The New Surveillance Bill: The Worst of Both Worlds

From AlterNet:

The bill, in short, is worse than granting absolute immunity: it is an effort to suborn the legitimacy of the federal courts by having a judge rubber-stamp the dismissal of cases against the telecoms without looking at the substance of what, in fact, was done. It reduces the separation of powers to a check-the-box exercise.

The bill does no better on privacy matters -- the question of new surveillance power. Title I of the measure grants the executive branch new surveillance powers for collecting the communications of persons overseas. Although it contains several provisions that purport to shelter Americans' privacy both at home and overseas, these parts of the bill are rendered irrelevant by the grant of sweeping collection authorization.

And

This is a radical break from the FISA regime created in 1978, and risks severe harm to Americans' privacy interests. The most important break with FISA is the absence of any individualized warrant requirement: it is now whole collection programs that are authorized and reviewed. And the abandonment of discrete, individualized legislative authorization and judicial review is only the first of the bill's troubling features.

Click here for more.

I've been wanting to post on this since Friday when the bill was passed by the House, but it's been difficult to find an article or essay spelling out, exactly, what's wrong with it. The above linked essay does a decent job, but still doesn't quite get to the heart of the matter.

The problem with the previously illegal White House warrantless wiretapping program, I mean apart from the fact that they didn't even try to get warrants, was its scope. They were looking at masses of electronic data concerning the communications of millions of Americans, the vast majority of them peaceful and law-abiding citizens. This was, on its face, an enormous and profound violation of the fourth amendment. The government can't search you, which includes your private communications, without a warrant, except under some very specific circumstances, such as imminent life-and-death emergencies. But that's exactly what President Bush's electronic surveillance program did, making a gargantuan mockery of one of our most foundational national values.

This new bill, just passed by the House, and by all accounts headed for success in the Senate, does nothing to change either the scope or the warrant issue. Indeed, there are no warrants at all, in the way the term is usually understood. As the essay observes, the FISA court, under this soon-to-be law, doesn't even glance at individual circumstances; instead, the court reviews the entire fishing expedition, and the standard for judging legality is reduced to simple assertions from the White House--all they have to say is "We're looking for terrorists," and that's it. So no warrants are required, and the very nature of the surveillance is such that millions of Americans are scooped up in its nets.

This is no compromise. Indeed, it's offensively unconstitutional. Anti-American, even.

But the Democrats all love it. What is their fucking deal?!? I know, I know. It all has to do with politics. That is, winning elections: the Democrats are inexplicably still afraid of appearing soft on terrorism. So afraid that they're willing to unilaterally shred the Constitution.

Well, whatever their reasons are, one thing is now achingly clear: our Congressmen understand neither the US Constitution, nor the role that they are required to play under its mandates. That is, our government, both the legislative and executive branches, is in the hands of utter incompetents who just don't get it. This is not unlike allowing an eight year old to drive a car. On the freeway.

I'm scared.

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DEBUNKING RACIST KATRINA MYTHS

From CounterPunch, an essay on all the recent racist Iowa/NOLA flood comparisons, written by my new favorite racism basher, Tim Wise:

The Ugly Side of Disaster

So consider Limbaugh's formulation, where he says, "I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street."

Fair enough. Those things aren't happening in Iowa. Yet, according to multiple post-Katrina investigations, and stories written up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the London Guardian, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Reason Magazine and the American Journalism Review, they weren't happening in New Orleans either. Reports of shooting at helicopters, or rapes or murders were almost entirely false. There were no murders in the evacuation centers, few if any sexual assaults (and none on the street as Limbaugh claimed), no helicopters fired on, and no police officers shot by residents. Yes, there was looting, although by a distinct minority of persons trapped in the city, and overwhelmingly for necessities like food, medicine, water,and clothing to replace the rotting, soaked rags people were wearing after wading through waist-deep water. And according to persons on the ground in the flood zone, even the luxury items taken were typically used as barter chips, to get rides out of the city for oneself and one's family when it became obvious that large scale assistance wasn't going to arrive any time soon. In other words, reports of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have been greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and have only remained believable to millions because of the race and class biases that allow people to believe the worst about poor black folks even without a shred of actual evidence.

