FAREWELL MOLLY IVINS

From the Houston Chronicle:

Noted Texas liberal Molly Ivins dies

Molly Ivins, the irreverent nationally syndicated columnist from Texas who rankled conservatives and delighted liberals, died late this afternoon after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. She was 62.

A self-described leftist agitator, she infused her writings with both passion and wit. Her career spanned some 40 years, and in that time she thought nothing of calling President George W. Bush "Billy Bob Forehead," and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry "Governor Goodhair." Her columns drew such attention that her picture once graced billboards in North Texas above the words, 'Molly Ivins Can't Really Say That, Can She?' (That later became the title of one of her best-selling books).

Ivins sided with underdogs. In an interview last year with the Houston Chronicle, Ivins said she made a career writing about "who was getting screwed and who was doing the screwing." She was a diehard liberal in a state that turned from Democrat to Republican in the span of a decade and she hardly ever let an opportunity pass to lament the change.

Click here for the rest.

Ah, bloody hell.

I really loved Molly Ivins. I first discovered her writings not long after I had decided that I was a liberal, and she taught me that there was nothing anti-Texan about moving toward the left. Indeed, she showed me how to be a Texas liberal: be loud and in-your-face; be smarter than the conservatives; be funny. Fuckin' A! She's the one who wrote that great Ann Richards line about the first President Bush, "Poor George, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth." This is so sad. She was so fucking great, and she was just too young to die. Not only has Texas lost one of its best, the whole damned country has good reason to mourn.

Farewell, Molly.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Audit: Millions in Iraq reconstruction aid wasted

From the AP via CNN courtesy of AlterNet:

Tens of millions of U.S. dollars have been wasted in Iraq reconstruction aid, some of it on an Olympic-size swimming pool ordered up by Iraqi officials for a police academy that has yet to be used, investigators say.

The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion and left the region near civil war.

"The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," according to the 579-page report, which was being released Wednesday.

Calling Iraq's sectarian violence the greatest challenge, Bowen said in a telephone interview that billions in U.S. aid spent on strengthening security has had limited effect. He said reconstruction now will fall largely on Iraqis to manage -- and they're nowhere ready for the task.

The audit comes as President Bush is pressing Congress to approve $1.2 billion in new reconstruction aid as part of his broader plan to stabilize Iraq by sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.

Click here for the rest.

I have a hunch that when all this is finally sorted out, perhaps decades from now, the amount of money lost to fraud and corruption will be counted in the billions rather than millions. But for now, millions is bad enough. Bad enough for what? If you've ever wondered exactly why things have gone so badly in Iraq for the United States, I think it's safe to say that there are numerous causes, but certainly mismanagement by Pentagon contractors is one of them. Clearly, lots of taxpayer money that's supposed to be going into reconstruction isn't actually making it, which, by itself, is a cause of instability. Furthermore, the Iraqi government that we created and dominate appears to be wildly corrupt. Bush's "surge" is supposedly going to clear the way for that puppet-government to finally take responsibility for governing, but how the hell is it supposed to do that when so many officials seem to be on the take? These stories about missing money and waste in Iraq aren't simply about US taxpayers getting the shaft: in between the lines is the guarantee that the occupation will continue to be a spectacular failure.

But we already knew that, didn't we?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

RIGHT WING IDEOLOGICAL ATTACKS
ON GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE

From the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

Fox Takes Fair And Balanced Look
At Weather "War"...With One Side

FNC's "Fox & Friends" host Steve Doocey did a piece on the "War over the Weather" this morning in advance of Friday's United Nations report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with guest Sen. James Inhofe, ranking minority member on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (and formerly its highly underqualified chair), so Inhofe could once again hold forth on his views on climate change and global warming, namely, that it's entirely normal and natural and not at all a man-based problem and anyone who suggests otherwise is a nefarious tool of the radical left. For his part, Doocey offered leading questions which also called out the "left wing", creating a segment that was actually not at all unlike an informercial.

Click here for video.

And from AlterNet:

Bush appointee unable to utter the words "Global Warming"

This first video details the hysterical-yet-sad story of John Negroponte, back when he was Bush's Director of National Intelligence, attempting to avoid the wrath of the White House by mentioning the words "Global" and "Warming" back to back.

Apparently, it was something of a game to get him to say them in the same sentence...

Click here for video.

I'm thinking that the reason Negroponte was unable to say "global warming" is because the White House prefers their term, "climate change," because they think it sounds less sinister. At any rate, such semantic games, and the Fox propaganda piece (aren't they all propaganda pieces over at Fox?) are simply minor manifestations of what appears to be an all-out attack on the science behind global warming. And this isn't simply harsh and misleading rhetoric: a second video in the AlterNet post shows Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman interviewing a government scientist whose reports on global warming weren't simply censored; rather they were rewritten to mean the opposite of what they originally said, that global warming is real, imminent, and man made.

You know, if there really is controversy about the subject among scientists, which isn't the case but conservatives assert it anyway, then why not let the scientists duke it out among themselves? Why does this supposedly unresolved scientific issue need to be addressed by politicians at all? I'm not certain of the answers to those questions, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that global warming is in reality uncontroversial among most climatologists, and right-wingers, scared as hell that reality is going to force them to lose money, are heavily engaged in wishful thinking.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

IMPEACHMENT BECOMING MORE PALATABLE

From Emphasis Added:

The Punchline

We are currently living through the rein of someone history will regard as one of the great failures in American history. What has been apparent to some since the moment Bush took office has now penetrated the consciousness even of Beltway insiders and other slow-witted creatures.

A recent Newsweek poll confirms this. Following last week’s miserable State of the Union speech, fully 58% say they wish the Bush presidency were “simply over.” (hat tip, Kos).

Well, guess what? That can happen. In a country where we impeached a President for an incidental offense stemming from illicit sexual conduct and removed the governor of our largest state because the people there just kinda felt like it, why is it not both possible and desirable to bring an end to the Bush-Cheney regime with its endless list of trespasses against the Constitution, common sense and American values – by this summer, say?

After surveying the damage of the last six years, spending two more years waiting for Bush to go away is too big a risk. Every day these criminal clowns remain in office brings us closer to another futile war, this time with Iran, and continues the parade of incompetence, intransigence and partisan mischief that will take us years or decades to recover from.

Click here for the rest.

Rascally Rob Salkowitz, who writes the always interesting and thought-provoking Emphasis Added, is decidedly to the right of me. I mean, he's decidedly to the left of what we generally tend to think of as conservative these days, but, for instance, he's no Noam Chomsky fan. That's why I'm utterly fascinated and excited by this unambiguous call for impeaching Bush. Personally, I've been calling for impeachment since 2003, but then I also think we need to completely dismantle the public school system and start over from scratch: I'm pretty close to radical on lots of issues, so my views in no way can be perceived as any sort of touchstone for where educated Americans are in their thought processes at the moment. But, like I said, Rob is more moderate, closer, I think, to where most thinking Americans are at the moment. For me, this is good news. It means we may very well start hearing respected American voices call for ousting Bush before his term ends.

God, I hope so!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Minimum Wage Increase Is Good for Business

From AlterNet:

For many business owners, paying their workers well is common sense. "Trying to save money by shortchanging my employees would be like skimping on ingredients," said Kirsten Poole, a petition signer and co-owner of Kirsten's Cafe and Dish Caterers in Silver Spring, Md. "I'd lose more than I saved because of declining quality, service, reputation and customer base. You can't build a healthy business or a healthy economy on a miserly minimum wage."

A growing body of evidence shows that successful businesses that are "built to last" don't skimp on wages. "It is a sound business decision to increase the minimum wage," said venture capitalist Adnan Durrani, president of Condor Ventures in Stamford, Conn. "I have found that without exception in the successful ventures we've backed, providing sustainable living wages yielded direct increases in productivity, job satisfaction and brand loyalty from customers, all contributing to higher returns for investors and employers."

Research by the Economic Policy Institute validates the theory that raising the minimum wage will have a positive effect for low-wage workers without a negative effect on the economy.

Click here for the rest.

Yeah, it's definitely time to dispel the minimum wage myths that have crippled debate on the subject for years. While it sounds reasonable that requiring businesses to pay more than the "labor market" value for workers cuts into the bottom line and retards economic growth overall, the reality stands in stark contrast to what appears to be common sense. For starters, workers aren't capital; they're people. Treating them as money or raw materials or heavy equipment is nutty from the get-go. People have souls, minds, desires, etc. Consequently, there is much more to labor than the value economists assign it. And I'm not talking about some sort of touchy-feely, new age, abstract value: I'm talking about dollars and cents. That is, when you treat your workers like human beings, they're better workers, producing more, and have a much higher value than when they are treated simply as capital. Furthermore, when you pay all workers more money - the minimum wage tends to have an upward effect on all wages - that money invariably comes back to the companies paying workers in the first place. In other words, higher wages means more consumer spending, which stimulates economic growth. That's why the states that have already raised the minimum wage on their own have seen more, not less, economic activity than states that haven't followed suit.

Raising the minimum wage is the real common sense. We've got to stop listening to these naysayers. They're full of shit.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Experts: Latest climate report too rosy

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations:

They "don't take into account the gorillas — Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century."

And

Those scientists who say sea level will rise even more are battling a consensus-building structure that routinely issues scientifically cautious global warming reports, scientists say. The IPCC reports have to be unanimous, approved by 154 governments — including the United States and oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia — and already published peer-reviewed research done before mid-2006.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I read this stuff and just become infuriated with the irresponsibility of conservatives who stoke the bogus "controversy" among scientists about whether global warming exists or whether it's man made. There is a controversy, it seems, but it's about how bad and how quickly global warming is happening, not whether it exists. Needless to say, given the financial and ideological power the global warming flat-earthers wield, we're sure to be having the same stupid argument as the water starts to cover our ankles, and the economy falls to pieces.

It's no wonder that George Carlin has given up hope for the human race.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Tens of thousands in D.C. demand end to war in Iraq

From the Washington Post via the Houston Chronicle:

A raucous multitude of protesters, led by some of the aging activists of the past, staged a series of rallies and a march on the Capitol on Saturday to demand that the United States end its war in Iraq.

Under a blue sky, tens of thousands of people angry about the war and other policies of the Bush administration danced, sang, shouted and chanted their opposition.

They came from across the country, and across the activist spectrum, with a wide array of grievances. Many seemed to be under 30, but there were others who said they had been at the famed anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s.

They came to Washington at what they said was a moment of opportunity to push the new Congress to take action against the war, even as the Bush administration is accelerating plans to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq. This week the Senate will begin debating a resolution of disapproval of the president's Iraq policy, setting up a dramatic confrontation with the White House.

Click here for the rest.

I've been noticing that this particular round of demonstrations is getting much more press coverage, and much more favorably so, than the demonstrations before the war back in early 2003. That's got to be evidence that mainstream America no longer supports this foolish imperial adventure. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that this is how it's always been: Americans don't like war. I mean, when we really need to fight, we will, and we'll throw ourselves into it wholeheartedly, as with World War II. But when there really is no threat, when we're fighting for the wealthy elite, Americans traditionally loath war. It's laudable, I suppose, that the nation was willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt, and trust his claims that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a great danger to the world. But now everybody knows that Bush lied to them, and that Iraq was never a threat.

It's so weird. A scant four years ago, opposing the Iraq war was considered to be utterly unpatriotic. Now the reverse is true.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

REAL ART RERUNS

Like I keep saying, grad school is finally getting to the point that it's really interfering with my blogging. I've got to have the first draft of my thesis ready in just a few weeks, and, of course, I'm way behind. We're also rehearsing Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and I'm really lucky to be playing Shylock, the villain, but this too is taking up lots of time. So it's occurred to me that because I've been blogging for four years now, I've built up lots of content: why not run some old posts when I'm too busy to scour the internet for blog fodder? That also strikes me as a good idea what with Real Art's archive access being disabled due to issues associated with the new Blogger--I have access, of course, but nobody else does.

