WHAT REAL EDUCATION MIGHT LOOK LIKE

From AlterNet:

Fighting to Restore a Sense of Civic Duty in School Kids

Nancy Gannon is not an ideologue, an America hater, or an activist determined to recruit revolutionaries to her cause. She's just a high school principal.

She's a principal in one of the toughest places to be a principal: the New York City public school system. Yet, despite the enormous challenges of educating children in a city where only slightly more than half of all ninth graders graduate high school, Nancy's mission goes beyond securing as many diplomas as possible. She told me she wants to help prepare citizens who are equipped with "voice, power, and responsibility."

This is probably why the very first schoolwide activity Gannon oversaw as principal at the School for Democracy and Leadership was the registering of eligible students to vote, instilling in them the value of this most fundamental responsibility of American citizenship.

The Crown Heights-based school was motivated by "change" even before it became the motif of the 2008 presidential campaign. Although the focus of the teachers and staff at SDL is to prepare their students for college, they are also, in Gannon's words, "incredibly steeped in activism. We encourage the students to pick something in the world or the community they want to change and then act on it together."

Like the children of Hampton, Virginia, participating in Project Citizen as part of their civics curriculum, the students of SDL are encouraged to put their citizenship into action on a local level. They are required to complete a "change project" of their own choosing each year. These change projects have included writing a proposal for a school library where there was none, working with junior high school students on a project to teach safe-sex education, and building more community through joint poetry readings among the schools that share SDL's campus.

More here.

So I've written at great length about what's wrong with the American model for public education--in short, our system serves, in reality, to indoctrinate children into a culture of authority and obedience, rather than training our youth for participation in American democracy. But I've written very little about what ought to replace it. By and large, that's because I'm not a pedagogist. That is, I don't think I have to have a perfect solution to all our educational woes when there are thousands of experts out there who only need to be pointed in the right direction in order to flesh out a workable system for the creation of good small "d" democrats. And there are, in fact, a few pedagogists out there who are already deep into experimental phases for putting together such a system.

The School for Democracy and Leadership in New York appears to be one such experiment, and from what I've read, it looks to be successful across the board, in terms of graduation rates, college attendance, civic engagement, and critical thinking. Go check out the essay, and pay specific attention to the lame right-wing criticisms aimed at SDL. When you get into a real discussion of American schooling as it is currently philosophically constructed, it's hard not to ask, "Why are we doing it this way?"

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DR. LAURA IS A SLEAZY RACIST BITCH

From Media Matters for America:

Schlessinger's N-word rant

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

CALLER: That isn't --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away.

I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.

Much more here, with audio.

And it just gets worse. Really, go check it out. You thought Michael Richard's n-word tirade was shocking? This is far, far worse. Schlessinger, unlike Richards, was in full control of her wits. She wasn't angry. She wasn't being heckled in front of a seemingly hostile audience. She was simply stating her views honestly.

And those views are unambiguously racist.

Her "apology" drives the point home. To her, it was all about "(articulating) the 'n' word all the way out." And that's definitely a problem, to be sure. Especially because she does it, like, ten times. But she appears to be blissfully unaware of how she:

1. reduced African-Americans to nothing but a herd who voted for President Obama simply because he's black

2. used an example of her relationship with her black servant, a bodyguard, to show what she believes proper black behavior ought to be when addressing white people

3. displayed utter contempt for the subtle and nuanced black usage of the n-word for purposes of solidarity and self-liberation

4. derisively asserts that electing a black man as President ended all racism

5. accuses the African-American caller of having "a chip on (her) shoulder" for simply making reasonable observations about Schlessinger's gratuitous usage of the n-word

6. slams the NAACP for no apparent reason

7. asserts that any racism the caller faces is her own fault for marrying a white man

8. repeatedly cuts off and talks over the caller, disallowing her from making any real points of her own

9. dismisses all black complaints about racism as "black-think"

And

10. insists that blacks would be just fine if they had a sense of humor.

Yeah, the n-word is bad. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Schlessinger is a part of that huge percentage of the US white population who really really really resent black people for believing racism is still a big problem. I mean, if you think racism no longer exists you're either stupid or ignorant. If you're really pissed off at black people for thinking racism still exists, you're a racist. Dr. Laura is clearly part of the latter group. Unapologetic, in-your-face, and fuck you.

I've known for years that Schlessinger is a right-wing cunt who is not only cruel and vicious to her callers, but is also willing to allow people to think that she knows what she's talking about, when, in fact, she doesn't: her doctorate isn't in psychology--it's in physiology. That is, she's a liar, too. Now we know that she, like many other mainstream conservative personalities, is a straight-up racist.