And while Limbaugh and others praise Midwesterners for pulling together in a spirit of cooperation--as opposed to the animalistic chaos we are to envision when thinking of New Orleanians during Katrina--the fact is there were innumerable acts of kindness in the streets of New Orleans as well. Those who personally brought supplies to the thousands trapped downtown reported little if any fighting or random anger amongst the assembled; rather, they saw persons trying to shade the elderly, and make sure that old folks and the very young had first dibs on what little relief supplies were dribbling in. But the media focused on none of that, choosing instead to highlight reports--false as it turned out--of mass violence.

Then of course have been the suggestions, especially common in the e-blasts and blog postings to the effect that Iowans, unlike New Orleanians, have helped themselves, because while the latter had grown dependent on government to solve their problems, Midwesterners in the "heart of America" still value the importance of self-reliance. But the fact is, Iowans are no less likely to receive government assistance than those in New Orleans were prior to Hurricane Katrina, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys, taken in 2006 (the most recent year available) and 2004 (the last data collected for New Orleans before the flooding of that city).

Click here for more.

And this vile racist bullshit isn't just coming from hate-radio, email, and blogs: I was stunned recently while scanning through reader comments on a story about the Iowa flooding in the Houston Chronicle; the majority of them were very much along the lines of the crap-rhetoric Wise describes in his essay.

What is it about so many Americans that makes them so ready to accept such racist narratives that have absolutely no evidence to support them?

I mean, sure, some of this was launched almost immediately by the White House in order to take political advantage of the situation as quickly as possible. But Katrina was a watershed event for the Oval Office: most Americans appear to have not bought into Karl Rove's story line that New Orleans corruption, rather than Federal incompetence, was responsible for the worst events during the week-long Reign of Chaos after the storm hit. Likewise, the corporate news media broadcast unverified frightening rumor after unverified frightening rumor, as fact, for days and days. But the vast majority of these horror stories, the rapes, the shootings, the looting, were corrected within a few weeks of airing. The record is clear: the people of New Orleans did not turn on each other. They were just trying to survive. On their own.

Nonetheless, all this bullshit has a great deal of traction. Many Americans apparently need to believe that NOLA's African-American population turned to savagery and sloth in the face of disaster, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary. Clearly, the appeal of such mythology is due to racism, even among people who adamantly insist that they are not racist. Fuck man, even suggesting that these comparisons are racist pissed off numerous commenters for the Chronicle story linked above.

At any rate, the Wise essay is longish, but well worth reading, if only to arm yourself with a shitload of facts to counter any thick-necked asshole who might waylay you with the "good white Iowans versus bad black New Orleanians" fiction running around lately. Go check it out.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Reine



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

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From AlterNet:

Memphis Cops Caught on Tape Beating Transsexual Prisoner

The video, recorded February 12th, shows Duanna Johnson in the booking area at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center after an arrest for prostitution. The tape clearly shows a Memphis police officer walk over to Johnson - a transsexual - and hit her in the face several times.

"Actually he was trying to get me to come over to where he was, and I responded by telling him that wasn't my name - that my mother didn't name me a 'faggot' or a 'he-she,' so he got upset and approached me. And that's when it started," Johnson said.

Johnson said the officer was attempting to call her over to be fingerprinted. She said she chose not respond to the derogatory name the officer called her.

"He said, 'I'm telling you, I'm giving you one more chance to get up.' So I'm looking at him, and he started putting his gloves on, and seen him take out a pair of handcuffs," Johnson said.

Click here to read more and to see the video.

Okay, I must admit that transsexuals weird me out a bit, and I'm not one hundred percent sure why. My speculation is that it has something to do with Freudian castration anxiety; that is, I see a transsexual person and I subconsciously imagine losing my family jewels--at least, that's what I think is happening. Damn the Butthole Surfers and the sex reassignment surgery film they projected at that concert I attended back in 1990.

At any rate, this is my problem to work out. It's caused by me. It's not caused by transsexuals, who have a perfect right to be whatever they want to be.

That's why this cop beating is so extraordinarily egregious. She was beaten for who she is. Not that it would have been okay if these cops were just being your typical violent asshole cops. But this is so hardcore because you have armed security agents of the government acting out their Freudian neuroses on a citizen who only resisted after what was going on became clear. This is no different from Rodney King. Cops taking out their weird psychological issues on relatively peaceful victims.

And it's no surprise, either. Police culture, nationwide, makes such incidents inevitable. Prevailing cop attitudes are hypermasculine, authoritarian, violent, and paranoid: put all that together with irrational fear of transsexuals and you get beatings. Or worse. The really sad thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. Change cop culture and you change cop behavior.

Unfortunately, that just doesn't seem to be on anybody's political agenda at the moment.