So, anyway, get ready for some retro-Real Art. Hopefully, I won't be doing this everyday, but it will give me some extra time to deal with my life. I hope. God, I hate having this thesis hanging over my head.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

THE NEW REAL ART
Forced by Blogger

Well, as I mentioned last night, Blogger's forcing everybody to move over to the new Blogger. That is, they've got some big new software or server thingy going on, and they're making all their clients, which obviously includes me, switch to it. Whether they like it or not. This is probably not really much of an issue for most people posting on Blogger, but it is for me. I've been using Blogger since 2002, some months before Google bought the service, and my blog uses one of what they're now calling "classic templates." And my "classic template" is apparently not entirely compatible with the superfangled new Blogger. That's why my page, never an aesthetic delight in the first place, now looks like shit. My archives are unavailable, too, with the great new Blogger.

So now I have to choose a new template for Real Art.

The problem with that is that I've spent years, on and off, tweaking that "classic template" to suit my own tastes. I've even learned some html basics in doing so, which is a pretty good thing I guess, but it's time consuming. And that's what I'm faced with now. When I eventually adopt a new template, all those tweaks will be gone, and I'll have to start over from the beginning. I suppose that's not really much of a big deal, but like I said, it's going to take some time, which I don't really have at the moment. So, for about six weeks or so, I'm just going to have to deal with a crappy looking blog until I can bring whatever my new template will be up to speed.

Arrgh! This is really annoying. In the meantime, I've started up a new blog strictly for experimentation in the way of tweaking my new template. For now, I'm thinking that the new Real Art is going to look something like this:



What do you think? I'm not sure myself, but it does tend to retain much of the old look's generic flavor. Drop a comment and give me some advice if you like.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY DONE TO MY BLOG?

So Blogger's pretty much forced me to switch over to their new version, which has somehow scarred up my blog's template. At the moment, I have no idea what to do about it, or if anything can even be done. And, for god's sake, my archives are misssing. Meanwhile, I'm in heavy rehearsals for Merchant of Venice here at LSU, and master's thesis deadlines are looming.

I don't know when I'll have the time to get this straightened out. Bastards.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

SCIENCE FICTION LESSONS I LEARNED AS A KID
Twilight Zone: "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"

From Wikipedia:

As the aliens state, the central theme is how irrationally people act under stress and, in particular, it serves as an allegory for the Red Scare, particularly the House Committee on Un-American Activities which began as a congressional inquiry into the political inluences of the Soviet Union but rapidly degenerated into a witch-hunt. This is especially prevalent near the end, when shifting the suspicion to someone—anyone other than oneself, innocent or guilty—becomes a way of survival; ultimately, everyone is suspected of being an alien in one form or another, and the town descends into total chaos.

Click here for the rest.

I don't think I saw this one in early childhood, although it's possible because I did see quite a few with my Mom, who loves the show. Instead, I had to wait until sixth or seventh grade for my first memory of "Maple Street," when we read the teleplay in my language arts class as part of a science fiction unit. The episode's lesson, that human beings freak out and turn on each other when they're extraordinarily frightened, is simple enough to digest, and most Americans probably understand such a concept in the abstract. Unfortunately, the freak out part tends to make people completely forget what they know about human nature. That is, even though Americans know that extreme fear makes people irrational, once they become extremely afraid, they behave irrationally, and such knowledge becomes irrelevant. Case in point: 9/11. American fear of terrorism, stoked by the endless airing on televison of burning World Trade Center footage, has made us imprison Muslims without cause and invade Iraq needlessly. It made us reelect the worst President in US history. It's turned us into torturers.

Like those who were alive when JFK was assassinated, I clearly remember where I was and what I was doing when I first learned what had happened. I was at the school where I taught high school theater that day, and as students and faculty alike ran around ranting and raving about the terrorist threat, my only thought was something to the effect of "I'm much more afraid of the reaction of the American people than I am of any Islamic terrorist." Time has proven me right--just look at the mess we're in now, created by us, rather than terrorists. Actually, I knew I was right that very moment.

Probably because I had watched The Twilight Zone when I was young.

Anyway, Throw away your TV's got the full episode available for viewing. Go check it out. It's great.



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Sammy



Phil



Frankie



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

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

2006 and the plutocracy

From ZNet:

Corporate concentration through global mergers and acquisitions reached a record at the close of 2006. In our daily life this means that companies are becoming ever fewer but also ever larger with greater power to impose their products and norms of consumption on us, dictate labour conditions (and unemployment) and exercise every kind of pressure on legislators, governments or international institutions so as to achieve the rules and legislation they consider necessary. What they cannot achieve through market mechanisms they can impose through laws favourable to them as has happened on many occasions in the year just past as well as previous ones.

Click here for the rest.

In other words, all my rantings about how our democracy is a theatrical sham, about how we actually are ruled by a plutocracy, are not only true, but getting worse. This is no filthy goddamned hippie rant. We vote, yes, but we vote for candidates from a menu of choices pre-approved by corporations and the wealthy elite. We have elected representatives, yes, but because the cost of campaigning is astronomically high, each and every one of them is greatly beholden to the corporations and wealthy elite who fund their campaigns--this affects Democrats and Republicans alike.

When I was a kid, there were a number of movies predicting that corporations would ultimately do exactly what they are doing now. That is, taking over. The great 1975 science fiction sports flick starring James Caan, Rollerball, envisions a future where we aren't citizens, but rather employees. There are no governments, only corporations who decide where we will live, who we will marry, what we will do with our lives. 1979's Alien shows a similarly bleak futuristic society. But the best articulated vision of the corporate dominated future comes from the decidedly non-scifi film, 1976's dark anti-television comedy Network.

Ned Beatty has a badass monologue:

There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians. There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars!, Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? (pause) You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

Those are the nations of the world today. And it just keeps getting worse.



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

RIGHT WING LUNATIC PUNDITS ON PARADE
Dinesh D’Souza’s Bizarre New Book

From the Progressive:

Dinesh D’Souza is at it again.

In his new book, “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11,” conservative ideologue D’Souza blames the American left for Sept. 11. Here’s how his reasoning goes: The Muslim world is angry at the United States for the moral and cultural breakdown that liberals brought about in this country, and then exported to the Middle East. In addition, the left exhibits an anti-Americanism in its critique of U.S. policy that is quite similar to the worldview of Islamic fundamentalists.

“The cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world,” D’Souza writes in the portion excerpted on the book’s back cover. “Without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened.”

Click here for the rest.

D'Souza, as the essay observes, is one of the more polite conservative pundit weirdos on TV, and you'd probably recognize him because he's one of the few non-white faces in this category. But that doesn't make him any less of an idiot. The essay, if you click through to it, does a good job tearing down D'Souza's "arguments," if you want to dignify his rantings by calling them that--I mean, really, if he's right about American morality motivating Islamic terrorists, which he's not, implicit in his view is that we ought to make all women wear head coverings and not drive and whatnot. So if you really need a rebuttal, go check out the essay. What bugs me, however, is that mainstream news organizations actually treat D'Souza and his ilk as worthy of a seat at the discussion table, while at the same time utterly marginalizing serious far-left voices. It makes a mockery of public discourse.

It's probably a very good thing that my bottom of the line cable package doesn't provide CNN.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Israeli settler abuse compared to pre-Holocaust Europe

From AlterNet:

The head of Israel's largest Holocaust memorial, Holocaust-survivor Yosef Lapid, said that the behavior of some of Israel's settler's toward Palestinians reminded him of the anti-semitism before WWII.

Referring to a recently televised incident in which: "a Hebron settler woman hiss[ed] "whore" at her Palestinian neighbour and settler children lobb[ed] rocks at Arab homes," the sometimes fiery Lapid commented on Israeli radio:

"It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," he said.

"I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron?"

Click here for more.

An apt comparison that, given the politically charged and overly propagandized climate in both the US and Israel, only an Israeli could make. That is, AIPAC and Christian Zionists have politicians and the media so cowed in the US, that any sympathy at all toward the Palestinians is viewed as being anti-semetic, which is why one must be obviously not anti-semetic in order to speak the truth. The bottom line is that the days of any serious terrorst threat to Israel's existence are long gone--I mean, Palestinian terrorism is a very real thing, and some of their loudmouths run on about destroying Israel and all, but they just can't be taken seriously anymore; Israel won, decisively, many years ago, and their real enemies, their immediate Arab neighbors, are either friends or impotent. Today, Palestinian terrorists strike because Israel treats their people like shit, ghettoizing them, breaking promises, stealing from them, murdering them. I'm sure you get the idea: Palestinians are to Israel as Native Americans once were to the United States, a huge problem that needs to be removed.

It really is intolerable, and our tax dollars are paying for it. Thus, we bear responsibility.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Bush's SOTU: Nixon Would Have Been Proud

From AlterNet:

Earlier yesterday, when asked by reporters what the best part of the speech was going to be, White House Spokesman Tony Snow replied, "You know, it's difficult to say. It's like looking in a drawer full of diamonds."

But those who were expecting some glittering bling-bling would have been disappointed; what made last night's SOTU noteworthy is that George W. Bush simply had nothing to say. It might have been the first time in American history.

Of course, everyone will pretend he said something important -- that it was a major address. The media will pick it apart and discuss its "significance"; lawmakers from both parties will quote bits and pieces of it to support or oppose this or that legislation; bloggers will remind us of what he said when he actually does the opposite and so on. But all you really need to know is that last night president George W. Bush could have come out on stage and, after pausing to let the ovation die down, he might have looked at the cameras with those beady little eyes and said, simply, "Folks, I got nothing. G'night!"

Click here for the rest.

Yeah, I don't even make an attempt to watch these things anymore, although I do regret missing Charlie Rangel reportedly laughing when Bush started talking about balancing the budget. But that just makes my point for me. It's all theater, and with Bush these days, it's not even very interesting theater. I suppose the SOTU right before the Iraq invasion was interesting, but that had more to do with what was so obviously on the line, and less to do with anything he was actually saying. Of course, in retrospect, those eleven or seventeen or whatever words about uranium and Niger have much more theatricality today, but, again, that has nothing to do with Bush himself. For all I know, he totally believed what his speech writers had fed him. Anyway, if anything, this latest state-of-the-union speech just drives home the reality that he's now a total lame duck. Nobody really believes his new bipartisan rap. I mean, after six years of sticking it to the Democrats, how can anybody take his hand of friendship seriously?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Report has 'smoking gun' on climate

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Human-caused global warming is here — visible in the air, water and melting ice — and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week.

"The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. "The evidence ... is compelling."

Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: "This isn't a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."

Click here for the rest.

Over Christmas, a conservative friend of mine hit me with the latest right-wing attempt at global warming denial: a majority of scientists may believe in man made global warming, but not a majority of climatologists. Well, I suppose that's a move in the right direction--the last piece of misinformation on the subject he was feeding me was complete denial of the scientific consenus on "climate change." Anyway, his comment disturbed me and made me want to find some quick info on the consenus issue.

Wikipedia is always handy:

A small minority of climate scientists and scientists in related fields have expressed opposition to the scientific consensus on global warming.

Click here for more.

My bet is that, if I had another debate with my conservative pal and confronted him with the Wikipedia article, he would then attack Wikipedia itself as being unreliable, which it sometimes is. Of course, a study done by the science magazine Nature back in 2005 found Wikipedia's science articles to be approximately as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Of course, a few months later the Encyclopedia Britannica fired back, asserting that the Nature study was deeply flawed. Jesus!

