FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
ONE OF MY TWO COLLEGES JUST WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

Unfortunately, it wasn't the one I preferred.

From the AP via ESPN:

Mitchell, Ochinko homer as LSU wins CWS championship

OMAHA, Neb. -- LSU's down cycle is over.

A program that two years ago wasn't good enough to qualify for its conference tournament is the best team in college baseball again.

The Tigers won their sixth national title Wednesday night, breaking open Game 3 of the College World Series finals with a five-run sixth inning that carried them to an 11-4 victory over Texas.

More here.

Okay, I was really really really happy when LSU won the national championship in college football a couple of years back. Because, you know, I got my master's degree from LSU, and I now count myself as a citizen in good standing of the Tiger nation. Geaux Tigers, and all that! But last night, even though the Tigers won a national championship, this time in baseball, I was a bit bummed.

Texas lost the national championship. And that's where my primary loyalty lies.

This was never supposed to happen. Texas plays in the Big 12; LSU plays in the SEC. They almost never face one another. Except under extraordinary circumstances. Like national championships. I mean, when I entered LSU back in '04, I had it all figured out: if Texas ever plays LSU, I'll have to support Texas, my first school, no problem.

But this was harsh. As with the first two games in the series, I was at work, and had to watch in bits and pieces at the bar when I could pull myself away from my tables. Here in NOLA, everybody was rooting for the Tigers, and I'm usually part of that rowdy mass. But not this time. And because I was one of only three Texans on the waitstaff, I had a target on my chest. People were giving me a lot of shit, even before the Tigers put it away in the sixth. I mean, friendly shit, but shit nonetheless. I kept saying, "I'm a Tiger, too," but nobody cared. And why would they?

You know, I would have been pissed if OU had beaten us. Same with A&M. But this is just a drag. I feel like I should be celebrating, but I also feel like we lost. At least when somebody around here tries to lord it over me I can always come back with "Hey, I fucking have a degree from LSU."

Geaux Tigers!


Mark Saltz/The Advocate

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

STAR TREK
THE GALILEO SEVEN

From Wikipedia:

"The Galileo Seven" is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is a first season episode #16, production #14, written by Oliver Crawford and directed by Robert Gist. It was broadcast by NBC on January 5, 1967.

Overview: Mr. Spock leads a scientific team aboard the Enterprise shuttlecraft Galileo on an ill-fated mission.

More here.

One of the all time greats. To me, anyway. I don't think that I've heard many Star Trek fans going on about this one the way they do about "Mirror, Mirror" or "City on the Edge of Forever," but if you really are a fan, this one has a lot to sink your teeth into. Most notably, it's a Spock episode, relegating Kirk to only a few brief scenes on the bridge while his first officer leads the away team. While I love Kirk, Spock definitely deserves his day as commander. And this one doesn't disappoint in that department. Spock becomes increasingly frustrated with the logical but ineffective decisions he makes, all the while hounded by his team for his lack of emotion--indeed, the friction between Doctor McCoy and Spock, always fun to watch, gets as hot as ever in this one. In the end, Spock resorts to a wild and irrational gamble, which he absolutely and wrongly insists is utterly logical, to save his team.

He is half human, after all.

Beyond the Spock showcase, "The Galileo Seven" has some generally fun Trek stuff. Red shirts get offed by science fiction caveman monsters. An African-American officer besides Uhura is prominently featured. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but this may be the first episode to feature a Star Fleet shuttle craft. And we can't forget the usage of a favorite Star Trek plot device, the meddling, arrogant presence on the bridge of a Star Fleet official who wants to fuck everything up.

Yep, this one's fucking great. Check it out:



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

"Suck on Our Yachts"

Matt Taibbi uses his razor wit to slice up Goldman Sach's non-apology apology for destroying the finance and credit markets, from AlterNet:

Let's be clear about what that meant. These crap/sham mortgages, a lot of them adjustable-rate deals with teaser rates that featured sudden rate hikes two or three years after closing, they would never have been possible had not someone devised a method for selling them off to secondary buyers. No local bank is going to keep millions of dollars worth of Alt-A mortgages on its books, because no sensible company lends out money to very risky customers and actually keeps those loans on its balance sheet.

So this system depended almost entirely on banks like Goldman finding ways to securitize these instruments, ie chop the mortgages up into little bits, repackage them as mortgage-backed securities like CDOs and CMOs, and sell them to unsuspecting customers on the secondary market, most of them large institutional buyers like pensions and insurance companies and workers' unions, many of them foreigners.

And

This isn't really commerce, but much more like organized crime: it was a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the economy that wouldn't have been possible without accomplices in the ratings agencies and regulators willing to turn a blind eye. Imagine a meat company that bred ten billion rats, fattened them on trash and sewage, ground their bodies into chuck, and then sold it all as grade-A ground beef to McDonald's and Burger King, right under the noses of the USDA: this is exactly the same thing, only with debt instead of food. We're eating it, they're counting the money.

More here.

So, as you may know, I really dig Taibbi because of his ability to make me laugh self-righteously while he skewers the powerful entities that fuck us over on a daily basis. But to type him as simply a funny guy is to miss the fact that his analysis is always dead on. I've compared him to Hunter S. Thompson, but in the most important ways he's more like I. F. Stone with a black sense of humor.

Case in point: Taibbi's assertion that the subprime mortgage crisis is less of a systemic failure of the banking and finance industries than it is the result of straight up fraud. That is, the crash resulted from what amounts to a criminal enterprise.

I mean, c'mon. I'm willing to believe that many of the players involved were innocent dupes, but some of these people had to know exactly what was going on. How can one make "mistakes" that result in triple-A security ratings for loans made to people who can't possibly pay them back? The way that Goldman Sachs is coming out of this smelling like roses, the way that so many of GS's alumni have managed the crisis from insider positions within both the Bush and Obama administrations, the way the Fed bailed out AIG, who owed GS hundreds of billions in insurance payouts for subprime losses, but not GS rival Lehmann Brothers, well, they call New Orleans corrupt, but the Big Easy's got nothing on these guys.

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently said of the relationship between bankers and Congress, "Frankly, they own the place." Meanwhile, President Obama offers financial "reform" that by and large allows to remain intact the same regulatory structure that was incapable of stopping this grand scale Mafia work in the first place.

