DUMBASS BUTTHOLE AGGIE FRAT BOY GETS HIS COMEUPPANCE

Sometimes there really is justice. And now he has to go to Blinn College. Hahaha. Click here.

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WE ALREADY KNOW THAT MOST US CONGRESSMEN ARE EXTRAORDINARILY STUPID, BUT...

'Freedom fries' go on House restaurant menus

The French Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment, except to say that french fries actually come from Belgium.

And the 9/11 terrorists all came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but that didn't stop us from invading Afghanistan. Silly Congressmen.

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES: Who Watches the Watchmen?

More cop rape, this time in Miami. The trigger-happy Philadelphia police force is also getting in on some rape, too (note how the article says that this is only the most recent accusation). Finally, while it's not exactly about cop misconduct, it is worth noting that famed Harvard Law School professor and civil rights advocate Alan Dershowitz is now also an advocate of torture. That is to say, one of the most articulate spokesmen of the last two decades against police brutality, corruption, and misconduct has gone to the other side. With civil rights friends like these, who needs enemies?

Thanks once again to J. Orlin Grabbe for the link.

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A REALLY GOOD ARGUMENT FOR PACIFISM

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, I waffled for about a week on whether to support US military action in Afghanistan. Then I read this Howard Zinn essay. That's the moment when I became a pacifist.

War is immoral.

War is fought by regular people against regular people for the benefit of a wealthy elite who are barely even inconvenienced by it all. The rich get richer; the people pay the price. As long as war is waged to fatten the pockets of the wealthy (as has almost always been the case), there can be no such thing as a "just" war. All the pro-war political rhetoric is just bullshit designed to rouse the population to do what an informed, rational person would think insane: kill innocent human beings for the profit of our masters.

Still don't buy it? Read this email sent to Tom Tommorow from the proud father of a US marine who has shipped off to kill Iraqis in order to enrich the American wealthy elite. Sounds like he's proud of his son but not proud of what he's been ordered to do...

UPDATE

Unfortunately, the direct link to the above mentioned email isn't working at the moment, so if you want to read it, just go to Tom Tommorow's page and scroll down to the post for 1:28 PM, March 10.

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SPRING BREAK

If anybody's wondering, the reason I'm posting more these last few days is that I'm on spring break. In addition to health insurance, steady pay, and retirement benefits, the many days of vacation are one of the really nice aspects of being a teacher. It almost makes up for being a lacky-stooge to the authoritarian indoctrination force more commonly known as "public education." Almost.

(God, sometimes I really do feel like an indoor cossack.)

Woohoo! Party down! It's spring break!

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MORE CONSERVATIVE BULLSHIT OUT OF MY HOMETOWN

Veep Cheney's buddies at Halliburton are getting a sweetheart deal to assist in the raping of Iraq after the war. Does this sort thing even surprise anyone anymore? Not about oil, indeed...

Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link.

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THE SEARCH ENGINES ARE FINALLY NOTICING ME!

And seemingly the search topic that makes Real Art pop up on both Yahoo and Google searches is Janeane Garofalo. I think people are trying to read the transcript for her March 7th appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Of course, Eschaton has already linked to it.

Now, just to be helpful to wayward internet searchers (anybody that knows me knows how I just loooove being helpful to strangers...), I will also link to the said transcript.

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TRAILER TRASH

Lack of seniority lands Texas senator a trailer-office.

I hope he has to use a porta-can, too.

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MOLLY IVINS

Molly Ivins coins a new name for the US after Bush finishes remaking it in his image: Greater Texas. Plus: funny remarks about governor Rick Perry's beautiful hair.

How I miss her columns in the Austin American-Statesman! Do they still run them? I haven't really kept track since I left Austin in 1996. I suppose I should just check the A A-S website...

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PERFORMING ARTISTS CONTINUE TO GET TOUGH WITH THE MAN

Houston Symphony musicians go on strike over the amount of pay cuts they will endure. Meanwhile, the neon lights are not bright on Broadway as the musician/actor/technician strike continues.

Right on, brothers!

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MACROECONOMICS 101
Or
How Bush is destroying the United States

The Bush administration's out of control military spending coupled with its absurdly massive tax cuts is pushing the federal budget deficit to nearly $2 trillion dollars. A "budget deficit" refers to the yearly difference between money collected by the federal government and the money it spends (not to be confused with the federal debt which refers to the cumulative total of those yearly deficits plus interest).