You know, when the global warming flat-earthers have to resort to epistemological arguments to make their case, then they're probably on the ropes, anyway. Unfortunately, most Americans can't hang long in an argument about the nature of knowledge itself, so I expect the controversy to continue for some years to come. Not even this latest round of studies is going to change that.

I'd better start thinking about moving to higher ground and boning up on survivalism.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

LOW CLASS ASSHOLES

From WAFB TV in Baton Rouge:

Some Saints Fans Say the Weather in
Chicago Wasn't Nearly as Cold as the Fans

Just to be clear, the fans Avery spoke with say the majority of people in Chicago were very nice, but you know what they say about a few bad apples and it appears some were very bad.

It's easy for Saints fans to push away Bears fans that interrupt their interview, but pictures like this one hit much deeper.

And

One Saints fan says she has a memory she can't bleep out. This is what she says a Bears fan had to say at her hotel.

Susan Joly says a Bears fan said, "'Oh yeah, you thought Katrina was bad' and just really not giving them any chance to say, you know, the man lost his wife and child in Katrina and they were ragging him over that and it was just terrible."

Click here for the rest.

Of course, there are low class assholes everywhere, but this is certainly worth a mention, if only to illustrate this creeping feeling that I've had for months now: much of the country has no fucking idea just how badly Katrina hit New Orleans. I mean, to be fair, I've stuck my foot in my mouth in almost the same way on more than one occasion, especially when I was younger. But, whoa, this is pretty hardcore:



Fucking assholes. The only thing I can think is that these kids, and others, too, because it was definitely more than just the people in this picture, had absolutely no idea what they were actually saying. Like I said, I really get the feeling that many Americans just don't know what happened and is still happening. But when all is said and done, this hurt, and I'm not even from New Orleans.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

VEEP CHENEY FORCED IRAN TOWARD AGGRESSION

From the blog of Middle Eastern studies scholar Juan Cole courtesy of AlterNet:

Lawrence Wilkerson, an aide to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state says that Iran in 2003 offered to help stabilize Iraq and to cut off aid to Hizbullah in Lebanon and to Hamas. Wilkerson says that the State Department was interested in pursuing the offer, which presumably came from reformist president Mohammad Khatami. He says that when the issue was broached with VP Richard Bruce Cheney, Cheney shot down any notion of "talking to evil." As if Mohammad Khatami is evil and Richard Bruce Cheney is not. (Cheney's lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and connection to 9/11 have gotten hundreds of thousands of people killed).

Because Khatami kept promising that his reforms would make Iranians better off, and because the US rejected all his overtures and left him with no achievements to show for them, the Iranian electorate turned against the reform movement and put Mahmud Ahmadinejad into power, a loud-mouthed braggart of a sort that Cheney's Likudniks could then build up into a bogey man to frighten Americans with. Cheney created Iran as a menace.

Click here for the rest.

This comes as absolutely no surprise at all. Indeed, when it became absolutely clear to Saddam Hussein in Iraq just how serious the Bush administration was about its saber-rattling, he gave unprecedented access to weapons inspectors. That is, he caved, but we invaded anyway. These guys just don't care about US security; they've clearly got their own imperial agenda, and pursuing it means turning potential friends into enemies in order to justify it all. Bottom line: the White House lies to everyone about everything. It should just be assumed that everything they say is a lie. I mean, okay, I'll accept that they're going to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq, but I feel pretty sure that even they don't believe it's going to make much of a difference in the way of stability.

Who knows what they're really up to? They're certainly not telling.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
LANDMARK GAME: NOT ONE BUT TWO
BLACK HEAD COACHES IN SUPER BOWL

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

2 super coaches make a breakthrough

Indeed, Dungy has come a long way since those formative years. So has the NFL.

The leader of the Indianapolis Colts awoke today as a Super Bowl coach — one with a rapidly growing legacy. In two weeks, he'll face one of his proteges, Chicago's Lovie Smith, for the league championship. They'll be the first black head coaches to pace the sidelines in the NFL's biggest game.

"I've been thinking about my generation of kids who watched Super Bowls and never really saw African-American coaches and didn't think about the fact that you could be a coach," Dungy said of the black kids who grew up in the 1960s. "Hopefully, young kids now will say, 'Hey, I might be the coach some day.' That's special."

Click here for the rest.

I guess the real landmark game was the first time an African-American became head coach at all, and this Super Bowl is simply a necessary consequence of that barrier being torn down first. On the other hand, there were only seven NFL black coaches this past season, and the number tends to fluctuate from year to year; it's usually lower, so maybe this is a pretty big deal. You gotta admit, one way or the other, it's pretty cool. What's really interesting to me is that, as the article observes, the Colt's coach Tony Dungy made a strong conscious effort when he first became head coach for the Buccaneers a few years back to recruit and groom African-Americans as assistant coaches, getting them "into the pipe," as it were--the payoff is that he'll be facing one of those black former assistants on Super Sunday. That's a major testimony to what one man can do to change entrenched institutional attitudes when he gets into a position with some power.

Actually, given my utter hatred for massive institutions at the moment, I ought to think about Dungy's example for a bit. I so often feel like big organizations are so extraordinarily monolithic that working within them is a waste of time. Perhaps I'm wrong.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom

From Damn Interesting courtesy of Throw Away Your TV:

Shortly after they abandoned the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, the crew watched in amazement as the huge platform and derrick overturned, and disappeared into a lake that was supposed to be shallow. Soon the water around that position began to turn. It was slow at first, but it steadily accelerated until it became a fast-moving whirlpool a quarter of a mile in diameter, with its center directly over the drill site.

And

Clearly, the salt dome which contained the mine had been penetrated by the drill crew on the lake. Texaco, who had ordered the oil probe, was aware of the salt mine's presence and had planned accordingly; but somewhere a miscalculation had been made, which placed the drill site directly above one of the salt mine's 80-foot-high, 50-foot-wide upper shafts. As the freshwater poured in through the original 14-inch-wide hole, it quickly dissolved the salt away, making the hole grow bigger by the second.

And

After three hours, the lake was drained of its 3.5 billion gallons of water. The water from the canal, now flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, formed a 150-foot waterfall into the crater where the lake had been, filling it with salty ocean water.

Click here for the rest, and here for some documentary footage.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Sort of a cascading disaster, with each successive event worse than the one before it. I'm kind of blown away by my never having heard of this, especially because it happened in my lifetime, back in 1980, only an hour and a half's drive away from Baton Rouge, where I live now, on the other side of the swamp outside of New Iberia.

Actually, it's somehow fitting that such an engineering disaster happened so close to the Louisiana swamp. While marshes and lowlands occur naturally in the southern half of the state, longtime and widespread use of levees has made swamps much more common than they would be otherwise. Meanwhile, decades of oil drilling has made the land drop even lower. Eventually, large sections of Louisiana will be covered by the Gulf of Mexico, and it's all due to human re-engineering of the environment.

The Lake Peigneur disaster is kind of a micro-version of what's happening all around here very slowly, everyday.


The Gulf of Mexico flowing upstream into the temporarily empty Lake Peigneur.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Saints' magic-carpet ride hits a stone wall in Chicago

From the AP via ESPN:

The Chicago Bears know how to make a Super Bowl memorable. They're making this one historic long before it's played.

Dissed all season long, Rex Grossman and Co. are heading to the big game for the first time since 1985 after rolling over the New Orleans Saints 39-14 Sunday, and Da Coach leading them there makes it all the more special.

Lovie Smith's arrival in Miami will make him the first black head coach to reach the marquee game in its 41 years.

Click here for the rest.

Make that one of the first black head coaches to go to the Super Bowl, now that we know he'll be facing Tony Dungy who heads the Colts.

Anyway, the Saints had a damned fine run. They even had a shot there for a while after that Reggie Bush 88 yard TD catch. But they turned the ball over four times, and I've heard coaches and commentators alike assert many times that if you turn the ball over that much you don't deserve to win. On the other hand, such football philosophy can end up being a bit funny. The Fox sports guys calling the game were in agreement that it was the turnovers, rather than the cold and snow, that killed the Saints. But what the hell do they think was most responsible for all those fumbles? Bad luck?

At any rate, the Saints'll be back next year. I think I'm a fan now.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Brown: Politics played role in Katrina

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Brown, speaking at the Metropolitan College of New York, said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the devastating hurricane be federalized — a term Brown explained as placing the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster.

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" he said, without naming names. "'We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"

Brown, 52, declined to say who in the White House had argued for federalizing the response only in Louisiana. He said that he'd later learned of the machinations through Blanco's office and from federal officials.

Blanco reacted sharply to Brown's remarks.

"This is exactly what we were living but could not bring ourselves to believe. Karl Rove was playing politics while our people were dying," Blanco said through a spokeswoman, referring to Bush's top political strategist. "The federal effort was delayed, and now the public knows why. It's disgusting."

Click here for more.

Amazingly, I'm still loving this. The White House hung Brown out to dry, totally scapegoating him. I mean, okay, Brownie did not do "a heckuva job," but in retrospect the guy was set up, a political appointee in a job for which he wasn't qualified; ultimately, that's Bush's fault much more than Brown's. When they tried to make him take the fall for the federal government's jaw-dropping failure in New Orleans, he broke ranks and squealed, like any normal human being would do, which probably says a lot about guys like former CIA chief Tenet and others who kept their mouths shut while the Oval Office stuck it up their ass. At any rate, this latest info from Brown is very interesting, to say the least: we now know that the White House wasn't paralyzed by indecision or anything along those lines while the Big Easy descended into Hell; they were hard at work trying to figure out how they could fuck their political enemies. It's pretty clear that the Bush White House has never been serious about the role of the Presidency. Instead, they've used the office exclusively for their own purposes, not giving a single shit whether the nation lives or dies.

These are some truly evil people.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

New Orleans of Future May Stay Half Its Old Size

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Hurricane Katrina may have brutally recalibrated the city’s demographics, setting New Orleans firmly on the path its underlying characteristics had already been leading it down: a city losing people at the rate of perhaps 1.5 percent a year before Hurricane Katrina, with a stagnant economy, more than a quarter of the population living in poverty, and a staggeringly high rate of unemployment, in which as many as one in five were jobless or not seeking work.

Political leaders, worried about the loss of clout and a Congressional seat, press for people to return, but a smaller New Orleans may not be bad, some economists say. Most of those who have not returned — 175,000, by Mr. Stonecipher’s count — are very poor, and can be more easily absorbed in places with vibrant job markets, they say.

Large-scale concentrations of deep poverty — as was the case in New Orleans before the storm — are inherently harmful to cities. The smaller New Orleans is almost certain to wind up with a far higher percentage of its population working than before Hurricane Katrina.

“Where there are high concentrations of poverty, people can’t see a way out,” said William Oakland, a retired economist from Tulane University who has studied the city’s economy for decades. “Maybe the diaspora is a blessing.”

Others, however, worry that permanently losing so many people threatens the city’s culture — its unique way of talking, parading and eating.

Click here for the rest.

I fear they may be right about this. I mean, the situation could be altered, but it would take a massive governmental effort directed at changing the circumstances that created New Orleans' dire poverty in the first place. That is, millions of dollars would have to be poured into those poor neighborhoods, not just for reconstruction, but for education, welfare, and economic stimulus--if the powers that be had no interest in doing that before the hurricane, then they're certainly not going to do it after; indeed, the powers that be, both locally and nationally, are no doubt quite happy with the way things are now, none of those dirty, lazy, po' folk to mess up their way of doing business. It makes me sick. It really does mean the end of the Big Easy's utterly unique way of life. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that N.O. needed poverty in order to be the city I loved, but I am saying that all those cool, old African-American neighborhoods were what fed all those cool, old New Orleans traditions. After all, Louis Armstrong didn't come up in the Garden District.