Personally, I think we'd all be better off if John Gotti was running the country.

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

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
LSU rallies to topple Texas in 11th in Game 1 of CWS finals

From the AP via ESPN:

OMAHA, Neb. -- Mikie Mahtook singled in the winning run in the top of the 11th inning after DJ LeMahieu tied the game in the ninth, and LSU survived Texas' five home runs to beat the Longhorns 7-6 in Game 1 of the College World Series finals Monday night.

LSU (55-16) would win its sixth national title with a victory over the Longhorns (49-15-1) on Tuesday night.

And

Texas is the first team since LSU in 1998 to homer three times in an inning at the CWS.

More here.

So, as you may know, I hold alumnus status with both Texas and LSU, which means that either way, my team wins. Of course, the flip side to that is that either way my team loses. But who am I kidding? I spent much more time in Austin than I did in Baton Rouge. I've got burnt orange blood. Tonight, it felt like my team lost.

I didn't really get to sit down and enjoy the game because I had to work, but it was slow, so I spent a lot of time in the bar checking the score, watching a few at bats here and there. From what I could tell, I really would have enjoyed the game, at least until the eleventh inning. I mean, one thing is pretty clear: both the Tigers and the Longhorns deserve to be in the CWS finals. There was some kickass shit out there on the diamond tonight. And for a moment or two there in the top of the ninth, it looked like the 'Horns were going to pull it off. But no. The Tigers managed to be just a little bit better in the eleventh. Harsh.

Ordinarily, I'd say "geaux Tigers" at this point, but it just doesn't seem right, all things considered. Instead, I'll say "hook 'em 'Horns!" We can still pull it off.

UPDATE: Texas wins to force game three!


Longhorn Connor Rowe is out at first as LSU Tigers Ryan Schimpf celebrates.
Ricardo B. Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN

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

IRAN

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Struggle among Iran's clerics bursts into the open

TEHRAN, Iran — A backstage struggle among Iran's ruling clerics burst into the open Sunday when the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of an ayatollah who is one of the country's most powerful men.

State media said the daughter and four other relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani were later released but their arrests appeared to be a clear warning from the hard-line establishment to a cleric who may be aligning himself with the opposition.

Tehran's streets fell mostly quiet for the first time since a bitterly disputed June 12 presidential election, but cries of "God is great!" echoed again from rooftops after dark, a sign of seething anger at a government crackdown that peaked with at least 10 protesters' deaths Saturday.

The killings drove the official death toll to at least 17 after a week of massive street demonstrations by protesters who say hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole his re-election win. But searing images posted online — including gruesome video purporting to show the fatal shooting of a teenage girl — hinted the true toll may be higher.

Police and the feared Basij militia swarmed the streets of Tehran to prevent more protests and the government intensified a crackdown on independent media — expelling a BBC correspondent, suspending the Dubai-based network Al-Arabiya and detaining at least two local journalists for U.S. magazines.

More here.

Here's my take: this is really difficult to understand.

Admittedly, it's all very exciting. I mean, ostensibly, it looks like the people have risen up to demand their freedom, like when the Berlin Wall fell, or when protesters faced off against tanks in Tienanmen Square, or like the great Civil Rights era march on Washington here in the US. It's hard for me, as a rebel-rousing freedom-loving American, to not side with the people of Iran as they do their thing in the streets.

I do support the demonstrations. But I'm not really sure if I'm necessarily on the same side as these Iranians. That is, as far as I can tell, these protests are aimed at forcing the Iranian government to follow the laws they're supposed to execute. In other words, it seems to me that, in the face of what appears to be a massively rigged election, the people of Iran are are protesting in favor of the theocratic governmental system they've had since the revolution of 1979, the one their leaders no longer seem interested maintaining.

I think Americans see the turmoil in the streets of Tehran and can't help but understand it in terms of our own revolutionary history. We see Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry; we see love for Western democracy and Western freedom because this is what it looks like to us. But Persians aren't from the West. There was no Enlightenment in the Middle East. There is no democratic tradition in Iran in the way we understand it. These people want democracy, yes, but how many of them understand the concept in terms of the severely limited sense of democracy afforded them by their ayatollahs? My guess is that this is what the majority of these demonstrators want. That is, they want a restoration of the status quo, a restoration of Muslim Shia theocracy as they've understood it for forty years.

Do we really want to support that? President Obama is right to be cautious.


Tehran, from Twitter, courtesy of the Daily Kos.

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

HAPPY JUNETEENTH

From Wikipedia:

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas in 1865. Celebrated on June 19, the term is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 31 of the United States.

More here.

Juneteenth was yesterday, but as far as I can tell most of the celebrations across the country are taking place today, so happy Juneteenth. Being from Texas, I've known about this ostensibly African-American holiday most of my life, but more recently I've started wondering why white Americans don't celebrate the holiday as well. I mean, as I've asserted here before, we're all in agreement that slavery was an awful, horrible, dehumanizing institution that stands as a bloody stain on the reputation of the United States, aren't we? Aren't we also in agreement that getting rid of slavery was an historic watershed for our nation, making us all live up to our stated democratic values a bit better? That ending slavery made us a much more civilized people, a better country?

Why the fuck aren't white people raising beverage-filled glasses toasting this radical step in our continuing evolution towards freedom and democracy? I mean, ending slavery was at least as big of a step for America as establishing our democratic republic was. This is a big fucking deal. So why all the white silence? At least the Senate finally got around to issuing an apology for slavery, albeit an apology with anti-reparation strings attached.

I guess that's a start.

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

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash



Reine



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

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

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Texas holds on to defeat Louisiana in Bayou Bowl

From the Houston Chronicle:

Defense dominated and the offense built Texas’ biggest lead in a Bayou Bowl en route to a 17-14 victory in the annual showdown with Louisiana’s all-stars Saturday night at Stallworth Stadium.

It was Texas’ fourth win in the 7-year-old series.

Harwell, from Elkins, had four catches in the first half, including a 28-yard TD from Cypress Creek’s Pugliese.

Harwell finished with Bayou Bowl records for receptions (eight) and yards (82).