I hope this destroys her career.

UPDATE: Here.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash



Reine



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

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STAR TREK
The Omega Glory

From Wikipedia:

"The Omega Glory" is a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast March 1, 1968 and repeated July 26, 1968. It is episode #52, production #54, written by Gene Roddenberry, and directed by Vincent McEveety.

There is no reported stardate for this episode.

The story was one of three outlines submitted for selection as the second pilot of Star Trek: the others being "Mudd's Women" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

Overview: Captain Kirk must find the cure to a deadly disease and prevent a meaningless war.

More here.

Is it just me or are these Wikipedia episode overviews getting more and more misleading? Oh well. Go watch the episode.

Notes and pics:

* Lieutenant Galloway has a classic red-shirt set up. You've never heard of him before and he barely has any lines. And he's wearing a red shirt. You know he's not one of the guest stars, but you also know he's there for some reason. What could that reason possibly be?



* Always great to see more than one starship.



* The whole opening sequence is just fantastic, invoking the weird sense of "what if this was the Enterprise" that you got from "The Doomsday Machine," and these are some excellent science fiction deaths, what with the uniforms and crystal remains.



* Great mini-moment as Spock walks over to the bridge science station, briefly eying what is most likely his Exeter counterpart's corpse.

* Some cool Prime Directive shit here. As with "Bread and Circuses" and "Patterns of Force," we have a rogue Federation presence that Kirk has to beat into submission. I kind of prefer these Prime Directive cop stories.

* "Put the ax away, Lee Yang!" Morgan Woodward, a fellow Texan, and fellow Texas Longhorn, as well, and who also appeared in the first season's "Dagger of the Mind," is totally great playing Captain Ron Tracey, one of the few guest actors, along with Ricardo Montalban, who could hang with Shatner's over-the-top acting style for extended periods. He is truly one of the great Star Trek villains, and his presence is what makes the episode as good as it is.



* Oh, that's why Lieutenant Galloway is here!



* Great fight which ends with a karate chop to Kirk's neck, delivered with a nice psychotic look on Tracey's face.



* I love the original Trek costume design concept that gave different chest insignia to the uniforms of different ships.

* Cloud William is a hulking Bizarro World David Soul.



* Fabulous marathon fight in a jail cell with Cloud William, humorously interspersed with clever chatter from Spock.



* It's always very cool when McCoy does his desperate medical research thing. And he's got a nice little speech ending in a quintessential line: "But lengthen lives? Poppycock! I can do more for you if just eat right and exercise regularly."



* Excellent moment pulling from the Greek tragedy formula. Generally, for ancient Greek theater, most of the real action took place off stage. Consequently, battles, deaths, suicides, and other overwhelming events were usually reported to the characters on stage by a messenger of some sort. Tracy does exactly the same thing here, telling the gripping tale of how the Yangs sacrificed thousands to kill a relative few Kohms. The lighting even seems to give him something of a mask, which is very Greek, indeed.



* Where the hell's Scotty? Oh well, it's always cool when Sulu's in command!



* Kirk has a second fight with Tracy.



* The Yangs are dirty filthy goddamned hippies.



* I totally love the pomp and circumstance of the Yangs. Especially the bare chest beefcake guy playing the tympani.



* By the time the US flag comes out, and our heroes have figured out they're on yet another parallel Earth, the narrative becomes easily as ridiculous as "Patterns of Force," but the story's been so tight, and the showcasing of patriotic symbols we've all had drilled into our psyches since birth is so emotionally compelling, the absurdity kind of doesn't matter. The story's still got you at this point.



* Kirk beautifully recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

* I love the guy who says "He spoke the holy word!" This scene just keeps getting sillier and sillier.



* "He was cast out!!!" Have I said that Ron Tracey is one of the great Star Trek villains of all time? Well, he is.



* What the hell is Spock's picture doing in the Bible? He's not in my Bible. WTF?



* Okay, so the episode just continues its free fall into absurdity, but it's still holding your attention, and much of that has to do with the fabulous conflict between Kirk and Tracy. Of course, this includes a third fight between them.



* Including an actual copy of the US Constitution, and then having Kirk's dramatic recitation of the Preamble is nothing short of fucking stupid. But, oh my god, it's just too wonderful. This might be my favorite Kirk speech of all time.





* Why must Cloud William be played as a total retard?



* Allegorically speaking, is this a tale of the rugged persistence of American values, of the scrappy survivor attitude of the American people? Or is it the tale of how American values, in actual practice, are nothing but garbled words, meaningless except as tribalistic ritual speech? I prefer the latter interpretation, but I assume the creators meant the former.