This isn't easy to accept, but I'm afraid I don't have much of a choice.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

REPUBLICANS IN DISARRAY

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Departing Chief Warns G.O.P. on Outlook for 2008 Races

In his farewell speech after two years as chairman, Mr. Mehlman said that the 2006 elections, in which Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress, was not a fluke that could be attributed to the calendar, a few scandal-tainted candidates and the tough going in Iraq.

“Each of these factors combined to create an environment that was unfavorable for Republicans,” said Mr. Mehlman, one of the chief architects of President Bush’s two national election victories. “But, folks, these factors cannot be an excuse.”

He said that if Republican officials shrugged off the repudiation of the party in the 2006 elections they would lose the White House in 2008 and remain in the minority in Congress indefinitely. He said the party had to recommit itself to political reform, fiscal restraint and personal ethics.

Mr. Mehlman addressed the roughly 170 members of the Republican National Committee at their annual winter meeting, a rather glum affair at a downtown hotel here. Party members are still nursing the wounds of the mid-term elections and are riven by divisions over Iraq, immigration and other issues. Members are also beginning to take sides in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

Click here for more.

Well, if Mehlman's right, it's playing out as I had hoped after Kerry lost in '04: the power drunk Republicans would overplay their hand, disgusting the country with conservatism for years to come. And there may be some truth the the former party chief's warning: I heard some talking heads on PBS earlier this evening discussing how Senate GOPers seemed totally unfazed by their stunning election loss in their opposition to the just passed ethics reform bill. If they keep that shit up for long, they really will become political dinosaurs. On the other hand, one should never misunderestimate Democratic willingness to sit in a corner and masturbate when there's work to be done. The Republicans lost, yes, but it in no way had anything to do with the Democrats beating them.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Phil



Sammy and Frankie



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

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

House Democrats pass bill withdrawing oil breaks

From the Houston Chronicle:

Most House Republicans, along with four Democrats, including Rep. Nick Lampson of Stafford, voted against today's measure on grounds it would blunt domestic oil exploration and cost industry jobs, while increasing dependence on foreign energy producers.

The bill would wipe out between $5 billion and $6 billion worth of tax incentives set up in recent years by Republican-controlled congresses which supporters had said were necessary to encourage domestic exploration.

The legislation also would bar oil and gas companies from enjoying a tax deduction that would effectively reduce their corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 32 percent by 2009.

The White House opposes that provision, arguing "It is inappropriate to single out this industry from all others for punitive tax treatment."

The bill also takes aim at those oil and gas producers that have refused to renegotiate botched lease agreements signed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service during the Clinton administration in 1998 and 1999.

Those agreements failed to include language that would force producers operating in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico to pay royalties to the federal government when oil and gas prices reached certain levels.

That bureaucratic bungling involving 1,032 leases already has cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion. And the Government Accountability Office has estimated the gaffe could cost more than $10 billion.

Click here for the rest.

A few observations.

First, The oil industry is currently enjoying record yearly profits counted in the billions. Withdrawing tax breaks doled out during the Bush years will most definitely not "blunt domestic oil exploration" or "cost industry jobs." I feel insulted that I even have to point that out. Further, there is now pretty much no such thing as "foreign" oil or "domestic" oil. These companies are multinational, owing no allegiance to any one nation, and often using their vast economic strength to twist a given nation's policies in a more favorable direction. Worrying about "foreign" competition is stupid from the get-go.

Second, taxes are not "punitive." Taxes are what businesses owe the state for use of the legal and economic circumstances, which it sets up and maintains, that make business possible--citizens also owe taxes for similar reasons, which have more to do with day-to-day existence than with making money. In short, taxes are like a bill for services rendered. To call them punishment is so much bullshit right-wing propaganda.

Third, these royalty, or "lease," agreements, when not "botched," are pretty close to being sweetheart deals, anyway. That is, we're practically giving this oil away in the first place. It's amazing, indeed, that Big Oil would have the balls to whine about renegotiation. I guess those are just the times in which we live.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Study: Children living near Houston
Ship Channel have greater cancer risk

From the Houston Chronicle:

The results of an 18-month study released today identify for the first time a link between cancer risks and hazardous air pollutants being released in Harris County.

In particular, the study conducted by the University of Texas School of Public Health found that children living within two miles of the Houston Ship Channel had a 56 percent increased risk of contracting acute lymphocytic leukemia when compared to children living more than 10 miles from the channel.

In addition, children who were living in areas with increased emissions of 1,3-butadiene from petrochemical industries were found to have an increased risk of developing any type of leukemia, acute lymphocytic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia.

Click here for more.

This comes as no surprise, what with a wildly understaffed and underbudgeted EPA, reliance on industry self-reporting of toxic emission levels, and Texas' own laws mandating "voluntary compliance" with pollution standards. And, oh yeah, let's not forget about the way Republicans have gutted citizens' ability to sue companies that injure them.

A company is a collective entity, treated by the law in many ways as though it were a human being, but, having no soul, it does not behave like a human being. Companies necessarily have no morals or ethics--certainly, the individuals working for companies have morals and ethics, but they are also contractually bound, and receive payment, to think of their employers first, and everything else second. That is, the only thing guiding business behavior is the bottom line.
That's why these emissions in Houston are killing kids. These polluting companies, which are completely aware of what they're doing, are able to save a great deal of money by releasing toxins into the environment because there is no financial consequence for doing so. They don't really care about the life lost. It's not their problem. And as long as they contribute heavily to politicians who are totally dependent on corporate cash to stay in office, it will continue to not be their problem.

Fuckers.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The Psychology Behind the Worst Possible President

From AlterNet:

The propaganda that Bush's sponsors and handlers have poured forth has ceased to persuade the voters but succeeded beyond all measure in convincing the man himself.

He will tell himself that God is talking to him, or that he is possessed of an extra measure of courage, or he that he is simply compelled to do whatever it is. The soldiers will pay the price in blood. We will pay the price in money. The Iraqis will pay the price in horror. The Iranians will pay the price, possibly, in the almost unimaginable terror of nuclear attack. Probably, the Israelis will pay the price, too.

Little George isn't the same guy he was in 2000, the guy described by Gail Sheehy in her Vanity Fair profile -- hyper-competitive and dyslexic, prone to cheat at games, always swinging between screwing up and making up, hating criticism and disagreement, careless of others but often charming. He is no longer the guy who the Republicans thought they could control (unlike, say, McCain).

The small pathologies of Bush the candidate have, thanks to the purposes of the neocons and the religious right, been enhanced and upgraded. We have a bona fide madman now, who thinks of himself in a grandiose way as single-handedly turning the tide of history.

Click here for the rest.

I've been reading Greg Palast's recent book Armed Madhouse, which I got for Christmas, and the section I'm on right now is putting together a pretty compelling argument about how the White House managed to fail so spectacularly with Iraq's occuption. The long and short of it is that the neo-cons and the oil industry, both of whom enjoy to this day incredible influence with the Oval Office, both had competing plans for Iraq's oil. The neo-cons, driven by "free trade" ideology, wanted to privatize Iraq's oil fields, double or triple production, and break OPEC's back, which would ultimately lower oil prices greatly. The oil industry, however, just loves OPEC, which is able to artificially inflate oil prices by keeping production down, because Big Oil can make much more money with the cartel in power--in order to keep a lid on production, oil reserves must be state-owned; otherwise, each individual oil company would produce as much as it could in order to maximize it's own profit, rather than looking out for the industry as a whole. Instead of choosing one plan over the other, Bush enacted both plans, which obviously cannot mix well together. The resulting confusion infected and botched all levels of the reconstruction, which essentially made daily life for Iraqis totally miserable, which, in turn, made desperate people even more desperate. Under such chaotic circumstances, mass insurgency was inevitable. So was sectarian strife.

The point is that, in this case, it appears that Bush was either unable to or uninterested in resolving the differences between these two very influential groups.

That's why I think making general declarations about what's actually going in the President's head is jumping the gun. From all outward appearances, yes, Bush seems to be delusional. But there is just as much evidence suggesting that he's simply allowing himself to be pushed around by his advisors, or that he knows he's in over his head and has simply withdrawn from the decision making process. For that matter, there appears to be just as much evidence to support that he's simply stupid. There's just no way of knowing right now what's really going on.

I mean, we know it's pretty bad within the executive branch, but that's about all we really know.

But one day, the sad tale will be known to all. I can't wait. You know it's got to be fascinating, however it turns out.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

BURNING MONEY IN IRAQ

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

Click here for more.

It's a bit confusing with all those zeroes, but I tried to calculate what that trillion dollar price tag comes to per person: the US currently has over 300 million in population, according to Wikipedia; rounding that down, and rounding down $1.2 trillion dollars, I get $3,333 dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country. And, like I said, that's rounded down, and includes a lot of people who don't pay taxes. The actual price per tax-paying citizen is somewhat bigger-- the article also observes that the actual expenditure over Iraq may come closer to two trillion, which would double that per capita price.

You know, that's more than ten times the lousy tax refund Bush handed out back in 2001.

Obviously, we don't really have much to show for our money. Terrorism is still a big threat. Oil prices are higher, not lower, and the entire Middle East is in much more turmoil now than before. It's like we've paid a lot of money to have somebody come and hit us on the head repeatedly, except worse. Anyway, by this one standard, a cost-benefit analysis, Iraq has been a spectacular failure for the US, and bales of dollars continue to be thrown on the fire.

So much for the overrated Republican ability to spend money intelligently.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

IRAQ WAR: ENTIRE REGION
ON VERGE OF DISASTER

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

34,452 civilians killed last year in Iraq

The United Nations said today that more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in sectarian violence last year, nearly three times the number reported dead by the Iraqi government.

And

"Without significant progress in the rule of law sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," he warned.

And

It pointed to killings targeting police, who are seen by insurgents as collaborating with the U.S. effort in Iraq. The report said the Interior Ministry had reported on Dec. 24 that 12,000 police officers had been killed since the war started in 2003.

The report also painted a grim picture for other sectors of Iraqi society, saying the violence has disrupted education by forcing schools and universities to close as well as sending professionals fleeing from the country. At least 470,094 people throughout Iraq have been forced to leave their homes since the bombing in Samarra, according to the report.

Click here for more.

And from MSNBC courtesy of AlterNet:

Saudis consider sending troops to Iraq

Saudi Arabia believes the Iraqi government is not up to the challenge and has told the United States that it is prepared to move its own forces into Iraq should the violence there degenerate into chaos, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Tuesday.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal made no effort to mask his skepticism Tuesday about President Bush’s proposal to send 21,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq to stem sectarian fighting.

And

Saudi officials reassured Rice on Tuesday that they had no intention of getting in the middle of the dispute between Iran and the United States. Rice emphasized that the U.S. campaign to disrupt Iranian networks threatening U.S. forces in Iraq would be confined within the boundaries of Iraq, officials said.

Click here for the rest.

Here's the mess that the US has created in Iraq. The government we've created over there is wildly corrupt and highly infiltrated by insurgents and Shiite militia men. In some respects, it is simply a lumbering organization sucking in and wasting billions of dollars while providing cover in the sectarian civil war against the Sunnis. Meanwhile, Iran, which is predominately Shia, licks its lips, waiting for the US to leave so it can move in and take over, creating a "Shiite Crescent" of domination from Tehran to Southern Lebanon, which is why the Saudis are now threatening to enter the conflict themselves. And while all this is going on, US soldiers continue to be targets, and Iraqis are dying in droves. Like I said, a big fucking mess, and all Bush has to offer is hope and 20,000 more troops, who were already there during the recent Iraqi elections, and didn't really manage to stabilize the place any better than the way it is now.