More here.

Heh. They played it out in Baytown, where I sat on the field with the rest of the faculty through several excruciating graduation ceremonies back in the day.

Anyway, I had no idea this game even existed, but since moving to Louisiana, I'm glad it does. That is, in the five years I've been in the land of swamps and crawfish, I've learned that people here are arguably more crazed about high school football than people in my home state. I mean, Louisiana is smaller than Texas, which is probably why there's only one big time college football program, LSU's in Baton Rouge, but trust me, smaller doesn't mean less devoted.

That's why it's only natural to pit the best Texas has to offer on the gridiron against its nextdoor neighbor. Sounds like it was a damned good game. Of course, I'm glad that Texas won--indeed, whenever Texas faces Louisiana in football, I must necessarily always root for Texas, and be happy when Texas wins. But that doesn't mean I don't like Louisiana football.

You know, there's a high school behind the apartments where I live in Metairie: I really ought to go see them play this fall. It'll probably be as fun as watching high school football in Texas. Probably.


Texas lineman Austin Riley (71) of Baytown Lee hoists the
championship trophy as players celebrate following a 17-14
Texas victory in the Bayou Bowl Texas-Louisiana All-Star
Football Game at Stallworth Stadium on Saturday.
Photo by Smiley N. Pool for the Chronicle.

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

STAR TREK
CONSCIENCE OF THE KING

From Wikipedia:

"The Conscience of the King" is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #13, production #13, and aired on December 8, 1966. It was written by Barry Trivers and directed by Gerd Oswald.

The episode takes its title from the concluding lines of Act II of Hamlet: "The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

Overview: Captain Kirk crosses paths with an actor suspected of having been a murderous dictator many years before.

More here.

I like this episode a whole lot more than I probably ought to.

After all, it's pretty clunky and over the top--it's got Kirk's first Enterprise love affair, which, like most of his other Enterprise love affairs, is utterly unbelievable. Lots of stuff that would make me cringe during any other episode. Lots of back story holes that you could drive a truck through. A guest actress who couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.

Yeah, I ought to hate this one. But it's the Shakespeare episode.

That's right, the Shakespeare episode. And, you know, I'm an actor and all, so...did you know that William Shatner cut his teeth doing Shakespeare on stage in Canada? That's one of the main reasons he was hired to play Kirk: Roddenberry wanted a larger-than-life individual to sit in the captain's chair, and Shatner was that in spades. So "Conscience of the King" all comes together for me in very weird ways. I mean, the scene where Kirk confronts Karidian in his quarters is stiff and wooden, as far as acting on screen goes, but so formalistic and rhetorical, something of a duel between old school North American Shakespearean actors, that I just fucking love it. I love the sense of tragedy, the great man who falls because of his own hubris. I love the semi-poetic dialogue. I love the heightened emotions, the desperation. And it's all in space!

And it's also got Reilly's second and final appearance, which is worth noting whether you like the episode or not. They really should have given that guy a permanent job. And like his last appearance, "The Naked Time," Uhura sings. And there's a phaser set on overload, which is always cool.

I mean, you may hate this one. But I always seem to keep coming back to it. Check it out:



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

Gregg Co. boy fatally mauled by pit bulls

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

KILGORE — A 10-year-old boy died Monday after authorities say he was mauled by two pit bulls in the small community of Leverett’s Chapel.

Gregg County Justice of the Peace B.H. Jameson pronounced Justin Clinton dead at a Longview hospital. Justin’s body was sent to Dallas for an autopsy.

The Rusk County Sheriff’s Office said witnesses reported seeing the dogs drag the boy, who had been playing at a friend’s house, down the side of the road. Tyler television station KLTV reported that a motorist who saw the attack pulled the animals off the boy.

More here.

Okay, so I know that a lot of people assert that pit bulls are just fine and that it's bad owners who either abuse these animals or straight-up train their dogs to be vicious that make these attacks likely. Not having read much about pit bulls, I suppose this assertion is entirely possible. But you have to admit that these attacks happen seemingly all the fucking time. And it's never labs, or chihuahuas or beagles or dalmatians. It's always pit bulls. Is the media biased somehow against these dogs, giving their attacks more attention than they might actually deserve, or are we actually in the midst of a twenty year long rash of random and brutal pit bull attacks? The latter seems more likely. But I don't really know.

It seems entirely reasonable to ask what the fuck is going on here.

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

Hey Kids, Have Lots of Sex -- It's What Your Parents Did at Your Age

From AlterNet:

Yesterday, NPR sounded the alarm that "hooking up" is replacing "dating" for college students and twentysomethings and that this is very bad.

What is this "dating culture" of which they speak, that some long for, even in college? We didn't have it in the '70s, not really. Yo, NPR, I was there.

Then, as now, college was an environment where you were surrounded by peers, single, all coming of age, reaching or reaching for adulthood, exploring their sexuality.

Kids today -- meaning precocious high-schoolers, college students and twentysomethings -- hang out, go to dance parties, clubs and bars … drink, dance, try to meet people to whom they're sexually interested, and hook up, which might include fucking.

We -- meaning old people who went to high school and college in the 1970s -- hung out, went to mixers, clubs and bars … drank, tried to meet people to whom we were sexually attracted in order to make out, and sometimes fuck.

More here.

Back in '97 when I was getting certified to teach, I took part in one of many class discussions about about teens and sexuality: one of my classmates, a fortysomething woman, asserted that teenagers "have no business having sex." I was so shocked by this Puritanical attitude, and the chorus of agreement it received, that I found myself in a state that is usually rare for me, speechlessness. What the fuck does that mean, teenagers "have no business having sex"? I mean, for chrissakes, nature has designed human bodies such that teens are all about having sex!!!! Hormones and sex drives are at their peak during teenage years. To assert that teens "have no business having sex" is the height of absurdity.

It's probably just as well that I kept my mouth shut. Arguing with absurdity is automatically a losing proposition. Perhaps I should have tried belittling this point of view, arrogantly dismissing such country-fuck "arguments" as fucking stupid. After all, these anti-sex types usually respond well to harsh authority.