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The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs

From the New York Times courtesy of Whiskey Fire courtesy of Eschaton:

On Friday, The A.P. issued a statement defending its action, saying it was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.” An A.P. spokesman declined Friday to further explain the association’s position.

After that, however, the news association convened a meeting of its executives at which it decided to suspend its efforts to challenge blogs until it creates a more thoughtful standard.

“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy said.

And

Even if The A.P. sets standards, bloggers could choose to use more content than its standards permit, and then The A.P. would have to decide whether to take legal action against them. One important legal test of whether an excerpt exceeds fair use is if it causes financial harm to the copyright owner.

“The principal question is whether the excerpt is a substitute for the story, or some established adaptation of the story,” said Timothy Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law School. Mr. Wu said that the case is not clear-cut, but he believes that The A.P. is likely to lose a court case to assert a claim on that issue.

Click here for the rest.

And click here to see the AP's new standards, per word pricing, for using their work.

Okay, this is slightly disturbing, if only because I rely on the AP, usually by way of the Houston Chronicle, so heavily for my rantings here at Real Art. On the other hand, I'm only getting like 70 hits per day, and more than half of those come from Google image searches, so I'm probably fine as far as being sued goes--I seriously doubt anyone at AP corporate even cares about me, or notices me, for that matter.

Beyond that, however, it's still pretty disturbing. Blogging, on both the left and right sides of the blogosphere, has become a rather important overall forum for national political discussion that did not exist before the internet. That is, political blogging, in its totality, has become a strong enhancement to American democracy, and is therefore quite a good thing. Because bloggers are essentially citizens engaging in debate, and not reporters, they must necessarily rely on actual reporting from bona fide news sources: cutting off such news from the grand discussion would heavily stifle it, thereby hurting American democracy.

That's a bad thing.

And the honchos at the AP must surely know this. But then, the news business, in the end, is a business. Clearly, the bottom line trumps social obligation, which is what's been making the corporate news media suck so much in recent years, anyway. But this is just tacky. No better than the heavy handed tactics of the music industry. Worse, actually, because most illegal music downloading is of Britney Spears and the like, you know, shit music, inconsequential as far as democracy goes; this AP gambit, however, stands to snuff out this relatively new arena for political debate on the internet.

Further, I don't really understand why they think this hurts their bottom line. I've clicked through countless blog posts, myself, to read AP stories in their entirety, which are always surrounded by the advertising that pays their bills. That is, as far as I can tell, bloggers give AP web articles much more exposure than they would have gotten otherwise, and in the internet ad business, that's gold.

My best bet is that, as print journalism continues to go the way of the dinosaur, old school news businessmen are panicking, which is making them do silly shit. Hopefully, this will blow over after a few months and the AP will regain its senses--otherwise, they'll end up being like Scientology, suing everybody they can think of, just because they're crazy and pissed.

No fucking way I'm paying $12.50 to quote five words.

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FREE MARKET FANTASIES

From the New York Times, Princeton economist Paul Krugman on how deregulation came to be considered a good thing:

Bad Cow Disease

Thus, when Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, was asked about his ultimate goal, he replied that he wanted a restoration of the way America was “up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.”

The late Milton Friedman agreed, calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. It was unnecessary, he argued: private companies would avoid taking risks with public health to safeguard their reputations and to avoid damaging class-action lawsuits. (Friedman, unlike almost every other conservative I can think of, viewed lawyers as the guardians of free-market capitalism.)

Such hard-core opponents of regulation were once part of the political fringe, but with the rise of modern movement conservatism they moved into the corridors of power. They never had enough votes to abolish the F.D.A. or eliminate meat inspections, but they could and did set about making the agencies charged with ensuring food safety ineffective.

They did this in part by simply denying these agencies enough resources to do the job. For example, the work of the F.D.A. has become vastly more complex over time thanks to the combination of scientific advances and globalization. Yet the agency has a substantially smaller work force now than it did in 1994, the year Republicans took over Congress.

Perhaps even more important, however, was the systematic appointment of foxes to guard henhouses.

Click here for the rest.

The point Krugman goes on to make, and it's quite a good one, is that, in the end, a great deal of this deregulation mania has come back to bite US business on the ass--Korea's current boycott of American beef comes from reasonable fears that the US does far too little to guard against mad cow disease.

