Why Bill Clinton Pushed Back

The Washington Post's liberal guy, EJ Dionne, throws in his two cents, courtesy of the Daily Kos:

My canvassing of Clinton insiders suggests two things about his outburst on "Fox News Sunday." First, he did not go into the studio knowing he would do it. There was, they say, a spontaneity to his anger. But, second, he had thought long and hard about comparisons between his record on terrorism and Bush's. He had his lines down pat from private musing about how he had been turned into a punching bag by the right. Something like this, one adviser said, was bound to happen eventually.

Sober, moderate opinion will say what sober, moderate opinion always says about an episode of this sort: Tut tut, Clinton looked unpresidential, we should worry about the future, not the past, blah, blah, blah.

But sober, moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton's record on terrorism. It largely stood by as the Bush administration tried to intimidate its own critics into silence. As a result, the day-to-day political conversation was tilted toward a distorted view of the past. All the sins of omission and commission were piled onto Clinton while Bush was cast as the nation's angelic avenger. And as conservatives understand, our view of the past greatly influences what we do in the present.

Click here for the rest.

Sorry to keep harping on this topic, but I see it as a major watershed event in American politics. The sober moderate opinion that Clinton threw to the wind last Sunday is the same thing that Republicans have been ignoring to their benefit for years. With the aid of the sober moderate press and a prevailing attitude among Democrats of sober moderation, the fiery pack of pit bulls known as the GOP agitated, screamed, and whined so consistently, year after year, that they successfully pulled what was once understood as the political middle well to the right. Today's moderates are, by the standards used two decades ago, actually conservative. Even Bill Clinton, who entered office in 1993 with grand plans for health care reform and inclusion of homosexuals in the military, fell victim to this shift of the middle--he never attempted anything as liberal ever again. Clearly, being nice only works if everybody's doing it; it's pure capitulation if only one side is being nice, which may be the one of the biggest reasons our country is so screwed right now.

Democrats have been bringing knives to the Republican gun fight for so long that I've essentially written them off. Finally, the one guy that all Democrats respect decided that enough is enough and sawed off his shotgun. Fuck the sober moderates. This is war. I hope to god that the rest of the party isn't as stupid as they appear to be, and take Elvis' call to arms seriously.

Maybe someday I'll be able to vote for one of them without sighing.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Phil



Frankie and Sammy



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TAKING A SHIT ON THE CONSTITUTION

Courtesy of Eschaton, the New York Times editorial board weighs in on the soon-to-become-law "anti-terrorism" bill:

Rushing Off a Cliff

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

Click here for the rest.

The essay also explains why Senate Democrats didn't even try to filibuster this travesty (they fear "soft on terrorism" ads in these last few weeks before the elections), as well as the real reason Bush needs this bill (the evidence needed to convict detained bigtime "illegal combatants" was tortured out of them and cannot be used in a real trial), but the most offensive outrages are listed above. And what a list it is.

After all these years, after countless outrages, I am truly amazed. It's open season on Muslims and people with brown skin. We really are now on the proverbial slippery slope: the Democrats had a shot at stopping this hideous bill and they didn't try. Our government is utterly broken, and, believe me, we're all in big fucking trouble.

It's no longer over the top to look at this old poem in terms of recent events:

First they came...

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

When the Republicans came for the Muslims...

Human beings, over the years, aren't terribly original in their behavior and thinking. History really does repeat itself, as has happened countless times throughout the ages. We all have this "it can't happen here" mentality. But it is happening, and I don't see anything at all on the horizon to stop it. If something doesn't radically change in the next five years or so, we are so fucked.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
WHAT A TURNAROUND! ASTROS ONLY
HALF GAME OUT FROM DIVISION TITLE

From the Houston Chronicle:

Astros continue surge with ninth-straight win

Only the rain slowed Roy Oswalt and the Astros as they continued their late surge Thursday afternoon, keeping their slim postseason hopes alive with their ninth consecutive victory.

Oswalt threw seven scoreless innings and combined with three relievers to complete the three-game sweep over the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 3-0 shutout at PNC Park.

By extending their season-high winning streak to nine games, Phil Garner's club kept pressure on the National League Central-leading St. Louis Cardinals heading into the Astros' season-ending three-game series against the Atlanta Braves.

Now the Cardinals' NL Central lead is down to a half-game.

Click here for the rest.

You know, a little over a month ago, I had, as usual, completely written the Astros off for the season--indeed, as of August 28th they were below .500 in the win/loss stats. Then, as usual, they caught fire and started winning again, and now they're right smack dab in the midst of a streak, part of which was sweeping the NL Central Division leading St. Louis Cardinals. Meanwhile, the Cardinals, who lost again tonight, are right smack dab in the middle of a losing streak. Well, not exactly, but they have lost eight of their last nine, three of those, like I said, to the Astros, and suddenly, the division title is wide open.

Christ, the Astros do this every fucking year it seems. Who says baseball isn't exciting?

So now, and a big "sorry" goes out to my friends in and from Atlanta, I'm totally hating the Braves, who I hope lose in a big way to my formerly orange home team. Kill the Braves! Go Astros! Woo-hoo!



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THERE GOES AMERICA'S SOUL

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Detainee interrogation bill wins House approval

The legislation would establish a military court system to prosecute terror suspects, a response to the Supreme Court ruling last June that Congress' blessing was necessary. While the bill would grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the administration's old system, it nevertheless would eliminate rights usually granted in civilian and military courts.

The measure also provides extensive definitions of war crimes such as torture, rape and biological experiments — but gives Bush broad authority to decide which other techniques U.S. interrogators can legally use. The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.

With elections just weeks away, the debate over the legal handling of terrorists was often partisan with some Democrats contending the bill would approve torture.

"All Americans want to hold terrorists accountable, but if we try to redefine the nature of torture, whisk people into secret detention facilities and use secret evidence to convict them in special courts, our actions do in fact embolden our enemies," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.

Others vehemently opposed language that would give the president wide latitude to interpret international standards of prisoner treatment and bar detainees from going to federal court to protest their treatment and detention under the right of habeas corpus. Supporters of the bill have said eliminating habeas corpus was intended to keep detainees from flooding federal courts with appeals.

The bill also gives the president the ability to interpret international standards for prisoner treatment when an act does not fall under the definition of a war crime, such as rape and torture.

Click here for the rest.

Make no mistake about it: this bill is all about making Bush's secret torture centers legitimate. Sure, there are some restrictions, but, as far as I can tell, it's much more about giving carte blanche to these Nazi fucks in the White House for all their vile shit. I mean, they're going to get to "interpret" rape? There's nothing to interpret there. Rape is fucking black and white. This stinks as bad as anything I've ever smelled, and fuck the Democrats for not going into over-the-top psychotic hysterics over it. The article makes it sound like there was lots of opposition to the bill, and there was some, but still, a fifth of Democrats in the House actually voted for it. That's unconscionable. I mean, it's unconscionable that even Republicans are voting for it, but it's just sick and twisted that any Democrat at all would ever bless this monstrosity. This isn't about political philosophy or appropriations. This is about fucking torture.

Sick, sick, sick.

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COALITION OF THE COERCED
US 'threatened to bomb' Pakistan

Just in case you missed it over the weekend. From the BBC:

The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said.

General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan's intelligence director.

"I think it was a very rude remark," Gen Musharraf told CBS television.

Pakistan agreed to side with the US, but Gen Musharraf said it did so based on his country's national interest.

"One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did," he said.

Click here for the rest.

Well, by now the Bush administration has completely denied the accusation, but you've just gotta wonder. Actually, I'm not wondering at all. We have every reason to believe that the denials are total lies. I mean, my take, after all these Republican lies over the last five years, is to believe what seems to be the most reasonable assertion; that is, the White House no longer has any credibility, and I wouldn't put this bombing threat past them at all. After all, we know for sure that when Bush was cobbling together for the invasion of Iraq his "Coalition of the Willing" from third world nations, former Warsaw Pact members, and other global non-players, that they offered all kinds of diplomatic and monetary incentives. Why on earth wouldn't they use a stick as well as a carrot? Of course they used under-the-table threats to get it all together, which is why it's so utterly believable that they did the same thing in preparation for the Afghanistan invasion.

None of this comes as any surprise. These are some sick motherfuckers.

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FOX NEWS GOES LITERALLY INSANE
RESPONDING TO CLINTON'S DEBATE WIN

From Throw Away Your TV:

Holy Shit, this is fucked up right here, the Fox News network revisited the Clinton interview on every program they had - (mediamatters.org provides a nice mashup below) and you can go to their site for a detailed analysis of the clip.

Beware this is a solid five minutes of Fox News Clinton bashing, its starts to get real sad as you watch, they are trying so hard to make Clinton look bad, However after watching this I think Wallace is Worthy of the Douchebag Tag. If you want to watch the Interview to see exactly what happend, we have it posted here.

I think fox is just best to admit defeat as they have pulled the clip from youtube.com thats usually a sign that they don't want people to watch the Interview from an environment that they can't control.

Click here to see the video montage of the Fox freak-out about Clinton.

This pretty much proves that the Clinton interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday was a big win for the Democrats: Fox devoted all day Monday to spinning it into something else. When you see that much effort, that much overkill, you know they're running scared. Heh. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Of course, Fox sure as hell ain't no lady; she's a brazen whore with yellow fangs in her coochie, and the former President chewed her up and spit her out. I'm fucking loving this.

Now if only we could somehow get all Democrats who appear on television to use the same strategy...

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Teacher reprimanded after student
sees nude art on museum trip

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

School board members have voted to not renew the contract of a veteran art teacher who was reprimanded after one of her fifth-grade students saw a nude sculpture during a school trip to a museum.

Sydney McGee has been on paid administrative leave from Fisher Elementary School since Friday, said her attorney Rogge Dunn.

McGee's contract runs through the end of the school year and it was unclear whether she would remain on leave until then. Her attorney said he would wait for written confirmation and clarification from the school district to decide how to proceed.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, we are officially in the middle of a Puritanical frenzy. Back in June, I learned of a woman in upstate New York who had lost custody of her child because of a performance art piece in which she was involved that mocked Christianity and included some nudity. Shortly after that, I read about some district officials gunning for a high school art teacher who had posed for some topless art photos that ended up online. More recently, there was the story of the Oklahoma police chief who was forced to resign due to the moralistic outcry over his wife's online nude photos.

Now this shit.

One could argue that this scandal, and I say "scandal" because booting an art teacher for exposing her students to art is downright scandalous, is actually much more the result of paranoid administrators overreacting than it is about my perception of an alarming rise in absolutist anti-sex and anti-nudity attitudes. After all, I spent six years in a bumfuck town in Texas teaching theater classes, myself, and my feeling the whole time was that the district needed students to get their state mandated fine arts credit, but didn't like, understand, or value the arts. Consequently, it was my job to simply process students through my classroom while keeping as low of a profile as possible--any controversy at all was automatically my fault, which severely hampered my abilities as a teacher. Clearly, much of the public education establishment is, quite literally, old school. The arts aren't reading, writing, 'rithmetic, or football, and are therefore useless for anything other than complying with state regulations.

Of course, that's total bullshit. Besides the intrinsic cultural value that comes from studying the arts, students who do so tend to score higher than their peers on standardized tests. But what can you do? "Educators," contrary to popular opinion, are some of the most conservative people in the country.

So the nude sculpture issue in the story above may simply be paranoia combined with disrespect for art, but given the proliferation of such instances, along with the freak-out over Janet Jackson's Superbowl nipple, the impeachment of a good President for a private sexual affair, and numerous other examples of Taliban-like tendencies in American culture, I'm not ready to dismiss this as something else. The big dumb cunt-faces of fundamentalist morality are out there fucking with perfectly innocent Americans, and they're doing it much more than they used to.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Big Easy in Superdome: Triumphant homecoming for Saints

From ESPN:

The Superdome got a new roof after Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Saints did their best to blow it off again.

In an earsplitting return to their rebuilt stadium, the Saints gave the Big Easy something to cheer about -- an undefeated football team that made it look easy with a 23-3 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night.

This one couldn't have been scripted any better for a team that spent all of last season on the road, and it couldn't have come at a better time for a city that is still struggling to overcome the devastation of Katrina.

After a Super Bowl-like pregame show that included a performance by supergroups U2 and Green Day, the Saints wasted no time turning their welcome-home party into Mardi Gras: The Falcons' first drive stalled, and special teams demon Steve Gleason sliced through the middle of the Atlanta line to smother Michael Koenen's punt.

The ball skidded across the goal line, where Curtis Deloatch fell on it for a touchdown -- the first given up by the Falcons this season. Just 1½ minutes into a homecoming that was over a year in the making, the Saints sent an emphatic message to the NFL and the entire country.

New Orleans is back.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I don't even get ESPN, so I was unable to watch, although I did listen for a bit on the radio, but I just had to post on this. I was in New Orleans Saturday night, and the whole city was extraordinarily excited about the Saints' return to the Superdome. You've got to understand that huge numbers of people there continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other emotional illnesses, fully half of the population has yet to return, and some two thirds of the area still lie in ruins. New Orleans needs good things to happen to it. Just reopening the Superdome for business would have sufficed, but this win, which brings the Saints to 3-0, against their division rival, and by a hefty margin, is the right kind of mojo to charge the Big Easy's spirits.

