtual shoo-in to ripe target, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin surged to a second term Saturday, besting Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu to maintain leadership of a city still languishing in ruin.
Nagin, a former cable television executive who ran as a political outsider four years ago, overcame withering criticism of his performance in the months since the Aug. 29 storm. Acknowledging that the effort to restore basic municipal services has been painfully slow, Nagin blamed the lack of progress on a failure of state and federal government to come to the aid of a city reeling from the worst urban natural disaster in American history.
With his victory, Nagin kept alive a 60-year win streak for incumbents and continued the era of African-American leadership in the mayor's office, which began when Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978.
Nagin's re-election means he will remain at the helm of a daunting recovery effort through 2010, removing an air of uncertainty that even he admitted during the campaign has slowed the rebuilding process.
Click here for the rest.
Strangely, this election wasn't about politics. Well, okay, it was about politics, but not about political issues. As the article observes, Landrieu's and Nagin's policy positions were identical, so voters weren't choosing between different visions of how New Orleans ought to be reconstructed. Instead, as the conventional wisdom goes, this was a referendum on Nagin. Indeed, the Big Easy's Mayor had come under heavy criticism concerning the way he handled the Katrina crisis, before, during, and after. Apparently, he got enough New Orleanians to believe that he did, at least, an okay job, despite the months of mouthing.
And that's kind of my take on it, too. Certainly, what happened with Katrina was a massive, system-wide failure, and Nagin most definitely made mistakes. But I think that Houston's clusterfuck of an evacuation when category 5 Rita was headed in their direction made it obvious to all that evacuating a major city is a problematic concept at best--really, what all cities need is much better oversight and coordination from the Feds, but then, I'm just an actor, so what do I know? The bottom line for most voters in regard to this "referendum," I think, is that Nagin was on the ground during the entire Katrina story, right in the middle of things, all by himself doing his best to kick ass. Landrieu wasn't there. Blanco wasn't there. And Bush just kind of did a fly-by. I think that's how Ray Nagin re-earned his position.
Overshadowing all of this, however, is race. The final analysis is still out, but, in the end, the Picayune seems to think that between the primary and runoff Nagin managed to get enough white votes, twenty percent, to do the trick. Consequently, the election wasn't decided along a strict white-black line. That's a great thing because it will make governing the city that much easier. But it's also great, to me, because I'm of the opinion that only an African-American mayor can assure that New Orleans' enormous black population will get, at least, a shot at a fair shake. Landrieu is a Democrat, yes, but he's also a product of the old and entrenched Louisiana white power structure. As liberal as Democrats seem to be, white Democrats have a tendency, like all white Americans, to overlook and underemphasize the problems facing black Americans. And white Democrats, in the South anyway, usually look to the problems of white citizens first, blacks later. Sometimes much much later. Or never. Let's face it: most black New Orleanians have yet to return because they can't. Their neighborhoods still lie in ruins. Many of these African-Americans, because they are poor and politically powerless, do not have the lobbying resources that whites have. Even with Nagin on the job, I still fear that the needs of whites will be met first, leaving blacks to pick up the scraps dropped from the table. But with Nagin on the job, I am less fearful.
Congrats Mayor Nagin.
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Monday, May 22, 2006
FDA: High levels of benzene found in some drinks
From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
The companies that make the drinks have been alerted and either have reformulated their products or plan to do so, the FDA said. Government health officials maintain there is no safety concern, an opinion not shared by at least one environmental group.
The five drinks listed by the government were Safeway Select Diet Orange, Crush Pineapple, AquaCal Strawberry Flavored Water Beverage, Crystal Light Sunrise Classic Orange and Giant Light Cranberry Juice Cocktail. The high levels of benzene were found in specific production lots of the drinks, the FDA said.
Benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia, can form in soft drinks containing two ingredients: Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, and either of the two preservatives: sodium benzoate and potassium benzoate.
Click here for the rest.
I think it's safe to conclude that things are probably worse than the FDA is indicating. After all, it's fairly well known that Federal agencies under the Bush White House have been extraordinarily friendly to the industries they are supposed to regulate, and have, in numerous documented instances, kept important information from public scrutiny, for everything from global warming to pollution levels to stem cell research. I'm betting that the drinks listed in the above excerpt are simply the worst of the worst. It's nice and all that I don't drink the worst of the worst, but I've got to ask: what's really safe and what's not? That's actually a major problem. Americans today have no way of knowing to which toxic substances they are being exposed. Really, the federal government is the only entity with the resources to figure this shit out, but, under Bush, that's just not happening.
Just another thing to worry about.
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Saturday, May 20, 2006
NOT IF I CAN HELP IT!
Since I have not started my cross-country trip I will post a little something. It will have neither the wit nor sparkle that Ron usually gives us, but it will keep RealArt from going dark for too long. Here goes something:
Revisiting Allen Ginsburg's 'Howl' at 50
from NPR (where else)
The resulting rush of violent, desperate words, starting with the well-known opening lines "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," created major ripples in the literary world.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was at the Six Gallery to hear the 29-year-old Allen Ginsberg read "Howl" for the first time. Ferlinghetti owned City Lights, a bookstore and publishing house in San Francisco. He asked Ginsberg if he could publish "Howl," and the first edition appeared in the fall of 1956. "'Howl' knocked the sides out of things," Ferlinghetti later said.
The poem gave voice to an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and alienation in Eisenhower's America. "Howl" became an anthem for the nascent counterculture.
Click here for the rest (and for a lovely listen).
Rereading this today for the first time in a long while was awe-inspiring (I use that term because I can think of nothing else). Ginsburg wasn't much older than I was when he wrote it. It hurts to read it, but it feels so good too. It has some of the same qualities that my favorite songs do-- it confuses my emotions and my reactions. I want to cry and simultaneously scream from the roof tops. It makes me want to howl. It moves, it has rhythm. It is amazing what still stings after 50 years. It makes me wish I had been around to see that first reading-- to feel the room. It got me thinking about modern poetry (and lord knows I have no right to be discussing poetry-- novice is a compliment)... where are the poets who move people? I know they must exist. Why don't they get attention? Where are the artists putting into words and thoughts and pictures our generation's frustration? Does my generation even feel frustration? Yipes! Reread Howl if you haven't in awhile. It'll make you think or not.
REAL ART GOES DARK TIL MONDAY
We're headed to Houston to take care of some business for the next couple of nights, so I won't be posting until late Monday evening. Unless, of course, Miles or Tara find a little cyber-inspiration and put a little something up. Actually, I think Tara is in the midst of a long road trip from her home on the Atlantic to Boulder for work in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, so it's unlikely that we'll be hearing from her. But Miles, I'm pretty sure, is done with his finals at UT, and probably hasn't found a summer job yet, or started summer classes, or whatever he's doing, and most likely has oodles of time for blogging. You hear that, Miles? C'mon, man, you're a journalism student! Get to it, then!
See ya'll Monday.
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Senate Votes English as 'National Language'
From the Washington Post courtesy of the Daily Kos:
After an emotional debate fraught with symbolism, the Senate yesterday voted to make English the "national language" of the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English except for those already guaranteed by law.
The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to "preserve and enhance" the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages. Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.
And
But its author, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), made two last-minute changes that some opponents said would reduce its effect significantly. By stipulating that the English-only mandates could not negate existing laws, Inhofe spared current ordinances that allow bilingual education or multilingual ballots. By changing the amendment to label English the "national language" rather than the "official language" of the country, Inhofe may have lessened its symbolic power.
And
Further complicating the picture, moments after approving the Inhofe amendment, the Senate voted 58 to 39 to approve a competing amendment by Salazar. It declared English the "common unifying language of the United States," but mandated that nothing in that declaration "shall diminish or expand any existing rights" regarding multilingual services.
Senators said the conflict will have to be worked out in negotiations with the House.
Click here for the rest.
Say what?
This is one weird bill. It doesn't declare English to be the official language; instead, it makes English the "national language." Whatever the hell that means, and, as far as what this article says is actually in the bill, there are apparently no clues there. From what I can tell, I think that "national language" means that it is now patriotically correct to praise English as being better for America than other languages, and that no new programs or laws mandating the use of other languages will be enacted in the future. I think. Frankly, it sounds like the Senate was for English-as-official-language before they were against it. That is, this bill is obviously something of a patchwork quilt, designed to throw bones to as many factions of the GOP as possible, including, of course, both the right-wing xenophobes who are scared shitless of brown people, and the right-wing capitalists who want to exploit the hell out of brown people.