If things continue as they are, Iran and the Saudis may not wait for the US to leave, making the conflict expand to much of the Middle East region while we just sit and watch. The situation would be totally unprecedented in modern times. And it's all our fault.

As Henry Kissinger recently observed, there is no military solution in Iraq, as if Bush's paltry 20k surge, a number chosen much more for troop availability than for strategic concerns, didn't make obvious. We just can't manage the situation, whether we're there or not. It's time for some hardcore diplomacy, with everybody. We've got to bring everybody to the table, the major players in the region, and the major players in Iraq, and the UN. We've got to give up on the notion of making Iraq an easily dominated client state. Screw the oil, 'cause we'll never control it anyway. Whatever the neo-cons, or the oil industry, or both wanted to get out of this in the first place is now unobtainable.

It's time to punt the ball and hope for some good field position. It's fourth and twenty, and Coach Bush, who played when he was younger without a helmet, wants to fucking go for it.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FAREWELL MICHAEL BRECKER

From Wikipedia:

Most of Brecker's early work is marked by an approach informed as much by rock guitar as by R&B saxophone. After Dreams, he worked with Horace Silver and then Billy Cobham before once again teaming up with his Brother Randy to form the Brecker Brothers Band, which played fusion that was equal parts bar band, Monk, and Sly Stone. The band followed the trail blazed by Miles Davis's 1970s bands and Weather Report, but with more attention to structured arrangements, a heavier backbeat, and a stronger rock influence. The band stayed together from 1975–1982 with consistent success and musicality.

At the same time, Brecker put his stamp on numerous pop and rock recordings as a soloist. His more notable collaborations include those with James Taylor, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Donald Fagen and Joni Mitchell. During the early 80s he was also a member of NBC’s Saturday Night Live band. Brecker can be seen in the background sporting shades during Eddie Murphy’s James Brown parody, Get In The Hot Tub. He also played sax briefly on Frank Zappa's live album Zappa in New York.

After a stint co-leading the all-star group Steps Ahead with Mike Mainieri, Brecker finally recorded a solo album in 1987.

Click here for more.

Brecker died of leukemia, way too young, on the 13th. As with James Brown, I haven't really been much of a Michael Brecker fan over the years in terms of buying lots of albums, but I'd be deaf not to recognize his brilliance. Indeed, I was listening to him by way of Steely Dan, Zappa, Joni Mitchell, and Donald Fagen well before I knew who he was. I even saw his brother, also very talented, play once in New York as part of the Mingus Big Band. But it was his work with Steps Ahead that really blew me away. My older brother gave me one of their albums, Magnetic, for Christmas when I was a senior in high school back in 1985. Brecker's take on Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood," with the sax part played on an Electronic Wind Instrument, blew me away, sort of reinventing classy romance and sexuality for the eighties. Brecker's solo on the song "Trains," however, still strikes me as one of the most moving in all of jazz: he overdubbed himself, so it's essentially two solos playing at the same time, and the effect is a marvelous and overwhelming wall of sax power.

He was truly one of the greats, and should be spoken about when one discusses Coltrane and Parker. If he had played in an earlier era, you'd probably have already heard of him.

Here is a video clip of a live performance of "In a Sentimental Mood."

Here is a video clip of a live performance of "Trains." The solo isn't as good as the record, but it's still worth checking out.

Farewell Michael Brecker.



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FUCK DA EAGLES

This really cracked me up. From the Hartford Courant columnist Dennis Horgan's blog, courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Especially considering the dust their "news" channel kicked up during the Janet Jackson affair, and that this was no "live television oopsie daisy" -- it was tape playback of crowd reaction...

Click here for more text, pics, and video.

During the Saints game on Saturday, there was a quick moment when I blinked, squinted, and then rubbed my eyes: the screen flashed on a young bleach blond babe wearing a cropped black tee shirt that said in gold letters, "FUCK DA EAGLES." I was like, did I just see what I thought I saw? Only during a telephone conversation later with someone who had also watched the game did I manage to confirm the live broadcast obscenity. And, now, thanks to our good friend the internet, I'm able to show you exactly what I saw:



I just love the technology of our era!

Anyway, I personally loved this. I mean, sure, it reeks of Howard Stern style faux rebellion and all, but this was authentic and real--the girl appears to have no idea that she made national television; I'm sure she found out later. I especially love this right now because of how the FCC has tightened up on indecency since the bogus outcry over Janet Jackson's nipple at the Superbowl a few years back. Backing down isn't the thing to do now. TV should go balls-to-the-walls in defiance. But was this really defiance? Horgan seems to think so, but at the time it looked to me like the director, who had final say over putting the shot on air, was just wanting to get a babe onscreen and didn't really read what her shirt said. That is, I think it was a screw up, and a pretty major one at that. But, hey, I'll take my rebellion where I can get it.

Hee hee. Fox is going to be in trouble.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FORTY YEARS AGO MLK KNEW
WHY WE MAKE WAR TODAY

From American Rhetoric, an excerpt from Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech:

This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

And

We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

And

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

Click here for the rest--you can listen to streaming audio of the speech there, too.

Some things will never change. It is obvious today, just as it was to Dr. King in 1967, that the United States wage war for business and nothing else. All the fancy rhetoric that taps deeply into American values, greatly twisting them, about "freedom" and "democracy" is just a bunch of bullshit cover. We send our troops overseas in order to make the world safe for corporations to do business abroad.

Despite all those platitudes about freedom, the greatest American moral value is wealth, which drives everything. King was keenly aware that ending American racism, the crusade for which he is most well known, was inextricably tied to ending American materialism. US state sponsored violence and oppression both here and elsewhere is always about keeping a preferred order of power, but what that order of power most wants is to make money, to do business in as reckless a way as possible, on the cheap: anything threatening that order is necessarily a threat to doing business and maximizing profit, and vice versa. Consequently, ending materialism also means ending war. Which also allows for the ending of racism, which has always been driven by economic concerns.

It's all part of the same phenomenon. King knew well that the worst social ills of our era are different manifestations of the same problem, greed.

Think about that this Martin Luther King day.



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
WHO DAT? N.O. SAINTS GO MARCHING IN
TO THE NFC TITLE GAME FOR FIRST TIME

From the AP via ESPN:

Deuce McAllister and rookie sensation Reggie Bush gave this battered city a reason to throw itself a party, carrying the New Orleans Saints where they've never been before -- one game from the Super Bowl.

To constant chants of "DEUCE!" or "REG-GIE! REG-GIE!" the Saints used an assortment of spectacular plays to beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-24.

And

It was the veteran McAllister with his two touchdowns and team playoff mark of 143 yards rushing, and the rookie Bush with his collection of magnificent moves, that made the difference in the raucous Superdome.

"It's my first opportunity to be in the playoffs, I didn't want to be one and out," McAllister said. "I didn't want to say, 'If I had done this or prepared differently, we would have been successful.'

"It's just the determination of this team and this city -- to give them everything we have."

Click here for the rest.

The article notes how the victory celebration after the game included live jazz, which was played in the traditional New Orleans style, I'm sure. Of course, jazz is entirely appropriate for the Saints because New Orleans is the birthplace of the musical form, my favorite, as Real Art readers know. But it is also appropriate because the Saints are headed to Chicago to play the Bears: starting in the 1920s, after the forced closing of the city's red light district known as Storyville, which necessarily included a collapse of the job market for jazz players, many musicians hopped on river boats and headed up the Mississippi looking for work, which took them first to Kansas City, and then to Chicago, where Big Easy style jazz quickly dominated the city, and, from there, the entire nation.

That the Saints are playing against Chicago, in Chicago, is a very good omen indeed.

Beyond that, everybody here in Baton Rouge seems really excited. I hear from friends in New Orleans that the Crescent City is really, really excited. And this state fucking deserves it. Not only have the Saints been more disappointing over the years than my hometown's former team, the Oilers (yes, yes, and now the Texans too), but Louisiana is still recovering from the twin battering rams known as Katrina and Rita. We need some good shit here; that's for sure. This win fits the bill quite nicely.

On a more personal note, because as far as football strategy goes my preference is the old-school smashmouth "three yards and a cloud of dust" approach, I'm extraordinarily happy to see the Saints having so much success running the ball. Man, Bush is great and all, but McAllister really reminds me of Earl Campbell, the great former Oiler and one-time Saint. Did you see the Deuce moving all those dogpiles downfield with him? That's football!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

House GOP Shows Its Fractiousness In the Minority

From the Washington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

House Republican leaders, who confidently predicted they would drive a wedge through the new Democratic majority, have found their own party splintering, with Republican lawmakers siding with Democrats in droves on the House's opening legislative blitz.

Freed from the pressures of being the majority and from the heavy hand of former leaders including retired representative Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), many back-bench Republicans are showing themselves to be more moderate than their conservative leadership and increasingly mindful of shifting voter sentiment. The closest vote last week -- Friday's push to require the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare -- pulled 24 Republicans. The Democrats' homeland security bill attracted 68 Republicans, the minimum wage increase 82.

Click here for more.

As amusing as these GOP turncoats are, this report leads me to a couple of decidedly dark conclusions.

First, if these moderate Republicans now feel free to vote as they feel they should, it strongly suggests that what liberals have been saying for years is true: the country is simply not as conservative as Republican leaders and the mainstream media have insisted repeatedly. That's a good thing, but if that's the case, it seems pretty clear that it's fairly easy to create the perception that the nation tilts in a given political direction, which, for all practical purposes, is almost as beneficial to such illusion-makers as if it were actually true--I think it's a no-brainer that such a perception pushes politicians and corporate news organizations to behave as though the myth were reality, which only aids the people pushing the myth.

Second, what the fuck kind of people blow with the political winds? That is, it is frightening indeed that politicians, outside of hard nosed political compromise, without which no legislation would ever be passed, would ever vote for something in which they don't believe. Democrats are exactly the same as Republicans in this respect: they're far more into being reelected than into principle. In other words, I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of the political class is unprincipled.

But I guess we already knew that.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

THE JACKSONS' "ENJOY YOURSELF"

From Wikipedia:

"Enjoy Yourself" was a hit recording for The Jacksons when it was released in 1976.

It was the first non-Motown single for the group since they departed from the label earlier that year. The song, a joyful production by legendary Philadelphia producers Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff, it was the former Motown group's first venture into Philly soul.

With the musical accompaniment by MFSB, lead singer Michael Jackson, now 18, gives the song a joyful jolt, especially during the breakdown when he yells "You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!"

Click here for more. (It's a pretty brief entry, but there are the usual billion always interesting Wikipedia hyperlinks to check out)

So, for some reason, I've been hearing this song quite a bit over the last couple of years. I mean, I don't listen to commercial radio at all these days, except for the always wacky Coast to Coast show, so it's not like some Clear Channel oldies programmer has decided this is what the masses need to hear. Generally, I've been listening to streaming non-commercial stuff over the internet, but those are usually programmed locally. I have no idea why this has been revived by DJs but it's definitely to my benefit. It's an incredible tune, and I remember it from when it was first released when I was eight. It's also pretty nice to flash back to an era when Michael wasn't so disturbingly weird.

Of course, I've dug up a live Youtube performance of the song for you, from the Jacksons' short lived variety show in 1977. Their performance is as good as the song. It's easy to forget what incredible showmen the Jacksons were back in the day--their dance moves are simple, but incredibly effective, and the vocal work is as tight as anything I've ever heard.

That's why you should go check it out right now.

I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself.