I bet they're partying down on Bourbon right now, which is especially grand because the street was decidedly not hopping when I was there only a couple of nights ago. Hell, if New Orleans makes the playoffs this year, I'd bet a hundred bucks that the city eventually comes back as good as new. Seriously. The Big Easy is a town where symbolism goes a long, long way.

I'd better get in on some of this action myself: my home team looks like it may be the worst in the NFL at the moment. Go Saints!



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What's Wrong With Calling Bush A Devil?

From AlterNet:

Across the U.S. political and media spectrum, there was wide agreement yesterday: Name-calling and personal attacks are bad for national and global dialogue. Prompting the unity were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' comments that President Bush was the devil incarnate, "El Diablo."

Among those exercised (and exorcized) about Chavez' name-calling were some of the loudest name-callers in American media today -- including Rush Limbaugh and other rightwing talk hosts. Limbaugh tried to equate Chavez' remarks with the alleged Bush-bashing that comes from top U.S. Democrats. In case you've forgotten, it was Limbaugh who ridiculed Chelsea Clinton, then 13, as the "White House dog."

It was Limbaugh in 2001 who routinely referred to Democratic leader Tom Daschle, literally, as "El Diablo."

Click here for the rest.

The essay's writer, Jeff Cohen, director of liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, goes on to make the point easily that right-wing rhetoric, especially in the mainstream media, is actually much worse than Chavez's simple "devil" remarks, and their outrage is hypocritical, if not calculated. Alas, Cohen makes a needless nod to the concept of civility, and condemns Venezuela's president while asserting that only the pundits and politicos of the left, who have to some extent stayed away from name-calling, and not the frothy-mouthed right, have the moral authority to make such a condemnation.

Of course, I call people names all the time, myself, so I suppose I don't have any moral authority here. But I don't really want to condemn Chavez, especially because he's absolutely right. I'm assuming that "devil" is metaphor, and, given the death and destruction unleashed by our boy-President since 9/11, it is entirely appropriate. I suppose one could say that such volatile language is dangerous as far as diplomacy is concerned, but old Hugo is trying to get together a viable coalition of nations that oppose US imperialism. Consequently, it really does look like he's trying to fire up the crowd. In other words, calling Bush a devil may very well piss off lots of Americans, but I think it made lots of other people pretty darned happy.

Like me, for instance.

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NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE LEAK:
WAR IN IRAQ FUELS GLOBAL TERRORISM

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Intelligence report fuels debate on terror threat

Their criticisms came in a collection of statements sent to reporters today amid the disclosure of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report was completed in April and represented a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government, according to an intelligence official. The official, confirming accounts first published in Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post, spoke on condition of anonymity on Sunday because the report is classified.

Click here for more.

This was mind-numbingly obvious from the moment the Bush administration started their saber-rattling about Iraq, and countless individuals on the left, myself included, said so repeatedly at the time. Terrorism is an extremely complicated political problem, not an army or a monster that one can beat down with a stick in a metaphoric "war" on it, so the invasion of Iraq obviously never had anything to do with it. Despite the juvenile rhetoric about how "they hate our freedom," the so-called Islamofascists actually have legitimate grievances against the US, such as our support of the corrupt and brutal Saudi Royal Family, which is where we should have directed our anti-terror efforts in the first place. Instead, the neo-cons seized upon 9/11 in order to advance their plans for American global domination without even thinking about how it would simply add to terrorists' very reasonable motivations for terrorism.

Let me spell this out: outraging already angry Muslim populations by killing lots of Muslims only creates vast incentive for jihad against the US. Never mind the inherent immorality of war for a moment; the Iraq invasion was an extraordinarily bad idea from the get-go--it is incredibly counterproductive. Bush and his controllers took a bad situation and made it much, much worse, and we will certainly be cleaning up after their mess for decades to come.

How the fuck can anybody think that the Republicans have any idea what they're doing here, let alone somehow better than the Democrats on national security? This is truly one of the most surreal situations I've ever encountered.

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BILL CLINTON FOX "FREAK OUT" ACTUALLY
A BLUEPRINT FOR DEMOCRAT TV SUCCESS

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Mohandas Gandhi

So the right wing is calling it a breakdown or a freak out or something along those lines, but they don't really appear to be responding to what he actually said. That is, they're ridiculing him, which I put into the "laugh at you" category from Gandhi's quote above. When I first read some of the transcript from this Fox News Sunday interview on Friday, I felt certain that the video was going to show me what I wanted to see, a rare and real debate in the middle of the proverbial lion's den. It's all over now, if the Democrats take the ball and run with it: President Clinton went on Fox news and kicked ass, showing once and for all that liberals can go toe-to-toe with the corporate pundit parade and win. Anybody can do it. If they have the balls.

Actually, the real key to this kind of rhetorical win is to steadfastly reject the right-wing narrative, again and again, replacing it with an intelligent, reasonable analysis.

Anyway, here's a bit more of the transcript, followed by a link to some video of the exchange, courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

CW: I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

WJC: It was a perfectly legitimate question. But I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you’ve asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked ‘Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?’ I want to know how many you asked ‘Why did you fire Dick Clarke?’ I want to know…

CW: We asked…

WJC: [..]

CW: Do you ever watch FOX News Sunday, sir?

WJC: I don’t believe you ask them that.

CW: We ask plenty of questions of…

WJC: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth.

CW: About the USS Cole?

WJC: Tell the truth…

CW: I…with Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

WJC: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on Climate Change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about…

Click here for the rest of the full transcript, and video of the first half of the exchange.

What a man. That's the way you do it--that's also how the Republicans did it, too. Never back down on your key points, and go for the jugular. "Taking the high ground" is no longer a productive option, especially because the Republicans utterly destroyed the high ground long ago. I'm not advocating mud-slinging, despite how much fun it is, but what I do want to see is bravery in the line of fire, and that's something old Bill's got in spades. We can turn this country around, if only our leaders would fight for it.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.


There's only one way to play it...

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
TEXAS, LSU KICK ASS AGAINST LESSER OPPONENTS

From the AP via ESPN:

Neither rain nor Iowa State can stop McCoy, No. 8 Texas

Texas was cruising to another Big 12 win when the weather put everything on hold for more than an hour.

No matter. By the time the rain and lightning had cleared, Iowa State was in no position to mount much of a rally.

Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy engineered another efficient game with a pair of touchdown passes Saturday to lead No. 7 Texas to a 37-14 victory in the Big 12 opener for both teams.

The outcome was pretty much what was expected. It just took a long time to finish after waves of rain and lightning rolled through downtown Austin at the end of the third quarter, forcing game officials to suspend play for 70 minutes.

Click here for the rest.

And again from the AP via ESPN:

LSU jumps out to big early lead before cruising past Tulane

LSU brought Tulane's 14-game span away from New Orleans to a merciless and painful end.

Early Doucet caught two touchdown passes and ran for a third score as the No. 10 Tigers jumped out to a large early lead in a 49-7 victory over Tulane on Saturday night.

LSU's top-ranked defense also knocked Tulane starting quarterback Lester Ricard out of the game when two tacklers hit him from opposite sides late in the first half.

"It was the wrong week to play us," LSU coach Les Miles said, referring to his team's drive to bounce back from a potentially costly 7-3 loss at No. 2 Auburn last weekend. "We came off a disappointing showing a week ago. There's a little edge on this program and our kids wanted to win. Get victory back and enjoy the fruits of their labor."

Click here for the rest.

If there's any problem with ending up as a loyalist, by way of undergraduate and graduate education, to two of the top college football programs in the country, it's that you'll invariably end up with blowout weekends all around like this one was. Granted, the Texas/Iowa State game got interesting in the second quarter, but once the Longhorns found their groove it was all over by the time the rain delay hit at the end of the third quarter. I mean, okay, the Cyclones weren't as overmatched as Tulane was, but then, they're no Texas Tech or Texas A&M, either. At least it's a conference win. On the other hand, it's hard not to feel sorry for Tulane's Green Wave. If I recall correctly, the went undefeated in regular season play the year before Katrina hit, and they just haven't been able to really be competitive since then. The Tigers just murderlized 'em. As they should have.

Good thing I didn't really get the chance to watch either one--Sundays are for napping, not Saturdays.

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French back off report of bin Laden's death

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

President Jacques Chirac said today that information contained in a leaked intelligence document raising the possibility that Osama bin Laden may have died of typhoid in Pakistan last month is "in no way whatsoever confirmed."

Chirac said he was "a bit surprised" at the leak and has asked Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to probe how a document from a French foreign intelligence service was published in the French press.

Click here for the rest.

Well, so much for my late night revelry. Nobody at Kos or Eschaton even touched the story, and with good reason--it was obviously just a rumor at 3:30 in the morning, and that's what it is now. But then, all I really wanted to do is gloat. I'm personally not going to believe that bin Laden is dead until they plaster pictures of his body all over the global mass communications grid. So, for now, I guess we should simply file this away as yet another rumor of the supervillain's death.

I swear, this guy really is straight out of Marvel Comics. He's dead, no, he's alive, no, he's dead, haha, he escaped your vile Western clutches once again! I think it's probably time to unfreeze Pat Tillman's body and inject him with the super-soldier serum: only a superhero can take down a supervillain. I swear to god, as long as incompetents are running the show in Washington, it's going to take a lot of spandex and radioactive spiders to get the job done.



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DID TYPHOID DO TO BIN LADEN
WHAT BUSH WOULD NOT?

From Reuters:

French paper says bin Laden died in Pakistan

A French regional newspaper quoted a French secret service report on Saturday as saying that Saudi Arabia is convinced that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.

L'Est Republicain printed what it said was a copy of the report dated September 21 and said it was shown to President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and France's interior and defence ministers on the same day.

"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead," the document said.

Click here for the rest.

I don't have much to say about this at the moment, other than something along the lines of "this may or may not be true," but it strikes me as big news, and I happen to be awake at the moment, when most sensible bloggers are sleeping, so I figured, what the hell, I'll have it waiting for whatever grownups happen to wander into Real Art when the sun comes up later this morning, maybe scooping the big boys in the process. Having successfully extended my adolescence well into my thirties, I will not be one of those early rising grownups, myself. Anyway, "scooping" is of course being wildly misused here, in that I didn't actually do any of the reporting on this story, but it will be nice to think that I'm among the first few bloggers to post on the death of this real life Marvel Comics supervillain.

If it's true.

Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!! In your face Atrios! Have a kick in the Kos, Daily Kos! I said something about this before you did! Nyah, nyah! I am so great. I am so great. I am so great. I am so great. (Repeat until nausea sets in.)

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BILL CLINTON KICKS SOME ASS AT FOX

From USA TODAY courtesy of Eschaton, a transcript from an upcoming interview on Fox News:

Clinton: OK let's just --

Wallace: May I just finish the question sir? And after the attack, the book says, that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is always 20/20 --

Clinton: No, let's talk about it.

Wallace: But the question is, why didn't you connect the dots and put him out of business?

Clinton: Let's talk about it. I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises. I'm being asked this on the FOX network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative running their little pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 commission report with three things asserted against me directly contradictory to the 9/11 commission report. And I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say I didn't do enough claim that I was too obsessed with bin Laden.

All of President Bush's neo-cons that I was too obsessed with bin Laden, they had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say I didn't do enough, said I did too much, the same people. They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk Down and I refused to do it and stayed six months and had an orderly transfer to the United Nations.

OK, now let's look at all the criticisms, Black Hawk Down, Somalia, there is not a living soul in the world who thought Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down or was paying any attention to it, or even knew al-Qaeda was a going concern in October 93.

Wallace: I understand.

Clinton: No, no, wait. Don't tell me that -- you asked me why didn't I do more to bin Laden, there was not a living soul, all the people who now criticize me wanted to leave the next day. You brought this up, so you get an answer.

Click here for the rest.

As I've said many times before, Bill Clinton is a conservative Democrat with whom I have many problems. On the other hand, he's probably the most gifted American politician of the second half of the twentieth century--I would definitely put him in the top five all time list. And this interview shows why: unlike most of his pussified party colleagues, Elvis doesn't roll over and die when attacked; Bill Clinton fights back. And that's exactly what he does in this interview, which is slated to be aired on whatever version of Meet the Press Fox runs on Sunday. Apparently the original right-wing nutcase blogger Matt Drudge is already trying to spin this as a Clinton freak-out, but the transcript reads like the former President won with a devastating full court press.

So, bravo.

But what gets me is that Clinton's style of argumentation isn't too terribly difficult to emulate. It's really basic high school debate: know your opponent's points beforehand, know what to ignore and what to press, know when to attack and when to retreat, but don't back down one damned bit. Why do I so rarely see Democrats do what I was successfully training my public speaking students to do for six years back when I was teaching high school? This is old school democracy, the kind of thing they were doing in the British Parliament centuries ago. When did the Democrats decide that the best way to win elections was to shrink away from fist-slinging arguments like a bunch of Southern church ladies?

Bunch of pussies. I hope some of them watch and learn when this airs on Sunday.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Phil



Sammy



Frankie



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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Iraq torture 'worse after Saddam'

From the BBC:

Torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein, the UN's chief anti-torture expert says.

Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents.

Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue "often bear signs of severe torture", said the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq in a report.

Click here for the rest.