Anyway, the point is that thirty years after the sexual revolution, many Americans continue to be scared as hell of sex, and many of those sex-cowards occupy positions of influence--teachers, journalists, politicians, and of course, clergy continue to preach their sex-the-bad-monster messages even though they obviously have no fucking idea what they're talking about. This cultural oddity, the notion that sex is somehow unsavory and bad, is clearly the drive behind widespread "abstinence based" sex education programs, which downplay safe sex attitudes while pushing Puritanism, which results in unwanted pregnancy and STD transmission.

Meanwhile, Americans do what human beings have always done. They "hook up." Personally, I only see two detrimental ramifications here, and they have far more to do with the cultural landscape in which people have sex than with the sex itself. First, as mentioned above, young people having sex without good sex education are waaaay more likely to engage in risky behavior. Second, the capitalist media exploitation of sexuality tends to make youths more likely to value themselves in terms of their sexuality disproportionate to other important personal attributes, that is, boys who sport-fuck, and girls who chronically slut themselves out, which are psychologically harmful if understood as the sole source of self-esteem.

But this is about a sexually sick culture, not about sex being sick. Really, when establishment figures lament all the sex kids are having, they're talking about how fucked up the establishment is, and using the young as easy scapegoats. The real challenge for teens and twentysomethings today is figuring out how to navigate a sensible course between our malevolent bipolar cultural extremes on sexuality, Puritanism and exploitation, rather than avoiding casual sex.

In short, sex is fucking great. It is deeply embedded in our very identities as human beings. Everybody should have sex, even young people. Just be smart about it. And that's something that the schools could really help kids do. If only we had the social will.

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

HOW THE "SCIENCE" OF ECONOMICS IS FLAWED

From NPR's All Things Considered:

Using Psychology To Save You From Yourself

The three of them spent a year walking the hills of Stanford. Kahneman and Tversky taught Thaler about psychology; Thaler, in turn, taught Kahneman and Tversky about economics.

In the early '80s, they began to publish their ideas — an integration of psychological research and economics with this new flawed decision-maker at the center. But initially, mainstream economists largely rejected the work.

The main point of contention, says Thaler, was the suggestion that humans are less than perfectly rational when it comes to decision-making. For the majority of the 20th century, and for the most part even today, the human beings imagined by economists and placed at the center of their economic models have had a Spock-like rationality.

"Economists literally assume that the agents in the economy are as smart as the smartest economist," Thaler says. "And not just smart: We're not overweight; we never overdrink; and we save just enough for retirement. But, of course, the people we know aren't like that."

So why would economists assume that human beings are so hyper-rational?

Because using a rational human in their mathematical models works. For decades, economists have been using idealized humans to predict everything from international trade to market prices, and they've done pretty well. They've been able to figure out all kinds of things. Also, it's hard to include more realistic human behavior in an economic model.

Click here to listen to or read the rest.

Okay, so I wrote at length some years ago about the rampant flaws in reasoning and weird biases inherent to the "science" of economics, but here's the short version. While economics, as a field of study, has great value, there are some severe problems with the way economists work that become even bigger problems when laymen such as politicians and talking heads use their limited understanding of economics while implementing or discussing policy. That is, economics is popularly understood to be a "science," which is necessarily factually based, and carries the cultural weight that the real sciences do.

This is a big problem because economics is only "science" in the way that archaeology or psychology are sciences: the field uses an approach that could be deemed scientific, but actual scientists start with actual data, while economists use both data and assumptions. And many of those assumptions are just flat out wrong, which taints pretty much all conclusions based on them.

One of those faulty assumptions is that there is such a thing as a "free market." Without the government, there can be no market, but with the government, there can be no "free" market. Because the government must necessarily create the circumstances by which markets can exist, the government must always be intertwined with markets. You just can't get rid of it. The government is always going to be there because it's an integral part of the market.

This means that all economic pontificating about the wonders of the market are flawed at best, and plain wrong at worst. No argument can stand on an imaginary foundation.

Another faulty assumption tainting economic philosophy, which is probably a better word here than "science," is the concept of the rational consumer, which the above linked story goes into great detail refuting. But you don't even really need NPR to show you the obvious: if consumers were rational people, why does the advertising industry spend hundreds of billions of dollars yearly to get consumers to make choices based on images, music, personal association with celebrities, and being cool? That's right. Consumers are utterly irrational. And it's been staring us in the face all our lives.

Anyway, the point here is that the US power establishment makes countless economic policy decisions based on what they believe to be scientific truth. Economics, however, is not scientific truth; much of it is philosophy, sometimes good philosophy, sometimes bad, but philosophy nonetheless. That is, if one dares to challenge widespread conventional economic orthodoxy, one is not insisting that the Earth is flat.

We, as a society, have a lot of rethinking to do.

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

Ex-Miss Calif. says gay comment is why she lost her crown

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Prejean told Matt Lauer on NBC’S Today show Friday that she “absolutely” had been dethroned because of the comment, when she said marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Prejean lost her title Wednesday after the California pageant’s executive director said Prejean was skipping Miss California USA events while speaking out against gay marriage at unsanctioned appearances.

A bit more here.

I've avoided posting on this story because it was beginning to look like nothing was going to come of it. I mean, you know, minor celebrity says something people don't like, people bitch about it and try to get her fired, yadda yadda, and it all dies down. But that's apparently not what happened.

So once again I find myself compelled to defend a conservative idiot.

I've got to agree with the former Miss California on this one: she lost her crown because she is opposed to gay marriage and was willing to go on the record saying so. I mean, okay, the technical reason for her dethroning has something to do with a dispute about how she was performing her "duties" as Queen of California, but it is impossible not to suspect that this would have all been negotiated away somehow if not for her infamous "opposite marriage" statement at the pageant. Kind of like the whole Ward Churchill controversy--they nailed him on trumped up plagiarism charges, which were ultimately nullified in court, but what they were really trying to get him on was his controversial essay about 9/11.

In short, pageant officials in California, who were straight-up telling her "ixnay on the odgay stuff," decided that the only way they could get rid of what they deemed embarrassing behavior was to nail her on whatever they could dig up. First it was the extraordinarily tame nudie pics, which pageant owner Donald Trump declared to be within the rules, followed by this "duties" business. And they got her. But it's pretty obvious that the motivation behind it all was shutting her up.