The point I want to make, however, is that I'm not full of shit when I go on and on, again and again, about how conservative philosophy, which is probably too kind of a word to use, concerning the government's role in the economy, is responsible for many of the consumer safety stories we've seen in the headlines so often these last few years. That is, conservatives believe the less government interference in the economy, the better it is for everybody; "get the government off the people's backs" sounds really nice, but without Big Government protecting us from inhuman Big Business, we're all fucked. Poison cat food, lead paint and date rape drugs in toys from China, tainted spinach and tomatoes, E. coli hamburgers, all this stuff should have been caught by government regulation agencies before it injured a single American citizen. But these agencies now represent the interests of the industries who think nothing of harming their customers. All because of the ascendancy of right-wing economic philosophy.

Same thing goes for the California energy crisis of 2000-2001. Ditto for Enron and Worldcom. Same for the subprime mortgage crisis. And on and on.

If we're going to allow massive corporations to have great power over our lives in this way, we simply must have a government that is strong enough to play the policeman. On the other hand, that makes it all the more vital to keep these vast concentrations of wealth away from the levers of governance--all they ever do is fuck it all up.

At any rate, I've got a mainstream bigtime economist here who says I'm right.

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SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD

From osama husseini courtesy of This Modern World:

How Russert et al Planted the Seeds for War

The survivors of those killed in the U.S.'s war in Iraq since the 2003 invasion cannot simply blame Bush. Under the guise of "tough journalism" Russert and others disseminated lies and built the case for invasion even before Bush got to the White House. A letter I sent to Russert tells a slice of the story:

And

You now have a serious obligation to correct these errors. Iraq did not throw out the weapons inspectors. Butler did it, apparently at the administration's behest. This is important since it sets the terms of how the new inspections regime should be viewed.

It's noteworthy that a sophisticated, experienced journalist like yourself could get so sucked into the cliche of Iraq as aggressor/U.S. as victim that how the administration launched "Desert Fox" is forgotten. It's a case study in the conventional wisdom trumping the facts. I hope to hear from you shortly so that we can rectify this matter.

More here.

Yeah, this was an enormous myth being bounced around during the run up to the invasion. Journalists, Congressmen, and White House officials kept humming the mantra "Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors." Of course, that never happened. The US pulled them out so Clinton could start bombing Iraq while impeachment proceedings against him began in the House.

Tim Russert engaged in a lot of power-enabling bullshit during his tenure on Meet the Press.

I mean, look. There's evil and then there's evil. When Jerry Falwell died last year, I danced a jig--Falwell was a rub-your-face-in-it prick, pushing dangerous ideas and lies from an authoritative position, happily condemning good people on a regular basis. Russert wasn't an asshole, but, like Falwell, he definitely pushed dangerous ideas and lies from an authoritative position, again and again.

Here, check out this search of FAIR's website for the keywords "Tim" and "Russert," and you'll see what I'm talking about.

To be fair, Russert was really no better or worse than any of his high dollar TV press colleagues, but that doesn't make him innocent. Russert, Rather, Brokaw, Jennings, all those guys, it's the same thing: too close to power to really be able to criticize it, too caught up in Washington's inside the beltway herd-think to come up with any original ideas. Ultimately, they're all nothing more than siphons for corporate and government PR. More often than not, that makes them liars, and worse, enablers of profound injustice.

Like the war in Iraq. Or the health care crisis. Or poverty.

I'm not particularly glad that Russert's gone, no jig dancing this time around; he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. But President Bush appears to be a nice guy, too. And that's no defense when tens of thousands of people lie dead because of your actions. We couldn't have started this awful war without Russert's aid. He's responsible.

The really sad thing is that he's just going to be replaced by another corporate media clone who's going to do exactly the same thing.

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BOBBY JINDAL CONTINUES TO BE A BIG ASSHOLE

My adopted state's governor is now GOP hot shit. Really, just shit, when you get right down to it. From Crooks and Liars:

Face The Nation: Jindal Thinks Intelligent
Design Should Be Taught With Evolution

REID: But how about you personally? Where do you stand personally on the issue?

Gov. JINDAL: As a parent, when my kids go to schools, when they go to public schools, I want them to be presented with the best thinking. I want them to be able to make decisions for themselves. I want them to see the best data. I personally think that the life, human life and the world we live in wasn’t created accidentally. I do think that there’s a creator. I’m a Christian. I do think that God played a role in creating not only earth, but mankind. Now, the way that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don’t want them to be–I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness. The way we’re going to have smart, intelligent kids is exposing them to the very best science and let them not only decide, but also let them contribute to that body of knowledge.