So, remember the rhetorical pasting Howard Dean endured when he said that Iraq was not safer because US forces had recently plucked Saddam Hussein from his filthy hidey-hole? Well, Dean was, indeed, mistaken, but only in the degree of his assertion. Not only is Iraq not safer because of the end of the Ba'athist regime, it is much more dangerous. The picture I'm getting is that everybody is torturing and killing everybody over there. Say what you want about Saddam; after all, he was a brutal dictator. But his iron-fisted rule provided the kind of social stability that has eluded the US occupation. It's total chaos in Iraq, and it's our fault.

Good thing I don't believe in karma, or I would be scared shitless of the inevitable punishment this country would receive for its vile, sick misdeeds.



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HOUSTON DJ I ONCE LOVED TURNS EVIL

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram courtesy of AlterNet:

Radio ad asks Houstonians to arm themselves against evacuees

A radio commercial for a local gun shop advises Houstonians to arm themselves against "Katricians," adding to the growing tension between Houstonians and the Katrina evacuees who have been blamed for a rising crime rate.

Gun shop owner and radio talk-show host Jim Pruett said Thursday he started running the ad a few weeks ago after hearing a local television interview with a Katrina evacuee living in Houston who implied he would have to turn to crime if his government assistance ran out.

And

Residents in upper middle-class west Houston have blamed evacuees for violent crime rates that have increased almost 14 percent in one district and homicides that have nearly doubled in another.

Earlier this month, the FBI reported that violent crime in Houston jumped 2.4 percent last year, slightly above the national figure of 2.3 percent.

Click here for the rest.

When I was a kid in the late 70s Jim Pruett, along with partner Mark Stevens, did the morning show on KILT 610 AM under the aliases "Hudson and Harrigan." Actually, I understand that KILT FM continues to have a couple of morning guys under the same nom-de-radio. Anyway, Stevens and Pruett were, to me, extraordinarily funny. Their humor was goofy and juvenile, yes, but it was good stuff, and, along with Monty Python and Saturday Night Live, a major part of my early education in comedy.

Then one day in 1980 or '81, riding the Urban Cowboy bandwagon, KILT went country, and I stopped paying attention--if I remember correctly, I think my two morning men left the station along with the pop songs they spun between sketches and jokes. Years later, in the early 90s, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they had been hired under their real names to do the morning show on Houston's late and lamented album oriented rock station KLOL. They had retooled themselves for the Howard Stern era, including lots of sexual references and whatnot, but the comedy itself was still the same, still pretty funny after all these years. Then KLOL went Tejano a couple of years ago, and I lost track of the beloved radio comedians from my childhood.

I'm now amazed to find out that half of the duo is now a right-wing fascist. If I had been living in H-Town, I probably would have known about this new talk show Pruett's doing, and I probably would have already been familiar with this seemingly new gun-slinging rhetoric of his. But no. Instead, I'm shocked. It's like finding out that Mr. Rogers molested little boys or something.

Well, it's undeniable that some gangbangers came to Houston after the hurricane, which makes sense given that most of the evacuees the Bayou City got came from the Superdome, which temporarily housed some the poorest people in New Orleans--crime and poverty have been known to be correlated for decades now. But much of that crime has been confined to within the evacuee community, and the overall crime rate in Houston is only slightly higher than the national average. What I'm getting at is that even though crime is worse in Houston lately, it's absolutely alarmist to proclaim a vigilante open season on it. And clearly, such alarmism is deeply rooted in white bourgeois fear: that is, it's racist.

Well, fuck him. Jim Pruett is an evil, opportunistic, racist, son of a bitch. The only consolation I've got here is that gun owners are much more likely to die by gun violence than people who shun firearms. Maybe we'll get lucky.

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Meltdown: Ice Cracks at North Pole

From Live Science courtesy of AlterNet:

Satellite images of the Arctic show large openings in the perennial ice cover, yet another consequence of greenhouse warming, scientists announced this week.

The Arctic's thick perennial sea ice typically survives the warmth of the summer and lasts through the year. But satellite images taken in late August show that up to 10 percent of the perennial sea ice has been fractured by summer storms. The surprising change involves an area larger than the size of the British Isles.

The striking openings in the pack ice were found north of Svalbard, Norway and extend to the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole. This condition is likely due to the thinning and extra mobility in the European section of the central Arctic ice pack seen in recent years.

Click here for the rest.

Well, I guess the upside to this is that Russia finally gets to have its warm water port. Other than that, it's all downside, even for Russia: they'll get their port, yes, but they'll also get the ruined economy that necessarily comes with the massive worldwide floods that will result from all this melting ice, thereby obviating the need for increased sea trade. And let's not forget the release of all that CO2 and methane gas, which has been trapped for centuries in that pack ice, that will speed up greatly the rate of global warming.

Christ, I'm sick of explaining all this. How the fuck can anybody not take this shit seriously?

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Poll Finds Most Americans Displeased With Congress

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Across the board, the poll found marked disenchantment with Congress, highlighting the opportunity that Democrats see to make the argument for a change in leadership and to make the election a national referendum on the performance of the Republican-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush’s tenure. In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents — including 65 percent of Republicans — said that most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give new people a chance. That is the highest number of voters who said it was “time for new people” since the fall of 1994.

But

Overall discontent with Congress or Washington does not necessarily signify how someone will vote when they see the familiar name of their member of Congress on the ballot. Thus, while 61 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job, just 29 percent said they disapproved of the way their own “representative is handling his or her job.”

For all the clear dissatisfaction with the 109th Congress, 39 percent of respondents said their own representative deserved re-election, compared with 48 percent who said it was time for someone new. What is more, it seems highly unlikely Democrats would experience a sweep similar to the one Republicans experienced in 1994. Most political analysts judge only about 40 House seats to be in play at the moment, compared with more than 100 seats at this point 12 years ago, in large part because redistricting has created more safe seats for both parties.

Click here for the rest.

Obviously, I'm hoping for a Democratic sweep come November, if only so we can see all those investigations and subpoenas that the Republicans keep mentioning in an attempt to scare their base into showing up on election day. However, as with my lukewarm support of John Kerry in '04, my hoping is only half-hearted. The Democrats are still the Democrats, almost as beholden to corporate interests as the GOP--remember how they had both houses and the Presidency back in '93 and still couldn't get any healthcare reform passed? If the Dems take over next January, there's a good chance that no one will actually see any difference.

Furthermore, as much as I'm hoping for victory, the last two paragraphs of the excerpt pretty much tell the whole story. The game is waaaay more rigged than it was back in '94, what with all these gerrymandered "safe seats," which the Democrats, as individuals, all support because, even though they're not in the majority, they still get to keep their own position and perks. Really, what we need is to put Article I of the Constitution into a paper shredder because, clearly, the legislative process that we have now no longer works--personally, I think a European parliamentary system would suit our current socio-political situation much better. But given the reverence Americans have for the Constitution, that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

Expect more of the same for decades to come.

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FBI RADICALLY INCREASES MANPOWER
TO COMBAT CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION

From the New York Daily News courtesy of AlterNet:

There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers, the Daily News has learned.

For decades, only one squad in Washington handled corruption cases because the crimes were seen as local offenses handled by FBI field offices in lawmakers' home districts.

But in recent years, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and other abuses of power and privilege have prompted the FBI to assign 37 agents full-time to three new squads in an office near Capitol Hill.

Click here for the rest.

I do agree with the Congressional leaders who warned last spring of a usurpation of the balance of powers by the administrative branch via misuse of criminal investigation, especially under the current administration. However, I've long understood, myself, that Congress, by and large, is literally bought and sold by special interests, and by "special" I generally mean "corporate." In fact, it's been so bad for so long that I've essentially decided that we no longer live in a democracy. These Bozos in Congress need to be investigated. Ending the cycle of influence-peddling has got to start somewhere, and I'm not holding my breath waiting for my own representative to begin the crusade. It might as well begin with the FBI.

But what I'd like to know is why Bush is allowing this to happen. I'm assuming he could quash the whole thing if he wanted, in the same way that he's gotten the results he's wanted from other agencies under his control. What's his game? Or is the whole corruption issue so out of control that he feels he has no choice?

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The Power of Stereotypes

From ABC's 20/20 courtesy of Throw away your TV:

One study showed that women who watched commercials with stereotypical ditzy females before taking a math test scored 38 percent lower than women who didn't see the ads. The Kaplan Education and Test Prep company helped us run similar tests.

And sure enough: Even in our unscientific test, the women who viewed the sexist commercials did worse.

This stereotype effect has been found in study after study, said New York University psychology professor Joshua Aronson

"We found that just reminding the women that they were college students at a selective college overcame the gender gap. However, when we reminded them that they were women, the gap widens," Aronson said.

Aronson said that when he reminds Asians that Asians do well in math, their scores go up.

Then what does the stereotype that blacks test poorly do to a black person about to take a test?

"The situation of taking an IQ test for a black kid is so loaded that it's not a direct measure of their intelligence," Aronson said.

He found he could change blacks' scores simply by what he told them before the test.

Click here for the rest.

I'm not at all a big fan of 20/20, especially one of this article's writers, John Stossel, who isn't much more than an apologist for the ravages of free market fundamentalism, but every now and then they get it right, and this is one of those instances. I remember years ago when I was a teenager how I adamantly took the view that movies, music, and television don't affect people's behavior--I had to take such a position because I was worried about being told what kind of art I could and couldn't experience; such is the life of a suburban teen. Years later, especially after taking RTF classes at the University of Texas, I had to change my opinion to some extent.

Even though the mythical effect of satanic rock music on kids is by and large untrue (that is, kid listens to Marilyn Manson and then, as a result, kid decides to shoot up his school), although there are isolated instances of somebody who was already a psycho taking inspiration from what he sees or hears, the real problem with the influence of entertainment media is the overall context it creates in society. When our culture is overflowing with images of, say, stupid women, such a message seeps in, under people's radar screens as it were, and before you know it, people tend to believe in such fantasies, all the while intellectually rejecting them. In other words, people both believe and reject media stereotypes at the same time, and get caught up in shifting back and forth between the two points of view. The inevitable result is our fucked up country, which strongly believes in equality, but also believes in inequality.

The long and short of all this is that the problem with stereotyping and other negative media influences isn't as simple as the binary choice between "has an effect" and "doesn't have an effect." There is an effect, but it's indirect, and can be rejected if we're on our guard. What makes it all so hellish is that it's pretty damned difficult to always be on guard, especially in a media saturated culture such as ours.

Short of somehow destroying Hollywood, I have absolutely no solution for this mess.

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GOP talk of vibrant economy rings hollow

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Times are "very good for the rich and very, very bad for the poor" who "can't afford to live," laments Larry Mitchell, 43, a now-and-then merchant peddling his wares recently in a submarine sandwich shop parking lot. He says the middle class is "having a hard time."

In the Ohio River Valley, where people decry high gas prices, stagnant wages, lost jobs and factory closures, many don't buy the claim that the economy is humming along.

Seven weeks before the midterm elections, the gulf between Bush's perceptions and that of voters form the political backdrop across the country as well as in a region with several competitive House races. This area typically gets left out of national boom times and usually feels the pinch more than others during slowdowns.

Here and elsewhere differing views on the economy could hurt the GOP's efforts to retain control of the House and Senate this fall, and give voters reason to put Democrats in charge instead.

Click here for the rest.

Most of the individuals feeling the economic squeeze in this article are Republicans, so I see this as pretty good news. That is, right-wing conventional wisdom, which has been so utterly dominant for years now, is starting to fall apart. Since the so-called Reagan Revolution, it seems that a majority of American voters and politicians have bought, hook, line, and sinker, the bogus notion of laissez-faire: the economy works best and provides for the most people, when the government stays the hell out. In practical terms this has meant massive tax breaks for big business and the wealthy, heavy deregulation, and the delegitimizing of organized labor and collective bargaining; ideally, this would free up business to make some serious bucks, which would then benefit rank-and-file citizens in terms of better wages and more job opportunities. The only problem is that it hasn't actually worked that way. Businesses and the wealthy have, indeed, benefitted from laissez-faire policies, but, through outsourcing, downsizing and other techniques, they've perfected the art of keeping it all for themselves. The money simply hasn't trickled down, and people are hurting. That's how we're able to have a "good" economy coupled with rising poverty. It's taken years for people who bought the bullshit to open their eyes to see the ample evidence before them, but it looks like that's exactly what's happening right now.

And that's a damned good thing. Bye-bye bullshit right-wing "philosophy."

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Health officials warned spinach growers in 2005

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Federal health officials told California farmers to improve produce safety in a pointed warning letter last November, nearly a year before the multistate E. coli outbreak linked to spinach.

In fact, the current food-poisoning episode is the 20th since 1995 linked to spinach or lettuce, the Food and Drug Administration says.

And

There have been 19 other food-poisoning outbreaks since 1995 linked to lettuce and spinach, according to the FDA. At least eight were traced to produce grown in the Salinas Valley. The outbreaks involved more than 400 cases of sickness and two deaths.

In 2004 and again in 2005, the FDA's top food safety official warned California farmers they needed to do more to increase the safety of the fresh leafy greens they grow.

"In light of continuing outbreaks, it is clear that more needs to be done," the FDA's Robert Brackett wrote in a Nov. 4, 2005, letter.

Click here for the rest.

What I want to know is why these were warnings instead of heavy fines or even jail sentences. I suppose that's what comes from a regulatory body staffed by industry insiders and GOP cronies who see themselves more as cheerleaders than watchdogs. The bottom line here is that people have gotten very sick, and in some cases have died, because of overly greedy business practices. That is, none of this had to happen.