Of course, I don't know all the rules for the Miss California Pageant, but it seems to me that contestants don't have to check their political views at the theater door--otherwise, they'd have dismissed her immediately. And if political speech is against the rules, well, that would be pretty fucked up. Needless to say, America necessarily must thrive on political speech, everybody's political speech: democracy doesn't work without it, even if much of that political speech is bullshit.

Okay, I can imagine some speech moving into hateful rhetoric, like Imus' "nappy headed ho's" comment, but simple opposition to gay marriage doesn't come anywhere near that. I mean, you know, Prejean is wrong and everything, and weirdly hypocritical, given her religious views juxtaposed against all her cheescake work, but nothing she's said, that I know of, actually falls to the level of what we would call "hate speech."

Really, the whole damned controversy is downright bizarre, and is yet another revelation of totalitarian strains on the left. So she's opposed to gay marriage. Big fuck. Lots of people are. Why must she be punished and purged? The girl's entitled to her opinion. Persuade her to change her mind; don't fuck her over. It's lame when conservatives do it, but worse when the left does it--the left should know better.

Ugh. It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth defending conservatives like this.


Carrie Prejean, some hot Christian action I could really get into!

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

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie and Sammy



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

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

DOMESTIC RIGHT-WING TERRORISM IS REAL

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Guard killed at Holocaust Museum

An 88-year-old gunman with a violent and virulently anti-Semitic past opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot himself by other officers, authorities said.

The assailant was hospitalized in critical condition, leaving behind a sprawling investigation by federal and local law enforcement and expressions of shock from the Israeli government and a prominent Muslim organization.

And

Von Brunn has a racist, anti-Semitic Web site and wrote a book titled "Kill the Best Gentiles," alleging a Jewish conspiracy "to destroy the white gene pool." Writings attributed to von Brunn on the Internet say the Holocaust was a hoax. "At Auschwitz the 'Holocaust' myth became Reality, and Germany, cultural gem of the West, became a pariah among world nations," one says.

In 1983, he was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board and served more than six years in prison. He was arrested two years earlier outside the room where the board was meeting, carrying a revolver, knife and sawed-off shotgun. At the time, police said von Brunn wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation's economic difficulties.

More here.

Less than two weeks ago, a right-wing anti-abortion terrorist assassinated an abortion provider. A few months back another right-wing terrorist opened fire in a Unitarian church because he wanted to kill liberals. Yesterday, a right-wing white-supremacist neo-Nazi terrorist opened fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a guard. All Americans, all conservatives. All willing to kill their fellow countrymen to further their conservative political views. And that's terrorism.

Are the right-wingers who freaked out over DHS's warning a couple of months ago about dangerous "right-wing extremism" going to apologize now? Probably not, which is just so fucking typical.

But really. This is starting to be a big fucking problem, and I think it's only going to get worse.

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

STAR TREK
MIRI

From Wikipedia:

"Miri" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, that was first broadcast October 27, 1966, and repeated June 29, 1967. It is episode #8, production #12, written by Adrian Spies and directed by Vincent McEveety. The planetary exteriors were shot on the set used for fellow Desilu series The Andy Griffith Show.

Overview: The Enterprise discovers an exact duplicate of Earth, where the only survivors of a deadly plague are some of the planet's children.

More here.

I hate this episode. Seriously. I mean yeah, I'm a total Star Trek nut and all, but I really fucking despise "Miri." This is significant. There is only one other Trek episode I hate, the third season vomit bucket called "And the Children Shall Lead." Can you see any connection? Yeah, that's right: it's the children.

Generally, I like kids just fine. Hell, I even taught high school for six years, and I loved my kids. Most of them anyway. Rather, the problem I have is with child actors. Not my child actors, mind you, the freshmen and sophomores I taught back in the day, many of whom I managed to coach into some good acting work for the stage. The child actors I hate are on screen.

Look, it's not really their fault. Acting is damned difficult. You've really got to understand yourself and human relationships, and that's something children are simply not emotionally or psychologically developed enough to do. I mean, acting is hard enough for adults, but virtually all children are in waaaay over their heads when it comes to realistic drama. Add to that the way that Hollywood writers tend to pander, shamelessly playing toward adults' base nurturing instincts in vile ways, mythologizing childhood in a filthy slimy "Kum Bah Ya" meets "Pass It On" way.

This is why Wesley Crusher is a cancerous sore on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Anyway, "Miri" does have a few notables. Like the Wikipedia article mentions, they shot it on the Mayberry set. It's the first "parallel Earth" episode, which, in spite of the failure of "Miri," ended up being a pretty cool story formula for Trek--Nazis and mobsters and gladiators are coming in the second season! And we get to see for the first time McCoy racing against time to cure a disease and save the day.

None of this, of course, saves "Miri." It's just awful. You really ought not watch it.



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

Businessman gets New Orleans City Council
to designate CBD as the 'American Sector'

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

For most of the past decade, Arne Hook has been a man with a mission -- a curious and even quixotic mission, many might have thought, but one that last week won the blessing of the New Orleans City Council.

Hook's goal has been to get New Orleanians to start using the label "American Sector" for the part of town often known as Downtown, the Central Business District or the Downtown Development District.

The part of the city upriver from Canal Street was widely known by that name in the first half of the 19th century. As the city expanded after the Louisiana Territory became part of the United States in 1803, most of the newly arrived Americans settled in new neighborhoods upriver from the French and Creole sections below Canal.

However, the name dropped out of use even as the section of the city just across Canal gained international fame as the French Quarter.

More here.

If you don't really know New Orleans, you may have no idea why this has any significance.

Here's my take. What I love about the Crescent City is its remarkably unique culture, which is a direct reflection of its odd and singular history. Outsiders know it was founded by the French and continues to have strains of that nation's culture to this very day, but it is not popularly understood that New Orleans has always been, and continues to be, what Ken Burns called in his PBS documentary Jazz, a veritable gumbo of cultural influences. It isn't just the French: Native Americans, Africans, Spaniards, and of course, Americans from the Eastern seaboard have all made enormous impacts on how the people of NOLA think and live their lives.