* Four stars. Maybe four and a half. This ought to be a failure in some ways, like the aforementioned "Patterns of Force," which has many similarities. But it's actually quite successful. Very tight plot, very engaging performances from the two principles. And, of course, very patriotic.

You know, I try to watch this one every July Fourth.

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Gitmo Judge Admits Confession Extracted By Rape Threat

From Think Progress courtesy of AlterNet:

In the first full war crimes tribunal of the Obama administration, a military judge held that a detainee who confessed to killing an American solider after he was threatened with being gang-raped to death if he did not cooperate may nonetheless have that confession used against him at trial...

And

Khadr was only 15 years old at the time of his capture and confession, earing his tribunal a strong condemnation from the United Nations. In the words of the UN, “Juvenile justice standards are clear. Children should not be tried before military tribunals.”

More here.

A few observations.

There is every good reason to believe that Khadr feared this threat: Reporter Seymour Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal, has asserted that the Pentagon possesses video tapes of children being sodomized at the US Army torture chamber in Baghdad; just as we now know that American torture under Bush was systematic, using similar techniques in both Iraq and Guantanamo, it is reasonable to conclude that people were raped at Gitmo, too. As the article goes on to observe, coerced confessions are notoriously unreliable. There's a damned good reason such "confessions" are inadmissible in civilian trials: they help convict innocent people.

For that matter, why the fuck is this guy being tried in this bullshit "military tribunal" format, anyway? He was doing grunt work for Al Qaeda, which is a criminal organization, not an army. "Military tribunals" were frighteningly inappropriate when Bush first started using them, and they continue to be frighteningly inappropriate under his "liberal" successor. Furthermore, how is it a "war crime" to return fire against a soldier who is trying to kill you? War crimes are about torture, or abusing POWs, or deliberately targeting civilians, or using banned weapons such as napalm or white phosphorous, you know, stuff that US forces have done repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan, not fighting back against an invading force.

This entire process is a disgusting farce. True terrorists should be tried in real courts for their crimes, and accessories, too, for helping them. But these bogus "military tribunals," which try unsuccessfully to invoke the gravity and justice and patriotism of the Nuremberg Trials, are just plain wrong. It is also wrong to treat a fifteen year old as though he were an adult. Yeah yeah, he's twenty three now, but he was just a kid when he was captured, and was clearly neck deep in weird religious philosophy he couldn't possibly understand. Just what the hell are we trying to prove here?

Why is Obama doing this?

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White House unloads anger over criticism from 'professional left’

From the Hill, courtesy of, well, everybody:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

More here.

Of course, the "professional" left is absolutely outraged. Not me, though. Frankly, I've been wondering for a while when White House rhetoric on liberals was finally going to match its actions. Now that the other shoe has dropped, so to speak, I'm kind of giggling about it all.

That is, as I've been writing here since it became clear that Obama was going to win the primary back in 2008, President Hope And Change is no liberal. Indeed, he's a corporatist Democrat, conservative, even, on virtually everything except the so-called social issues, FOX News weirdos and psychotic Tea people notwithstanding. President Obama has never approached his work in the nation's highest office from a liberal perspective, and anybody who's been paying close attention already knew that.

So this is kind of a "Ha! Told you so!" moment for me vis-a-vis liberal Democratic loyalists. I mean, my smug satisfaction in this arena has been slowly growing in the months since he was elected, watching liberals slowly realize that Obama is not the person they allowed themselves to believe he was. But this is a smoking gun, a frying pan to the face of stupid fucking liberals from sea to shining sea.

I wonder if it will have any effect on their ass-embedded heads.

In most ways, this has a lot less to do with Obama than it does with where the Democratic Party is today on the ideological spectrum. Whatever historical associations the party has had with the plight of average ordinary working citizens have degenerated for decades now into not much more than lip service. This became obvious to honest political observers by the mid 1990s when President Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council had finally solidified control of the party in the wake of its resounding defeat in the 1994 Congressional elections. Behind the scenes Democratic power brokers were saying "fuck the left" and holding out their greedy hands for corporate donations. In front of the cameras it was all lovey-dovey with the AFL-CIO. Clinton's reelection in 1996, and Gore's near election in 2000, simply convinced Democrat insiders that the DLC road was the right one to take.

Liberals seemed to notice none of this, continuing to see the Democratic Party as their natural political home. Actually, some of them did notice, voting for Ralph Nader in small numbers in '96, 2000, and 2004. But most liberals apparently had absolutely no idea what had happened to "their" party, even going so far as to blame Nader for Gore's loss, in spite of overwhelming, if unpublicized, evidence of GOP vote tampering. Thus, liberals have been in a state of total delusion and denial about American politics for a decade and a half.