Eric Schlosser in his book Fast Food Nation describes how the first major E. coli outbreak back in early 90s happened: in a move to cut costs and increase profits, the meatpacking industry cast off its experienced unionized labor and replaced it with inexperienced non-union workers who weren't as capable with stomach and intestine removal, which resulted in a massive increase in fecal spillage, which was magnified a thousandfold when the meat was ground up; suddenly people were dying all over the place--the same practices are still in effect today; what ended the outbreak is that now we have to make sure we cook our shitburgers well enough to kill the E. coli. That's right, whenever we eat hamburgers, there's a good chance we're eating cow shit, too.

Anyway, the point is that we regulate businesses and consumer products for a damned good reason, the health and safety of our citizens. But twenty five years of "get the government off the people's backs" rhetoric has made our regulatory agencies become little more than fronts for the industries they are supposed to regulate. If regulation makes the cost of spinach or any other product rise, then so be it; that's the price we have to pay, and if it makes producing such products completely unprofitable, then so be it. The general welfare easily trumps profit.

If you're a moral person, that is.

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CARL SAGAN: "Evolution is a fact,
not a theory. It really happened."

When I was a kid in the 70s, creationism didn't really exist, at least, not as it does today. That is, the only people who took the creation story in Genesis as literal truth were total kooks, flat-earthers, backward-ass dumb fucks. By the 80s when I first started hearing at church about a movement of people who believed that dinosaur bones were placed by God to test our faith, and that the Earth is really only some five thousand years old, I was astonished, but didn't really consider them to be a threat. I mean, how could such lunacy ever amount to anything?

Flash forward to today. Polls and studies continually suggest that a sizable percentage of our population, maybe even a majority, tend toward, if not fully believing in, creationism. Fundamentalist activists constantly push teaching their beloved fairy tales in public schools, either in conjunction with evolution, or replacing it entirely. "Teach the controversy," they say, "it's only fair."

Well, that sounds reasonable, I suppose, except for the fact that there is no controversy. Evolution is a fact, not a theory. It really happened. There are now mountains of evidence in favor of evolution that didn't even exist in the 70s, when it was more widely accepted. And when one really starts sifting through that evidence, developing a decent lay understanding of what it's all about, it's pretty difficult to refute. My personal belief about why creationsim has become so widespread is that most people don't really pay much attention in biology class, and besides, teachers generally aren't really good cheerleaders for science, at least, not in the same way that preachers are for creation fairy tales: consequently, creation supporters are utterly ill-informed about evolution. When I was a high school theater teacher, I heard more than once the retarded statement "I didn't come from a monkey."

Of course, as far as evolution goes, the reality is that humans and monkeys descended from a common ancestor millions of years ago--nobody came "from a monkey." Anyway, with that in mind, I offer this excellent and elegant explanation of evolution plucked from Carl Sagan's wonderful 80s PBS science series Cosmos. I'd like to hear a real response from a creationist after seeing it--I mean something besides the usual and unpersuasive "God said it's true" kind of argument.

Anyway, go check it out; it's cool.


Carl Sagan

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THE TRUTH ABOUT LIBERAL AMERICA-HATRED

From CounterPunch:

The incomparable Ms. Roy says: "What does the term 'anti-American' mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz or that you're opposed to freedom of speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?" (I'm a tree hugger remember? I don't argue with sequoias.)

When pressed, I sometimes reply: "I don't hate America. In fact, think it's one of the best countries anyone ever stole." But, after the laughter dies down, I have a confession to make: If by "America" they mean the elected/appointed officials and the corporations that own them, well, I guess I do hate that America-with justification.

Among many reasons, I hate America for the near-extermination and subsequent oppression of its indigenous population. I hate it for its role in the African slave trade and for dropping atomic bombs on civilians. I hate its control of institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. I hate it for propping up brutal dictators like Suharto, Pinochet, Duvalier, Hussein, Marcos, and the Shah of Iran. I hate America for its unconditional support for Israel. I hate its bogus two-party system, its one-size-fits-all culture, and its income gap. I could go on for pages but I'll sum up with this: I hate America for being a hypocritical white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Click here for the rest, which includes a fantastic Paul Robeson quote.

This line of thinking has been so obvious to me for so long that I was extraordinarily disturbed for the couple of years after 9/11 that criticism of US foreign policy became "anti-American." Unlike so many of my contemporaries, as far as I can tell, I took my civics lessons in public school seriously. That is, when I first learned about the self-destructive detour of vile McCarthyism in the late 40s and early 50s, I became fascinated and obsessed with the concept of freedom of speech and its absolute necessity for our democracy--it was probably because I was a middle child and always felt like I wasn't getting a fair shake, but, ultimately, that doesn't really matter; long ago, I understood that "anti-American" was code for "shut the hell up." It continues to bother me that people who sat through the same classes I did never took the lessons to heart.

Things have gotten much better in terms of open criticism recently, but the "you hate America" tactic continues to be a fixture in US public discourse. I suppose that's because, even after countless Bush failures, "you hate America" maintains some level of effectiveness. When some moronic right-winger throws out such an accusation, it automatically puts the person on the receiving end on the defensive: almost reflexively the first response is something along the lines of "No, I don't hate America." Suddenly, the accused accepts the burden of illustrating that he does not, in fact, hate America. Because it's virtually impossible to prove what is or isn't inside one's own heart, the right wing automatically wins. It's brilliant in its brutal simplicity.

As Noam Chomsky has observed, if one goes to Italy and starts speaking about how liberals are anti-Italian, the response is bound to be laughter. I mean, it is pretty absurd when you get right down to it, and that's how liberals in the US should respond, as well. Just don't play the game, especially because it's rigged: the best response to charges of being "anti-American" is scorn and ridicule, maybe even a turn-around, explaining how such talk only exists to stifle the market place of ideas, without which our democracy is meaningless.

Of course, as the Republican Party continues to fall apart, and as the Bush administration continues to fuck up, such a point may end up being entirely moot rather soon.

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UBER-TEXAN MOLLY IVINS ON THE DEATH
OF HER CLOSE FRIEND ANN RICHARDS

From AlterNet:

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there meetin' and greetin' at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our butts against a table at the back wall of the bar. Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller, moi, Charles Miles, the head of Bullock's personnel department, and Ms. Ann Richards. Bullock, 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no good sumbitch in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him, "Bob, my boy, how are you?"

Bullock said, "Judge, I'd like you to meet my friends: This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer."

The judge peered up at me and said, "How yew, little lady?"

Bullock, "And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department." Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie's palm with one finger, while turning eagerly to the pretty, blonde, blue-eyed Ann Richards. "And who is this lovely lady?"

Ann beamed and replied, "I am Mrs. Miles."

Click here for the rest.

I posted a few days ago my own thoughts about Ann Richards, but I tend to think of her relationship with Molly Ivins as being very much like the one Duke Ellington had with Billy Strayhorn. That is, they were so close in terms of political artistry, that in many respects they might have been a single composite person. Consequently, in my humble opinion, Ivins has the final word as far as eulogies about Richards go within the public discourse. And this essay does not disappoint; it's quite the celebration, complete with the sharp-as-razors political wit that made them a formidable duo when Richards was governor.

Indeed, after reading this piece, it makes me certain that I need to start using words like "sumbitch" and "whore" much more often when I write and talk about politics. I also need to grow some balls as big as theirs.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
TEXAS BULLIES HONOR STUDENTS,
LSU GETS DICKED AT AUBURN

First, my beloved Longhorns. From ESPN:

No. 8 Texas holds Rice to minus
12 yards rushing in blowout win

If No. 8 Texas wouldn't have committed all those pesky penalties Saturday's 52-7 win over Rice would have been near-perfect.

And

Though Texas had its way with the Owls on both sides of the ball, coach Mack Brown was concerned with the number of penalties his team had. The Longhorns committed a school-record 19 penalties for 148 yards. On one drive late in the first Texas had three straight penalties -- two false starts and one for holding -- that forced the team to settle for a field goal.

"We made a lot of mistakes," McCoy said. "Their defensive line was yelling things. They did a great job of yelling and moving around and throwing us off."

Offensive coordinator Greg Davis was frustrated.

"It was way too many penalties for our standards," Davis said. "It's no question about it, we've got to get it cleaned up."

Click here for the rest, which includes a nifty video recap.

Well, even though Rice is playing as badly these days as they did when I was a kid in the 70s, it's nice to see the 'Horns bounce back so convincingly. But those penalties are disturbing. Actually, they did pretty well as far as that's concerned in the Ohio State game, so I figure that they're just a bit jumpy after that loss. Still, they did set a school record for penalty yardage, so I hope this isn't a harbinger of bad shit. Sloppy play is what I had to deal with back in the 80s when I was an undergrad in Austin; lots of penalties are, in my humble opinion, only a stone's throw away from fumbles and interceptions, which can turn a great team into a mediocre one. On the other hand, OU lost to Oregon, and A&M only barely beat Army, so maybe I have nothing to fear. The way I see it, the Big 12 Championship is UT's to take.

Next, the one that really pissed me off. Again from ESPN:

No. 3 Auburn outlasts No. 6 LSU
in classic defensive showdown

Brock's game-saving tackle just a few yards from the goal line on the final play preserved No. 3 Auburn's 7-3 win over sixth-ranked LSU on Saturday. He also tipped away a fourth-down pass to end another late LSU threat as Auburn turned away the visiting Tigers again and again.

And

With LSU facing fourth-and-8 from Auburn's 31 and 2:43 left, JaMarcus Russell fired the ball to Early Doucet near the goal line. A diving Brock deflected the pass, but Zach Gilbert was called for pass interference that would have kept the drive alive.

The officials overturned the call, although replays showed the contact came before the ball was tipped by Brock.

Click here for the rest.

I think if that bogus penalty withdrawal hadn't happened, LSU would have punched the ball in on the next play or the next, and their defense would have easily kept Auburn from scoring in the short time left, thereby winning the game. Instead, LSU got fucking dicked. Watching the replay was just fucking hell. One defender fucking tackled Doucet, while the other tipped the damned thing at least a second later: it was definitely pass interference. I mean, it was actually a great game to watch, nothing like a hardcore defensive battle, and losing fairly would have been a big drag. But this was just fucked-up, producing a totally different feeling from the one I got watching Texas lose last week.

I've discovered that I really have absolutely no understanding of what's a reviewable play in college ball and what's not. Fuckers.

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LYSISTRATA LATINA STYLE

From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

Sex strike hits Colombia gang members

They are calling it the "crossed legs" strike.

Fretting over crime and violence, girlfriends and wives of gang members in the Colombian city of Pereira have called a ban on sex to persuade their menfolk to give up the gun.

Click here for the rest.

Now that's feminism! It's also a case of life immitating art. Check out this bit from Wikipedia:

Lysistrata

Lysistrata . . . Aristophanes' anti-war comedy, written in 411 BC, has female characters, led by the eponymous Lysistrata, barricading the public funds building and withholding sex from their husbands to secure peace and end the Peloponnesian War. In doing so, Lysistrata engages the support of women from Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. All of them are at first aghast at the suggestion of withholding sex, but they finally agree and swear an oath to support each other. The woman from Sparta, Lampito, returns home to spread the word there.

And

The play also addresses the contribution that women could make to society and to policy making, but cannot because their views are ignored: All such questions are considered the purview of men only. See the exchange between Lysistrata and the Magistrate who comes to try to browbeat the women into giving up their plans.

Click here for more.

Amazing.

On the other hand, I wonder if this actually is a case of life immitating art: the population of Pereira is about a half million, not a tiny hole in the wall, but not a cosmopolitan metropolis, either. Surely, there must be educated women there who have read the classics, but without any information to the contrary, I like to think that they figured this out by themselves. After all, witholding of sex has got to be a major motivator, behaviorally speaking, especially in a macho Latin culture. Really, it's kind of an obvious tactic, once women are organized and looking for a way to flex their muscle.

You gotta hand it to those ancient Greeks: they understood human nature as well as anyone alive today, which is, of course, why we continue to study them. Now, how can we get American women organized enough to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? My god, that would be so fucking cool. No sex until the fighting stops.

Heh. Make love, not war. I fucking love it!



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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Sammy and Frankie



Paz



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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THE MYSTERY OF BLACK ROCK AND RON

So, my buddy Reuben emailed today an image to me with this explanation:

Hey Ron,

I found this on the internet and I thought you might like to use it on your blog or something. I don't know what it's for or what if refers to, but I figured you could use it for something. Hope you dig it.

Reuben

Here's the picture:



Of course, I do dig it, especially because, you know, my name is Ron. I'm also fond of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist ideas associated with the pan-African colors. Not to mention the fact that I'm a big fan of "black rock," or rock music performed by black people, such as Jimi Hendrix or Sly and the Family Stone. And it's just kind of neat, too.

So, I figured that I would go ahead and make some sort of blog post using the image. My take was just that I would post the pic, ask if anybody knew anything about it, and add a few links to Youtube videos of African-American rock stars. But once I got on Youtube and did a search using the terms "black rock," I had to change course a bit.

It appears that Black Rock & Ron was an obscure hip-hop group in the late 80s and early 90s. And, boy, when I say "obscure," I mean it.

From allmusic:

Rock and Ron Black are an American rap duo whose 1989 album Stop the World made the U.K. charts.

Click here for the rest.