Why is this bad? Don't lots of individuals and businesses carry debt for years and years in order to buy things they wouldn't ordinarily be able to buy and then eventually pay it off, no worse for the wear?

Yes, but individuals and business aren't as big as the federal government. That is to say, you have to readjust your thinking about the sense of economic scale when considering the federal budget. As the conservatives are continually reminding us, the government is big. Perhaps this puts it into perspective: Douglas Adams's fictional reference book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," says of the universe, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space..." So, too, with the federal government and it's collection and spending of money. If I and millions of other individuals are in debt, the overall economy is relatively unaffected (although I could see a scenario where personal debt gets really out of hand...), and one could argue that profits gained by lenders offset the effects of personal debt at the macroeconomic level. But the movement of federal money is so vast that it can easily be viewed as a significant percentage and, therefore, a major influencer of the national economy itself.

That is to say, when federal deficits rise above a certain dollar threshold relative to the Gross Domestic Product (or simply, the economy) bad things happen.

The feds can deal with a lack of money in several ways. They can raise taxes (always unpopular and in the current political climate, not likely). They can just print new money (which causes inflation and makes the economy even worse). Or they can borrow it: this has been the standard solution for funding government operations and programs during deficits for at least a couple of decades, probably longer. But the big problem is that when the feds borrow, they borrow on the enormous scale mentioned above. This essentially squeezes the overall supply of American money. That means much less money for American businesses to stay afloat during lean times or to expand during good times, much less money to finance personal car purchases, home purchases, home improvement, and college educations. The higher the federal budget deficit, the slower the US economy moves.

Simply put, huge federal deficits are a really, really bad idea.

Couple Bush's retarded economics with the effects of war jitters on the price of oil and the overall economy itself, along with the effects of the recent wave of corporate scandals and we have a recipe for a recession the likes of which have not been seen since the 1930s. Bush is this era's Herbert Hoover as Nero: he is playing with his toy soldiers while the nation burns. In fact, he's playing with matches and gasoline as the nation burns.

All of which really burns me up.

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VANS, ABORTION CLINICS, HIT LISTS AND BEIRUT

I want to take a quick moment to make it clear that a van driving into a Planned Parenthood office must be considered to be an act of terrorism even though nobody was hurt. Abortion providers and their staffs live in a constant state of seige and fear. The longtime judicial injunction against mass Operation Rescue style protests and clinic blockades have eased the anxiety a bit but that injunction has recently been lifted by the Republican dominated Supreme Court (this by itself may have encouraged this van guy). Furthermore, during the time of the injunction, clinic bombings and murders have continued virtually unabated. I hope that everyone knows of the "hit list" on a website called the "Nuremberg Files" that compares abortion clinics to Nazi concentration camps: despite the denials of the people who run the site, the list is clearly a call to kill abortion providers; they cross off the names of doctors that have been murdered by the site's readers. Yesterday's van attack takes place within this context. The attack also invokes the ghost of the Beirut truck bomb attack that killed sixty three Americans in 1983. Clearly, Frank Lafayette Bird Jr.'s very loud unspoken message was something like, "We've got you in our sniper scope; we used blanks this time, but we can kill you and your patients any time we want. Be afraid."

Bird's "protest" was, without a doubt, designed to create fear and anxiety on the part of clinic staff and would be patients. Perhaps next time, Bird will have his van full of explosives.

These psycho-fundamentalist acts of intimidation and violence are having an effect, too (I mean, apart from the violence itself). Many doctors and nurses, fearing for their lives, are getting out of the business. The ultimate effect is that it is increasingly difficult for women to find doctors willing to perform abortions. Where politics have failed, from the point of view of pro-lifers, terrorism has succeeded.

Driving vans into abortion clinics is not a "protest;" it is terrorism, pure and simple. KHOU is wildly irresponsible in euphemizing this.

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KHOU TERRORIST AS "PROTESTER" STREAMING VIDEO

How long before we start to see "peace protester" changed to "terrorist"? It's not so strange to think. It's already been done successfully with environmental activists and anti-globalism protesters.

Anyway, the link actually comes from the KHOU story page linked below. The graphic in question on the background screen at the beginning of the segment says, "protester arrested." Then, after a quick shot of a map graphic, a full screen title graphic says, "Planned Parenthood Protest." My point here is that driving a car into a building cannot reasonably be said to be simply a protest. Not that I expect anyone to disbelieve my wild claims of conservative bias in the media.