We may very well be watching the disintegration of the Republican Party on this issue.
You know, I've never understood why people seem to be so threatened by Spanish. I mean, I've heard some reasonable people talk about cultural unity, but such arguments seem so abstract as to be uncompelling. I've also heard people talk about how much it costs to print ballots and whatnot in multiple languages, but, again, all budgets considered, we're only talking about a drop in the bucket, which makes this argument uncompelling, too. What we're left with, then, is irrational fear of the unknown, which is just stupid. In Texas, I've had a great deal of interaction with people who speak Spanish as a first language. It's just no big deal. Even interacting with people who don't speak English at all is no big deal. We just stumble through whatever we need to get done with some improvised Spanglish and it all works out. I just don't get why people are so terrified of what, to me, is quite a lengua bonita.
We really do live in a culture of fear.
By the way, over at Emphasis Added rascally Rob Salkowitz has some wise things to say about this issue. Check it out.
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Friday, May 19, 2006
Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’
From MSNBC courtesy of This Modern World:
Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.
One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.
“This one is ugly," one official told NBC News.
Click here for the rest.
It's just like Vietnam all over again, right down to the initial coverup. Murtha's got it completely right: the marines who did this were in all probablity not murderous when they first arrived in Iraq, but the insanity of a long and drawn out unwinnable quagmire is obviously taking it's toll; it's turning good soldiers into evil men. This is probably the issue that makes my heart hurt the most. It's terrible, of course, what's happened to Iraq, all the needless death and destruction brought on by American action--we really are responsible for all this. But the thought that young guys, boys really, who could have been me twenty years ago are being twisted by Bush's psychotic war into violent sick fuckers who will probably never recover just makes me sad.
As Colonel Kurtz said, "the horror..."
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JAMES T. KIRK IS BORN
No, really.
From the AP via the Fairbanks News-Miner courtesy of This Modern World:
Like all parents, Marcus Weldy and his wife Rebecca McInnes Weldy of Nikiski are hoping their newborn baby will live long and prosper, but they went a step further to ensure their son's future.
"We decided to name him James Tiberius Kirk Weldy," said Rebecca in regard to the newest family member who, according to the Captain's Log, was added to the family fleet at 4:31 a.m. on Friday, April 21, 2006.
For those not in the know, James T. Kirk - played by William Shatner - was the commander of the starship Enterprise in the 1960s science fiction series "Star Trek."
Rebecca said she is not a convention-going "trekkie,"as "Star Trek" fans are called, but is a longtime fan of the show.
Click here for the rest.
Riiiight. She's not a "trekkie." Sure. I believe that.
Anyway, people can name their kids whatever they want, I say. And James Tiberius Kirk actually is a pretty cool name, Star Trek or no. You know, this reminds me of some of my own family's culture. Years ago when my younger brother Steve was four or five, he made his first trip to a mother's-day-out program at a nearby church. Apparently, so our family lore goes, when the teacher asked him what his name is he replied, "I'm Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise." The teacher thought it was so funny she told our mother about it when she came back from her "day out." We've been laughing about it now for over thirty years. I think even Steve gets a kick out of it.
I wish I'd thought to do that.
Anyway, here's a pic of the bouncing baby Kirk:
Looks like a tough guy.
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Wednesday, May 17, 2006
BILL O'REILLY FLIRTS WITH RACISM
Defends white power structure in America
From Media Matters for America courtesy of Eschaton, some of the Butthole's "Talking Points Memo":
O'REILLY: Now in 1986, President Reagan thought he could solve the [immigration] problem by granting about 3 million illegal aliens amnesty. The New York Times was in heaven, editorializing back then, quote, "The new law won't work miracles but it will induce most employers to pay attention, to turn off the magnets, to slow the tide." Of course, just the opposite happened. But the Times hasn't learned a thing. That's because the newspaper and many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad, so a drastic change is needed.
According to the lefty zealots, the white Christians who hold power must be swept out by a new multicultural tide, a rainbow coalition, if you will. This can only happen if demographics change in America.
An open-border policy and the legalization of millions of Hispanic illegal aliens would deeply affect the political landscape in America. That's what The New York Times and many others on the left want. They might get it. And that's the "Memo."
Click here for the rest.
I think it's safe to say that the right wing, flirting with racism since Nixon began his "Southern strategy," and picking up after 9/11, has finally been pushed over the edge by the whole illegal immigrant flap. I mean, Ann Coulter's desire to profile "swarthy men," and Michelle Malkin's defense of the Japanese internment camps in the US during WWII were dismissable by me as the ravings of idiot pundits. Of course, O'Reilly's an idiot, too, but never have I heard him essentially supporting American white supremacy. Indeed, the whole immigrant debate has brought out some of the worst racism in public discourse I've heard my whole life--thank god I'm too young to remember some of the bullshit from the 60s; I mean, I know it's been worse before, just not in my lifetime. Anyway, it's amazing to me how the most mainstream of conservative pundits are now sounding more like David Duke than William Buckley. And the corporate media are letting these freaks get away with it.
You know, I think I'm stealing some of these ideas from David Neiwert over at Orcinus: he's written at great length about how the far-right extremist fringe has become lately a sort of testing ground for intolerance; that is, the far far right is now where the far right appears to be getting its ideas. What was unthinkable ten years ago is now part of the overall debate. You really should go over to Neiwert's site and check out the links in the left margin to some of his trademark essays. He's a pretty brilliant guy.
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GET READY FOR INFLATION HELL
Either that, or insanely high interest rates
From Knight-Ridder via the Houston Chronicle:
It all adds up to pressure on the Fed to keep raising interest rates. Its mission is to control inflation — the increase in prices across the economy — and its main tool is the federal funds rate, the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans, which serves as a benchmark for commercial bank lending rates to consumers and businesses alike.
On May 10, the Fed's Open Market Committee raised the funds rates to 5 percent, the highest level in five years and the 16th consecutive increase since June 2004. Many hoped that the Fed wouldn't raise it again at the next meeting, June 28-29.
But Wednesday's numbers make another quarter-point increase seem probable.
For many Americans, the inflation data confirm what they're feeling in the wallet: A dollar isn't stretching as far. From April 2005 to April 2006, inflation ran at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent, while core inflation was at 2.3 percent. Energy-price inflation during that period was 17.8 percent.
On top of that, businesses' costs are soaring for energy, copper, other metals and other raw materials. With the economy growing rapidly in recent months, executives find they can pass more of these costs to consumers.
Click here for the rest.
Obviously, a lot of these inflationary pressures are because of oil: oil lubes everything in the economy, and, consequently, when oil prices rise steeply, all prices rise. But I wonder if it's just the oil. I posted recently about how federal deficit spending stands to trigger inflation which would surely result in higher interest rates in order to combat it. I'm still not sure if deficits have become high enough to start the downward inflationary spiral yet, but it seems to me that it's only a matter of time. The terrible stagflation of the 1970s was caused by, to the best of my knowledge, a very similar situation to what we have today. That is, massive spending on the Vietnam War coupled with an expansion in domestic spending crashed headlong into the oil crisis early in the decade. The result was self-sustaining inflation paired with recession: only a steep rise in interest rates along with some clever supply-side economic policy was able to pull us out. Unfortunately, the cure was a bitter economic pill for millions of working Americans who never really recovered from it. Today, we haven't expanded domestic spending as far as I know, but the psychotic tax cuts for the rich that Bush just signed into permanency amount to the same thing. In other words, we may very well be in for some deep shit, and, frankly, I don't think Bush and his advisors are really willing to do what it takes to head this off at the pass.
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CRAZY PEOPLE CAN SAY ANY CRAZY
THING THEY WANT ON THE INTERNET
I posted late Sunday night a link to an article originating on the truthout site that Karl Rove had already been indicted, although it has not yet been announced, and that the White House gossip is that he's essentially telling staffers there about it. The ever wise Rob Salkowitz of Emphasis Added dropped by to splash a little cold water on my face.
From Real Art comments:
This would be great if true. Rove has denied it, the mainstream press is utterly silent about it, and even some on the left are wondering how this reporter managed to scoop everyone on such an important story. I'm keeping my hopes low at this point, so I can only be pleasantly suprised and not disappointed.My response:
Well, of course, this is speculative, based on what appears to be gossip. But you're right to keep your expectations low--I guess DeLay's resignation, which would have been completely unbelievable to me in 2003, has got me in an optimistic mood these days.Turns out that there's more smoke here than even Rob knew about, maybe even some fire. This story is, indeed, a bit fishy.