Click here to watch the video.

Ah yes. A variation on the old "teach the controversy" point of view, which uses reasonable sounding language to undermine science education. That clever Bobby. He's so reasonable, isn't he? He wants kids to be exposed to "the very best science." How reasonable of dear smart Bobby.

Problem is, "intelligent design" isn't science. It's philosophy masquerading as science. To be fair, science is also philosophy, but it is a very very specific kind of philosophy, with its central tenet being that the physical universe is best understood through use of the scientific method. Including "intelligent design" in any science curriculum does nothing but make a joke of science education.

That is, science requires evidence, and there is no evidence for "intelligent design." Really, as far as I understand it, "intelligent design" isn't even good philosophy: it's essentially "gee whiz, the universe is so amazing and complex that God had to have created it." It's kind of stupid, actually. I mean, I don't have a problem with "intelligent design" being included in, say, elective philosophy courses, or courses on comparative religion, or social studies classes because "intelligent design" is an important concept as far as understanding a lot of American politics goes. But it is not science, and has no place in the science classroom.

Which means that Bobby Jindal is a stupid asshole and has no place in the Governor's Mansion up in Baton Rouge, and definitely has no place in Washington D.C. in, well, any capacity at all. Certainly not as Vice President.

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. You're every bit as retarded as your chosen namesake from the Brady Bunch.


Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

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SPECIAL FATHER'S DAY EDITION
THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



...Captain Kirk and Spock's father Ambassador Sarek!!!

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie



Sammy



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

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Obama says his wife did not say 'whitey' in speech

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said today that Michelle Obama never used the word "whitey" in a speech from the church pulpit as he launched a Web site to debunk rumors about his campaign.

The rumor that Michelle Obama railed against "whitey" in a diatribe at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The rumor included claims of a videotape of the speech that would be used to bring down Obama's candidacy this fall.

"No such tape exists," the campaign responds on the site, www.fightthesmears.com. "Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word."

Click here for the rest.

Truth be told, the main reason I'm commenting on this story is because the headline is just about the funniest thing I've seen in a week. I mean, what is she? George Jefferson? Pretty much nobody from Michelle Obama's generation ever says "whitey." Clearly, this "whitey" attack is bullshit at face value.

I would even go so far as to say that, even if it were true, it's not that big of a deal. As far as I've ever been able to tell, the racial epithet "whitey" always had more of a connotation criticizing the white power structure, rather than white individuals, and, believe me, the white power structure is still very much in need of criticism. Further, even if "whitey" is to be taken as a racial attack on white people in general, it's like, so what, white people still dominate the United States--"whitey," "cracker," and numerous other anti-white racial slurs will never ever ever be the same thing as the n-word or its ilk; when you're part of the privileged majority they really are simply words. "Whitey" is just kind of lame; the n-word is patently offensive.

But never mind all that. Michelle Obama did not rail against "whitey." It's fucking absurd to think that. But then, it was also absurd to think that John Kerry got his Purple Heart in Vietnam by shooting himself in the foot: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an independent GOP hatchet smear squad, managed to blanket the airwaves with all kinds of bullshit about Kerry, pulling off the unthinkable, turning an honorable war vet challenging a National Guard deserter for President into a dope smoking hippie piece of shit. Fortunately, the Obama campaign has not forgotten the lessons of '04, and this new Fight the Smears site appears to be part of a coordinated rapid response effort.

Obama doesn't strike me as the kind of Democrat who's just going to roll over and take it. Cool.

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Why Oil Prices Are So High

At last, an answer that doesn't leave me asking more questions. From CounterPunch, conservative economist Paul Craig Roberts:

The dollar is weak because of large trade and budget deficits, the closing of which is beyond American political will. As abuse wears out the US dollar’s reserve currency role, sellers demand more dollars as a hedge against its declining exchange value and ultimate loss of reserve currency status.

In an effort to forestall a serious recession and further crises in derivative instruments, the Federal Reserve is pouring out liquidity that is financing speculation in oil futures contracts. Hedge funds and investment banks are restoring their impaired capital structures with profits made by speculating in highly leveraged oil future contracts, just as real estate speculators flipping contracts pushed up home prices. The oil futures bubble, too, will pop, hopefully before new derivatives are created on the basis of high oil prices.

And

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi recently stated, “There is no justification for the current rise in prices.” What the minister means is that there are no shortages or supply disruptions. He means no real reasons as distinct from speculative or psychological reasons.