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Some SMU faculty members don't want Bush library

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Negotiations to build George W. Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University have divided the campus, pitting the administration and some alumni against liberal-leaning faculty members who say the project would be an embarrassment to the school.

Some professors have complained that the combined library, museum and think tank would celebrate a presidency that unnecessarily took the country into a war.

The fear is that the library "will continue to espouse the philosophy and practice of the Bush administration, which has seriously divided our nation and has brought the ire of other countries," said William McElvaney, a retired professor at SMU's theology school and co-author a November opinion piece in the campus newspaper titled The George W. Bush Library: Asset or Albatross?

Click here for the rest.

As amusing as this controversy is, it fully illustrates one of the things about liberals that really bugs me. That is, they're letting their political passion get in the way of their thinking. Whatever one thinks about Bush, and Real Art readers fully know that I think he's the Devil, his Presidential library will be an invaluable academic resource. Sure, the place is probably going to try to deify our wanker-in-chief, and the think tank is most likely going to be another right-wing blowjob factory, just like every other conservative think tank. But so what? Like the Vietnam era over which President Johnson presided, these are fascinating times; the LBJ library in Austin, also protested, as the article observes, when it opened in 1971, has been over the years a treasure trove of research material for constructing a real understanding of exactly how things went so badly back in the 60s. The Bush library will surely do the same thing for us in the long run. And, bloody hell, placing a conservative think tank so close to true academia strikes me as having great potential for side-splitting hysterics and hilarity--the reason conservatives have resorted to think tanks over the years is because their views don't hold up too well when subjected to bona fide intellectual criticism, which is also why there aren't too many conservative university professors. One hopes that these liberal SMU profs would avail themselves of this priceless opportunity to take down such light-weight conservative "intellectuals" in their midst, if only for amusing sport, if not out of a sense of academic duty.

In the end, a Presidential library is simply a library, and it's damned foolish to allow political anger to get in the way of knowledge and inquiry. Goddamned lefties need to shut their fucking mouths and get back to work.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Sammy



Paz



Frankie



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

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Dallas-based pizza chain under fire for taking pesos

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A pizza chain has been hit with death threats and hate mail after offering to accept Mexican pesos, becoming another flashpoint in the nation's debate over immigrants.

"This is the United States of America, not the United States of Mexico," one e-mail read. "Quit catering to the damn illegal Mexicans," demanded another.

Dallas-based Pizza Patron said it was not trying to inject itself into a larger political debate about illegal immigration when it posted signs this week saying "Aceptamos pesos" — or "We accept pesos" — at its 59 stores across Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Pizza Patron spokesman Andy Gamm said the company was just trying to sell more pizza to its customers, 60 percent of whom are Hispanic.

Click here for the rest.

Oh, for crying out loud! People are just fucking nuts on this illegal immigrant shit. Look, this company can do this. There are no laws against it, and in no way can this be construed as any kind of threat to the United States or the American way of life, whatever that is. Christ, I'm getting really sick of these xenophobic morons pulling out of their asses lunatic rules for how people are supposed to be American: there is no one way to be an American! If there is any one culturally unifying tenet in this country, it is the melding of the various cultures that have found outposts here--generally, these racist xenophobes push some kind of Anglo heritage as being the only acceptable form of cultural expression, but, obviously, such a stance is blatantly unAmerican, if such a thing even really exists.

And now, I'm hungry for some Mexican pizza! It's funny: only the US could give birth to such culturally hybridized food. Fucking racist assholes.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



Kirk!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

US CASUALTIES TO SKYROCKET

From Reuters:

Bush Iraq plan has many risks, no guarantees

Advocates of the boost pin much of their hopes on the fact that U.S. forces will now hold areas of Baghdad once they have been cleared of insurgents and militia fighters. This, they say, will be a significant change.

"The proof of the pudding is in the holding," said Tom Donnelly, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, who favors an increase in U.S. forces.

Previous operations failed because U.S. and Iraqi forces did not have enough troops to hold areas after clearing them of enemy fighters, U.S. officials have said.

Donnelly said he expected the U.S. casualty rate to rise at least initially after the new strategy is adopted but it could decline after a month to six weeks if operations succeeded.

Click here for more.

I heard a little bit more about this on Nightline a little while ago. The plan for holding these Baghdad neighborhoods involves creating "mini-camps," outside of the so-called Green Zone, which essentially amount to police sub-stations. That is, Bush's marvelous plan for taking out the insurgents in Iraq's capitol city permanently is to paint big huge targets on the chests of our soldiers and marines. They're going to be sitting ducks out there, completely at the mercy of guerilla fighters who blend into the local population, and can strike brutally without warning.

This is fucking stupid and Bush is a heinous asshole. Get ready for lots of flag draped coffins.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FOX NEWS: TED KENNEDY A "HOSTILE ENEMY"

From Crooks and Liars:

Seguing to Kennedy's speech to the National Press Club, Carlson said, "You talk about the hostile enemy, obviously being Iraq, but hostile enemies right here on the home front. Yesterday Senator Ted Kennedy, proposing that any kind of a troop surge should mean that there should be congressional approval of that…."Bartlett responded that the administration considered Kennedy a long-time critic of the war, but not a hostile enemy.

Click here for video, and for a link to a longer article.

I don't often post on Fox News blather these days because there's just so damned much of it. I mean, obviously, Fox News isn't really a news network in any way that a reasonable person would understand; it's quite clearly a right-wing propaganda organ, and one could, and many have, devoted entire blogs to debunking their bullshit. Of course, every now and then, Fox goes waaay over the top, by even their low standards. This is one of those times: Kennedy, whether you like him and his politics or not, is a sitting US Senator, with a very long and distinguished record. Calling him a "hostile enemy" is so obviously wrong that I imagine he could sue for libel and win if he wanted to. How on earth could anybody buy that "fair and balanced" line these days is beyond me.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Carter, Clinton back moderate Baptists

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

With the help of former President Carter, Baptists who have distanced themselves from the conservative Southern Baptist Convention announced plans Tuesday for a major meeting that aims to improve the Baptist image and broaden its agenda.

Carter, who left the Southern Baptists in 2000 after the denomination came under conservative control, and former President Bill Clinton, also a Baptist, joined leaders of about 40 Baptist groups in making the announcement at The Carter Center.

"Our goal is to have a major demonstration of harmony and a common commitment to personifying and to accomplish the goals that Jesus Christ expressed," Carter said.

And

The announcement Tuesday is the latest chapter in fierce Baptist battles over how to interpret Scripture. Starting in 1979, Southern Baptists who believe the Bible is without error took leadership of the convention, which now claims 16.4 million members. The denomination became a leading voice opposing gay marriage and abortion, and took stands on many other public policy issues.

Click here for more.

You know, one thing that hardcore atheists don't seem to understand about religion is that it's not simply about theology or belief in a supreme being: religion is also about culture and identity. That's probably one of the bigger reasons why I'm so interested in the Southern Baptists after all these years as a non-Christian. I've rejected their theology, but in many ways I still like them as people. I mean, on the whole, they're good folk; if it weren't for their leadership being so heavily infiltrated by conservative literalist weirdos, they really wouldn't be so bad. To this day, on an individual level, I continue to get along with Southern Baptists exceedingly well, which makes sense, because they're who I come from. Their culture is still a big part of who I am. That's why I strongly endorse Carter and Clinton's Baptist reform movement. Anything to save all these good people from the right-wing psychos that control them.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
A FEW NOTES ON THE END OF
THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Florida's No. 1 in a landslide, with no lobbying necessary

The Gators finished atop The Associated Press Top 25 after upsetting Ohio State 41-14 in the BCS national championship game Monday night, a matchup Florida lobbied hard for late in the regular season when it looked as if the Gators would be left out.

The Buckeyes had been No. 1 since August and were looking to become the third team to hold the top spot in the media poll from preseason through the bowls. Florida State was the first in 1999 and Southern California did it in 2004.

Instead, Ohio State finished No. 2. LSU, Southern California and Boise State rounded out the top five.

And

The SEC champion Gators were joined in the Top 25 by five other league rivals, and no other conference finished with more in the top 25.

Oklahoma, which lost a 43-42 overtime classic to Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, finished 11th. No. 12 Rutgers was followed by Texas, California, Arkansas and BYU.

Click here for the rest.

*First off, congrats to Florida. After what struck me at the time as an unconvincing win over LSU, a loss to Auburn, and some close calls over the course of the season, I didn't really think they had it in them. But, boy howdy, they sure did. I mean, by some standards it was a pretty boring championship game--the Gators came out with both jaws chomping and never let off the pressure, a total rout of Ohio State. But then, watching the mighty Buckeyes taken down like so much WAC trash had the allure of a dramatic car crash; I just couldn't look away. I was actually greatly entertained.

*My current school, LSU, ended up in the number three slot, which is cool, but my personal take is that Ohio State lost so badly that the Tigers ought to be ranked number two. There's probably a reason I don't get a vote on all this.

*The SEC got six teams to finish in the top 25? Holy shit! This really is the toughest conference in the country. The Big 12 really needs to get its shit together, and speaking of the Big 12, it's nice to see that Texas ended up with an okay season-end rating, especially after their back to back losses to K-State and Texas A&M to round out the season. But did Oklahoma really have to be ranked higher? I mean, the Longhorns did beat them, after all.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

MY FAVORITE ANIMATED SHORT: BEGONE DULL CARE

I saw this years ago in a film theory course I took at Texas. It immediately blew me away. Of course, I'm a sucker for a cool jazz soundtrack, but the images are thoroughly in the modern art style I love so much, which makes sense because it was made in 1949, and the animation technique is like nothing I've ever seen, before or since: the animator, Norman McLaren, literally painted on blank film stock, and scratched lines into the film's emulsion, which created, when projected, an utterly unique look. But enough of my yammering. Go check it out right now--it's pretty short, so it won't take away much of your valuable day; actually, I think the video cuts out a bit early, but it's still well worth viewing.

Click here for Begone Dull Care.

But you'd better hurry. I was going to run this last fall when I first found it on Youtube, but within a week or so of my discovery, it had been pulled for violating the "Youtube user agreement." Apparently, somebody doesn't like to take "no" for an answer, so it's back up, but who knows for how long?


A screen capture from Norman McLaren's Begone Dull Care

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

NEW PAUL KRUGMAN

Ever since the New York Times started putting Paul Krugman essays behind a pay-per-view firewall, it's been extraordinarly difficult to post his work for my bloggy response. There was one site for a while there that was just reposting them in their entirety, and I was able to carry on with my always fun Krugman blogging, but they got caught, and were issued a cease-and-desist order. Finally, I've found somebody else who seems to be doing almost the same thing, with, maybe, only a couple of deletions to make it all intellectual-property safe.

Anyway, without any further ado, from the New York Times via Economist's View, the latest Paul Krugman essay:

Quagmire of the Vanities

The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.

Senator Joseph Biden ... thinks they’re cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be “the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof.”

Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize ... for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they’re delusional. Mr. Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administration’s unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one’s losses — the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even.

And

Mr. Bush is expected to announce his plan for escalation in the next few days. According to the BBC, the theme of his speech will be “sacrifice.” But sacrifice for what? Not for the national interest, which would be best served by withdrawing before the strain of the war breaks our ground forces. No, Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities — a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won’t admit that they were wrong.

Click here for the rest.

You know, at this point I think it's safe to say that pretty much nobody really knows why we're still in Iraq. I mean, okay, the point of view that says we can't leave the Iraqis high and dry isn't unreasonable, but I don't think anybody has any idea of how the US military is going to make things better--at best, we're only keeping things from getting worse, and they're pretty bad as it is; at worst, our presence, and our support for the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi puppet government, is actually throwing gasoline on the fire. But as far as what's in the minds of Bush and Cheney, your guess is as good as mine. Is it politics? Does Rove still think there's mileage in the "war president" schtick? Is it, like Krugman asserts, simply ego? That they just can't imagine that they're wrong?