From Salon courtesy of Eschaton:
Karl Rove, Jason Leopold and the hunt for the truth
We contacted Leopold again this week when Rove's spokesman denied his most recent story in interviews with the New York Sun and Byron York of the National Review. We asked Leopold the following questions:
* Are you standing by the story? And by "the story," I don't mean that Rove's indictment is imminent, but rather the story that you reported: that Rove has already been indicted, that Fitzgerald met with Luskin for "about 15 hours" Friday, that Fitzgerald "served" Rove's attorneys with a copy of an indictment, and that Fitzgerald told Luskin that Rove had "24 hours" to get his affairs in order.
* If you're standing by the story, can you shed any light on why your report is so different than the characterization Rove's spokesman is offering?
* TalkLeft says you claim to have spoken four times with Rove spokesman Mark Corallo over the weekend. Corallo tells TalkLeft that he's never spoken to anyone who identified himself as "Jason Leopold." Corallo seems to be suggesting that you may have identified yourself as someone named "Joel" from the Sunday Times of London. Can you explain?
Leopold didn't answer any of the questions. This is what he said instead:
"Call anyone else besides Corallo, Luskin? Have you ever tried to go beyond the spokesman for a story? Did you call [Fitzgerald spokesman Randall] Samborn? Have you tried to find out where Rove was Friday? Did you call the White House? Did you do any digging? No, you didn't. Call the White House. Find out where Rove was.
Click here for the rest (you'll have to click through an annoying ad to get there, though).
The Salon article also notes that this truthout reporter, Leopold, has played fast and loose with the truth before, lifting text from other people's articles, and presenting as facts events that cannot be verified. At any rate, this now sounds, to me at least, like the same sort of reporter fibbing that has plagued bigtime news outlets like USA Today and the New York Times. It's a bit surprising because the bigtime reporters are, well, bigtime, and Leopold is strictly smalltime internet potatoes. I guess every pond has a scramble to see who's going to be the big fish.
Not that the report is necessarily wrong. But given this guy's troubled past, given how he's responded to criticism, and given the fact that pretty much no other paper has picked up on the story, my skepticism has gone way up on whether Rove has actually already been indicted. Sorry to lead you astray. It's just that the story was so damned believable.
Anyway, I hope to have a more proper celebration if and when the indictment really does come down.
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Roger Clemens' Family Offers Him
One-Year, $10 Million Contract
From the Onion:
HOUSTON—Representatives from the Clemens family met with the star pitcher over an informal dinner Tuesday evening to discuss the possibility of keeping Roger Clemens home for one more season, sources close to the family reported.
Baseball analysts are calling the one-year, $10 million contract a last-ditch effort on the family's part to bring the seven-time Cy Young Award winner and three-time World's Greatest Dad back to his roots.
"It's hard to put a dollar amount on what Roger has historically meant to this family," said Clemens' wife Debbie, who has been handling most of the negotiations. "Many of the younger members of this organization really look up to Roger—growing up, he was their hero. Now Roger has the chance to be a kind of mentor to guys like Kacy and Kody. They have really been lacking the strong veteran presence that's so crucial at this point in their careers."
"We need you, Roger," Debbie added. "Please come home."
Click here for the rest.
Okay, if you have no idea why this is funny, my apologies. To further your annoyance, I've got to add that the explanation I'm about to give will probably not do anything to make you laugh. Ah, well. You can't please everybody. Anyway, this is funny, to me at least, because, as you probably know, I check the Houston Chronicle website pretty much everyday. Part of that is scanning the sports headlines. I'm not a huge sports fan--well, I'm a big football fan, but not of sports in general. But I do kind of like baseball; I was extraordinarily happy when the Astros made it to the World Series for the first time in club history last fall. Part of the reason they made it so far is former Longhorn pitcher Roger Clemons.
I was pretty amazed when we first got him: he had just retired from the Yankees, and his hometown team, which is also my hometown team, then spent weeks in negotiations to woo him out of his newfound freedom and back onto the mound. While this was going on, there was a story in the Chronicle sports section pretty much every other day about whether or not we were going to get him. It was, in effect, a sort of baseball soap opera in print, dealing with the drama of mundane contract and incentive issues. The story had a happy ending, of course. Then Clemons retired again after last year's Series.
After that, the Chronicle sports section once again returned to the Clemons contract storyline. Was he really serious about retirement? Could we get him for just one more season? Then the season started without him and the stories died off. A few weeks back, however, some sort of free agency deadline passed, and the stories started up again. Was he really serious about retirement? Could we get him for just one more season? I have no idea what's going on with that; I haven't seen any stories for over a week.
But, given Clemons' talent and experience, it doesn't surprise me at all that his family is trying to steal him out from under the Astros' noses. Personally, I think he'd be much more effective at Minute Maid park than he would be playing catch with his two young sons in the back yard. I mean, who the hell do these people think they are? Bunch of minor leaguers, if you ask me.
Damned families.
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Monday, May 15, 2006
NSA WIRETAPPING
Unwarranted intrusion
From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:
Equally troubling is USA Today's reporting that telecommunications giants Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth willingly turned over data on billions of private calls within the United States in exchange for contracts with NSA. These providers trampled on their customers' rights in a rush to the government trough. Federal intelligence agencies apparently have continuously updated compilations of the calling patterns and personal contacts of millions of citizens who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. While the companies did not include names and addresses in the data provided, such information can be easily obtained by cross-referencing phone numbers with other data bases.
A former NSA chief and nominee to be CIA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, justifies the surveillance as a legal measure to combat terrorism. But the information will also be available to federal agencies with no oversight from the courts. If White House officials were willing to leak the name of a covert CIA operative in order to discredit her husband, how secure will such data be in the hands of a host of bureaucrats and private contractors? Imagine the temptation for politicians to access a complete roadmap of opponents' business and personal contacts.
Click here for the rest.
Quite right, this is the major reason such laws exist: politicians, always trying to maintain and expand their power, cannot be trusted to have access to such personal information; the incentive to abuse it is built into the system, which is why it is illegal to get it without a damned good reason. And speaking of illegal, the government isn't the only entity in trouble here. The telecom companies who cooperated were very likely violating the law themselves.
From Think Progress courtesy of This is not a compliment:
Telcos Could Be Liable For Tens of Billions of
Dollars For Illegally Turning Over Phone Records
The penalty for violating the Stored Communications Act is $1000 per individual violation. Section 2707 of the Stored Communications Act gives a private right of action to any telephone customer “aggrieved by any violation.” If the phone company acted with a “knowing or intentional state of mind,” then the customer wins actual harm, attorney’s fees, and “in no case shall a person entitled to recover receive less than the sum of $1,000.”
And
In other words, for every 1 million Americans whose records were turned over to NSA, the telcos could be liable for $1 billion in penalties, plus attorneys fees. You do the math.
Click here for the rest.
There's already a class action suit against Verizon, and I expect more to follow. It is interesting to note that the law says a person whose records have been violated in such a way shall not "receive less than the sum of $1,000." That is, it could be way more. On the other hand, if any of these suits should win, they stand to bankrupt each of these companies, so it's not likely that the penalty is actually going to exceed that single grand. But, hey, a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks. BellSouth is my phone company. How can I get in on some of this action?
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CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GRADUATION
Now what are you going to do for the rest of your life?
I posted what follows last year at around this time. But I'm still impressed with myself for my masterwork of plagiarism, and it is graduation season, after all. Maybe I'll make this an annual thing. Until prospects for American life improve greatly, that is.
Here's a little graduation music to set a mood (start it when you begin the speech).
SMITH'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
In my movement class this past semester we've been working on a process of character creation through the use of various physicalization exercises while wearing a mask. The work is taken from Libby Appel's book Mask Characterization. The final exercise, which we're doing Wednesday, is called "Finding the Right Words;" the idea is to take the actor-created character from the world of improvisation into the world of text--that is, it's about finding ways to make the character useable in an actual play. From Appel's book:
From published material in any form other than dramatic literature (poetry, essays, biography, letters, fiction, nonfiction, ect.), put together a monologue which your character will speak in a five-to-seven-minute situation that has a beginning, a middle, and end. The monologue must seem as if it is the character's own words and thoughts.