That is, we now live in a de facto corporate state, with our elected officials responding far more to the influence of vast concentrations of wealth than they do to the concerns of regular Americans. The Republicans, obviously, are the corporate party of the far right: the Democrats are the corporate party of the right and middle right. And this is the party that nominated Obama to run for President. Of course, he's not a liberal. The Democrats no longer have the ability to nominate an actual liberal.

But nostalgia for the glory days when Democrats were truly left-of-center, for the most part, continues to hold the majority of America's left wing in thrall. All Democratic politicians have to do is make a few vague statements about jobs or abortion or whatnot, and that's good enough for the stupid liberal Democrat. "He's one of us, guys! Let's go knock on some doors!" The Party fully understands how liberals swallow its bullshit good-vibes rhetoric, and has benefited greatly from the deception. Liberals, conversely, continue to be clueless, always ready to line up and bend over.

Sure, they're mad now, but my bet is that they'll simmer down by November, totally ready to campaign and vote for candidates who do not in any way represent their political views. Tea Baggers are stupid because they think Obama is a socialist. Ditto for Democrat liberals.

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Joe Negri: From Handyman To Jazz Guitarist

From NPR:

If you or someone you love grew up watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, you may remember Joe Negri as Handyman Negri, the affable guy who solved problems in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. But jazz fans know him as a guitar virtuoso. At the age of 84, Negri has just released a new CD, his first in the stripped-down setting that showcases his finger-work.

And

"So I noted that living wasn't easy in New York. The kids had babysitters. Somebody had to take them to the park to play. The whole scene just kind of turned me off. So we packed up, came back to Pittsburgh."

That's when Negri started working in television. He appeared on the Ken Griffin Show, the Buzz and Bill Show and, finally, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood — all shot in Pittsburgh.

"Most people know him as an actor. They don't quite realize what they have here, you know?" says Mike Tomaro, the head of the jazz studies department at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where Negri teaches. "They're missing a treasure. Not just a Pittsburgh treasure, but a musical treasure."

And

But Rogers did find ways for Negri to perform on the show.

"He found me a music shop, decided it should be Negri's Music Shop. And that was a wonderful part of the show, I enjoyed that. Because we brought in a lot of good guests, a lot of good musicians."

Including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Ellis Marsalis and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Actor David Newell, who played Mister McFeely on the show, says Negri introduced thousands of kids to jazz.

Read or listen to the rest here.

So, of course, I love this guy because I actually remember him from Mr. Rogers, and his guitar playing really is top notch, which you can hear if you click through and listen to the report. But I am definitely struck speechless by his career trajectory: he decided life as a professional musician was too tough so he became...a professional actor. And succeeded. I mean, I know life is tough as a professional artist, but as a musician there's more merit involved--you've always got your chops. But acting is far more arbitrary. Skill is less important in the professional world, at least on television, than the vagaries of personality and looks. That is, you have far less control over how you are perceived by the powers that be as an actor than as a musician. And Negri succeeded.

But really, he's a far better guitar player than he is an actor. Don't get me wrong. I really like his Handyman Negri character, but the stuff I heard on the radio this afternoon blew me away. He's got a sound that takes me away like Duke Ellington or Miles Davis in their more dreamy moments, but it's not just the sound: Negri really is a virtuoso, playing his guitar like it was an extension of his mind.

I think I'm going to get his CD.

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Rush Limbaugh and William Shatner Debate Health Care

I understand that I'm running the risk here of appearing to be headed toward an all Star Trek all the time format, but, apparently, Shatner's got this new talk show, and he manages to make an extraordinarily good point with The Big Fat Racist Drug Addict.

From Crooks and Liars:

SHATNER: Here’s my premise, and you agree with it or not. If you have money, you are going to get health care. If you don’t have money, it’s more difficult.

LIMBAUGH: If you have money you’re going to get a house on the beach. If you don’t have money, you’re going to live in a bungalow somewhere.

SHATNER: Right, but we’re talking about health care.

LIMBAUGH: What’s the difference?

SHATNER: The difference is we’re talking about health care, not a house or a bungalow.

LIMBAUGH: No. No. You’re assuming that there is some morally superior aspect to health care than there is to a house.

SHATNER: No, I’m not moral at all. I want to keep the subject, for the moment, on the health care thing.

Click here for video.

Set aside, for this post anyway, the fact that lots of specifics make consumer and producer behavior in the field of health care radically different from behavior in, say, the soap or automobile markets, which means that an honest discussion on the topic must necessarily be radically different from most other economic discussions. What I'm interested in is this notion of morality and economics.