Personally, I still like the "control the spigot" theory that the invasion was a way of transmuting our vast military power into global economic leverage by taking control of the oil markets before our own financial strength gives out. The five massive, expensive, and permanent bases we're currently constructing in Iraq strongly suggest that may be the case, that we're there for the long haul whether we like it or not. On the other hand, the ongoing carnage over there, the absolute chaos in which Iraq is mired, suggests that Bush and Cheney have no idea what they're doing.

We probably won't really know what's going on for at least a decade after Bush is out of office, and maybe not until after he's dead.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

SO, WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH THAT HOUSING BUBBLE?

From ZNet, economist Mark Weisbrot on the ramifications of the recently burst housing bubble:

Economy Looks Bad for 2007

The timing of any downturn is not easy to predict. But a recession is likely, because of the enormity of the housing bubble and the impact of its collapse. Recall that our last recession (in 2001) was caused by the bursting of a stock market bubble of about $7 trillion. The housing bubble is comparable in size (about $5 trillion at peak) and the bubble wealth is much more widely distributed: most Americans still have most of their assets in housing and little or nothing in stocks.

As this housing wealth disappears, people cut spending. We have already seen an enormous drop in the amount that people borrow on their homes, from $600 billion last year to about $350 billion for 2006. It was this borrowing, enabled by soaring house prices that allowed people to borrow more against the value of their homes, that fuelled the U.S. economic recovery since 2001.

Housing construction and sales are also a big sector of the economy, currently about 6 percent of GDP. If that falls 30-40 percent, as it has in previous downturns, that's a drop of about 2 percent of GDP.

The recession caused by the stock market bubble bursting, which lasted only from March to November of 2001, would have been a lot worse if not for the enormous demand created by the housing bubble. So what will rescue the U.S. economy from the collapse of the housing bubble?

Click here for more.

The article talks about much more than the housing sector and its influence over the overall US economy, and it really adds to this sneaking suspicion I've had for the last few years that our economy is increasingly looking like a big huge pyramid scheme. Now I couldn't hang long in any real argument about this, but it just strikes me, what with outsourcing virtually all of our manufacturing overseas, our federal budget deficit being financed by foreign banks, the rapidly shrinking value of the dollar relative to other currencies, our negative savings rate, our outrageously high federal debt, not to mention our outrageously high consumer debt, mostly driven by credit cards, and a whole host of other problems, that the people who control big money in this country are just shifting it all around hoping to score big without actually creating anything of value. And like all pyramid schemes, it seems that the liklihood is high that the whole shebang is going to come crashing in on itself sooner or later. I mean, I know that there are lots of serious economic arguments for each of these areas I've mentioned as to why things aren't so bad.

But it sure does sound like we're pushing our luck, hardcore, in pretty much every aspect of the economy. Surely, there's some sort of danger, if only for that.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

NOW, CAN CONGRESS REALLY DO NOTHING ABOUT IRAQ?

From the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet Democratic Senator and new chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden on why he thinks Congressional control over military budgets doesn't amount to much:

"You can't go in like a Tinkertoy and play around and say you can't spend the money on this piece and this piece," Mr. Biden said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "He'll be able to keep the troops there forever, constitutionally, if he wants to."

Click here for more, including a link to the Washington Post, from which the quote comes.

As big of a dick as Biden is, he's got a point: the White House has already shown repeatedly that it is completely willing to do whatever it wants in spite of Congressional oversight, although I don't know if that's what Biden meant when he said "constitutionally." At any rate, If money is pulled from the Iraq war budget, the Oval Office will simply drain it from some other budget, whether it's legal or not to do so. However, I can personally think of one Constitutional option for getting Bush out of Iraq if Congress is willing to do it. Impeach 'em, Bush and Cheney both. At this point, there are mountains of evidence for numerous high crimes performed by the executive branch, and they're losing their supporters, and by that I mean bigtime, wealthy, powerful establishment supporters, hand over fist. It's not a "slam dunk," I know, but, if successful, it'll get us out of this damned war, if anything.

Are the Democrats really serious about ending the occupation? I guess we'll see.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

House vote gives more scrutiny to pet projects

From the New York Times via the Houston Chronicle:

The House voted Friday to pull the shadowy tradition of congressional earmarking into the daylight, requiring lawmakers to attach their names to the pet items they slip into spending or tax bills and certify that they have no financial interest in the provisions.

More than any of several ethics rules adopted by the House this week, the earmark measure could prevent the kind of corruption that led to several big scandals in recent years, including former Rep. Randall Cunningham's sale of earmarks to government contractors for cash, gifts and campaign contributions.

The cost of congressional earmarks has tripled in the last 12 years, to more than $64 billion annually. Some lawmakers treated their share of that money as personal accounts to dole out to constituents or, in many cases, campaign contributors.

And

"I'm pleased that Democrat leaders agree with Republicans that earmark reform is a critical issue," said Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader.

Click here for more.

Hmm. If Republicans think this is "a critical issue," then why did this kind of spending triple over the twelve years they ran Congress? Just something to think about.

Anyway, whether it's called "earmarking" or the more old-school "pork barrel spending," it's straight out of the corrupt former Louisiana governor Huey Long's political play book: spend taxpayer money so lavishly on your own constituentcy that reelection is assured. And it's bullshit. Not only does it give an unfair advantage to incumbents, not only does it amount to a somewhat sophisticated form of vote-buying, or more simply bribery, but it is also a tremendous waste of tax dollars, which is why it's so damned funny that the practice got so wild under the supposedly money-smart GOP. At any rate, despite the fact that the practice will probably continue in some other form, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Now, what I want to know is how long the Dems will be able to resist keeping their hands out of the cookie jar. I give 'em two years, tops.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

CASE STUDIES IN DEREGULATION INSANITY

From CounterPunch:

Ignoring statistics that said a high percentage of truck accidents were caused by tired truck drivers, the department acted on an industry study that said only 2% of accidents were the fault of tired truck drivers and more than 80% the fault of passenger car drivers. Among other things, the new regulations increased the maximum driving hours from 60 to 77 over 7 consecutive days and from 70 to 88 over 8 consecutive days while increasing the time off required to 10 hours from 8. This was the first increase in the number of hours drivers were permitted to work in 60 years. Regulators declined to require new drivers to undergo additional training as had been suggested by safety groups.

The administration says the new regulations have saved money for businesses and consumers making it cheaper for goods to be moved across country. Safety is also improved they explain. By lengthening the number of hours experienced drivers are permitted to work even though tired, fewer new and inexperienced drivers are needed.

Click here for more.

Of course, some federal business regulations really are absurd, overly counterproductive, and don't even really accomplish what they're designed to do. The free market fundamentalists would have us believe that all regulations are like this. Obviously, this is not the case--in its relentless quest to achieve ever higher profits business would steamroll playgrounds full of five-year-olds if it could get away with it; often, it does get away with it, metaphorically at least, like in third world corporate sweatshops. Given the great power of greed, society must necessarily establish rules for how business is done, or things could easily get out of hand. Actually, the regulatory environment has become so lax under twelve years of Republican rule that things are out of hand. Nonetheless, the free market fundamentalists continue to push and push, backed by billions in corporate cash.

Now, like I said, such a discussion as this can get sticky, if only because, sometimes, these people have a point. That's why it's extremely important to insist that their arguments in favor of a given area of deregulation be spelled out in excruciating detail. "Good for business" just isn't enough. They must explain exactly how it's good for business, and why that's better than the health, safety, and financial welfare of American citizens. Often, I think, that's all it takes to have their rhetoric exposed for the bullshit it is. I mean, just take a look at the deregulation "argument" in the second paragraph above. That's pretty weak, if you ask me.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

WITHOUT A HINT OF IRONY,
ROCK'S MOST ABSURD MOMENT

For years I've admired the work of keyboardist Rick Wakeman, mostly his stuff with the British art rock band Yes. After all, his solo on the Yes song "Roundabout" is one of the best in the classic rock canon. Of course, playing almost exclusively in the 70s art rock style is fraught with danger. That is, attempting to fuse elements of classical or serious composition and instrumentation with poetry and rock music is a lofty and pretentious venture in the first place--most, if not all, art rockers have fallen flat on their highfalutin faces more than once. I recently found that Rick Wakeman once took such a fall in such a grand way that all I could do was stare in confusion, wondering how he could be such a moron.

A week or so ago over at Eschaton, I learned about a little feature Atrios does called "The Youtube Wars." Every now and then he, and some of his bigtime blogger pals, will try to outdo each other by finding and posting the worst videos available on the internet video site. Atrios won this most recent bout hands down. He posted four clips from Rick Wakeman's Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which is pretentious enough by itself, as an album, but these performances are from a live show in 1975. In an ice skating rink. And while the band played, the events were dramatized by ice skaters wearing Arthurian costumes. I'm not joking, and there doesn't seem to be one lick of irony about it all from Wakeman. He was dead serious, which is kind of a drag because it's really one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It is to rock music what Plan 9 from Outer Space is to film.

Here, check it out.

Stylistically, Myths and Legends on ice is indistinguishable from pretty much anything ever done by the fictional satire band Spinal Tap. No really, if anything, Spinal Tap is actually less absurd. I mean, compare what you just saw with this clip from This Is Spinal Tap, a live performance of the song "Stonehenge." See what I mean? You just can't write humor like Myths and Legends; it has to simply happen, like a man falling on a banana peel, which is probably the best metaphor I can think of to describe Wakeman's ice rink travesty: it's like a man falling on a banana peel in real life. You see it, and you're like, "wait, did I just actually see that?"


Rick Wakeman


Spinal Tap

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil and Paz



Sammy and Frankie



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

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FEDS TO OPEN YOUR MAIL
W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

From the New York Daily News courtesy of AlterNet:

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

And

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

Click here for the rest.

Democratic Congress or Republican Congress, it's full steam ahead for the Bush White House. Of course, this is an absolute outrage, and an unconstitutional violation of privacy at face value, but at the moment, I'm more concerned with the other unconstitutional behavior that this act represents: Bush continues to cut away at the separation of powers between the three branches of the federal government, thereby expanding the Oval Office's powers well beyond anything we've seen since King George III ruled the colonies.

This is yet another, in a series of hundreds, of the President's "signing statements," bullshit White House legalese designed to give some legal cover for Oval Office defiance of Congressional authority. That is, Bush signs virtually every bill that comes across his desk, but while doing it, he often states that his interpretation of the law is such that, in executing it, he'll do the exact opposite of what it says. Group this with all the secrecy, all the domestic spying, all the attacks on his own watch dog agencies, all the appointments of ideological bastards to run regulatory agencies, and on and on, and it's achingly obvious that Bush, or more likely Cheney, is trying to turn the Presidency into some kind of super executive branch, beholden to no law or other branch of government. In other words, a king, or a dictator.

Just because you've got seventy five cable channels and a wide screen TV doesn't mean things aren't going to hell.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Russell outduels Brady in LSU's sweet win over Notre Dame

From the AP via ESPN:

Keiland Williams ran for a career-high 107 yards and Justin Vincent added 71, grinding time off the clock in the second half as No. 4 LSU sealed a 41-14 victory over the 11th-ranked Fighting Irish in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on Wednesday night.

Going with a running back-by-committee, the Tigers rushed for 245 yards -- their second-highest total of the season behind the 268 yards they piled up against Kentucky. That kept star quarterback Brady Quinn and the Irish offense off the field.