My character, Smith, is something of an embodiment of existentialism: he's absurd, bored, sad, and desperately wanting amusement because he feels that's all that's left for him. In collecting material for his monologue, I wanted to somehow reflect the absurdist but morbidly depressed sense of bipolarity inherent within him. When putting it all together, it seemed like a graduation speech--probably because it's that time of year and I'm once again in college. I was so pleased with what I came up with, I thought I'd post it here. I mean, my blog is called "Real Art," after all.
I'm not going to tell you exactly what bits come from where (because that'd be a big hassle), but I will tell you that the speech rips off John F. Kennedy, Oscar Wilde, John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Dr. Seuss, the Bible, Noam Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, T. S. Elliot, Nietzsche, and Jim Morrison.
So here it is. Smith's Commencement Address:
President Griswold, members of the faculty, graduates and their families, ladies and gentlemen:
Let me begin by expressing my appreciation for the very deep honor which you have conferred upon me. As General de Gaulle occasionally acknowledges America to be the daughter of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard. It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds, a Harvard education and a Yale degree.
To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can sing that can't be sung. Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. It's easy. There's nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved. Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time. It's easy. There's nothing you can know that isn't known. Nothing you can see that isn't shown. Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the ones who'll decide where to go. Life is too important to be taken seriously.
All you need is love.
From the book of Matthew:
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
But question authority. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. Take, say, the core of the established religions today: the Bible. It is basically polytheistic, with the warrior God demanding of his chosen people that they not worship the other Gods and destroy those who do -- in an extremely brutal way, in fact. It would be hard to find a more genocidal text in the literary canon, or a more violent and destructive character than the God who was to be worshipped.
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. And so I am a deeply superficial person.
From the book of Ecclesiastes:
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit."
I have known them all already, known them all, have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons; I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid. I have dared disturb the universe. I have prayed to God, but God is dead. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
This is the end. My only friend, the end, of our elaborate plans, the end, of everything that stands, the end, no safety or surprise, the end. I'll never look into your eyes...again. The end of laughter and soft lies. The end of nights we tried to die.
This is the end.
I hope I get a good grade when I perform this.
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Rove Informs White House He Will Be Indicted
From truthout via ZNet:
Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.
Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high- profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove's indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."
Click here for the rest.
Oh my. Whatever will the President do without his brain?
This is really fantastic, of course, and long awaited. Of course, Rove lied to the grand jury and obstructed justice. What else was he supposed to do? Admit that he shamelessly divulged the name of an undercover CIA operative who was investigating Iran's nuclear weapons program all for a petty political vendetta? No. He just couldn't do that, so he lied instead. This will further cripple the already massively gimpy White House.
I'm starting to believe that there may be, after all, some kind of justice in the universe.
And stepping away from the trees for a moment to look at the forest, this is yet another loud signal that today's GOP is, perhaps, the most politically corrupt group in American history. Tom DeLay's "K Street Project," an elaborate operation aimed at formalizing lobbyist bribes for favorable legislation, the Abramoff lobby/bribe scandal which still stands to implicate a yet unknown number of GOP lawmakers, former GOP Congressman Duke Cunningham's hookers and bribes scandal which has already brought down CIA director Porter Goss, all this, and whatever I'm forgetting, show the Republican Party to be no more than a criminal enterprise which makes the Corleone family look like a t-ball team.
I've been saying for some months that it's not about ideology anymore; it's about incompetence and crime. At this point, I think I'd be happy, relatively speaking of course, to be ruled by some real conservatives. Real conservatives, at least, believe in the rule of law.
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Sunday, May 14, 2006
MENTALLY ILL TROOPS ARE A REALLY BAD IDEA
Tara posted yesterday about how the Pentagon apparently has no problems with sending obviously mentally disturbed soldiers back into battle--in many cases they just hand them some anti-depressants and point them toward the danger zones. Obviously, this is a result of the US overextending its military commitments throughout the world. We just don't have enough men to expand the American empire the way the neo-cons want, so we're making do with what we have--this is the same problem that resulted in the recent recruiting of a teenager with autism.
Needless to say this is no good at all. Tara observed that it's downright inhumane to treat our fighting men and women this way, and a really stupid way to try to win a war. But that's not all that's wrong with forcing mentally ill troops into fighting, as Seattle journalist David Neiwert over at Orcinus shows:
One thing the story only briefly addresses is that veterans damaged psychologically like this also bring their scars home. And when the violence that results is not inwardly directed, it can also be directed outward.
Paul deArmond pointed this out three years ago, as we began this invasion:
Here's an unsettling thought. The last go-round in the Gulf produced at least three spectacular domestic terrorists: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma City) and John Mohammed (DC sniper killings). Both McVeigh and Mohammed were reported to be unbalanced by their experience during the Gulf War.Click here for the rest.
...The levels of stress on our troops is quite high and several sources report that the training and conditioning of troops for agressive behavior is more severe than in the past. Combine this with the continuing spread of anti-government ideologies through terrorism-related conspiracy theories and the encouraging (or at least failure to suppress) of activities like vigilante border partrols which combine racism with xenophobia.
This doesn't even begin to address other kinds of war-spawned violence here in the US, such as domestic abuse: there have already been several murders of spouses by soldiers home from Iraq--my bet is that there are going to be more. And as VA budgets continue to be slashed by our troop-supporting GOP dominated Congress, I'm also betting that we're going to see a big rise in the numbers of obviously crazy homeless street people.
I already know we're going to be in Iraq for years to come. We're going to be feeling the pain from that for a much longer time.
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A REALLY BRILLIANT GUY ENTERS THE BLOGOSPHERE
And it's about time. My old pal Matt, who has been reading and commenting at Real Art for pretty much it's entire existence has finally decided to start a blog. I've known Matt since like sixth grade, and he's always been the most thoughtful and intelligent person in whatever room he happens to be. He's definitely not as far to the left as I am; indeed, he's a self-described moderate, which, by the old rules, makes him somewhat conservative, but so what? Well considered rational discourse is always a breath of fresh air these days, and I, for one, need some good brainiacs to keep me honest.
He's also, I might add, quite a good actor, wasting his god-given talent slaving away in a stimulating and lucrative business career, but, hey, who am I to deny a man a chance to live a normal life?
Here's a sample from his first post over at Caffeinated:
The thing that pushed me over the edge into blogginess was the birth of my child. Having a child has provided a great focusing in my life. The lesser things melt away but the more important things become MUCH more important. Very little is theoretical anymore; it all matters to the world he will live in.
So, that will drive the content. Issues like commercialism and media influence on kids; private versus public schools; noble causes and how much one person can do; war and peace; god and religion. Small stuff.
I'll also share some of my enthusiasms: coffee, steak, football, running, cycling, games, history, books, gadgets. And my professional interests: marketing, technology, security.
Click here for the rest.
Cool, very cool.
I should also observe that Matt's relationship with his older brother Dave, a "well-informed blogger, with...a rightward slant and shades of libertarianism" puts me and my older brother's relationship to shame. The last political discussion I had with my brother was in 1998, about the impeachment; it ended in a shout fest--we don't discuss politics anymore. Matt and Dave, however, appear to have an extraordinary dialogue with each other. At least that's how it looks online from the nature of their bloggy discussion, a veritable model for how political discourse should be handled by the entire nation, respectful and intelligent, with real potential for actual persuasion and change of position. I get the feeling that Dave's going to be a regular commenter over at Caffeinated, which should make the discussion way more engaging than my typically one-sided rants over here.
Anyway, Matt's blog will now be part of my daily surfing list, and it should be part of yours, too. Go check him out.
Matt now sports
a devil beard.
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Saturday, May 13, 2006
WHAT? WHAT! WHAT?
from the AP via MSN
Suicidal troops sent into battle
U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.
The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.
Click here (I hope it works this time) for full article.
The rest of the article states that sometimes the military feeds these severely depressed soldiers antidepressants and sends them back out to the field with little or no monitoring. It also says that because recruiting levels are down the military has to weigh "the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers’ personal needs.” And that commanders, not psychologists are in charge of who stays and who goes-- often retaining a really disturbed soldier because they don't want other soldiers thinking that acting crazy will get them sent home.
Dear God, this article is disturbing on so many levels I am not sure how to begin.
I'll give it a shot-- It is cruel and unusual to send mentally ill/unstable people into battle. Period. According to this report, it appears that they are also sending soldiers with severe PTSD back into battle. Beyond the cruelty, what about poor strategy to win a war. This particular war, as we have been reminded over and over again, is no ordinary war. It isn't "he who has the most men on the board, wins." So how can we possibly do any good if half of our troops are looking at their gun and trying to decide if it will fit in their mouths? And has anyone heard of suicide by police? Suicide by enemy army makes you a hero. I don't mean to be crude. This is certainly no laughing matter, but the action is so ridiculous.