And the arrival of the Americans here had at least as big of an impact on the region as did the French. Indeed, the cultural tensions between the newly arrived Americans and the long settled Creoles lasted for decades--French was still spoken frequently here, alongside English, into the first decades of the twentieth century. Ultimately, however, the two cultures, all contributing cultures, fused into what we now know as the Big Easy's way of life.

So I like this tip of the hat to the ongoing cultural evolution of New Orleans. I mean, as the article explains, there are some here who have big problems with renaming the downtown area, and their objections are reasonable, but history is literally what this city's about. And getting closer to NOLA's history can, in the long run, only be a good thing.

Who knows? The crescent shaped area between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain has been since Katrina receiving great masses of immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, and other Central American nations. Maybe in fifty years or so, we'll see the recognition or founding of a new Hispanic Quarter somewhere in the area. That'd be cool too.

As local son and jazz trumpeter extraordinaire Wynton Marsalis once said, "In New Orleans we do history."

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

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



...Mr. Scott, Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura, and Mr. Chekov!

But where the hell's Sulu? Probably has the con. I'm too tired to check it out: the pic is from the episode "I, Mudd;" go watch it if you want.

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

Was Ronald Reagan an Even Worse President Than George W. Bush?

From Consortium News via AlterNet:

Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by lauding the 40th President.

But there's a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan's presidency. There's also a grudging reassessment that the "failed" presidents of the 1970s – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter – may deserve more credit for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country.

Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges of America's oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and nuclear proliferation – all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now threaten America's future.

And

With his superficially sunny disposition – and a ruthless political strategy of exploiting white-male resentments – Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.

In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

More here.

The essay goes on to offer an ambiguous answer to the question its title asks: Bush was an awful president, but Reagan laid the philosophical groundwork, if such ideas actually rise to the level of "philosophical," for our recent chief executive's most spectacular failures.

But here's my answer. Bush was indeed worse than Reagan. After all, for the most part, Reagan had a Democratic Congress, as well as much more liberal attitudes among voters at the time, to rein him in. That is, Reagan's actions didn't quite match up to his rhetoric in the way that Bush's did--indeed, Reagan, "the great tax cutter," was also the great tax raiser; when it became apparent how much damage his early cuts would do to both the government and the economy, the Gipper flip-flopped, and restored taxes to essentially the same rates they were before he was elected. He also had a more competent administration around him, Republicans who hadn't completely embraced the message that government was to be dismantled, rather than run efficiently. President Bush, on the other hand, seems to have believed the bullshit, and governed accordingly.

When your central philosophy of governance is shit, that's how you're going to govern, and Bush was no exception to such an obvious truism.

But that doesn't get Reagan off the hook. As the essay asserts, it all started with him. Well, to be fair, you see the Conservative Movement's roots going all the way back to Goldwater's presidential run in 1964, or William F. Buckley's founding of The National Review back in the late 50s, or the horror experienced by fundamentalist Christians at the sexual excesses of the 1960s, or by those same religious nuts reacting to Roe versus Wade, or by Milton Friedman's supply side psycho-economics taught at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. But it all came together with Reagan. He was the guy who united free market fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, anti-drug law-and-order Nazis, and anti-communist hawks under one umbrella. He was the one who gave it all a friendly, smiling, movie star handsome face. You can't possibly have George W. Bush if you don't have Reagan first.

But then, I'm also very much of the opinion that pretty much anybody could have done it, if Reagan hadn't. It was simply a matter of time. The conservatives were working their asses off to overthrow the center-left coalition that had ruled the nation since the Great Depression, and they would have found somebody to embody their values. Maybe Charlton Heston, maybe somebody else. Really, it could have been anybody, as long as he talked good.

Because there's one other precedent Reagan set for Bush to follow: actor-as-president. We were lucky during the Reagan era. The whole shit house did not cave in the way it has recently. But as long as the GOP found it a desirable strategy to run what has amounted to a couple of figure heads for the Oval Office, governmental self-destruction has been inevitable. A robot man is quite simply a bad choice for a leadership position.

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

Texas poet laureate returns to first love: writing poetry

From the Houston Chronicle:

So Ruffin, a professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and editor of the Texas Review, has returned to the form where he first found success.

And if at first it was simply pragmatic — what writer would say no to the offer of a new book? — he has taken fresh pleasure from a field often criticized as unwelcoming to the casual reader.

“Contemporary poets got so obscure that poetry kind of fell out of favor,” Ruffin said.

No worries about that with these new poems, taken from themes he had written about in a weekly column for the Huntsville Item: A consideration of Amelia Earhart’s final flight, or the fictional saga of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy impregnated by a security guard. Another offers instructions for eating chicken backs.

None of which is to say that Ruffin takes poetry lightly.

“I always want my poems to be understood by a general audience, and then I want there to be more there.”

Ruffin himself is equally multilayered, an educator who belongs to the National Rifle Association and feels at home whether running a literary journal or tangling with balky plumbing.

“It’s a rare thing for a college professor, and especially an English professor, to be a conservative and a member of the NRA, or to be able to change the oil in their own car,” he said. “I’m a Renaissance man.”

More here.

Okay, I have no idea who this guy is. I've never read any of his poetry. For that matter, I'm not much of a fan of poetry, generally. But I really, really, really like his attitude about poetry, which I extend to all the arts.

Throughout the history of Western civilization, artists have always occupied a social space somewhere outside the mainstream, being in essence, as they are, commentators on the societies in which they live. But at some point in the nineteenth century, artists, no doubt spurred on by the Romantics, greatly upped the ante on this sense of social exceptionalism. That is, artists began to believe that they were more enlightened than, more emotionally sensitive than, in many ways simply better than the great mass of regular ordinary people who do not have the scholastic background to fully appreciate their art, which by the early twentieth century was becoming increasingly weird and off-putting to those who are not in the club. In short, serious artistes of all varieties have become elitist snobs who are far more concerned about the reactions of club members, which include other artists, critics, and effete dillitantes, than the reactions of plain folk.