Except for the fact that there isn't any "the rest." That's all the information I was able to find online about Black Rock & Ron. Which is pretty weird, because, you know, from what I'm able to tell from their two videos on Youtube, they were pretty damned good, shunning the MC Hammer style of glossy pop rap that was so dominant at the time and embracing a more rough-edged sound, with funkier samples, before many of their contemporaries did once ganster rap reigned triumphant. Check 'em out.

Here is the video for their song "You Can't Do Me None."

Here is the video for their song "Getting Large."

So, one mystery is solved: Black Rock & Ron were a hip-hop duo. But another mystery takes its place: if they were so good, and I think they were, what the hell happened to them? And why is there so little information about them online?

Can you solve the mystery of Black Rock & Ron?



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THE REAL TRAGEDY OF 9/11

From the Houston Chronicle, an essay by my favorite University of Texas radical journalism professor:

Sept. 11 offered a dramatic moment in which the most powerful country on the planet could have led the world on a new course. U.S. leaders had a choice to either (1) manipulate people's legitimate fears and understandable desire for vengeance to justify wars of control and domination, or (2) help create a world in desperate need of more justice, not more war.

To choose the latter would have taken visionary leadership; a role for which, sadly, virtually no one in the Republican or Democratic parties appeared qualified, then or now. But there were such voices — not leaders but ordinary people, speaking out clearly and early. For example, those who lost family but resisted the call for war formed "September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows" and campaigned for alternatives to war.

Antiwar activists immediately began developing the argument that war would exacerbate the terrorist threat and that a two-track solution — radically changing the unjust U.S. policies in the Middle East that provide fertile ground for terrorists to recruit, while pursuing vigorous law-enforcement efforts to track and capture terrorists — would be not only moral and legal, but also effective. War, we predicted, would not solve our problems.

Five years later, one thing is clear: The antiwar voices were right. We saw what was coming, not because we were so smart but because it was so obvious.

Click here for the rest.

The real tragedy of 9/11 is that the US blew its best chance to live up to its stated ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. What's been missing for years from the mainstream narrative about the "war on terrorism" is that the whole thing takes place within the context of American econmic interests abroad. By and large, US foreign policy is about business, which is far more than simply trade deals and the WTO: when a relatively weak nation refuses to play the game by our rules, we send in covert operatives to cause instability in hopes of regime change; when the secret agents fail, we send in the military.

You can read up on the whole racket in this interview from Democracy Now, but suffice it to say that we're targeted by terrorists not because of the comic book motivation that "they hate our freedom;" rather, they attack us because our government treats their fellow Muslims as resources to be exploited rather than human beings. The only way out of this is to start treating the people of the world with respect, to construct our foreign policy around the concept of help rather than profit. Alas, the entire US power structure refuses to do things differently. What do they care if average Americans are hurt or killed by terrorists? We already know that they couldn't care less about the loss of foreign lives--just read up a bit on Chile in the 70s to understand exactly what I mean. It's just the cost of doing business; they're getting rich otherwise.

So, while Jensen is absolutely right to observe the real tragedy of 9/11, he completely glosses over the fact that it would take a near revolution here in the US to actually realize our potential to be a guiding light for justice among nations. The US isn't really interested in justice: there's no profit in it.

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FAREWELL ANN RICHARDS

From the Houston Chronicle:

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards dies at 73

Richards was the quintessential Texas woman, with a sassy homespun charm, sharp wit and tough pioneer spirit. With bright silver hair, a weathered face and an affinity for cobalt blue suits and pearls, Richards was instantly recognizable to national television audiences.

As a Democratic politician, Richards' 1990 race for governor against Republican cowboy oilman Clayton Williams became a battle of the sexes. Her victory symbolically broke down gender barriers for a generation of Texas women who were seeking professional careers.

Richards labeled her administration the "New Texas," appointing more Hispanics, blacks and women to state boards and commissions than any previous governor. She pushed for increases in public education funding and promoted business expansion in the state.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I usually write these memorial posts to show respect for some kind of progressive or artistic accomplishment, for an individual's life's work. Rarely, am I truly saddened when I write about these deaths--after all, I don't really know any of these people personally. Tonight, however, I'm pretty sad. Ann Richards was the first Democrat, the first liberal, for whom I ever voted. And even though I've since moved much farther to the left than Governor Richards ever was, supporting her, instead of the conservatives I'd always supported, was a very important step in my political growth. Back in 1990, when she became governor, it had only been two years since I'd voted for our current President's daddy, and even though I would go on to support the first Iraq invasion in 1991, I did so as a Democrat, a moderate Democrat to be sure, but I was certainly no longer a Republican--she made it all much easier than it might have been.

And Ann Richards really made being a Democrat into great fun. Her razor wit, which just cut the right wing back then to ribbons, was extraordinarily appealing to me in particular. The Republicans simply had nothing like her--Rush Limbaugh was, and still is, a big pile of stupid shit in comparison. Her constant barrage of rapid-fire barbs is how Richards, and her speechwriter Molly Ivins, showed me how to be a Texas liberal: because there are so many thick-headed conservatives in the Lone Star State, a Texas liberal has to shoot from the hip, fast, to kill, and smile while doing it. I hope my writing here honors her memory.

Man, I'm going to miss her presence and guidance.

Farewell, Ann Richards.

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School Bible courses sectarian, study finds

From the Houston Chronicle:

Among the findings:

•The vast majority of Texas Bible courses, despite their titles, do not teach about the Bible in a historical or literary context, as required under state law. Instead, the electives tend to be explicitly devotional in nature and reflect an almost exclusively Christian (usually Protestant) perspective.

•The Bible is often presented as being divinely inspired and biblical stories treated as literal history.

•Most Bible courses in Texas are taught by teachers who have no academic training in biblical, religious or theological studies and, it appears, little familiarity with separation of church-state issues. Some districts bring in local clergy to teach their Bible courses and fund them with private money.

The report cited three exceptions: San Antonio's North East Independent School District and the Leander and Whiteface independent school districts. It said all presented material in a more neutral manner.

Click here for the rest.

Given that Western Civilization, our civilization, is based on a weird combination of Greco-Roman philosophy and Christianity, it stands to reason that if one doesn't understand the Bible, one doesn't understand what it means to be a Westerner. I'm pretty much of the opinion that all Americans should study the Bible. But not like this. This kind of Bible study isn't about the dynamic interplay between Biblical ideas and society at large, isn't about how Christian philosophers elegantly found ways to combine the wisdom of the ancients with their own religious beliefs, isn't about how countless secular ideas today have a basis in Christian thought. No, this is religious indoctrination, plain and simple, paid for by taxpayer dollars, with a curriculum mandated by government entities. Totally unconstitutional. Totally unAmerican.

Totally wrong.

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Cheney's criticism of war critics is wearing a bit thin

The Washington Post's liberal guy, E. J. Dionne, via the Houston Chronicle:

Cheney seemed terribly impatient with democracy Sunday on Meet the Press when he suggested that those who oppose President Bush's Iraq policies are helping — excuse me, validating — the terrorists.

Our allies in the war on terror, Cheney said, "want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission."

Then the punch: "And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we've had in the United States. Suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validate the strategy of the terrorists."

Meaning what, exactly? If Cheney doesn't like "the kind of debate that we've had in the United States," is there any other "kind," short of a lockstep endorsement of all of Bush's choices, he'd endorse?

Click here for the rest.

If only Dionne had been writing like this back in 2002 when it really mattered.

I, for one, have never fully understood the whole criticism-equals-endangering-troops line of thought. I mean, I understand the assertion: our enemies hear about domestic opposition, which somehow makes them feel like they're winning, which emboldens them to fight all the more aggressively. Putting aside free speech issues for a moment, I think it's fair to ask if that's what actually happens. That is, how does Cheney know that's the case? I'm pretty certain that there have been no studies on this issue done among the Iraqi insurgency, so, to the best of my knowledge, Cheney's assertion about war criticism is simply an interesting, but totally unproven, idea. My own thought is that the insurgency simply wants the US the hell out of Iraq, and they're going to fight until they're dead or we leave, which is exactly the kind of enemy the US was facing in Vietnam over three decades ago. Indeed, the Vietnamese had been fighting against imperial occupiers for decades before we even showed up; they didn't care who we are or what we wanted--they just wanted us out. So it seems entirely fitting that Cheney's and other right-wingers' point of view is so utterly Nixonian. Really, as with Nixon, attacking war critics is far more about domestic power than about winning in the colonies.

And, of course, in a democracy, if that's still what we are, public debate about important national issues like war is vital. Without it, it's not democracy. But then, I'm sure my definition of democracy differs greatly from that of the Vice President.

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EPA proposes easing refinery pollution rules

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Bush administration proposed easing environmental rules today to allow oil refineries and other industries to change how they calculate whether they need pollution control equipment.

The oil refinery industry says the eased regulation would open the way for production of more oil and other products. But environmental groups say the proposed rules are gimmicks and loopholes allowing industry to emit more pollution, evade pollution controls and save money.

"This is a big gift to the refinery industry," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental watchdog group. "They are saying let's close our eyes and pretend pollution is not happening."

Click here for the rest.

This is actually from last week; I almost missed it, but I'm glad I didn't because this soooo obviously more of the same old dangerous cow shit coming out of Bush's ass. The three industries affected, oil, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals, are already doing quite well. The oil industry in particular, which continues to post record profits quarter after quarter, clearly needs no help--the real problem with gas prices isn't environmental rules; rather, it's that the industry has purposely reduced refining capacity over the years in order to create artificial shortages which raise prices. Meanwhile, over the last five years or so, Bush, with budget cuts and non-enforcement edicts, has degraded the EPA's ability to monitor emissions, which must now rely on industry self-reporting, which means that pollution is actually much worse than is reported. We need more stringency when dealing with pollution, not less. Like the environmentalist guy above says, this is nothing but another giveaway to GOP friends, but in this case, however, it's not simply the old reverse Robin Hood opertation that rips off average Americans like you and me: this time it's fucking dangerous, toxifying the air we breathe, causing cancers and weird asthmas, and accelerating even more our mad dash toward global warming induced apocalypse.

I know I'm not the only one out there who's sick of this shit.

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THE "WAR" ON TERROR

From AlterNet, another essay from Berkeley linguist George Lakoff:

How Bush's War on Terror Became Real

The war metaphor is still intimidating progressives. To come out against "staying the course" is to be called unpatriotic, weak, and defeatist. To say, "no, we're just as strong, but we're smarter" is to keep and reinforce the war metaphor, which the conservatives have a patent on.

It is time for progressives to jettison the war metaphor itself. It is time to tell some truths that progressives have been holding back on. What has worked in stopping terrorism is just what has worked in stopping international crime -- like the recent police work in England. What has failed is the war approach, which just recruits more terrorists. In Iraq, the war was over when we defeated Saddam's army. Then the occupation began. Our troops are dying because they are not trained be occupiers in hostile territory on the cusp of a civil war.

Bush is an occupation president, not a war president, and his war powers should be immediately rescinded. Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution to do just that (H.R. 5875) should be taken seriously and made the subject of national debate.

I am suggesting a conscious discussion of the war metaphor as a metaphor. The very discussion would require the nation to think of it as a metaphor, and allow the nation to take seriously the truth of our presence in Iraq as an occupation that must be ended. You don't win or lose an occupation; you just exit as gracefully as possible.

Click here for the rest.

Fighting a war against terrorism is like fighting a war against karate or fisticuffs. That is, terrorism is a tactic, a crime, not an opposing army or the nation state that sponsors it. We've never really been in a "war" against terrorism. I mean, okay, as Lakoff observes, the Iraq invasion was war, but that was against Iraq, not terrorism, despite what Bush has repeatedly asserted. The whole "war on terror" has been a con job from the get-go.

I would add to Lakoff's point about treating terrorism as a crime, the notion that we must also seek to dry up Islamic extremism's well of support: if we don't change the way we do business with the rest of the world, treating human beings as resources to be harshly exploited, we'll always have to deal with terrorism. That's the only way. Beyond that, however, Lakoff is, as usual, right on. Any discussion of the "war on terrorism" must have the concept of metaphor inserted. This'll definitely be helpful even at kitchen table conversations, but if somehow politicians and pundits start talking this way, it stands to abolish forever the spell the right wing has cast over America.

Lakoff makes it sound so easy.

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MORE ON THE UPCOMING GOP MUD SLING

Updating yesterday's post. From Talking Points Memo courtesy of Eschaton:

And who have they chosen to head up the effort?

According to the Post, that man is none other Terry Nelson.

And who is Terry Nelson?

Nelson has the unique distinction of being tied to two of the biggest cases of Republican campaign corruption in the Bush era. Nelson was implicated in the infamous New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal and he was an unindicted coconspirator in the political money-laundering case which ended Tom DeLay's career.

Click here for the rest.

So the GOP, having absolutely no positive record on which to run in the upcoming Congressional elections, has launched a negative "get the dirt on the Dems" campaign, which seeks to drown out common knowledge of near total loyalty to Bush by Republicans with a downpour rumor, innuendo, and lies. In other words, old-school Nixon style dirty tricks. I'm sure that Karl Rove, a master at this sort of thing, is providing spiritual guidance for the effort, but this guy Nelson, whose corporate-friendly bio says nothing about his fangs, sounds like nearly as big of a bastard. The fact that he was in on this phone-jamming thing says it all: the Republicans aren't just going to play dirty; they're going to cheat, just as they did in the 2000 Presidential election, just as they did in the '04 election.