Beyond the military failure we seem to be embracing by sending these men and women into battle, what about the hit the mental health community must be taking? "Oh, severe depression. You know what'lll fix you right up-- a prozac and 12 months in Iraq. Followed by a few months at home and then a second tour of Iraq. We can get you plenty more Zoloft." How can therapists discuss the good or bad of antidepressants anymore? The military says all you need is regular dosing and you are fit for combat-- day-to-day life will be no problem.
This little story also gets me thinking about the American desire for a quick cure all. Depression fixed with a pill and a semi-automatic machine gun in a country far away from anyone you love in an environment that sees depression as a sign of weakness. God bless America.
I am going to go to bed and cry.
Friday, May 12, 2006
The power of one
Single Juror reportedly Spared Moussaoui
from The New York Times by way of the The Associated Press
"A single holdout kept the jury from handing a death sentence to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in this country in the 9/11 attacks. ...''It was as if a heavy cloud of doom had fallen over the deliberation room, and many of us realized that all our beliefs and our conclusions were being vetoed by one person. ... We tried to discuss the pros and cons. But I would have to say that most of the arguments we heard around the deliberation table were 'in favor of the death penalty.'" Click here for the rest.
(Actually it is a different article now-- the one I used previously has disappeared. This is what now exists at the previous site. I don't know what to tell you. The internet... what are you gonna do?)
The day the verdict came out determining life instead of death, I sighed in relief. And then felt guilty for wanting the life of a terrorist spared. And then I figured out my reasons. This guy didn't do it. He didn't pilot a plane, he certainly didn't mastermind the plot. We, as a nation, want someone to pay for the pain that we all felt on September 11. And, unfortunately, everyone who was immediately responsible is dead. Moussaoui was going to be our revenge. We were going to get our pound of flesh from anyone with a funny name and a belief system unlike ours-- he happened to be the loony bird that got caught.
This article was with the jury foreman of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. And what I find most frightening is her annoyance that the single holdout didn't announce themselves. I am also irritated by this. This poor person probably feared for his/her life. They were probably right too. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be any jury room for any life/death decision, but this one must have been horrific. The man or woman who held out and decided silence was the strongest option is a hero. He is the sole person who kept our court system from looking like a machine of revenge. It is broken, but at least it doesn't have that dubious distinction.
BUSH APPROVAL RATING NOW AT 29%
From Washington Wire, a Wall Street Journal blog, courtesy of the Daily Kos:
President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January.
Click here for the rest.
And this poll was taken before today's news about the wide-ranging NSA scandal broke. This is extraordinarily good news. Once you get below 30% or so, it means Bush is losing his base--indeed, I read a couple of days ago that another poll found that 1 in 4 Republicans want Congress to go to the Dems this fall. Amazing: a quarter of the GOP want their guys out. Maybe Bush will never get the chance to declare martial law, as I bet in the post below. Maybe we'll get that impeachment I've been craving for four years now. Maybe. It's looking pretty good.
Okay, I'm now taking bets that Bush will be impeached before he finishes his term. Any takers?
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NSA DOMESTIC SPYING: MUCH
WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT
From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
Phone call monitoring sparks outrage
Lawmakers demanded answers from the Bush administration Thursday about a spy agency secretly collecting records of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls to build a database of all calls within the country.
Facing mounting congressional criticism, President Bush sought to assure Americans that their civil liberties were "fiercely protected."
And
AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., and BellSouth Corp. telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers' phone calls to the NSA program shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, said USA Today, citing anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement.
And
One big telecommunications company, Qwest Communications International Inc., has refused to turn over records to the program, USA Today said, because of privacy and legal concerns.
Click here for the rest.
I think it's safe to say that the White House is not making sure that our civil liberties are "fiercely protected." Indeed, as the article observes, Congress, in reaction to a 1979 Supreme Court case, passed a law that specifically requires a warrant in order for the government to seize records of this sort. That is, Bush is making sure that our civil liberties are being fiercely attacked.
You may wonder what the big deal on this is, given that the illegal NSA wiretapping program was revealed some weeks ago: back then, it was alleged that only calls to foreign locations were being monitored; this is about calls inside the US. And, I might add, I'm a customer of BellSouth. That means my calls have been monitored, too. Fuckers. Beyond the very serious civil liberties concerns here, the corporate willingness to cooperate with the White House on this is truly frightening. If you rip away all the nationalism and militarism from European fascism in the 30s and 40s, what remains is the unique cooperative relationship between government and business that comprised the power-nucleus of fascism. That is, fascism, at its heart, is about corporate-government alliance. And that's what this wiretapping program is apparently.
Each day brings us closer to the unthinkable. I am now taking bets that martial law will be declared before 2009. Any takers?
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
OUTRAGEOUS STONEWALLING
Security issue kills domestic spying inquiry
From the AP via MSNBC courtesy of the Daily Kos:
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.
Click here for the rest.
Just in case it's not obvious, and it should be, I'll spell out exactly why this is outrageous. What we have here is one White House agency, the NSA, refusing to allow another White House agency, the Department of Justice, to investigate the former because the latter lacks security clearance: this could be cleared up in like five seconds by, surprise surprise, the White House. In other words, this is some major fucking bullshit. Bush could very easily give these investigators the security clearance needed to do the job--I mean, it's not like DOJ employees who already have had major background checks are going to divulge NSA secrets to Al-Qaeda. This is a big joke. He really does think he's above the law.
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President's Itinerary Ends Up In Trash
Worker Finds Details Of Bush's Fla. Trip Hours Before His Arrival
From CBS News courtesy of the Daily Kos:
A public sanitation worker in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday found a thick stack of papers with nearly every detail of President Bush's trip to Florida on the floor next to a big trash truck.
The documents offer the exact arrival and departure time for Air Force One, Marine One and the back up choppers, Nighthawk 2 and 3, as Washington CBS affiliate WUSA-TV first reported.
The documents also list every passenger on board each aircraft, from President Bush to the military attaché with the nuclear football. CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports it was a copy of the president's exact schedule for the day, which the public never sees for security reasons.
Click here for the rest.
Okay, this makes it official: I no longer suspect that Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, allowing them to happen for his own political gain. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 happened because Bush is an incompetent idiot. I'm not sure if I should be more or less afraid, though. You know, the real question now is why Bush hasn't yet qualified for a Darwin Award. He really does seem to be that stupid. Maybe we won't have to wait for an impeachment. Maybe nature will remove him from office for us. Go Darwin!
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KRUGMAN: Who's Crazy Now?
From the New York Times via the Progressive American:
The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like "loopy conspiracy theories" are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to "confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree." Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.
Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again," said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration's harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred.
But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.
Click here for the rest.
There are people who, to this day, still believe that Nixon was railroaded. I think it's fair to say that a certain percentage of the US population will never come around to the point of view that Bush is either evil or incompetent or both, same as with Nixon. What's different today is that so many of the deluded are in positions of power, in both government and the media. Nixon-lovers pretty quickly ended up as a sort of lunatic fringe back in the 70s, and that's what they've been ever since. Today's lunatic fringe is mainstream, and apparently willing to fight until the bitter end.
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FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT MADNESS
From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:
History shows that while tax hikes in the 1990s were followed by spending restraints, tax cuts over the last two decades led to spending sprees. At no time in the modern era has the convergence of spending hikes and revenue cuts been so pronounced. The tragedy is that for every dollar borrowed, the imposition of fiscal responsibility becomes more difficult for future presidents and Congresses.
Click here for the rest.
And it's not just a problem for the future. It's doubly maddening that most public criticism of our ever increasing deficit spending is in terms of future harm: the deficit threatens to eat our lunch right now. It's simple, so I don't understand why this isn't part of the conversation. Generally, deficit spending is only a future problem when it remains below a certain percentage of the GDP. Once spending passes that percentage mark, however, all hell breaks loose. Under such conditions, the borrowing is on such a massive scale that it affects the overall dollar supply. That is, there are less dollars for businesses to borrow for use in upgrading equipment, expanding, general maintenance, etc. Or look at it this way. What happens is that in order to avoid inflation that would come from usual business borrowing added to what the government borrows, the Federal Reserve Board must raise interest rates. High interest rates drag the economy to a standstill. I don't think we've crossed that GDP percentage line yet, but if the GOP dominated Congress continues to spend like drunken sailors, it will definitely happen. And that's when another recession begins.