Years ago, I met a right-wing economist during the Reagan era at a Rotarian hosted seminar on the ideologically loaded and widely distributed document known as "The Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom." That's an entire story in itself, but one of the things that has nagged at me since then is this guy's assertion that the field of economics is not, and cannot be, concerned with any moral questions at all: economists simply describe economic reality, and the moral decisions are left to the politicians.

Of course, such an assertion is obviously false at face value. Declaring oneself to be amoral is, in fact, a moral decision. Indeed, the notion of "amorality" is so riddled with problems as to make the term virtually meaningless. Like it or not, humans are moral creatures, and we do not simply leave the sense of right and wrong at the office door as we head for our desks. I mean, I totally dig economists or journalists or scientists trying to remain as objective as possible in their observations and reporting, but the information they release to the public has moral consequences, and they're total fools if they make themselves believe that they bear no responsibility for that.

Actually, they're immoral fools if they think they have no responsibility for the intellectual work they produce. This side-stepping of moral issues in economics drives me nuts. It allows the economist the smug superiority he needs to make recommendations to corporations and politicians that drive thousands of people out of work, or off farms that have been in the family for generations, or into the desperation of prostitution or murder, or...well, you get the idea. The economist can sit back in his plush office chair, put his feet on his desk, and say "You know, it's good for the economy."

Really? From the perspective of the Indian subsistence farmer who is contemplating suicide because an international corporation has gamed local laws in order to steal his land, it sure does appear to be bad for the economy.

Indeed, closely related to this fictional stance of amorality is the bogus notion of market efficiency. It functions as a sort of backdoor moral excuse: "Yes, such measures will cause temporary disruption of workers' lives, but in the long run, the economy grows, and these people are able to reap an even bigger bounty than they were getting before." Yeah yeah. A rising tide lifts all the boats. So the theory goes. Except that it doesn't. I mean sure, sometimes it does, but when you consider the last thirty years of neoliberal reforms in this country that have caused wages to stagnate and even decrease in inflation-adjusted terms, that have caused great worker insecurity, that have made the concept of the single bread-winner family a thing of the past, that have effectively laid the groundwork for the elimination of the middle class as we understand it, it becomes achingly clear that the wealthy and powerful have perfected their ability to keep all that wonderful tide water to themselves.

That is, when economists talk about market efficiency, they never state for whom the market ought to be efficient. The kind of efficiency that makes the rich get richer while the poor get poorer is all so much Orwellian euphemism.

So yeah. Health care does have "a morally superior aspect" to it relative to other consumer products: people don't die when they can't afford toothpaste to brush their teeth; people do die when they don't have access to health care. And frankly, I think that I, and William Shatner, are necessarily morally superior to Rush Limbaugh for understanding that. But then, that's like saying I'm better than Judas or Hitler. Kind of an exercise in understatement.

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THIS IS VERY LIKELY OUR FUTURE

From DailyFinance.com courtesy of Paul Krugman's blog Conscience of a Liberal:

Japan's Economic Stagnation Is Creating a Nation of Lost Youths

What happens to a generation of young people when:

* They are told to work hard and go to college, yet after graduating they find few permanent job opportunities?
* Many of the jobs that are available are part-time, temporary or contract labor?
* These insecure jobs pay one-third of what their fathers earned?
* The low pay makes living at home the only viable option?
* Poor economic conditions persist for 10, 15 and 20 years in a row?

For an answer, turn to Japan. The world's second-largest economy has stagnated in just this fashion for almost 20 years, and the consequences for the "lost generations" that have come of age in the "lost decades" have been dire. In many ways, Japan's social conventions are fraying under the relentless pressure of an economy in seemingly permanent decline.

And

Even more extreme is hikikomori, or "acute social withdrawal," a condition in which the young live-at-home person nearly walls himself off from the world by never leaving his room. Though acute social withdrawal in Japan affect both genders, impossibly high expectations for males from middle- and upper-middle-class families has led many sons, typically the eldest, to refuse to leave home. The trigger for this complete withdrawal from social interaction is often one or more traumatic episodes of social or academic failure. That is, the inability to meet standards of conduct and success that can no longer be met in diminished-opportunity Japan.

The unraveling of Japan's social fabric as a result of eroding economic conditions for young people offers Americans a troubling glimpse of the high costs of long-term economic stagnation.

More here.

So for several years now Krugman has been looking to Japan's recent past as a possible future for the US. In short, when Japan's enormous economic bubble burst back in the early 90s, they responded in much the same way the US establishment appears to be wanting to respond to our economic crisis right now, with budget-cutting austerity measures, and with anti-inflationary measures, even though the real enemy then, as now in the United States, was deflation: as a result, the Rising Sun's economy has been stagnant, sluggish growth alternating with recessions, for nearly two decades.