I think I'm starting to figure out how to read right-wing code. "Taking the high road" means "mud-slinging," and "mud-slinging" means "election theft." These fuckers never tell the truth.

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THE BEST, QUICKEST ARTISTIC REACTION TO 9/11

From September 12, 2001:



Click here to see a bigger version.

Of course, Tom Tomorrow is a cartoonist, and cartoons are mostly funny, even when dealing with very serious subjects, as Tomorrow usually does. But not on 9/11. Like pretty much every other American, he was utterly devastated. Probably more so because he was living in New York at the time.

When I first saw the strip above, I marvelled at how perfect it was, how out of context it was for him, how with just a few words and a single oversaturated image he managed to capture and express my own feelings. Well, that's not entirely true. Words didn't completely fail me that day, although they mostly did: my first and pretty much only thought was something along the lines of "I fear the reaction of the American people far more than I fear any terrorist." And, of course, I was right to be afraid--a dark shadow of repression and hatred fell across our nation in the wake of 9/11, and many Americans wholeheartedly embraced it. Fortunately, most of my fellow countrymen eventually came to their senses.

But not everybody. My guess is that about 30% of the population continues to understand the "War on Terror" in terms of President Bush's comic book archetypes. They're the trigger-happy nuts who still support the Iraq occupation as a good thing, who support torture and ethnic profiling, who have no problem with a dramatic loss of civil liberties, who support Bush no matter what he does. In other words, the Republican base.

How the hell are we going to move forward as a nation when nearly a third of our citizens simply don't live in the same reality that the other two thirds do?

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GET READY FOR MUD AND SLIME

From the Washington Post courtesy of the Huffington Post:

In a Pivotal Year, GOP Plans to Get Personal

Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

The hope is that a vigorous effort to "define" opponents, in the parlance of GOP operatives, can help Republicans shift the midterm debate away from Iraq and limit losses this fall. The first round of attacks includes an ad that labeled a Democratic candidate in Wisconsin "Dr. Millionaire" and noted that he has sued 80 patients.

"Opposition research is power," said Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), the NRCC chairman. "Opposition research is the key to defining untested opponents."

Click here for the rest.

This is definitely something to worry about. I mean, it's no surprise, but the fact that they've seemingly become so balls-to-the-walls committed to the idea is kind of scary because Republicans are so damned good at slime warfare. Memories of the 2004 campaign season are still fresh in my mind. Remember how the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" successfully converted John Kerry in the public discourse from war hero, a status that he had for decades, to near traitor? Or how two years before that the right wing smeared and beat war hero and Georgia Senator Max Cleland by running ads that morphed his face into bin Laden's? Those guys were golden, with perfect records, straight as an arrow, bona fide American heroes. With uber-slimer Karl Rove overseeing the whole shebang, I think we might be in for a repeat of recent election history. That is, I don't think the GOP will manage to avoid losing some seats on the Hill, but I think they've got a shot at keeping control of both houses.

I think that probably the best thing targeted Democrats can do is dismiss all slime as dirty tricks and evidence of desperation, while at the same time pounding hard on Iraq, and relating their opponents as much as they can to Bush. It's do-able if they have perseverance. And that's what scares me most: Democrats these days are losers by nature; "persevere" just isn't in their dictionary.

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Nude photo scandal costs officials their jobs

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The police chief, the mayor and a councilman in this small town resigned amid an uproar over nude photos of the chief's 300-pound, tattooed wife that she posted on a Web site.

Dozens of residents of the town of 1,500 had demanded Police Chief Tod Ozmun resign, and the district attorney recommended an obscenity investigation, but the City Council decided last week that the pictures were protected by the First Amendment.

On Friday, Ozmun, Mayor Dale Moore and Councilman Clifford Barnard said they were stepping down because they were fed up with the public attention and criticism of the chief. Another council member resigned earlier over the council's support of Ozmun.

And

"They have no morals as far as I'm concerned," said Shirley Anderson, who served as mayor in the 1990s and whose husband was mayor before that. "You should have respectable people in office. They need to go somewhere else where this is accepted."

Cristen Edgar, a 16-year-old high school student, said: "I don't think it's right for him to be the chief of police and for his wife to be doing what she's doing."

Click here for the rest.

You know, I'm tempted to simply dismiss this as the rantings of a bunch of stupid fucking Okies, but given that this kind of thing seems to be occurring more frequently these days, I wonder if I ought to be worrying about it. Of course, the bottom line here is that we live in the 21st century, the human body is beautiful, sex is natural and wonderful, you know, all that good modern stuff that essentially means these Puritans are big fucktards. But put all that into the context of the Conservative Movement, which puts their warped reading of the Bible over science and good sense, pushes a dangerous anti-condom agenda, impeached a President over his own personal business, and on and on, and it becomes increasingly clear that we may be in for trouble over the next few years.

I know what I'm going to do the next time somebody in my presence negatively criticizes sexuality or nudity: I'm going to call him a big dumb cunt-face.

Unless, you know, it's my parents. In that case, I'll just tell them I think they're wrong.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
LONGHORNS LOSE, TIGERS WIN

From ESPN:

With poise and precision, Smith
leads No. 1 Buckeyes past No. 2 Texas

In the first regular season matchup of No. 1 vs. No 2 in a decade, Smith riddled the Longhorns for 269 yards passing and two touchdowns, leading the Buckeyes to a 24-7 win Saturday night.

And

As for No. 2 Texas (1-1), which saw its 21-game winning streak snapped, the Longhorns will need some help if they hope to defend their 2005 championship at the end of the season.

Colt McCoy was no Vince Young in the rematch of last season's 25-22 Texas win in Columbus. The Longhorns' new starting QB threw for 154 yards with an interception and a touchdown.

Click here for the rest.

You know, sports are much more enjoyable if you don't care who wins. I mean, okay, it's also more enjoyable when you care who wins and your team is the winner, but you get my general drift. I know I said recently that I was purposely going to have low expectations this year, what with Vince Young now playing for the former Oilers over in Tennessee, but I guess I wasn't very successful, especially because the 'Horns actually looked pretty good in the first half, kicking ass with the option and moving it all over the field. In the end, however, it was the absent Young who made all the difference. That is, McCoy's pretty good and stayed focused in the face of what is, admittedly, a really great OSU team, but we really needed a true superhero in the quarterback position, and the young guy simply doesn't have the X gene that makes Young and other mutant heroes and villains so powerful.

Maybe this loss will make the season easier to deal with; maybe it'll truly lower my expectations. As long as we beat OU and A&M, I'll be happy.

Meanwhile, just about six blocks down the street from where I now sit...

Again, from ESPN:

Behind suffocating defensive display, LSU crushes 'Zona

Jonathan Zenon returned an interception for a touchdown for the second consecutive week, highlighting a smothering defensive performance by No. 8 LSU in a 45-3 victory over Arizona on Saturday night.

"I knew the formation the Arizona receivers were going to run ... and I broke on it," Zenon said of his 41-yard interception return. "Our coaches are giving us a great scheme defensively and we already know what is about to happen."

Arizona had only 54 total yards through the first three quarters. The rest of the Wildcats' yardage came after replacements had begun to take over and a boisterous crowd of 92,218 was half gone.

"Obviously, playing a team like LSU they can expose some weaknesses," Arizona coach Mike Stoops said, dejectedly resting his chin on his hand. "There's no weaknesses when you play LSU. ... We just weren't ready for this."

Although the Tigers (2-0) put up 45 points for a second-straight week, they could have scored more. They settled for a field goal on their opening drive after having a first-and-goal on the 3. Three other drives ended with turnovers in Arizona territory on two fumbles and an interception.

Click here for the rest.

I didn't even get to watch this one--I did kind of hear it, though; the whole damned neighborhood hears it every Saturday the Tigers play at home. Sounded like rip roaring fun, actually. Nothing like sitting on a massive lead to get the testosterone pumping. But then, I was watching Texas lose, which made my testosterone levels drop dramatically. You know, this football blogging was easier last year. I like the Tigers, and they are my current school's team and all, but it doesn't really bother me that much when they lose, which they did two or three times last season: Texas didn't lose at all last year, and blogging about it was always a grand experience.

Aw, hell.

Geaux Tigers!

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
AT THE HALF, OHIO STATE 14 TEXAS 7

I don't know why I do this to myself. This game's driving me nuts! I'll post again after the game. If I don't die of a heart attack first.

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HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY STAR TREK

From the Huffington Post:

Star Trek Haters, Take Your Snotty Attitudes And Stuff It

Yes, Star Trek is a vital part of our culture. But it is that standing that frustrates more than a few science-fiction fans as well as large contingents of general fiction adherents.

Many of them are quick to embrace Heinlein, Bradbury and even the fantasies of Tolkien as literature- while consigning the original "Star Trek" and even its several successor series as little more than cartoonish escapades.

While I cannot say the authors I've cited have a lack of merit, I find much of their work intolerably quirky or overly ponderous. Sometimes both.

Yes, the original "Star Trek" had its hokey moments, but its memorable high drama as well. Some involved the complexities of moralistic dilemmas. Successor series, such as "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine," were graced with plots that richly explored human tableus and taboos- the preservation of dying races and creatures, the inner struggle many of us face between our good and potentially evil sides, the balance between emotion and logic, the question of whether or not it is ever justifiable to expend some lives to save many more, the appropriateness of whether or not to interfere in another culture's civil war.

Hear today's headlines in the examples I've just cited?

Click here for the rest.

Anybody who knows me, or reads my blog, knows what a big Star Trek fan I am. Always have been. It's actually one of my earliest television watching experiences. Consequently, it's always been a big influence on me, even today, in numerous areas like science, philosophy, morality, ethics, the greatness and evil of humanity, the notion of exploration and research, comedy, tragedy, music, dramatic action, and, yes, even acting. Shatner's Kirk often tended toward melodrama, but he was usually effective, and he definitely had his moments, like in the episode City on the Edge of Forever. Kirk is the epic hero in my own aesthetic. And Leonard Nimoy has never been matched by any other actor trying to do a Vulcan: Spock's internal struggle between extreme logic and extreme passion, such as in the episode The Naked Time, is, in my humble but well educated opinion, one of the great performances of the 20th century. I also appreciate the camp value--me and my buddy Shane once giggled ourselves silly through a viewing of the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before: "... and if successful, ma-roon-him-there." But just because I get the joke doesn't mean I don't take Star Trek seriously. Like I said, it has profoundly influenced me, maybe more than any other single cultural artifact.

So, anyway, happy birthday Star Trek. We've had a good life together, and I have no doubt that we'll be together for many years to come.

Here's an amusing interview with Nimoy and Shatner courtesy of my buddy Matt.

Here's the Wikipedia article on the original series.

Here are the opening credits in German.

A couple of cool pics:





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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Frankie



Sammy



Paz



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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ABC alters 9/11 show under pressure

From the LA Times courtesy of the Huffington Post:

After much discussion, ABC executives and the producers toned down, but did not eliminate entirely, a scene that involved Clinton's national security advisor, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, declining to give the order to kill Bin Laden, according to a person involved with the film who declined to be identified because of the sensitivities involved.

"That sequence has been the focus of attention," the source said, adding: "These are very slight alterations."

In addition, the network decided that the credits would say the film is based "in part" on the 9/11 commission report, rather than simply "based on" the bestselling report, as the producers originally intended.

ABC, meanwhile, is tip-toeing away from the film's version of events. In a statement, the network said the miniseries "is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews."

The statement adds: "The events that lead to 9/11 originally sparked great debate, so it's not surprising that a movie surrounding those events has revived the debate. The attacks were a pivotal moment in our history that should never be forgotten and it's fitting that the discussion continues."

Click here for the rest.

Well, I bet these changes don't amount to too terribly much--after all, ABC has apparently been heavily marketing this thing to conservatives, and I'm sure they don't want to lose too much of their audience. However, this last minute editing is a good sign. They had already sent out review copies to numerous media outlets, and such a thing isn't usually done when there's still more work to do on a project. That is, the public pressure has made them back down to some extent. In other words, this incident shows once and for all that big media companies are just as vulnerable to extreme liberal flak as they are to the usual conservative version. Only now, however, are liberals willing to use their dormant strength.

Actually, this vulnerability to flak has been known for some years. Here's a bit I wrote a while back about Chomsky and Hermann's book Manufacturing Consent:

FLAK AND THE ENFORCERS refers to organized negative responses to news products. The way this works is such that any reporting that is perceived as unflattering to the views or aims of these "flak machines" is attacked so endlessly that the news business loses money. A worst-case scenario, in these terms, is a boycott of news advertisers--advertising is the entire reason for the news business's existence. Of course, both liberal and conservative groups create flak (but I would say that the most powerful "flak machines" are conservative; they've got the money), but the point is that the news business is highly vulnerable to this kind of pressure and they certainly never admit it to their consumers.

Click here for more.

You can just scratch out the word "news" and pencil in the word "TV network" and it works just the same--at this point news and entertainment are all the same, anyway. The lesson here is that the left now has tangible evidence that they have the ability to successfully pressure the corporate media into fairer coverage. If I had a few million bucks, I'm pretty sure of where I would direct my activist dollars...

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Bush Fears War Crimes Prosecution, Impeachment

From ZNet:

With great fanfare, George W. Bush announced to a group of carefully selected 9/11 families yesterday that he had finally decided to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 13 other alleged terrorists to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be tried in military commissions. After nearly 5 years of interrogating these men, why did Bush choose this moment to bring them to "justice"?