The run up in oil price coincides with a period of heightened US and Israeli military aggression in the Middle East. However, the biggest jump has been in the last 18 months.

When Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, the average price of oil that year was about $27 per barrel, or about $31 in inflation adjusted 2007 dollars. The price rose another $10 in 2004 to an average annual price of $42 (in 2007 dollars), another $12 in 2005, $7 in 2006, and $4 in 2007 to $65. But in the last few months the price has more than doubled to about $135. It is difficult to explain a $70 jump in price in terms other than speculation.

Click here for the rest.

So I've been avoiding this subject for a while now, even as the gas crunch starts to affect my own personal bottom line. Why? Because I've been extraordinarily dissatisfied with the explanations I've heard, explanations from NPR's All Things Considered, the New York Times, PBS's The News Hour, you know, well respected news sources that are supposed to sort this shit out. The most widespread and most unsatisfying explanation appears to be about supply and demand in a global economy where Asia continues to grow at a quick pace. But the Asian economy has been growing quickly since its late 90s meltdown: why are oil prices only now shooting rapidly into the stratosphere? Like I said, unsatisfying. Some economists being interviewed by the above mentioned news sources have, like Roberts, also talked about oil futures speculators, but, unlike Roberts, are very mysterious and even dubious about the role such speculation might play.

So far, Roberts, a conservative economist who has broken ranks with the faithful in recent years, is offering the only explanation with any internal logic and consistency.

If you don't grok economics well, here's what I get out of the above excerpt. Before I go any further, it is important to note that oil, by an American/Saudi arrangement made during the early 70s, is priced in dollars worldwide. And dollars appear to be a big part of the problem. That is, dollars just aren't worth as much as they used to be; consequently, one needs more of them to buy everything, oil in particular.

Our dual deficits, trade and budget, have apparently created intense pressures on the dollar's exchange rate, primarily because we must borrow heavily from foreign nations in order to finance our red ink spending: borrowing in this way, on such an enormous scale, essentially creates masses of new dollars which are poured into the economy like Niagara Falls, causing inflation. In short, the more dollars there are, the cheaper they are. That's what inflation is ultimately, the devaluing of the dollar.

(It's actually much more complicated than this when factoring the important concepts of petrodollars and reserve currency, but I'm just going to leave it with what I've said about dollar inflation affecting oil prices more significantly than prices for other commodities. Especially because I barely grasp this stuff myself.)

Compounding the inflationary pressures of the trade and budget deficits are the super low interest rates that the Federal Reserve Board has been setting in order to keep our entire finance system from collapsing in the face of the mortgage and lending crisis. This, too, by making it cheaper to borrow, creates new money, and causes more inflation, making the dollar lose still more purchasing power. But if I'm reading Roberts correctly, this particular issue is less about inflation than it is about where much of the new money created by these low interest rates is being spent: it's going into oil futures.

Futures, as an economic subject, makes my head hurt, but my understanding of the idea is like this. Investors will bet that a commodity price will either go up or down. If they're betting that the price is going down, they want to sell now while the price is high. But if they're betting that it's going up, they'll buy now while it's cheap, and sell later when it's high. If you get enough investors betting that the price will go up, the price will go up, just because so many investors think it will: investor perception becomes reality simply because all their purchases now create high demand, and high demand for a finite resource, in turn, makes the price go up.

Just go watch that movie Trading Places to get a better explanation of the commodities market.

At any rate, the irony here is that this entire dynamic turns the law of supply and demand on its head. Global oil demand, in the real economy, has remained relatively stable in recent years; supply, according to the Saudis, is plentiful at the moment for all the world's needs. There should be no oil crisis. But demand among investors, however, has skyrocketed because they need somewhere to put all this money being pumped out by the Federal Reserve Board.

If this is actually the case, what we're looking at is an oil bubble, which, like the tech bubble and housing bubble before it, ought to burst at sometime in the future--oil is not really worth as much as investors think it is at the moment, and at some point, the more cautious among the futures set will start to sell it all off, making billions, but leaving other futures investors holding the bag. In the meantime, we're in the midst of handing over those billions, out of our own pockets, to those first few who sell while prices are high. In other words, right now, we're holding the bag.

Now what I want to know is why this bullshit is being allowed to happen. Don't we have any laws or agencies that are supposed to keep this shit from happening?