And it is adversely affecting their culture.

My gut instinct, too, is that something similar will happen here, if our leaders don't pull their heads out of their asses and throw off the neoliberal orthodoxy that makes them ignore economic reality. I mean, it probably won't be as bad as Japan, culturally speaking. Social roles and conventions play a much more absolute role in the island nation than in our gutter mongrel country. If there's one thing at which we Americans excel, it's flouting social convention. But it won't be particularly good, either. This shit is real. I have no idea how we will adapt to a reality where job prospects for most people range from totally shitty to non-existent, but I suspect it'll feel very much like the third world does.

After all, what we're looking at is enormous numbers of Americans who were raised with middle class values and expectations faced with real poverty for the rest of their lives. My personal hope is that our culture positively adapts, abandoning the notion of consumption-as-supreme-value in favor of human relationships, cooperation, and homegrown art and entertainment. In some ways it might not be so bad. On the other hand, most of us will be in poverty, or always on the verge.

One thing's for sure. It won't be very pleasant getting there.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Roi



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

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STAR TREK
The Ultimate Computer

From Wikipedia:

"The Ultimate Computer" is a season two episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast on March 8, 1968 and repeated June 28, 1968. It is episode #53, production #53, written by D.C. Fontana, based on a story by Laurence N. Wolf, and directed by John Meredyth Lucas.

Overview: A new computer designed to control the ship causes havoc aboard the Enterprise.

More here.

And watch the episode here.

Notes:

* Interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, theme of technology rendering certain jobs obsolete.

* I've always liked Commodore Wesley, and I don't know why. I mean, he really doesn't do much in this episode, and it's the only one he appears in. Maybe it's nice to see a Star Fleet commodore who hasn't gone space-mad like Commodore Decker did in "The Doomsday Machine." I don't know.



* Damn, Dr. Daystrom is fucking tall.



* It's very cool to see, at the point in history that this one was made, a dignified African-American man portrayed as tragic hero. I mean, he's doing much more than opening hailing frequencies, if you catch my drift.



* Some cool tech in this one, and a very cool shot of the engines.

* The whole tech-rendering-people-obsolete thing is weak from the get-go. Why on earth would 23rd century people who are drowning in technology already be afraid of technological progress?

* Kirk's "red alert" in the back of his head about the M5 tries to expand the above mentioned tech theme into the already established human instinct over Vulcan logic conflict running through the whole series. But it still doesn't go anywhere.

* Yay! Sulu's back from working on The Green Berets.

* M5's turning off non-essential ship's systems is an absolute failure as far as dramatic moments preceding commercial breaks goes. Really, this is more of a function of the weakness of the MacGuffin.

* William Marshall, who plays Daystrom, and later went on to be The King of Cartoons on Pee Wee's Playhouse, is very much cut from the Paul Robeson mold. That is, he's pretty fucking great.

* If I had to be really really fucking disturbed because somebody called me "Captain Dunsel" I'd fail utterly. Leave it to Shatner's artificial acting style to pull off what a psychologically realistic style couldn't.

* Did McCoy call this drink "Finagle's Folly"? They continue to push the Kirk-is-useless theme too much, but I like this Kirk and McCoy scene; it very much hearkens back to a similar scene between Captain Pike and his ship's surgeon back in "The Menagerie." (Part one here, part two here.)

* It's interesting that the M5 chooses to destroy an automated ship before it starts killing people.

* Kirk is positively gleeful in his anger once the M5 finally screws up.

* Fabulous red shirt death.

* Great creepy monologue Daystrom delivers to McCoy.

* Great Kirk and McCoy discussion on the fine line between genius and madness.

* Very cool to see all these starships.

* So...does Commodore Wesley have a bigger captain's chair because he outranks Kirk?

* Very nice touch that the machine that makes people meaningless also kills people.

* Great line, from Daystrom to the M5: "You are great; I am great."

* Daystrom has one of the very best Vulcan neck pinch moments in all of Star Trek.

* It's been a while since we've seen some serious space madness. 'Bout fucking time.

* It's also been a while since we've seen Kirk destroy a computer with logical paradox. Always fun.

* Three stars. Some really good moments, and Daystrom is one of the great Trek guest characters, but its message kind of doesn't make sense, which sabotages much of the story. But definitely still worth watching.

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



...Chekov! And he's screaming!