It took decades, but the net result has been to render serious art meaningless to the lives of most human beings in the West, especially in America, where its citizens, by their very nature, tend to distrust and disdain elitist snobs. This both infuriates and saddens me. I'm infuriated that this elitist art culture persists in the face of its own social irrelevancy. I'm saddened because art is one of the most marvelous innovations in the history of humanity, and most of my countrymen couldn't care less about it, and really, I don't blame them, given the negative attitude thrust on them by so many artists.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Serious artists, if they give a shit at all about the relevancy of their work, ought to shun the serious art institutions, serious art social circles, and elitist serious art attitudes that have placed a massive cultural barrier between their work and the people. Indeed, artists would well serve themselves by coming out of their ivory towers, Soho studios, Lincoln Centers, and cocktail party/art openings at expensive galleries to mingle with their "inferiors." They might learn a bit more about what it means to be a human being at the dawn of the twenty first century.

This guy, Texas Poet Laureate Paul Ruffin, appears to have lived his entire life this way, making himself a role model for what relevant art ought to look like. Maybe I should buy his new book.

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

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash and Reine



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

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

Student caps speech with pot smoke

From the News Tribune via the Houston Chronicle:

TACOMA, Wash. — The teachers wanted persuasive.

And they got it.

At the end of his speech Tuesday urging legalization of marijuana, a 17-year-old Peninsula High School student pulled out a joint, lit it and smoked away. Then he ate the remains.

For that he got a quick escort to the school office and then a ride to Remann Hall juvenile jail.

The stunt was celebrated among some of the teen’s peers but was frowned on to say the least by law enforcement officers and district administrators.

“We believe in freedom of speech and encourage it, but illegal activities are absolutely not going to be tolerated in our district,” schools Superintendent Terry Bouck said.

Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said, “If people want that law changed, they need to go about it the right way.”

He did acknowledge, though, that the student’s action will prompt discussion.

“It sure will probably bring a lot of attention to the issue,” Troyer said.

More here.

Wow, man, talk about balls.

Gotta hand it to this kid. In addition to performing a very nicely executed high school stunt that his classmates will be reminiscing about for decades to come, Teen Pot Smoker single-handedly managed to get his issue into the national news. I mean okay, legalization has been around the corporate news media's fringes for the last few weeks or so, anyway, but still, this is a good piece of agit-prop, worthy of activists much more experienced.

Here's an interesting regional difference within the authoritarian indoctrination institution known as "public school." If this had taken place at the high school where I used to teach in Baytown, Texas, Teen Pot Smoker's action would have been thoroughly criticized by everybody. There would have been no lip service paid to the notion of freedom of speech, no acknowledgement that his act of civil disobedience would be effective in promoting thought and discussion. No relevance to this student's 3.7 g.p.a., which is mentioned later in the article, although, to be fair, making a 3.7 in high school isn't like rocket science or anything. But I guess that's the difference between far-right conservative Texas and relatively liberal Washington: both states' educational apparatuses are about authority and obedience, but the way this mandate is administered reflects the respective social outlooks of the two regions--Texas is harsh; Washington is kinder and gentler. I mean, the kid gets busted and condemned in either state, but the so-called "Blue State" response is more nuanced and subtler.

At any rate, every now and then, actual learning accidentally takes place in the public schools, in spite of the imposed ignorance mission pursued by all these institutions. It is interesting to note that this particular lesson was taught by a student, rather than by the propagandists/indoctrinators also known as "teachers."

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

STAR TREK
DAGGER OF THE MIND

From Wikipedia:

"Dagger of the Mind" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #9, production #11 and was broadcast November 3, 1966. It was written by Shimon Wincelberg (under the pen name "S. Bar-David"), and directed by Vincent McEveety.

Overview: The Enterprise visits a prison planet where a new treatment for the criminally insane has deadly results.

More here.

Okay, this isn't the greatest one of them all, but it's pretty darned good. Straight-up, straight ahead Trek, nothing weird or out of place. A solid episode. It's particularly good, by and large, because of the fantastic performance of guest star Morgan Woodward who plays the stark raving insane Dr. Simon Van Gelder.

Indeed, and this is definitely worth noting here, the 1960s version of Star Trek was greatly concerned with insanity as a near omnipresent issue. "Dagger of the Mind" was only the eleventh episode overall, but it was the fourth where some sort of intense psychosis is a major theme--"Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Corbomite Maneuver," and "The Naked Time" all feature characters either descending into insanity or going right up to its edge; one might even make an argument that "The Enemy Within" deals with insanity, as well, but you know, Kirk's psychosis in that episode was only because the transporter had divided him into his good and evil selves. Whatever. The point is that, for original Trek, space drives people mad all the time. And I fucking love it! Trust me, in the sixty odd episodes to come, there will be much more insanity.

"Dagger" is also notable for the first appearance of Spock's use of the Vulcan mind meld: I think it entirely appropriate that the producers brought it out for the mental hospital episode.

Check it out:



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

Report: Climate Change Causes 300,000 Deaths Yearly Already

From the AP via the Huffington Post news wire:

The report suggests that rising sea levels, desertification and changing rainfall patterns are reducing many people's access to safe drinking water and food. This in turn increases diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.

The report said 99 percent of all people who die due to climate-change related causes live in developing countries, even though those countries generate less than 1 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

The report used existing data on weather-related disasters, population trends and economic forecasts to draw its conclusions.

More here.

I suppose this could have been alternatively titled "Fuck You, Third World."

Indeed, it was long ago predicted that the poorest and most vulnerable populations would be the first to suffer from the catastrophic effects of global warming, which is a no-brainer, I suppose, when you think about it for, like, five seconds. Nonetheless, this comes as a surprise. I've been so caught up in the notion for so many years that global warming is something that's going to happen in the future, that it takes me aback somewhat to realize that global warming is something that's happening right now.

But because its effects are hitting developing nations first, it pretty much continues to feel like global warming is a phenomenon of the future. That is, the third world has always been invisible to us. The US ruling establishment, which includes our elected leaders, bureaucrats, concentrations of vast wealth, and the corporate news media, just don't give a fuck about poor people, especially when they have black or brown skins. And because the ruling establishment provides our window to the world, we tend to see only what they care about. So the third world is, by and large, invisible.

And that's a damned shame, generally speaking. But it might now be rising above "damned shame" to straight-up damnation. Seeing how global warming is already killing hundreds of thousands every year might wake us out of our national stupor on the issue, allowing us to go beyond irresponsible arguments about whether climate change is actually happening and into hardcore planning for what to do about it.