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Salmonella outbreak tied to tomatoes reaches 17 states

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Federal officials today hunted for the source of a 17-state salmonella outbreak linked to three types of raw tomatoes, while the list of supermarkets and restaurants yanking those varieties from shelves and menus grew.

McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Burger King, Kroger, Outback Steakhouse, Winn-Dixie and Taco Bell were among the companies that voluntarily withdrew red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes unless they were grown in certain states and countries.

In addition, officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District — the nation's second largest — said Monday they have "indefinitely suspended" serving uncooked tomatoes.

The FDA is investigating the source of the outbreak, agency spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said. "We are working hard and fast on this one and hope to have something as quickly as possible," Rawlings said Monday.

Click here for the rest.

You can add my place of employment to the list restaurants altering their menus in response to this latest tainted food scandal. It's an Italian restaurant. No fresh tomatoes at an Italian restaurant. Big drag. I mean, we are substituting grape tomatoes where we can, but no Margherita pizza, no fresh tomato bruschetta...of course, we don't have any Italians working there, either, but you get the point.

And I call it a scandal because it probably is one.

That is, even though the FDA hasn't got it all figured out yet, I think it's safe to make a couple of predictions about what they will find. First, if these tainted tomatoes were grown in the United States, they most likely came from some kind of gigantic agri-business farming operation. In his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser relates in great detail how the corporatization of the American food industry has created circumstances that make what would have been only a small outbreak in the past massive and widespread today. Schlosser deals primarily with the E. coli poisonings of ground beef in the early 90s, but the same principle applies to chickens, eggs, and produce--sometimes, as with the recent tainted spinach scandal, produce growers can do everything correctly and safely, only to find that nearby operations dealing with live animals have tainted local water. In short, the centralization of food creation, coupled with corporate fiscal short-sightedness has made our food much less safe than it has been in the past.

Second, Republicans have gutted the regulatory agencies that are supposed to make sure this doesn't happen. When they had the Congress for twelve years, they continually cut funding, so these agencies for years have had neither the resources nor the staff to inspect our food and the companies that produce it. Now that they've had the White House for nearly eight years, they've restaffed these agencies with industry insiders who see regulation and safety as something that only inhibits profit. That is, many of the people running these agencies are now using them to do the exact opposite of what they were established to do in the first place.

In the end, these tainted food outbreaks we seem to experience every other year are the result of almost two decades of psychotic right-wing delusions about how the "free market" will solve all problems. I mean, I guess they have a point: consumers are now rejecting the bad product, tomatoes which may be infected with salmonella, which is, I suppose, a "market correction."

But I sure would hate to be one of those people who got really fucking sick or died from E. coli or whatever it is this week fucking up our food supply. Caveat emptor is only for Barbarians and savages, which is exactly how our corporate capitalist masters see us.

Bunch of fucking assholes.

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HOW FUCKING STUPID IS FOX NEWS?

Really, really, really fucking stupid.

From Media Matters for America courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Teasing a segment on the "gesture everyone seems to interpret differently," Fox News' E.D. Hill said: "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? ... We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says." In the ensuing discussion with a "body language expert," Hill referred to the "Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound," but at no point did she explain her earlier reference to "a terrorist fist jab."

Click here to watch the segment or read the transcript.

Here's what Hill was referring to:



They were simply touching fists. You know, a little dap, as they used to say back in the day. I mean, there's absolutely nothing cool about me these days, but one as lame as myself understands such a commonplace street gesture of solidarity. But not FOX. And leave it to the Bozo propagandists of the far right to speculate absurdly that the Obamas' little moment might have sinister implications. Terrorist fist jab? WTF? Terrorist fist jab? What the fuck is a terrorist fist jab?

Obviously, FOX was only pretending to not know what the Senator from Illinois was doing here with his wife in order to play up Rupert Murdoch's trademark misleading sensationalism, which is all the more insulting. Racist, too, if you're going to take FOX at its word that a little dap, which is very clearly "a Black thing," might be something related to terrorism.

S-T-U-P-I-D. And offensive, too.

And none of this even gets into how lame it is that FOX has taken to using experts for analyzing politicians' body language. Don't get me wrong: body language is interesting, but it is no substitute for issues. Indeed, all this "analysis" does is add another infuriating layer to the corporate media's insane emphasis on personality over policy. It's like reading People or watching Entertainment Tonight and expecting to walk away as a well informed voter and citizen.

These trying times.