It's just, you know, content for my website and all...

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I'M TOO TIRED TO THINK so here's a couple of links...

First, New York actors are going on a solidarity strike to support musicians who are being threatened by...automation?!?!? The sad reality is that actors and musicians are ultimately so much meat; when working professionally, they have almost no control over what they produce--that's why artists' unions are so overwhelmingly important: at least creative workers can collectively demand fair wages, benefits, and working conditions. Frankly, I think that performing artists should seize the means of production and run everything themselves. Jeez, such a revolution couldn't possibly in a billion years make Hollywood or Broadway any worse...

Next, and here in Houston, an anti-abortion terrorist drives a van into a Planned Parenthood office. I've been in that Planned Parenthood lobby. I've given out their business cards on the sly here and there to some of my high school students. I know that worse has happened to other abortion services in other parts of the country, but this really pisses me off and really scares me; this hits me literally where I live. Furthermore, I've noticed that the Houston Chronicle has, as of this writing, pulled the story from it's own front link page--this is really unusual because they typically keep story links up for 24 hours. So, read about it here or on Eschaton, where I got this link, because you won't find it anywhere else on the Chronicle site. Also the local news show on KHOU, the CBS affiliate, used a video graphic that referred to this anti-choice act of terrorism as an "abortion protest."

God damned mother fuckers.

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UPDATE

I'm not going to link to the KHOU page because they have an annoying registration process, but I have lifted a photo caption quote for you to read:

An abortion protester allegedly drove a van into the Planned Parenthood clinic on Fannin.

Abortion "protester?" "Protester?" "PROTESTER?!?" PROTESTERS DON'T DRIVE VANS INTO BUILDINGS!!!!!

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ANOTHER UPDATE

Okay, here's a link to the KHOU story on their web site. The above mentioned photo caption is not there because it was on their main link page and now even that has been pulled...what's going on here? Brave the registration process if you dare!

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OKAY, I PROMISE THIS IS THE LAST UPDATE

I found the terrorist story on the Chronicle site, but it was buried under a secondary (metro and state) link for some reason. Some nefarious reason? You decide...

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES

The Houston Chronicle just keeps sending these things my way. First, the time sheet cop scam mentioned below nets a constable conviction. Second, hard numerical data now proves what African-American Houstonians already know: the Houston Police Department engages in racial profiling.

At the rate these stories are being reported, I'm sure I'll have more soon.

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES A Special All Texas Post!

Cop in Harris County rips off taxpayers in a time sheet scam.

Houston PD crime lab is in worse shape than the FBI's and the LAPD's during the O.J. investigation.

Cop rape ring in a town near San Antonio is sued.

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LINKS FOR TUESDAY

Famous professional evil clown, Bill O'Reilly is at it again and Counterpunch's Kurt Nimmo meditates on both him and the new McCarthyism. But, wait! In a strange twist of events, Fox's pixie bastard suddenly decides that his most recent round of denunciations maybe just went a wee bit too far. Eschaton provides the details.

Over at Capitol Hill Blue, lawyer and author Steven Brill gives a detailed, easy to read account of how US Attorney General and Christian fundamentalist John Ashcroft rammed the draconian Patriot Act down Congress's throat.

So you still think Cowboy Bush is trying to catch terrorists in Iraq? Or trying to disarm Saddam Hussein? Well, you're dead wrong. The coming war is quite consciously about oil and US world dominance, and the plan to do it goes back thirty years! Democracy Now fills us in by streaming audio. Still a doubter? Read this.

Finally, here's a bit of samba streaming midi in honor of Carnival.

Some of these links lifted from J. Orlin Grabbe.

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THE CONTEXT FOR TRULY UNDERSTANDING THE USA IN 2003 PART II

OR How To Read Between the Lines of the Corporate News, Public Education, and Politics

OR The Story So Far…

“This recommendation (the call for a constitutional convention) was cautiously worded, for Hamilton did not want to raise any unnecessary alarm. He doubtless believed that a complete revolution in the old system was desirable, but he knew that, in the existing state of popular temper, it was not expedient to announce his complete program.”