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The Right-Wing's Racist Freak Out Over the "Ground Zero" Muslim Center

From AlterNet:

In May, news of the project grew more widespread and inflamed anti-Muslim rhetoric from the right (even though there has been a mosque in the neighborhood since the 1980s). Enraged (and now disgraced) Tea Party leader Mark Williams said the site would allow Muslims to worship their "monkey-god." From there, a right-wing freak out was born. "I hope somebody blows it up," said conservative radio talk show host Michael Berry. Rush Limbaugh said that because of the project, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed won't "have an impossible time" getting a "sympathetic jury" if he is tried in New York. The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol writes today that in order to save his presidency, President Obama should say the Islamic center is "a bad idea." Conservative blogger and executive director of "Stop Islamization of America" (SIOA) Pamela Geller said the Islamic center is a "triumphal mosque" on "conquered lands."

More here.

Augh. This is so 2002.

From everything I've read, it appears that this mosque and cultural center is exactly what it appears to be, a mosque and Islamic cultural center, no connections with radical clerics, no ties to Hamas or Hezbollah, no charitable donations going to the Taliban, not even any major criticisms of our fucked up and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just a mosque and cultural center. So the sole issue here is that the thing is going up near the hallowed Ground Zero, where radical Islamic extremists flew hijacked jet planes into the World Trade Center.

In order to have a problem with that, as the essay goes on to observe, you have to equate all of Islam with the psychotic assholes who blew up the WTC. See the problem here? Obviously, all of Islam did not blow up the WTC. For that matter, all of Islam does not approve of that or any other act of terrorism, just as all of Christianity does not condone bombing abortion clinics. Indeed, most Christians and Muslims refuse to condone terrorism. That's because, for the most part, both of these religions support non-violence and peace.

So what's with the right wing on this? I mean, their boy, Monkey-Face Bush, told us again and again that we're fighting a war against terrorism, not against Islam. I guess they didn't get the memo. Or, rather, the right wing is heavily populated with bigots, racists, and xenophobes who hate Muslims just because they're not white Christians, and even though it's totally irrational, it makes a sort of sense that these angry conservatives see no difference between the 9/11 hijackers and average ordinary people who call the Supreme Being "Allah" instead of "Yahweh."

You know, I'm not particularly fond of Islam, myself--actually, I'm not particularly fond of religion in general. But this is some sick shit. One of the bedrock and most cherished principles of this nation is freedom of worship. I don't have to like Islam to see that such rhetorical vomit threatens that principle. I'm sure none of these people are capable of appreciating the irony that they were all "anti-American" this and "anti-American" that back in the days of shock and awe, and here they are trashing what it means to be an American.

These people are so fucked up.

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How to Dismantle the American Empire Before This Country Goes Under

From AlterNet, an excerpt from Andrew Bacevich's latest book:

Achieving these aims -- it is said -- requires the United States to funnel ever greater sums of money to the Pentagon to develop new means of projecting power, and to hold itself in readiness for new expeditions deemed essential to pacify (or liberate) some dark and troubled quarter of the globe.

At one level, we can with little difficulty calculate the cost of these efforts: The untold billions of dollars added annually to the national debt and the mounting toll of dead and wounded U.S. troops provide one gauge.

At a deeper level, the costs of adhering to the Washington consensus defy measurement: families shattered by loss; veterans bearing the physical or psychological scars of combat; the perpetuation of ponderous bureaucracies subsisting in a climate of secrecy, dissembling, and outright deception; the distortion of national priorities as the military-industrial complex siphons off scarce resources; environmental devastation produced as a by-product of war and the preparation for war; the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small praetorian guard shoulders the burden of waging perpetual war, while the great majority of citizens purport to revere its members, even as they ignore or profit from their service.

More here.

Bacevich is so extraordinarily correct. It's not a question of "support the troops" or "national security." Rather, it is a question of how taking the imperial road, that is, maintaining global military dominance, is affecting us at home. And it's not simply about dollars and deaths; it's also about our distinctive American culture: are we going to be the masters of the world are or we going to be free men?

A former colonel in the US Army, the West Point educated Bacevich is a self-described conservative, but with one major catch. His conservatism isn't in terms of slogans and demagoguery. As an academic, he deeply considers issues before making conclusions. He does not, for instance, support military action simply because we've got soldiers in the fight. He looks at the facts: is this really good for America?

Go read this excerpt, and if you like it, buy the book. I read his last one, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, a few months back, and it was excellent, very clear and concise, quick reading. If you're tired of all my liberal bullshit, check it out. It's what the GOP might sound like if it hadn't years ago descended into sanctimonious folk-malarkey.

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Defining Prosperity Down

New Krugman, from the New York Times:

I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.

Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.

And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

And

I’d like to imagine that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn’t all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on.

Get the details here.

I wonder.