And

The President is undoubtedly familiar with the doctrine of command responsibility, where commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, can be held liable for war crimes their inferiors commit if the commander knew or should have known they might be committed and did nothing to stop or prevent them.

Bush defensively denied that the United States engages in torture and foreswore authorizing it. But it has been well-documented that policies set at the highest levels of our government have resulted in the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of U.S. prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Click here for the rest.

Oh yeah. The President is definitely a war criminal, and that notion ought to be uncontroversial to pretty much anybody who's actually read even a smattering about what a war crime is.

For instance, there's this bit from the Wikipedia article on war crimes:

Under the Nuremberg Principles, the supreme international crime is that of commencing a war of aggression, because it is the crime from which all war crimes follow. The definition of such a crime is planning, preparing, initiating, or waging a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances. Also, participating in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any such act constitutes such a crime.

Click here for more.

I suppose it all depends on whether you think the Bush administration simply made the grandest fuck-up of all time in their belief that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, or if the whole WMD thing was a big lie. Personally, I think it was a lie, and there appears to be, at this point, a mountain of evidence that strongly suggests that's the case. But even if you set that aside, it is undeniable that Bush invaded Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council, which is definitely a violation of treaty obligations--come to think of it, Clinton did the same thing with Yugoslavia, Bush I with Panama, Reagan with Grenada, and JFK, LBJ, and Nixon with Vietnam. Really, when you get down to it, war crimes are a very annoying habit of US Presidents.

But really, I don't think that's the biggest problem, the fact that he's actually guilty, with holding Bush accountable for his horrible crimes: in America, war crimes are something other people do, something Germans or Russians or Rwandans do. But not us. We're the good guys. I fear that most Americans simply cannot accept that their President is up there with Hitler and Stalin in terms of guilt--remember how many Republicans were freaking out a few months back about Democrats' use of the word "Nazi" to describe the administration's behavior? How easily they were shot down by squirrelly "arguments" about specifics?

Sad, but true. However, if this country is ever going to have any sense of moral credibility, Bush not only has to be thrown out of office, but also put behind bars. For life. Anything less is making ourselves accessories to his crimes.

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9/11 Miniseries Is Criticized as Inaccurate and Biased

From the New York Times:

Days before its scheduled debut, the first major television miniseries about the Sept. 11 attacks was being criticized on Tuesday as biased and inaccurate by bloggers, terrorism experts and a member of the Sept. 11 commission, whose report makes up much of the film’s source material.

The six-hour miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” is to be shown on ABC on Sunday and Monday. The network has been advertising the program as a “historic broadcast” that uses the commission’s report on the 2001 attacks as its “primary foundation.”

On Tuesday, several liberal blogs were questioning whether ABC’s version was overly critical of the Clinton administration while letting the Bush administration off easy.

And

ABC responded Tuesday with a statement saying that the miniseries was “a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.”

“The events that lead to 9/11 originally sparked great debate,” the statement continued, “so it’s not surprising that a movie surrounding those events has revived the debate.”

And

“As we were watching, we were trying to think how they could have misinterpreted the 9/11 commission’s finding the way that they had,” Mr. Ben-Veniste said. “They gave the impression that Clinton had not given the green light to an operation that had been cleared by the C.I.A. to kill bin Laden,” when, in fact, the Sept. 11 commission concluded that Mr. Clinton had.

Click here for the rest.

While I like Bill Clinton the man, I have big problems with Bill Clinton the President: he essentially ruled as a moderate Republican, locking in worker-shafting international investment deals wildly euphemized as "free trade," and signing away an admittedly faulty social safety net, but without providing an effective replacement, leaving the poor to fester. And that's only a couple of problems I have with the Big Dog--blowjobs from an intern, by the way, is not one of those problems; that's his and his family's own damned business.

But while he certainly made mistakes in dealing with Islamic extremism, I've got to credit him for trying. Trying is something that President Bush didn't do, at least, not until 9/11, and it's very questionable even after that. Even now. Really, Bush has only fanned the fires of terrorism; Hurricane Katrina showed us all that he's sat on his fat ass all these years when he should have been preparing for what is most likely an inevitible attack at some point in the future.

So now there's this upcoming ABC miniseries that, by numerous accounts, is pretty much a hatchet job attempting to lay the lion's share of blame at Clinton's feet, and ABC's responses that it's just a movie don't really amount to much. You see, the problem is that most people don't really pay much attention to the news, which is flawed itself, but it at least has the basic 9/11 narrative right these days, more or less. Presenting this movie as a "docudrama" which is "based on real events" makes things all the worse. My bet is that most people are going to walk away from watching this atrocity thinking that it's all Clinton's fault, which is just not true, not by a long shot--I mean, old Bill did pursue economic and military policies that set the stage for 9/11, but so did every President before him all the way back to Truman; they weren't asleep at the switch like Bush was.

Compounding matters is that stories tend to be strongly influential in the way people think. People literally construct their own sense of reality in terms of narrative. This miniseries can only cause trouble, bolstering Bush's sagging ratings, propping up the worst leader this country's ever had. This is pretty goddamned irresponsible.

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The Undeclared War on America's Middle Class

An excerpt from Thom Hartmann's new book Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class via AlterNet:

You can't be middle class if you earn the minimum wage in America today.

The American dream and the American reality have collided. In America we have always said that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can take care of yourself and your family. But the minimum wage is just $5.15 per hour. With a 40-hour workweek, that comes to a gross income of $9,888 per year. Nobody can support a family, own a home, buy health insurance, or retire decently on $9,888 per year!

What's more, 30 million Americans -- one in four U.S. workers -- make less than $9 per hour, or just $17,280 a year. That's not a living wage either.

The U.S. Census Bureau's statistics for 2004 show the official poverty rate at 12.7 percent of the population, which put the number of people officially living in poverty in the United States at 37 million. For a family of four, the poverty threshold was listed as $19,307. If the head of that family of four were a single mother working full-time for the government-mandated minimum wage, she couldn't even rise above the government's own definition of poverty.

Becoming middle class in America today is like scaling a cliff. Most middle-class Americans are clinging to the edge with their fingernails, trying not to fall. In the 1950s middle-class families could live comfortably if just one parent worked. Today more than 60 percent of mothers with children under six are in the work force. Not only do both parents work but often at least one of those parents works two or more jobs.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I hit on this subject just last Saturday, and this essay made me realize that I missed one more enormous sign that the middle class has effectively ended: the forty hour work week is almost completely gone; the fact that wages are so low not only means that most families no longer can make ends meet on one paycheck, but also that both mom and dad must work ever increasing hours. Some families are pulling it off, but just barely, and they are exhausted and always crunched for time--one financial disaster, like a car crash or a hurricane, means total ruin.

It's nice to see that the issue is being picked up by so many writers lately, but then, it's pretty obvious when you think about it all: this country is simply awash in cash and capital, so why the hell are we having to work so hard and so much? Answer: all the profit gains are going to the wealthy elite, despite increasing worker productivity. Trickle-down simply doesn't work. An expanding economy is only good for those who control it.

It's going to take some massive government intervention to set things straight again in this country, just as it set things straight in the first place. The Hartmann excerpt has some very good suggestions; go check it out.

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Iran's leader wants liberal teachers out

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Iran's hard-line president Tuesday urged students to push for a purge of liberal and secular university teachers, another sign of his determination to strengthen Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

With his call echoing the rhetoric of the nation's 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad appears determined to remake Iran by reviving the fundamentalist goals pursued under the republic's late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

And

Dozens of liberal university professors and teachers were sent into retirement this year after Ahmadinejad's administration, sparking strong protests from students, named the first cleric to head Tehran University. The country's oldest institution of higher education remains home to dozens more educators who outspokenly oppose policies restricting freedom of expression.

"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Click here for the rest.

This is no surprise at all for Iran, which we ought not to invade, but is clearly in the control of a repressive, backward-ass, theocratic, totalitarian regime. Makes me glad I live in the United States. But there's something bugging me about this story, something I just can't put my finger on about it...

...oh, yes, it reminds me of this:

More recently, he has turned his attention to rooting out liberal bias in the academy. Students for Academic Freedom, a group he founded, promotes the cause of ''intellectual diversity" in teaching, faculty appointments, and even research. Horowitz is also the author of an ''Academic Bill of Rights" asserting that students are entitled to an education free of ''political, ideological or religious orthodoxy" imposed upon them by professors. This right, he says, is routinely infringed by liberal academics who voice their politics in the classroom. Legislatures in 17 states are considering making the ''Academic Bill of Rights" law.

In Horowitz's recently published book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, he profiles left-leaning scholars who ''appear to believe that an institution of higher learning is an extension of the political arena." His targets range from the obvious, such as MIT linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky, to more obscure figures like Oneida Meranto, an associate professor of political science at Metropolitan State College in Denver. Horowitz insists that the professors profiled in the book are ''representative" of the American university as a whole, that liberal bias is ''increasingly widespread throughout the academic profession," and that it's time conservatives did something about it.

Click here for more, including David Horowitz's dumbass response.

Yeah, that's right, Iran's evil theocratic leaders are just like the American right wing in their hatred of liberal professors. Horowitz and others of his ilk, like gambling man and "virtues" expert former Secretary of Education William Bennett, and the wife of our evil VP, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and professional bitch Lynn Cheney, have made it their special project to intimidate and harass left-leaning professors in a post 9/11 wave of neo-McCarthyism.

So what does it mean that our right wing is very much like their right wing? Well, I just report. You decide. Anything less wouldn't be fair or balanced.

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WORST GREEN HOUSE GAS LEVELS IN 800,000 YEARS

From the London Independent courtesy of AlterNet:

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases over the past century is unprecedented in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of the oldest Antarctic ice core which highlights the reality of climate change.

Air bubbles trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years have revealed that humans are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that has no known natural parallel.

Click here for the rest.

So, the way I manage to keep from falling into a deep depression over global warming is by intellectualizing it all. With that in mind, it will be very interesting to see if the human race is actually able to get its act together in time to do anything about it. I saw a NASA climatologist on Sixty Minutes a while back asserting that we have about ten years before it's too late. What makes it interesting to me is that in order to do what needs to be done we're going to have to totally alter the way pretty much everything in our society, the world really, works. That is, we can't have the highly consumptive, fossil-fuel based, ever expanding economy that is utterly ingrained in the minds and attitudes of the wealthy elite; with such a change must necessarily come a radical alteration of infrastructure, as well as the way that individuals live their moment-to-moment lives. Everybody's going to lose something in some way or another. But the rich, who are the true rulers of the planet, stand to lose the most, which is why they are the most resistant.

If I were betting, there's no fucking way I'd ever put my money on pulling it off, but if we do successfully reverse this awful downward spiral, it will be one of the most amazing accomplishments in the history of humanity. See? It's interesting.

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Humans 'hardwired for religion'

From the London Guardian courtesy of AlterNet:

The battle by scientists against "irrational" beliefs such as creationism is ultimately futile, a leading experimental psychologist said today.

The work of Bruce Hood, a professor at Bristol University, suggests that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.

"I think it is pointless to think that we can get people to abandon their belief systems because they are operating at such a fundamental level," said Prof Hood. "No amount of rational evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon those ideas."

But get a load of how he figured it out:

Another experiment involves asking subjects to cut up a photograph. When his team then measures their galvanic skin response - ie sweat production, which is what lie-detector tests monitors - there is a jump in the reading. This does not occur when a person destroys an object of less sentimental significance.

Click here for the rest.

Sometimes psychology, with its assumptions and wild logic, drives me as batty as economics. I think it's probably fair to take at face value the notion that human beings tend toward the irrational. After all, we are primates, animals, with a thinking organ in our heads called a brain, rather than a computer. So this psychologist manages to establish our innate irrationality through scientific experimentation, but then concludes something that his experiments didn't tell him, that we are "hard-wired" for religion. No, we're hard-wired for irrationality; we're also hard-wired for the opposite, rationality. That's how humans discovered, you know, fire and the wheel, while at the same time believing that the gods actually did it.

And this guy's also completely wrong when he asserts that we're wasting our time trying to have a more rational society. Martin Luther's protest against the Church in the sixteenth century sparked a direct line of thought and cultural change that led to the Enlightenment. The secular society we enjoy today stands in stark contrast to Professor Hood's belief that it is impossible to battle irrationality. What a cynic!

Look, it may appear these days that we're headed toward some kind of fundamentalist hell, but it is not our destiny. And it's irresponsible to say it is.

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The Great Housing Crash of '07

From CounterPunch courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

The housing bubble is a $10 trillion equity balloon that will explode sometime in 2007 when more than $1 trillion in no-interest, no down payment, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) reset; setting the stage for massive home devaluation, foreclosures and unemployment. ("By some estimates housing activity has accounted for 40% of all the jobs created since 2001". Times Online) July's plunging sales are just the first sign of a major slowdown. The worst is yet to come.

And

There is no real growth in the American economy. Figure it out. Last year Americans saved less than 0% of their net earnings while they borrowed a whopping $600 billion from their home equity to piss-away on a consumer spending-spree. Once home prices begin to retreat, that $600 billion will evaporate, real GDP will shrivel, and the economy will begin flat-lining. (Consumer spending is 70% of GDP)

Click here for the rest.