“Mr. Madison warned the convention that in framing a system which they wished to last for ages they must not lose sight of the changes which the ages would produce in the forms and distribution of property. In advocating a long term in order to give independence and firmness to the Senate, he described these impending changes: "An increase in the population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life and secretly sigh for a more equitable distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former.”

From Charles Beard’s "Framing the Constitution."

A Quick Intro

After ruminating on my earlier plug for Howard Zinn’s “People’s History,” I thought that it might be helpful to try to write a really condensed overview of my understanding of US political history—this is the context in which almost all of my writings should be understood. By and large, I must both credit and suggest not only Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and James Loewen, who deal specifically with history, but also others that I’ve read who deal with deconstructive analysis of other topics such as Susan Faludi, Eric Schlosser, Greg Palast, and others.

Before I go any further, I must point out an assumption that I’m making here: class exists in the United States. Whether you buy this assumption or not (and you’re a fool if you don’t), one thing is undeniable. Most Americans die in approximately the same income bracket and social circumstances into which they were born. A relative few move up, even fewer move down; it is clear, however, that the percentage of Americans who actually somehow change their economic circumstances is so small as to make the observation irrelevant. There is effectively no upward mobility in the US. The “American Dream” is, quite simply, a myth that aids the powerful and oppresses the powerless.

The Overview

The really interesting thing about this so-called revisionist version of history is that it is not particularly sophisticated or difficult to understand. In fact, it makes much more sense than the officially recognized version—it is a story of people trying to do what they perceive to be in their best interests rather than the preferred mythological tales of the weird, altruistic, justice-oriented, super philosophy-heroes that founded the land of freedom against all odds. It’s not even really all that “revisionist;” most of the facts jibe with what we were all taught in high school (for the most part, anyway). The major differences are deciding which facts are the most important and determining what those facts mean.

Here it is:

In the 1780s, wealthy American merchants, bankers, and landowners managed to co-opt and then manage both the rhetoric and political energy of the young nation’s popular revolutionary fervor. In fact, the entire American revolution and establishment of national government can be seen in terms of one plutocracy that dishonestly presented itself as being “of the people” replacing another plutocracy that honestly presented itself as the elite.

All American governments, from federal down to municipal, ultimately reflected the collective will of the new wealthy establishment. By and large, therefore, the role of government in the United States came to be about protecting the property and business interests of the elite while moderating disagreements and conflict between wealthy factions. These functions were (and still are) cloaked in the language of “the people” but usually had more to do with restricting freedom and democracy to the benefit of the wealthy rather than protecting and enhancing such concepts. The founding fathers really were brilliant, just not in the way that we were taught.

“Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.” Thank you, Pete Townshend, for planting the seeds of understanding…

Charles Beard’s “Framing the Constitution” was, I think, the first time that this was understood to be true. It took nearly 125 years for the power of American national myth to be seriously questioned by a respectable scholar. Of course, by then it was too late to even matter. The rule of wealth was already strongly entrenched in the American character—to question the conventional understanding was to piss off not only the powerful, but also the oppressed who had made a strong identity investment in the national myths of democracy and justice.

Now this is not to say that there is not some truth to these powerful national myths. One must admit that the economic and social situation has greatly improved for most rank-and-file Americans since 1776. In every case of social improvement, however, the ruling elite has only cooperated such that the system would not disintegrate. That is to say, greater economic privileges, more civil rights, and fairer political representation have only been achieved by MASSIVE outpourings of popular dissent. The only time that justice is truly done in the United States is when the plutocracy feels very, very threatened—even then, the elitists are generally able to take credit for the political changes, once again wrapping themselves in the pseudo-ideology of American freedom and democracy. In the American political system of managing and directing popular dissent, defeat becomes success.

In summary, this is not the America that you thought it was. This is not a democracy; we are ruled by the wealthy, despite all appearances. This is how it has always been. This is how it is even now.

I did say that this point of view was pretty simple, didn’t I?

Some Examples

THE CIVIL WAR can be seen in terms of the worst-case scenario for the American plutocracy. The popular uprisings against slavery had come to threaten the existing order among the wealthy elite. That is to say, the elite in the north saw the writing on the wall: abolish slavery or deal with a real revolution that would be very harmful to business stability and rule of wealth. Of course, the elite in the south stood to be completely pushed out of the plutocracy if slavery were abolished, and, therefore, were utterly paranoid about the issue for decades before the Civil War. The Constitutional system was unable to work in the desired way: the resolution of conflict among elites and the management of popular dissent became mutually exclusive of one another--war eventually broke out.