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Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Howard Zinn: America’s Blinders
From the Progressive:
It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.
One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.
And
It becomes necessary then, if we are going to protect ourselves and our fellow citizens against policies that will be disastrous not only for other people but for Americans too, that we face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation.
These facts are embarrassing, but must be faced if we are to be honest. We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Indians were driven off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations. And our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation, and racism. We must face our record of imperial conquest, in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, our shameful wars against small countries a tenth our size: Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq. And the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not a history of which we can be proud.
Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted that belief in the minds of many people, that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world.
Click here for the rest.
I love this country. For starters, it is the land of my culture and my version of the English language; it is my home. There is no other place like it, and there are countless marvelous aspects of my country that don't exist anywhere else, our near-absolute freedom of speech, just to name one. I also love the American people in all their diversity. I'm a white American, yes, but I also claim national kinship with African-Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and more: they are all my people. We are all Americans.
But I'd be a fool, indeed, if I swept the countless injustices for which my country is responsible under the rug. This nation's past, and its present, too, are not pretty. Indeed, much of America's history is about how it doesn't live up to its own stated values and principles. But you know what? I believe in those principles; they're a big part of what makes us Americans. I, for one, insist that we become the people we think we are. No jingoistic, bullying, piece-of-shit, warmongering Nazi-Americans are going to stop me from doing that. Really, calling our government to task for defying our deeply held morals is the responsibility of all Americans. But, seeing as how so many of us clearly don't understand what we're supposed to be, the task is obviously on the shoulders of Americans who do understand.
Everyone who sees how fucked up things are has a patriotic obligation to rant and rave in people's faces until, well, forever. That's what being an American is all about.
God, I love Howard Zinn.
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The Tragedy Of False Confessions
A new Ralph Nader essay from Common Dreams:
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects a person from being a "witness against himself." All too often that is what happens - not on the witness stand but in the police station, and even after a person has been read his rights. The spirit and sometimes letter of the Fifth Amendment are violated routinely as such police cajole and bully innocent people to confess. Prosecutors, judges, and juries usually ratify the error because they can't believe the confessor innocent - only adding to the suspect's Kafkaesque nightmare.
Why would the police engage in outrageous tactics that implicate the innocent? For the same reason that prosecutors, judges, and juries play their roles in this tragedy - they are convinced that no one would actually confess if he were innocent. Since we now know that this intuition is false, we need to take measures that guard against false confessions. Hirsch's website proposes a range of reforms, including mandatory taping of interrogations. But, he suggests, the most important reform is education.
Everyone must recognize that false confessions can and do occur.
Click here for the rest.
This is what comes from having an enforcement system that is institutionally geared toward getting convictions instead of finding the truth. Invariably, the conviction mandate affects the way both cops and prosecutors think--they're looking to make cases, rather than for what actually happened. It's further compounded by the fact that many DA's are elected officials: there is a very tangible pressure to show voters that "justice" is being done, which ultimately translates into waving around high numbers of convictions to show that a given head prosecutor is "tough on crime." Supposedly, this is all supposed to be balanced by impartial judges and zealous defense lawyers. Unfortunately, for most people who are accused, it just doesn't work out that way. Judges traditionally give much more deference to prosecutors and cops, who have vast resources upon which they can draw, and public defenders are often the least experienced lawyers out there, being paid very little, with only a fraction of the resources that their competition has. Our entire criminal judicial system has serious shortcomings. It's a damned shame that so many Americans simply don't give a shit.
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Sunday, May 07, 2006
THE VIDEO THAT TURNED ME ON TO MILES DAVIS
Crooks and Liars managed to find the ultra-rare classic live performance of Miles Davis' song "So What" that I first saw in my jazz appreciation class at the University of Texas back in 1987. It's funny, C&L actually titled it's post that links to the video "John Coltrane" because, it seems, they like Trane better than Miles. And that's just fine because, of course, Trane is great too. It's also fairly appropriate because Miles' solo on the video isn't as good as his solo on the album version, but Trane's is, maybe, a bit better than what he does on the record. But really that doesn't matter. It's a damned cool video. Cool jazz, cool mid 50s clothes, legendary musicians doing their thing. It's no wonder at all that seeing this when I was all of nineteen years made me a Miles Davis fan in like five seconds. It also served to solidify the late 50s/early 60s visual aesthetic that has dominated my personal tastes since then. Screw postmodernism: I'm a shameless modernist at heart, so modern, in fact, that I don't even think there is such a thing as postmodernism--what we are currently living in is simply a late part of the modern era. Anyway, putting all that aside, go check out the video. It's fantastic.
Click here for "So What" live, via YouTube.
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WHY COLBERT WAS REALLY FUNNY AND WHY
THE DC PRESS CORPS JUST DOESN'T GET IT
The man who bravely took my position as theater arts teacher at Sterling High School in Baytown recently referred me in Real Art comments to an interesting discussion about Colbert's blistering speech at the White House Press Correspondents' dinner over at his blog, Great Blogs of Fire. It is, indeed, an interesting bunch of comments, which inspired me to try to figure out why, exactly, Colbert's routine was so funny.
Here's the comment I dropped over there:
I don't think either Stewart or Colbert would be really funny if it weren't for the politics. That is, I think Kyle's right, that you have to be on their side to find their jokes to be amusing. They make me laugh for the same reason that I think booger and dooky jokes are funny. They violate taboos, and I think indignant, arrogant, offended elitists are really funny. But take away the political angle and these guys are just another couple of comedians.In other words, Colbert wasn't at all trying to make that audience laugh. Indeed, while there was certainly an audience there, they weren't his audience; they were his victims. We were his audience. It was postmodern humor at its absolute finest. So, of course, the politicians and DC journalists in attendance didn't think it was funny. They weren't supposed to. Instead, they were made laughingstocks all for our benefit. And they're just too fucking stupid to understand that they were actually part of the performance. Meanwhile, Colbert's brilliant stunt continues without him: numerous outraged journalists, in a clueless haze of idiocy, continue to criticize him as being unfunny. God, I love it. Really, the whole thing ended up being a piece of performance art on the scale of environmental artist Christo. Bravo.
Fortunately for me, I'm pretty much on their side, so I think that within the narrow confines of their style of faux-news as political humor they're pretty brilliant--they're really good at making me imagine the responses of indignant, arrogant, offended elitists, who, as I said, make me laugh. Colbert's performance last Saturday went miles further than I've ever seen him go: he actually managed to employ real indignant, arrogant, offended elitists as part of the show. His jokes were only okay. The rip-roaring humor came from the situation he created, a nervous and indignant mass of self-important blowhards, whose collective actions have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens and thousands of American soldiers, forced to sit and listen to a nerdy guy in glasses make fun of them while simultaneously calling them out for their horrific sins. That's FUNNY!!! It's even funnier that these guys still don't seem to realize what hit them. Fools are funny.
But don't just take my word for it. Here's some more analysis from Consortiumnews courtesy of Hullabaloo:
Colbert & the Courtier Press
“Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude,” Cohen wrote. “Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person’s sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.”
According to Cohen, Colbert was so boorish that he not only criticized Bush’s policies to the President’s face, but the comedian mocked the assembled Washington journalists decked out in their tuxedos and evening gowns.
“Colbert took a swipe at Bush’s Iraq policy, at domestic eavesdropping, and he took a shot at the news corps for purportedly being nothing more than stenographers recording what the Bush White House said,” Cohen wrote. “Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.” [Washington Post, May 4, 2006]
Yet, while Cohen may see himself defending decorum and civility, his column is another sign of what's terribly wrong with the U.S. news media: With few exceptions, the Washington press corps has failed to hold Bush and his top advisers accountable for their long record of deception and for actions that have violated U.S. constitutional principles and American moral standards.
Click here for the rest.
This is so damned funny! I love it! These morons go on and on about "decorum" not realizing that the whole point was to utterly destroy their "decorum." This is the gag of all gags; the joke that keeps on giving. Everytime one of these blowhards blasts Colbert, they just keep the funny alive. This is the funniest thing I've ever encountered.
Ultimately, I think the best explanation of the humor here was given by Krusty the Clown during the Simpsons episode relating why Bob got the Sideshow job instead of his brother, who is a highly trained clown. Bob, a smug elitist, was extraordinarily funny attempting to maintain his dignity while he had pie all over his face. His brother never stood a chance: deflating the self-important is always funny, and much of the reason why is due to the fact that the victim isn't in on the joke; we're laughing at the victim, instead of with him.