You know, I'm increasingly amazed that we're not all dead yet.

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

CAUGHT ON FILM: RAPE AS OFFICIAL U.S. POLICY

From AlterNet:

Why the Pentagon Is Probably Lying About
its Suppressed Sodomy and Rape Photos

The Telegraph of London broke the news -- because the U.S. press is in a drugged stupor - -- that the photos President Barack Obama is refusing to release of detainee abuse depict, among other sexual tortures, an American soldier raping a female detainee and a male translator raping a male prisoner.

The paper claims the photos also show anal rape of prisoners with foreign objects such as wires and lightsticks. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba calls the images "horrific" and "indecent" (but absurdly agrees that Obama should not release them -- proving once again that the definition of hypocrisy is the assertion that the truth is in poor taste).

Predictably, a few hours later, the Pentagon issues a formal denial.

It is very likely that the Pentagon lying. This is probably exactly what the photos show, because it happened. Precisely these exact sex crimes -- these exact images and these very objects - -- are familiar and well-documented to those of us who follow closely rights organizations reports of what has already been confirmed.

And

But what is far scarier about these images Obama refuses to release and that the Pentagon is likely to be lying about now, is that it is not the evidence of lower-level soldiers being corrupted by power -- it is proof of the fact that the most senior leadership -- Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, with Rice's collusion -- were running a global sex-crime trafficking ring with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram Air Base as the holding sites.

The sexual nature of the torture also gives the lie to Cheney's and others' defense of torture as somehow functional: The sexual perversity mandated from the top reveals that it was just plain old sick sadism gratified by a very sick form of pleasure.

More here.

From the UK Telegraph courtesy of AlterNet:

Report: Unreleased Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape'

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

More here.

From Rebel Reports courtesy of AlterNet:

Gen. Taguba Alleges Existence of Prisoner Rape Photos;
White House Press Secretary Attacks ... British Media

In a major story today, London’s Daily Telegraph quoted Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba describing photos (that the Obama administration is fighting to keep secret), which allegedly depict U.S. personnel raping prisoners, other sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. Put that statement against this one from the president: In defending his decision to fight the ACLU in its efforts to have the photos publicly released, Obama said on May 13, “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational.”

At the White House press briefing today, Gibbs lashed out -- not at Gen. Taguba, who made the allegation on the record, and not even specifically at the paper that quoted Taguba. Instead, Gibbs went after the entire British media, saying “I think if you do an even moderate Google search (heh) you’re not gonna find many of these newspapers and ‘truth’ within say 25 words of each other.”

More here.

A couple of weeks ago in my post about President Obama deciding not to release some "not particularly sensational" photos of Americans torturing Iraqi POWs and detainees at Abu Ghraib, I speculated whether the real reason for this flip flop was that the pictures in question were actually depictions of rape and sodomy at Saddam Hussein's former national prison mentioned some months earlier by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. I always get a little nervous when I go out on a limb here at Real Art: at the time, as far as I could tell, nobody was asserting this. Just me.

Turns out, I wasn't the only one, which makes me feel a little better about my ability to analyze the news. But that's not really my point. Rather, my point is that this whole torture scandal gets more and more disgusting the more we learn about it. Speculation that the photos the White House was planning to release contained images of rape may be incorrect, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it was, and maybe still is, official US policy to rape helpless prisoners.

As if waterboarding, humiliation, attack dogs, "stress positions," and plain old beating the shit out of shackled detainees wasn't enough.

This is some deeply twisted and sick shit. And the men who designed and ordered these "enhanced interrogations" are some sick fucks, nearing John Wayne Gacy on the spectrum of violent perversion. Absolutely nothing can justify this. Not 9/11, not a million IED attacks against US service personnel. And we continue to do nothing about it. Is this what we have become? Are we now a nation that rapes helpless prisoners?

If that's the case, God damn the United States.

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

Kan. abortion doc killed in church; suspect held

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

WICHITA, Kan. — Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was detained some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said.

Although Stolz refused to release the man's name, Johnson County sheriff's spokesman Tom Erickson identified the detained man as Scott Roeder. He has not been charged in the slaying and was expected to be taken to Wichita for questioning.

Police did not release a motive for the shooting. But the doctor's violent death was the latest in a string of shootings and bombings over two decades directed against abortion clinics, doctors and staff.

And

Anti-abortion groups denounced the shooting and stressed that they support only nonviolent protest. The movement's leaders fear the killing could create a backlash just as they are scrutinizing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose views on abortion rights are not publicly known.

"We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down," Troy Newman, Operation Rescue's president, said in a statement. "Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning."

More here.

So just six weeks ago conservatives were in absolute hysterics over the Homeland Security Department's report on the rising threat of violent right-wing extremism. They felt they were being singled out by the new "liberal" Obama administration, totally forgetting the warning DHS had issued on left-wing extremism a few weeks earlier. Indeed, conservatives strongly asserted that the whole thing was nothing but cheap-shot politics, forgetting as well that right-wing extremists were responsible for the largest single act of terrorism in this nation's history prior to 9/11, the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

And now we see this assassination of an abortion provider in Wichita.

Even though "police did not release a motive for the shooting," this McClatchy article got some good dirt on the shooter. Roeder is indeed a right-wing extremist, long an anti-abortion fanatic, who for years vocally advocated murdering abortion providers as justifiable homicide. He was even busted in the mid 90s by the ATF on illegal explosives charges. But what really gets me going are Roeder's connections to far right militia groups in the same decade, the same movement that produced Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

Bottom line: this wasn't simply a murder; it was an act of right-wing terrorism.

You know, it's entirely possible that someday soon the far-left Earth Liberation Front might accidentally blow up some human beings along with the properties they usually target. It's also entirely possible that Al Qaeda might get its shit together and launch another spectacular 9/11 style attack here in the US. But right now, I'm much more afraid of right-wing lunatics with guns and bombs targeting me for my political beliefs. The conservatives can howl if they want, but this is fucking real. I mean, this is the second time in a year they've come after liberals. At church.

Just another reason to stay away from church, I suppose.

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