SUFFRAGE is an example of the granting of rights. Simply put, the all-male elites only gave women the vote because the widespread protests of the Suffragettes were seemingly threatening the stability of the nation. Allowing women the vote didn’t really have anything to do with morality from the point of view of the ruling elite; more like “we better save our asses because this is looking a bit scary (and my wife won’t have sex with me).”

LABOR rights had to be violently fought for. Public schools don’t really stress any real understanding of the US labor movement or how very popular it once was. In fact, Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs garnered 900,000 votes for president in 1912 and later got just about the same number of votes while in prison for speaking out against WWI (and, no doubt, for also pissing off the plutocracy). Indeed, the labor movement was perceived by the ruling elite to be a HUGE threat to their system. So they allowed workers just enough rights to diffuse the movement. Otherwise, freedom and justice might break out and then where would the wealthy be?

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT is theoretically almost a combination of the politics preceding the Civil War and the politics of the Labor Movement. That is to say, regional disagreements among wealthy elites converged with massive social upheaval to create the most turbulent times the nation has seen since the 1860s. The result was that the south lost again, but the rule of wealth was preserved and numerous politicians (JFK, to name one) were able to jump on the integration bandwagon and score political points—again, defeat becomes success.

THE VIETNAM WAR is yet another example of massive public dissent forcing the elite to grant concessions to the people. The US lost the war and suffered some loss of international prestige, but the plutocracy persevered.

WATERGATE is, perhaps, one of the most cynical examples of the inner workings of the American plutocracy. Noam Chomsky has pointed out in an interview in the book “Understanding Power” that the Watergate cover up is so utterly insignificant when compared with Nixon’s numerous real crimes (the secret bombings of Cambodia, misuse of the FBI, assassinations of both Americans and foreigners, etc), that the stated reasons for his exit from office cannot possibly be true. Rather, Chomsky speculates that Nixon’s abandonment of the Breton Woods financial agreement (this was the blueprint for the post WWII international economic order) and his freezing of wages and prices (which, interestingly enough, he believed he had to do because of the economic squeeze created by the Vietnam war) greatly offended and burned many powerful economic interests. In other words, Nixon had some very real enemies, but they did not make it onto his list: from the moment that he screwed the financial interests that allowed him to stay in power, his days were numbered.

TODAY the wealthy elite is in the best shape it has been in since the days of the Robber Barons and the political corruption of the late nineteenth century. After over two decades of conservative (a.k.a. wealthy) dismantling of the US social state, after over two decades of a concerted ideological attack on working and oppressed Americans that has manifested itself in the public schools and the elite controlled news media (in fact, the management and redirection of social unrest, or the “manufacture of consent,” as Chomsky and Edward Herman call it, is now a wildly successful near-science), opposition and popular dissent are in near complete disarray. The plutocracy can do almost anything it wants and it does. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are probably the most successful example in American history of the plutocracy co-opting popular unrest and redirecting it toward their own ends. There are, of course, massive demonstrations against the Iraq war, but it remains to be seen if the elite feel threatened—so far, the plutocracy is resting easy…

A Brief Conclusion

Anyway, I hope you get the idea of where I’m coming from: the political reality in America is at the same time both far more complex and far more simple than is popularly understood. Freedom, justice, and democracy all play important roles in the US, but these concepts generally serve as a means to elitists’ ends, rather than as a national end.

Call me crazy, but I think that democracy and freedom are good ideas by themselves. That is what they taught us all in school, after all.

Isn’t it?

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FRIDAY FLURRY OF BUSH WAR ACTIVITY

Bush lays the rhetorical groundwork for invading Iraq even though the rogue nation may end up being in compliance with UN resolutions. Blix prepares his own criteria and time table. Russia starts to play global political hardball at the UN. Bulgaria becomes the latest country to be bribed into the US led mercenary army of nations. Canada gets nervous.

AND A WHOLE LOT MORE!

Click here.

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES

Just for fun, I'm going to try to link to any reports that I come across that concern police brutality and corruption in these here United States. I'm working on the theory that I ought to be able to come across more stories than I might expect if I wasn't paying attention.

It's content for my website, anyway.

My first entry comes from the city of Harry Callahan.

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