"We wanted to run the football and that's what we did, and ate the clock," LSU coach Les Miles said. "It was because of the ability to take what the defense gave us."

Click here for the rest.

Well, this was a pretty good game...for the first half. Then the Tigers made potato soup out of the Fighting Irish, which was enjoyable, if only because I go to LSU, but also because I still haven't recovered from Texas losing to Notre Dame in Austin back in 1995. I'll take this as my revenge. Anyway, after this trouncing in the Sugar Bowl, it really does look like if a few plays and calls had gone the other way against Auburn and Florida, it would be LSU taking on the Buckeyes for the national title, and not the Gators--indeed, I saw a few Florida games this past season, and I don't think they're all that great; I expect Ohio State to rout them as badly as LSU beat those South Bend Catholic boys. If Jamarcus Russell decides to come back for his senior year, I expect my Tigers to easily be ranked number one or two at the beginning of the season.

That brings me to the sports radio assholes here in Baton Rouge. As far as I know, many of them continue to hate LSU head coach Les Miles. Perhaps I don't know enough about football, but I'm continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt myself: I mean, 11-2 ain't that shabby. But my older brother, Chris, weighed in on the controversy over Christmas, and he tends to agree with the radio guys. He tells me that the sports radio guys in Austin, which is where he lives, have been making fun of Miles, calling him a hack, or something to that effect, since his days at Oklahoma State. The impression is that former LSU coach Nick Saban, now fomer Miami Dolphins and current Alabama Crimson Tide coach, recruited all the great talent, and Miles is simply riding on their success, kind of like Fred Akers after Darrell Royal at Texas years ago. If that's true, Miles should do okay for the next few years, but, say, five or six years from now, look for 6-5 seasons and the like. I mean, I don't really think so, but I guess we'll see.

Anyway, Geaux Tigers!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

First Muslim elected to Congress to use
Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, will use a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson during his ceremonial swearing-in Thursday.

The chief of the Library of Congress' rare book and special collections division, Mark Dimunation, will walk the Quran across the street to the Capitol and then walk it back after the ceremony.

And

Some critics have argued that only a Bible should be used for the swearing-in. Last month, Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., warned that unless immigration is tightened, "many more Muslims" will be elected and follow Ellison's lead.

Click here for the rest.

The flap over Ellison using the Koran instead of the Bible would have been my nomination for dumbest controversy of the year except that it was beaten by the flap over Barak Obama's Islamic name. Nonetheless, it runs a close second, definitely worth mentioning in the same breath because of the similarity between the two "controversies." Both are right-wing smear jobs designed to capitalize on American xenophobia and Christian intolerance. Both are decidedly unAmerican because they sow support for applying a religious test to US public officials, which would stand in direct violation of Article Six of the Constitution. In short, both are just more of the same old conservative bullshit rhetoric we've been forced to endure since 9/11.

Anyway, Ellison's response here, using a Koran once owned by the founding father who coined the phrase "wall of separation between church and state," is a pretty brilliant move, politically speaking. Great symbolism, the kind of thing for which Democrats are usually not known.

And, you know, doesn't it make more sense for a Muslim to swear on the Koran instead of the Bible? For a non-Christian, an oath on the Bible is simply a promise; swearing on one's own holy book, however, packs a bit more punch, I'd imagine.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

NOW I'M REALLY PUSHING FORTY!
Last Holiday of the Season: Ron's Birthday

I'm thirty nine today. Unlike lots of people I know around my age, birthdays don't really bug me that much, but then, maybe you should ask me about that next year when I turn forty. Anyway, it's been calm as usual on my birthday, given that the whole country is continuing to reestablish its routine after the end of the Christmas/New Year's Axis--frankly, after all the hooplah, I'm in no mood to party down, myself. That doesn't mean there's no reason to experience something low key and quiet, however, because today is the last holiday of the season, Ron's Birthday. I know, I know, as my brother told me last January, some people see Elvis' birthday, January eighth, as the last holiday of the season, but how can such a day not stand on its own? Yeah, that's right, my birthday has got to be the finale.

I did well in terms of gifts too. Check this out. And this, too. Now I own, all the original Trek stuff; maybe I'll watch some after the Sugar Bowl, LSU versus Notre Dame at the Superdome in New Orleans, tonight on TV.

Geaux Tigers! Happy birthday me!



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
HERE'S WHY I LOVE FOOTBALL!!!

From the AP via ESPN:

Instant classic: Boise State's trick
plays repel OU's miraculous rally

The magic came on a stunning 50-yard "hook-and-ladder" touchdown play on fourth-and-18 in the final seconds of regulation. Zabransky hit Drisan James at Oklahoma's 35, and James pitched the ball to Jerard Rabb, who raced into the end zone with 7 seconds to play.

And

Oklahoma's Adrian Peterson opened the overtime with a 25-yard touchdown run. It may have been the final college play for Peterson, who ran for 77 yards and two touchdowns in his first game since breaking his left collarbone Oct. 14.

The Broncos answered with Vinny Perretta's fourth-down touchdown pass to Derek Schouman. With Boise State down by a point, Petersen decided to go for the victory.

On the decisive play, Zabransky looked at three wide receivers to his right, then, with his best Statue of Liberty impression, handed the ball behind his back to tailback Ian Johnson, who raced untouched into the end zone.

Click here for the rest.

Ordinarily, I only post on sporting events with which I feel some personal connection, like with UT or LSU. But, man, this game was something else. Boise State's goose was cooked, down by seven, some fifteen seconds left on the clock, and fifty yards out. On fourth and eighteen. The lateral just absolutely blew my mind. When Rabb crossed the goal line, "Holy shit!" popped involuntarily out of my mouth. Then the gutsy call in overtime to go for two, and the win, when they didn't have to. Ballsy, very ballsy. But, fuck man, they ran a freakin' statue of liberty play to do it!!!! I have never seen anybody run a statue of liberty play ever. Okay, I take that back: I think there's an Our Gang film short from the 1930s that featured the play, but then, that's fiction, and comedy at that.

But it wasn't all about Boise State's trickery either. OU's miraculous comeback from eighteen points down in the middle of the third quarter was something else, too. They even seemingly clinched a victory when they intercepted and ran it back for a TD with only a minute left in the game. That's what made Boise State's comeback all the more incredible.

This wasn't the best game I've ever seen - Texas beating USC in last year's Rose Bowl gets that honor - but it may very well be the second best game I've ever seen. Absolutely amazing.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

ON SADDAM'S EXECUTION

From the Progressive:

Amnesty International cited “the grave nature of the flaws,” which included the following:

“The court failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses and defense lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course of the trial,” it said. “Saddam Hussein was also denied access to legal counsel for the first year after his arrest, and complaints by his lawyers throughout the trial relating to the proceedings do not appear to have been adequately answered by the tribunal.”

Nor were they adequately answered by the appeals court.

“The execution appeared a foregone conclusion, once the original verdict was pronounced, with the Appeals Court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process,” said Smart.

Click here for the rest.

Yes to all the above, and more, if you click through to the article. While it's pretty damned obvious that Saddam was a brutal dictator, it is a deeply ingrained American value that even the most heinous figures deserve a fair day in court--indeed, this goes back, at least, to when founding father John Adams bravely risked a damaged reputation to defend the British soldiers who fired into the crowd during the Boston Massacre. That Hussein did not receive a fair trial is as plain and clear as the fact that he was guilty. I mean, he wasn't even allowed to present his best defense, that the vast majority of his crimes against humanity were given the green light by the US State Department. Hell, we even gave him more weapons to do it better. Furthermore, the fact that no mistrial was declared, despite that three of his lawyers were murdered during the trial, is a miscarriage of justice in and of itself.

I'm not absolutely sure what all this means, or what the eventual ramifications for Iraq will be, but, given that the US government was calling the shots all the way through, I'm pretty certain that it can't be good. For that matter, if our government can make a joke-trial overseas, you can bet your booty that they can the same thing here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Survey: Bad bosses common, problematic

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

"They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss," said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in the College of Business at Florida State University, who joined with two doctoral students at the school to survey more than 700 people working in a variety of jobs about how their bosses treat them.

"No abuse should be taken lightly, especially in situations where it becomes a criminal act," said Hochwarter.

Employees stuck in an abusive relationship experienced more exhaustion, job tension, nervousness, depressed moods and mistrust, the researchers found. They found that a good working environment is often more important than pay, and that it's no coincidence that poor morale leads to lower production.

"They (employees) were less likely to take on additional tasks, such as working longer or on weekends, and were generally less satisfied with their job," the study found. "Also, employees were more likely to leave if involved in an abusive relationship than if dissatisfied with pay."

Click here for the rest.

This fits in very nicely with my own personal experience. I've had some pretty shitty jobs over the years, but the ones with good management were always better than the relatively less grueling jobs with shitty management. Treating your workers well is pretty much always good business, which is why it is, at first glance, somewhat surprising that such Dickensian management techniques continues to be so prevalent. But when you consider the fact that our public school system literally instills such behavior into Americans, it isn't so surprising at all. That is, our educational system is structurally based on the 19th century Prussian system, which was sold by reformers here in the US as being perfect for creating good, obedient industrial workers. A big part of that, of course, is getting people used to giving commands, in Prussian military style, as well as taking them. I've written at great length here at Real Art about how such an approach to education is utterly counter to most of the goals most people cite for American learning, such as critical thinking or active participation in our democracy. I've spent very little time, however, writing about how our educational system hurts commerce and business. Take this post as my first attempt to do so.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

DEFYING THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

From the business section of the New York Times courtesy of Ezra Klein courtesy of Eschaton:

Health Care Problem? Check the American Psyche

The economic case for a single-payer system is surprisingly strong. Start with what we already know. Countries with single-payer systems have long records of spending less on health care than the United States does. The United States spent an average of $6,102 a person on it in 2004, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while Canada spent $3,165 a person, France $3,159, Australia $3,120 and Britain just $2,508.

At the same time, life expectancy in the United States, a broad measure of health, was slightly lower than it was in those other countries in 2004, the latest year for which complete figures are available. And the United States had a higher rate of infant mortality.

And

Despite everything that is known about the economic benefits of a single-payer system, there’s one big stumbling block: many Americans don’t believe in it. They have heard horror stories from abroad, often spread by partisan advocates, focusing on worst-case examples. Such tales play upon the aversion of many Americans to government involvement in the economy.

Click here for the rest.

Health care aside as a specific issue for the moment, this is something that really frustrates me. As far as I can tell, most Americans who see themselves as having a layman's command of basic economic principles tend to be free market fundamentalists, which I see as simply being a function of how most of the pundit class tends to see economics. Consequently, discussions about the topic with such people tend to die pretty quickly when one starts talking outside this box of conventional wisdom--when you take a contrary point of view in such discussions, your opponents pretty automatically decide that you don't know what you're talking about.

This is a crying shame because the study of economics is waaay more sophisticated than the national conversation appears to understand. There are even some damned good criticisms of economics itself, from outside the field, but unless you accept the standard (often unproven) assumptions about how money and finance function, your opinion is D.O.A., and people just stop listening to you.

Case in point: this latest round of studies about single-payer. Even though it totally defies the free market fundamentalist version of the way the world works, there's just no real world information that truly refutes that single-payer is about twice as good as the inefficient, Frankenstein-like, insurance-driven system we have now. Actually, if you read the NYT article, it's not so difficult to understand why that's the case, but the "smart" Americans just can't seem to abandon their cherished, but flawed, knowledge of economic principles.

I have no idea what to do about this except, for now, to blame our authoritarian-driven public school system, which is far more concerned with instilling obedience into students than training them to criticize authoritative opinions.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$