Ha! We live in wonderful times.
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E-mails show DeLay office knew
Abramoff arranged golf trip financing
From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned "if someone starts asking questions."
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting free trips from lobbyists. DeLay, R-Texas, reported to Congress that a Republican advocacy group had paid for the spring 2000 trip that DeLay, his wife and top aides took to Scotland and England.
The e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show DeLay's staff asked Abramoff — not the advocacy group — to account for the costs that had to be legally disclosed on congressional travel forms. DeLay's office was worried the group being cited as paying the costs might not even know about them, the e-mails state.
Click here for the rest.
Well, I'm not sure if violating House ethics rules means that DeLay broke the law per se, but, if not a smoking gun, it's definitely evidence that DeLay is a corrupt, lying scumbag and that the entire country is better off with him out of public service. Of course, as I'm sure you already know, I'm quite certain myself that DeLay goes beyond being simply a bad man straight into criminality. That is, he's certainly a criminal, and, if there's any justice, he'll be behind bars in the next few years. I mean, the guy was essentially extorting bribes from lobbyists for legislation: he didn't simply accept bribes; he actively sought them out, demanding them even, as a condition for allowing lobbyists to simply communicate with Republican lawmakers. If there's not a law against that, there ought to be. Tom DeLay's tenure in Congress went a long way toward destroying our one-time democracy.
If I believed in Hell, I just know there would be a special place there for him.
UPDATE: Duh. If DeLay had to "legally disclose" who paid for the trip, but lied about it, then he certainly broke the law. Book 'em Danno.
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Saturday, May 06, 2006
WHY DID THE CIA CHIEF UNEXPECTEDLY
RESIGN WITHOUT WARNING OR EXPLANATION?
Okay, this is weird, and, because this was so out of the blue, and because Goss appears to be hightailing it before a successor is named, it appears to not have much to do with Bush rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg, despite how they're spinning it.
From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
CIA chief steps down
Goss offered little explanation for his resignation in a brief appearance with President Bush, a televised address to agency personnel and a written statement.
"CIA remains the gold standard," he said. "When I came to CIA in September of 2004, I wanted to accomplish some very specific things, and we have made great strides on all fronts."
But the agency, as well as the Bush administration, has been far from peaceful. Goss' departure was the White House's third major personnel move in just over a month, aimed at reinvigorating Bush's second term.
And
Agency officials dismissed suggestions that the resignation was tied to controversy surrounding the CIA's executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. The FBI is investigating whether Foggo's longtime friend, defense contractor Brent Wilkes, provided prostitutes, limousines and hotel suites to a California congressman who pleaded guilty to taking bribes from Wilkes and others in exchange for government contracts.
Click here for the rest.
Wait a minute. Bribes and hookers? Well, of course, "agency officials" are going to dismiss that, but then, you know, Tom DeLay kept calling his indictment "highly partisan" right up until he announced his resignation. Okay, actually, DeLay is still calling the indictment "highly partisan," but it's still a good point: it is now clear that the GOP is extraordinarily corrupt, and every single one of those mothers under the cloud of scandal denies any wrongdoing at all, even as they're being booked and fingerprinted.
Let's hear a little more about the bribes and hookers.
From AlterNet:
Hookers involved in Goss resignation?
Last week the Wall St. Journal reported the explosive story that lobbyists had been procuring "hospitality suites" (where prostitutes happened to be waiting) for lawmakers like discredited California Republican Duke Cunningham (who, Matthew notes, has already been connected to Goss...).
But, from Old 33 we learn that Harpers' Ken Silverstein did a little digging of his own on the 27th of April: "I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees -- including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post."
And now, a little over a week later the person who holds the most powerful intelligence post resigns? Hmm. Could be nothing.
Click here for the rest.
Yeah, it could be nothing. Or not. Like I said above, it is now pretty clear that the GOP is now mired in a veritable culture of corruption, where, even if a given Republican isn't breaking the law himself, he's doing all he can to help out those who have. That is to say, bribes and hookers aren't immediately dismissable as simply impossible. Or even improbable. It remains to be seen what's really happening here, but I suppose you can imagine what I think it is: Goss quit because he's about to be up to his neck in corruption charges.
I hope they nail him to the wall.
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Friday, May 05, 2006
FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING (SPECIAL EDITION)
For today's Friday Cat Blogging, I present for your perusal my buddy Reuben's cat Mo. Check her out:
Reuben wanted me to point out that it took Mo two jumps to make it to the top of the wall in the middle picture, which is no surprise. Still, that second leap looks pretty impressive, I must say myself.
Back to our usual feline scoundrels next week.
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TWO FROM WORKING FOR CHANGE
Another busy night. So go read these columns.
Immigrants and hate
This was fairly typical local media coverage. What the SPD apparently did not say, but any organizer could have (and perhaps had) told any local reporter who cared to ask, was that the five were not marchers, as the P-I intimated. They were self-identified Neo-Nazis, and in the context of the large number of death threats organizers had received, there is only one possible explanation for their having come to the march armed. It was march security that brought their presence to the attention of SPD.
SPD also chose not to reveal, and no local media reported, a fact announced from the rally stage: that the car incident had resulted in several injuries.
SPD was reportedly irritated with march organizers because the organizers, all of whom were non-white and most of whom were immigrants, for some reason didn't especially trust the police during the April 10 march here. So, among other things, SPD chose not to block traffic at intersections during the first two, non-downtown miles of the march route -- a decision that led directly to the car incident and injuries.
Click here for the rest.
Gouging? What gouging?
You know who you are. Yes you. The ones who are waiting for the president to do something about this gas price thing. The ones who mistook that lame BS oozing out of his “gosh, gas prices are getting high, aren't they?” press conference as sincere. When are you going to get it through your tiny little heads? He's not here to help.
Let me go through this one more time. Stay with me. It's not that complicated. The president is a Texas oilman. His father is a Texas oilman. His vice president is an oilman who shoots Texas lawyers. All the rich people he knows, his father knows and Dick Cheney knows have 30 weight running through their veins. All the people who gave him money that put him in the White House are oilmen. Does this clear anything up? Maybe a little? His major priority is to pay them back in spades, then they tell him what a good job he's doing and give him more money.
Click here for the rest.
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Thursday, May 04, 2006
Stephen Colbert's Blistering Performance Mocking
Bush and the Press Goes Ignored by the Media
From Democracy Now:
On Saturday night, over 2,000 journalists, politicians and Washington insiders gathered for the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner. President Bush was there and took part in a skit with presidential impersonator Steve Bridges.
And then there was the featured entertainer, Stephen Colbert, the host of the Comedy Central fake news program, The Colbert Report.
If you followed how the corporate press covered the night you might not have even realized Colbert spoke but he gave a talk that repeatedly mocked the President and the press for its failings.
According to the media watchdog group Media Matters, subsequent press coverage focused only on Bush's light-hearted comedy, while omitting mention of Colbert's blistering performance.
And from Colbert's speech:
Most of all, I believe in this president. Now, I know there are some polls out there saying that this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias. So, Mr. President, please, please, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass -- important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash. Okay.
Click here to watch, read, or listen to the rest (includes video of most of Colbert's speech).
A few thoughts on this.
First, I saw a video clip of the speech Saturday night, but I didn't realize what a firestorm it would create on the left side of the blogoshpere. That's fairly typical of me--I never seem to be able to tell what's going to rouse the crowds. Anyway, I'm finally getting around to posting on it.
Second, I was, indeed, amazed when, on Sunday, I finally heard some coverage of the event, on Fox, and found that they were simply ignoring the most newsworthy aspect of the dinner. No surprise, it's Fox, I thought. But then everybody else ignored it, too. In the rare instances that the corporate media did cover it, it was extraordinarily negative, which was a surprise. Nothing Colbert said was out of line at all: he simply did a good job as a political comedian. That mainstream journalists would have a problem with that says much about how deluded the Washington press corps is--these are the same people who laughed their heads off two years ago at the same event when Bush joked around by pretending to hunt for WMDs in closets and bathrooms. Pathetic.
Finally, Colbert is a comedian, which in my book makes him an artist. That he unflinchingly went for the jugular in this way automatically makes him one of the great Real Artists of our time. I only hope I can bat in his league some day.
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Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Are U.S. Trade Policies & NAFTA Causing
An Influx of Undocumented Workers in U.S.?