I keep saying that we're living in a house-of-cards economy, and this housing bubble is one of the many reasons why. Because wages have been stagnating for decades now, the economic elite have been forced to be clever in order to keep the economy moving. One of those strategies has been to make access to credit cards much more open and easy. In the wake of 9/11, something similar was done with the mortgage market.

Imagine your slacker kid brother taking an extended break from college and working at, say, Starbucks in order to support himself. Obviously, this guy is not a good credit risk, but, for some reason, the credit card companies pound him with dazzling offers. Pretty soon he's accumulated $50k in debt, screwed for the next couple of decades or so. Well, that's not a new concept; it's been happening to twenty-somethings for years and years now. But change the example to a yuppie couple that's doing well money-wise, but can't quite afford to break into the tight housing market in order to fulfill their Ward and June fantasy: suddenly adjustable rate mortgages, no interest loans, and all that stupid dangerous crap is dangled in their faces; pretty soon they're up to their ears in debt, but they naively believe it's good debt, the kind that ultimately equals an investment. They're dead wrong. The market's inevitably going to tank, and they'll be left with expensive loans on a low-value house. Poof: all that good debt becomes bad debt.

And nobody's going to be building any new houses, so the construction market tanks, and all those jobs are gone, and all their dependent industries also tank, and...you get the idea. I may be wrong, and hopefully my buddy Matt will come along any moment now to point out something I've missed, but I am afraid here. The US has a negative savings rate, which is what has essentially kept the domestic economy in the black for years, but it just can't last. We really are spending our children's inheritance.

But I have a feeling that's going to bite our asses well before it bites our childrens'.

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THE YES MEN

From Wikipedia:

The Yes Men are a group of culture jamming activists who practice what they call "identity correction". They pretend to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations, accepting invitations received on their websites to appear at symposiums and TV shows. They use their newfound authority to express the idea that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse.

Their method is often satire: posing as corporate or government spokespeople, they might make shocking denigrating comments about workers and consumers, only to discover that instead of shock or anger, their prank is received enthusiastically, with no one realizing the reactionary rhetoric was only a joke. Sometimes, the Yes Men's phony spokesperson makes annoucements that represent dream scenarios for the anti-globalization movement or opponents of corporate crime. The result is false news reports of the demise of the WTO, or Dow paying for a Union Carbide cleanup.

The Yes Men have posed as spokespeople for The World Trade Organization, McDonald's, Dow Chemical, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The two leading members of The Yes Men are known by a number of aliases, most recently, and in film, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno.

Their experiences were documented in the film The Yes Men, distributed by United Artists, as well as the book The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization.

Click here for the rest.

I mentioned the Yes Men yesterday as being potential harbingers of a new wave of relevant theater. In a weird fit of synchronicity, I today bumped into a full documentary about their work. I think I may very well be right about them and theater. The documentary shows them pulling off some amazing stunts by convincing several different groups, including CNBC, that they are representatives of the World Trade Organization. And once they've done the convincing, their real work begins: bogus announcements for bogus events and bogus initiatives, such as a plan to recycle human feces into edible food for the third world, that make utterly clear how contemptible and inhuman the WTO really is. That is, everytime the Yes Men make the news, corporations and the WTO, pretty much anybody they've targeted, have to issue a denial, which forces the corporate media to actually address issues they usually ignore.

It's brilliant stuff. Go watch the video.

Here's a link to their site.

Here and here are links to Democracy Now coverage of Yes Men performances not covered in the documentary.

One of their members, their video animator, lives here in Baton Rouge. Maybe I can hook up with them somehow. It strikes me that they could use a well trained actor...


A Yes Man posing as a WTO rep shows off to textile industry wonks a fake management suit, complete with a phallus that allows a manager to moniter his workers on a small video screen

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



The Big Three: McCoy, Spock, and Kirk!

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ECONOMIC LAWS ARE BULLSHIT
GDP Grows But Most Lose Ground

From the New York Times courtesy of the Progressive American, Princeton economist Paul Krugman on how a "good economy" is meaningless to most Americans:

The Great Disconnect

The stagnation of real wages — wages adjusted for inflation — actually goes back more than 30 years. The real wage of nonsupervisory workers reached a peak in the early 1970's, at the end of the postwar boom. Since then workers have sometimes gained ground, sometimes lost it, but they have never earned as much per hour as they did in 1973.

Meanwhile, the decline of employer benefits began in the Reagan years, although there was a temporary improvement during the Clinton-era boom. The most crucial benefit, employment-based health insurance, has been in rapid decline since 2000.

And

Why have workers done so badly in a rich nation that keeps getting richer? That's a matter of dispute, although I believe there's a large political component: what we see today is the result of a quarter-century of policies that have systematically reduced workers' bargaining power.

Click here for the rest.

Somewhere along the line, in the late 80s or early 90s, when I wasn't as liberal as I am now, but had already left conservatism behind, it occurred to me that all the talk I was hearing then about traditional stay-at-home mothers versus working mothers was kind of a pointless debate. The conversation was in terms of how feminism was or wasn't hurting America, but for some reason it suddenly became obvious to me that so many women entered the work force starting in the 70s not because of a newfound freedom to do so, but because of necessity. It just so happens that the womens' rights movement happened at the same time that wages started falling. The long and the short of all this is that, in my lifetime, the middle class has effectively ended.

When I was a kid, a family could easily get by with only one breadwinner. Furthermore, this successful breadwinner status was easily accomplished by guys working in factories, driving cabs, clerking in grocery stores, and in many other blue collar jobs. Not today. Now most families absolutely have to have two adults working full time in order to make ends meet, and often these families are one financial disaster, such as an injury that requires surgery, away from ruin. If we have a middle class in the US today, it is cultural only. The economic middle class of my childhood is simply a thing of the past.

Krugman nails it when he suggests that the cause is the erosion of collective bargaining rights. That is, the middle class was essentially created after WWII by conscious policy decisions that established full legitimacy for labor unions, which affected all workers' situations, even those who weren't in unions. Since the Reagan era, and even earlier, even during the administration of liberal icon Jimmy Carter, the Federal government has made it absolutely clear that they would not only be repealing many of those labor-friendly laws passed decades before, but they would also refuse to enforce the laws remaining on the books. In other words, the government created the middle class, and the government destroyed the middle class.

In short, it doesn't have to be like this. Things can be much better.

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'Guerrilla artist' replaces heiress's
CDs in shops with doctored versions

From the London Independent:

Inside the accompanying booklet, a picture of the heiress emerging from a luxury car has been retouched to include a group of homeless people.

In another shot, Ms Hilton's head has been superimposed on a shop window mannequin beneath a banner reading: "Thou Shalt Not Worship False Icons."

Instead of Ms Hilton's own compositions, the replacement CD features 40 minutes of a basic rhythm track over which Banksy has dubbed Ms Hilton's catchphrase "That's hot!" and other extracts from her reality TV programme The Simple Life.

Click here for the rest.

Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, these little subversive works of art, I'm sure, are far more aesthetically pleasing than the album they lampoon. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that pretty much anything or anyone satirizing Paris Hilton is going to be better than the real deal, even when it's some stupid 15 year old jock doing the bashing. But then, when one is trying to be better than the famous and meaningless hotel fortune heiress one really only has to exceed what is, admittedly, an extraordinarily low standard. Not that hard to do.

Anyway, this CD prank is the work of Banksy, who apparently is becoming evermore sophisticated and political in his work. And inspiring to boot. Banksy's example, as well as the work of Ron English and his immitators, and various other culture jammers have all got me wondering what this means in terms of theater and performance. I mean, I've devoted my life as an artist to a medium, the theater, which is institutionally dead as far as I'm concerned. Dead and mostly irrelevant, but these other guys are out there making shit happen.

I think the Yes Men, another culture jamming group who struck again in New Orleans less than a week ago, are probably onto something in terms of making theater worth a damn.

I've gotta work this out. I just can't see myself being happy if I'm lucky enough to get cast in lots of commercials. Or even a Broadway play. Or a shitty blockbuster with Tom Cruise or Vin Diesel. There's got to be more to acting than all that.

UPDATE

From the BBC courtesy of the Huffington Post, a punchline of sorts:

No customers had complained or returned a doctored version, he said.

Click here for the rest.

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ARMITAGE CHANGES NOTHING AND EVERYTHING
Karl Rove and Lewis Libby are definitely traitors

The Nation's Washington editor David Corn, the first to realize that right-wing essayist Robert Novak's outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame might constitute a Federal crime, fills us in on what it means that the leak originated with former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a man who, ostensibly, wasn't trying to do anything but gossip:

Shortly after Novak spoke with Armitage, he told Rove that he had heard that Valerie Wilson had been behind her husband's trip to Niger, and Rove said that he knew that, too. So a leak from Armitage (a war skeptic not bent on revenge against Wilson) was confirmed by Rove (a Bush defender trying to take down Wilson). And days later--before the Novak column came out--Rove told Time magazine's Matt Cooper that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee and involved in his trip.

And

But because of Libby's request, a memo did circulate among State Department officials, including Armitage, that briefly mentioned Wilson's wife.

Armitage's role aside, the public record is without question: senior White House aides wanted to use Valerie Wilson's CIA employment against her husband. Rove leaked the information to Cooper, and Libby confirmed Rove's leak to Cooper. Libby also disclosed information on Wilson's wife to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Click here for the rest.

So, just to spell this out, Valerie Plame's undercover status didn't officially change once Armitage told Novak about it. That is, leaking her name was still highly illegal. And that's exactly what Karl Rove and Lewis Libby did: they blew her cover to journalists who hadn't been in contact with Novak about the issue, and they did it before Novak's essay was published. In other words, at the point that Rove and Libby squealed, Plame's undercover status was, in reality, still a secret--only Novak, and not his readers, knew. Consequently, Rove and Libby are guilty of revealing state secrets. They're traitors.

What's worse is that they're not traitors for any nation or ideology: what they did was clearly a hatchet job; they did it for short term political gain, a ham-handed attempt to discredit and punish Plame's husband, Bush critic Joseph Wilson. Furthermore, the fact that Libby sent around the entire administration a memo revealing Plame's identity strongly suggests that they weren't simply hardcore opportunists; rather, it is almost as if they were fishing for a leak, dangling some bait and hoping that some administration half-wit would bite, which is exactly what ended up happening.

The bottom line here is that this Armitage revelation confirms everything the left has been saying for months about the case. The fact that the former Deputy Secretary of State was apparently an unwitting pawn in Rove and Libby's high stakes Machiavellian games in no way changes their guilt. In fact, it makes it all the more obvious.

Hang these motherfuckers out to dry.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Frankie and Sammy



Phil



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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FAREWELL GLENN FORD

From KCAL TV:

Actor Glenn Ford, who played strong, thoughtful protagonists in films such as "The Blackboard Jungle," "Gilda" and "The Big Heat," has died. He was 90.

A statement from Beverly Hills police says paramedics called to Ford's home just before 4 pm found the actor deceased.

Ford, born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford, suffered a series of strokes in the 1990s.

This generation probably knew Ford best as Clark Kent's adopted father in 1978's "Superman".

Click here for the rest.

While I've enjoyed his work in other films, particularly in The Blackboard Jungle, Glen Ford, to me, was, and will always be, Jonathan "Pa" Kent. Better than Ward Cleaver or Mike Brady, Pa Kent is the perfect father, intelligent, willful but not domineering, compassionate, strong, and with good salt-of-the-earth values. I mean, he was Superman's dad, for god's sake. Glen Ford totally nailed it when he played the role. Really, I think it was his best work, too, very honest and natural, which is especially noteworthy because he comes out the old school film style of acting--think Ronald Reagan's acting work and you get the idea.

At any rate, Ford's work in Superman was extraordinarily influential to me as a boy when I was figuring out what it meant to be an American man.

Farewell, Glenn Ford.



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Texas must improve its shameful poverty statistics

From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:

According to the new data, one in six Texans lived in poverty last year. And Texas was home to three of the nation's 10 poorest counties, including the top two — Cameron County, with 42 percent below the poverty level, and Hidalgo County, with 41 percent. With 29 percent of its population poor, El Paso County was listed as the country's fourth least-prosperous.

A full quarter of all Texas children are poor, the Bureau's American Community Survey found. Almost 20 percent of Texans are economically deprived, which the government defined for a family of four as earning $19,971 or less. Only 13 percent of Americans overall were found to be poor.

The news was no more heartening in Houston. A full 29 percent of black families here were impoverished, a jump from 25 percent in 2000. Among Hispanics, the number living in poverty climbed to 30 percent from 26 percent. Fewer white Houstonians, 9 percent, were found to be poor.

Click here for the rest.

Even though their hearts are obviously in the right place, the Chronicle's editors end their essay with a plea to Texas political leaders to not engage in blame games and to figure out why so many Texans are rotting in poverty. Fools. This is exactly how the Texas political establishment likes it. This is how it's been since the founding of the Republic of Texas. In my home state, it doesn't really matter which party is in charge. Everyone's conservative. Everyone always places business interests above the interests of average citizens. Hell, Texas was founded by business interests for business interests. This is deeply ingrained in both the political and civic cultures.

Here in Louisiana, people joke about how corrupt the politicians are: my response is always something to the effect of it being the same back home, but because businessmen have more money and influence, the laws are written such that what's corrupt in Louisiana is legal in Texas, thus, no corruption. The Lone Star State has made rule-by-business an art form.

And there's no profit in helping out the poor.

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