Not about where we're headed, Krugman is right on target as far as that's concerned: bad economic theory is taking us into many years of sluggish growth alternating with chronic recessions. Clearly, we've set the controls for the heart of the sun, as it were.

No, what I wonder about is whether our leaders are committing economic suicide because they're heartless assholes who don't care about rank-and-file Americans, or whether it's because our leaders are incapable of questioning the Reaganomics that got us into this mess in the first place. My gut instinct is to believe the latter. I mean, it's impossible to stare into the souls of Congress to divine their true motivations, so all we can really do is speculate.

Krugman has good reasons for believing that Congress and the White House simply don't care. After all, based on what they actually do, the legislation that they pass, and the debates they have, it sure does look like they don't give a fuck. We're experiencing extraordinarily high unemployment, and all they seem to be focusing on is the deficit. Small business are going under day in and day out, but big business gets all the bailouts.

But, you know, I used to buy into Reaganomics, myself, years ago. And it's quite a beautiful and seductive theory. It is essentially supply-side in nature, arguing that the best thing the government can do to grow the economy is to generate policy that favors producers over consumers and workers. The idea is that once producers get really cranked up, their products get cheaper, and more jobs are created, which allows people more money to spend as consumers. In effect, or so the theory goes, the government doesn't have to deal with the demand side at all because supply-side policy takes care of that indirectly.

Like I said, beautiful. If only it worked in the real world.

Because I embraced the supply-side view over a quarter century ago, I've been watching all these years to see how it's working out. And you just can't get away from the fact that since Reaganomics became conventional wisdom in Washington, for Democrats and Republicans alike, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. The theory says that shouldn't happen. There's supposed to be prosperity for everybody. But there's not. Things have gotten much worse since the Reagan era.

So if Reaganomics is, empirically, an utter failure, why does almost everyone in Washington continue to embrace it? Belief is a curious thing: it doesn't have to have anything to do with what actually happens. Virtually everybody in America, for instance, believes in the strange being known as God, but there is about as much evidence for His existence as there is for the Easter Bunny's existence. No problem. Lack of evidence makes people believe more strongly. Yeah, I know, that makes no sense at all, but, you know, what can you do?

People believe in God because it makes them feel good. People believe in Reaganomics for essentially the same reason. Evidence, reality, scientific studies, none of this makes any difference. I'm not really sure why Reaganomics makes people feel good, but I have a few ideas. Supply-siders pitch the notion as being about freedom, and hard work, and property rights, abstract ideas that are historically near and dear to the American heart. It's probably very much like Stephen Colbert's "truthiness." That is, supply-side economics feels right, feels American, so it must necessarily be right.

And that's where I think our idiot-leaders are coming from. It's not that they don't care about people spending years without a job, even though they legislate policy that ensures such a situation. It's that they honestly believe, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary, that their job-destroying agenda is, in fact, a job-creating agenda.

Kind of like medieval doctors who would bleed their patients to death, all the while believing that they were saving them. We really haven't come too far in the last thousand years.

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Cop sues city, seeks overtime for BlackBerry use

From the Chicago Sun-Times courtesy of the Huffington Post news wire:

The city has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.

Allen was issued a BlackBerry while he was in the gang-investigations unit. "These guys, regardless of rank, are spending in some cases hours on the phone dealing with search-warrant issues and calls from supervisors about cases -- and they're working when it's not their tour of duty," Geiger said.

"We believe we can prove it's a requirement for people who want to work in the gang-investigation unit," he said. "If you tell them you're not going to work outside your work hours and don't want a BlackBerry, you're not going to work in the unit."

More here.

In the thirty years since the beginning of the Reagan era, we've witnessed a steady decline in worker rights coinciding with a steady increase in worker responsibilities--over the same period, wages have generally stagnated, and in some cases even decreased. The reason for all this, of course, is that the Washington consensus, dominated as it is these days by pop neoliberal economic theory, no longer gives a shit about workers. Management, in both public and private sectors, have taken full advantage of this, squeezing their workers as much as they dare, with the comforting knowledge that the federal government will, in all probability, do absolutely nothing to stop them.

So you hear all these flimsy justifications coming down from management. "Well, it's not really work, you know, it's just answering the phone, checking a few emails." Except, of course, it is work. You sure as hell wouldn't be doing it unless keeping your job depended on it. And work, especially hourly work, must receive payment. The English language has a word that well describes unpaid work: slavery. I know, I know, we're all supposed to be team players. We're all supposed to be dedicated to our careers and all that. And employers are so smooth with the Orwellian euphemisms they use to describe off-the-clock work. But fuck that shit. Call it what you want, but working for free makes me your bitch. You get all the benefit and I get nothing.

I really hope this lawsuit succeeds.

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