A couple of days ago, my buddy Adam, who authors the Shattered Soapbox blog, asked this question in Real Art comments:
Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but no one, not even lefties, seem to be talking about NAFTA in this "immigration debate" (until you just did, sort of). I mean, would so many people from all of Latin America be as desperate for jobs as they are if the U.S.-supported capitolist leaders of many of those countries weren't letting corporations exploit the working class? NAFTA makes it all possible, if I understand it correctly.Well, okay, so now at least one left-wing news program is talking about it.
adam
From Democracy Now:
Really, what's going on here is that the trade agreements, like NAFTA, and this neo-liberal free trade regime is displacing enormous numbers of people around the world so that worldwide there are about 170 million people living outside the countries in which they were born, and overwhelmingly this is due to the kind of enforced poverty that this free trade regime is producing.
But what is really kind of new here is that the corporate elite, large corporations, are now seeing this flow of people as something that can be used as a whole new source of profit, so that we see proposals for programs, like guest worker programs, in a number of different countries. In Britain, for instance, this is called “managed migration,” and we see the same thing in Europe and, in fact, at the W.T.O. negotiations in Hong Kong, there was a formal proposal introduced called Mode 4, which essentially would set up a huge new international guest worker program. So migration has always been part of the free trade regime, because of the fact that the imposition of this regime displaces people, but now it's becoming even more a part of this regime, because really in a sense the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, financial institutions, large corporations see migration itself as being something that they can turn into a profit.
Click here for to watch, listen, or read the rest.
So there you have it. The xenophobes have already lost. Indeed, they never had a chance. The corporate globalists want immigrant workers, so they're going to get immigrant workers. All this business about fences along the border, Spanish as destroyer-of-English, the Minutemen, all that bullshit, it's just political theater. The future's already been written because money always wins, unless, of course, the people rise up and demand an end to illegals with one unified voice, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen.
So what needs to happen now is to make sure that these workers, all workers really, are treated fairly by our corporate overlords. I wonder if it's possible for the left to somehow get the xenophobes to see this reality, to convince them that their real enemy consists of the wealthy elites who want to rip off everybody. Maybe if they can be shown that they have absolutely no hope of winning, they can be convinced to cut their losses by demanding fair wages and benefits for all. I'm doubtful, but weirder things have happened.
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Tuesday, May 02, 2006
New Army documents reveal US knew of and
approved torture before Abu Ghraib scandal
From the Raw Story courtesy of AlterNet:
"When our leaders allow and even encourage abuse at the 'outer limits',
Among the documents released today by the ACLU is a May 19, 2004 Defense Intelligence Agency document implicating Sanchez in potentially abusive interrogation techniques. In the document, an officer in charge of a team of interrogators stated that there was a 35-page order spelling out the rules of engagement that interrogators were supposed to follow, and that they were encouraged to "go to the outer limits to get information from the detainees by people who wanted the information." When asked to whom the officer was referring, the officer answered "LTG Sanchez." The officer stated that the expectation coming from "Headquarters" was to break the detainees.
Click here for the rest.
Of course, the torture mandate was approved at the very highest levels. That’s what the left, and others, have been saying for a couple of years now. It’s been far too widespread to be just a bunch of “isolated incidents.” The methods have been far too similar to have not been taught to the soldiers who carried it out. Numerous Oval Office attempts to find legal justifications to ignore the Geneva Conventions, Bush’s bizarre “signing statement” essentially nullifying Congress’ recent anti-torture legislation, and the White House’s lukewarm denials all indicate that this whole torture scandal comes from the tip top. It’s totally obvious. So, great, now we have documents implicating a general. When do we get the smoking gun that nails Bush to the wall?
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National Anthem Sung In Spanish At First Bush Inaugural
From Think Progress courtesy of AlterNet:
On Friday, President Bush blasted the idea of singing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish. But Bush’s highly-scripted 2001 inaugural ceremony actually featured a rendition of the national anthem sung in Spanish by Jon Secada. From Cox News Service, 1/18/01:
The opening ceremony reflected that sentiment. A racially diverse string of famous and once famous performers entertained Bush, soon-to-be First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President-elect Richard B. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, who watched on stage from a special viewing area.
Pop star Jon Secada sang the national anthem in English and Spanish.
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Monday, May 01, 2006
INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY
Also Known More Simply As May Day
Today, Monday, May 1st, is May Day. From Wikipedia:
International Workers' Day (a name used interchangeably with May Day) is the commemoration of the Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, and a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement. The 1 May date is used because in 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, inspired by labor's 1872 success in Canada, demanded an eight-hour workday in the United States to come in effect as of May 1, 1886. This resulted in a general strike and the riot in Chicago of 1886, but eventually also in the official sanction of the eight-hour workday. The May Day Riots of 1894 and May Day Riots of 1919 occurred subsequently. In 1889, the first congress of the Second International called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago riot. These were so successful that May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891.
Due to these left-wing overtones, May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and anarchist groups. In some circles, bonfires are lit in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot usually right as the first day of May begins. In the 20th century, May Day received the official endorsement of the Soviet Union; celebrations in communist countries during the Cold War era often consisted of large military parades and shows of common people in support of the government.
The Red Scare periods ended May Day as a mass holiday in the United States, a phenomenon which can be seen as somewhat ironic given that May Day originated in Chicago. Meanwhile, in countries other than the United States, resident working classes fought hard to make May Day an official governmentally-sanctioned holiday, efforts which eventually largely succeeded. For this reason, May Day in most of the world today is marked by huge street rallies of workers led by their trade unions and various large socialist and communist parties — a phenomenon not generally seen in the U.S. (which has a history of strong anti-communism).
In most countries other than the U.S., May Day is often referred to simply as "Labor Day" or "Worker day".
Click here for more.
It was no accident that immigrant workers chose May 1st as the day to hold their general strike. May Day is the real Labor Day, and, even though that significance is no doubt not understood by most American leaders, the protest participants, along with the rest of the world, do understand. Today's mass action was in the grand tradition of workers stuggling, worldwide, for better lives. And, I might add, it's all very American: May Day commemorates historically the American workers' struggle.
Power to the people.
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"TODAY WE MARCH, TOMORROW WE VOTE"
From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
Boycott shuts or slows many
businesses, farms across the U.S.
More than 1 million mostly Hispanic immigrants and their supporters skipped work and took to the streets today, flexing their economic muscle in a nationwide boycott that succeeded in slowing or shutting many farms, factories, markets and restaurants. From Los Angeles to Chicago, Houston to Miami, the "Day Without Immigrants" attracted widespread participation despite divisions among activists over whether a boycott would send the right message to Washington lawmakers considering sweeping immigration reform. "We are the backbone of what America is, legal or illegal, it doesn't matter," said Melanie Lugo, who with her husband and their third-grade daughter joined a rally of some 75,000 in Denver. "We butter each other's bread. They need us as much as we need them."
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This is real democracy, the people exercising their power. Voting is important, yes, but it's not what drives legislators' agendas. The loudest and most threatening voices, or, of course, voices with lots of money, do that. The civics lesson taught to this nation during the 1960s had been long forgotten, but the immigrant workers of America are teaching a brush-up course. And forget the euphemism "boycott." This was a general strike, the kind of thing that toppled communist Poland and other regimes: when they're organized, regular, ordinary folks are capable of shutting this nation down, switching the economy off. When that happens, the elites, who usually ignore the concerns of their inferiors, sit up and listen. Nervously.
Man, I'm loving this stuff, and so should most Americans: these workers are struggling for their rights, but, ultimately, they're fighting for everybody. When workers at the lowest rung of the ladder are successfully able to improve their position in relation to capital, it generally ripples up to workers who make better wages. Most people win in these situations--it's not all about whether a worker is legal or not.
And speaking of illegal immigration. It's occurred to me recently that there's a major shaft going on as far as the concept of "globalization" is concerned. If all these "free trade" agreements of the last decade or so are what is allowing corporations to "outsource" jobs to other countries in order to take advantage of lower prevailing wages, it only seems fair to allow labor the same kind of mobility. That is, if jobs can move freely across borders, it's a major injustice that labor cannot, because, when you get right down to it, it's not really "free trade" when one major aspect of the economy has no freedom at all. Don't get me wrong: I would greatly prefer finding a way to end the corporate bloodletting here in America, and finding ways to encourage real and sustainable growth in developing nations. However, if "free trade" constitutes the rules we must live by, then they need to be fair. That means allowing the free flow of labor across borders, just as free as corporate movement.
Somehow, I don't think the elites will ever see things my way.
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