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Bits, Bands and Books

From the New York Times, Princeton economist Paul Krugman:

So much, then, for the digital revolution? Not so fast. The predictions of ’90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected — but the future they envisioned is still on the march.

In 1994, one of those gurus, Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”

For example, she described how some software companies gave their product away but earned fees for installation and servicing. But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because “enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market.”

Indeed, it turns out that the Dead were business pioneers. Rolling Stone recently published an article titled “Rock’s New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don’t Sell.” Downloads are steadily undermining record sales — but today’s rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through “publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing.”

More here.

This has all been brewing for a while now, and, as Krugman asserts, it will continue to brew until new economic models for the distribution of creative work in the digital era become both workable and widespread. And I'm really happy about it. My anarchist within is particularly excited about the looming end of the recorded music industry: it only existed in the first place because of the capital needed to be a player; now that anybody with a computer can mimic the multi-million dollar studios of the 1970s, and distribution is as easy as logging onto the internet, the only thing keeping the record labels alive are the devilish deals punishing violators of "intellectual property rights" cut with the federal government in defiance of all market logic. I can't see this Mafia-like situation continuing indefinitely. Sometime soon fans and artists alike will be free from the shackles of idiot record executives deciding that we need to listen to ever more shit.

Indeed, "intellectual property rights" will itself soon be a thing of the past, at least as far as artistic and literary work is concerned--film and television will be the next to go down, or maybe books, as Krugman goes on to suggest in his essay. And that's a good thing for many reasons, again for artists and fans alike. No longer will the creative class necessarily humiliate itself so that a few economically privileged guys in suits who don't know the first thing about art or music or literature can choose who to promote and distribute. No longer will audiences have to choke down shit because that's all that's on the menu. Soon, this will all be an issue between artist and audience. No blood-sucking middlemen. Freedom.

On the other hand, as an actor, writer, and song writer, I'm also scared. These new economic models do not yet exist. And the current model is being used as a springboard toward economic experimentation--artists who have fought through the present system to fame and acclaim are in the best position to market directly to the audiences that the establishment helped them build. What does this all mean to a guy laboring in total obscurity such as myself?

Like I said, it'll be a while before TV and film go the way of music, if only because narrative video requires far more collaboration and capital than does music. I mean, there are some fantastic examples of what a few people can pull off on relatively cheap budgets, like the Star Trek fan shows, but is their approach economically viable in the long run? In the end, like all businessmen, artists have to figure out how to make money with their product, if only so they can pay the rent while they continue to make the art they love.

In the meantime, however, I'm certain the creative class will do what they've always done, whether they're making money with their work or not: they'll keep on creating. After all, that's what they do.

It's what I do, anyway.

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How Karl Rove played politics while people drowned

From Salon courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Instead of supplying relief to the city, Rove had devised a scheme whereby he could blame the failure of government to take action on someone besides Bush. "They looked around," Landrieu says, "and they found a Democratic governor and an African American Democratic mayor who had never held office before in his life before he was mayor of New Orleans -- someone they knew they could manipulate. Ray Nagin had never held public office and here he was the mayor of New Orleans and it was going underwater."

In short, Rove was going to blame Blanco for the failure of the response in Louisiana, and to do that he was going to use Nagin. He had already set the plan in motion on Tuesday with Nagin, who, even though he was a Democrat, was so close to the Republican Party that some members of the African American community in New Orleans called him "Ray Reagan." In 2000, Nagin had actually contributed $2,000 to Bush's campaign when he ran for president.

Rove knew of Nagin's ties to the Republican Party, so more than likely Nagin could be convinced to level his criticism at Blanco and to support Bush when he could. Here was Rove's strategy: Praise Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi; praise Michael Brown and FEMA; blame Blanco, the Democrat. It was not a stretch for Nagin. He and Blanco so disliked each other that in Blanco's last race Nagin had endorsed her opponent.

Rove and Nagin were communicating through e-mail. "I heard Nagin was bragging about being in touch with The Man," Blanco says. "Nagin took the position that they were the people who could help the most to do what he wanted. People get highly complimented when they have contact with the White House." In this case the trade-off for Nagin was his willingness to cooperate with Rove. "I knew Ray Nagin could be easily manipulated," Landrieu says. "I could feel it. We were all working together in a relatively small building. We were in close proximity. But I could see where Rove was going. Blame Blanco. Blame the levee board. Blame the corruption in New Orleans. 'The reason the city is going underwater is because the city is corrupt,' Rove was saying. 'But don't blame the Republicans or George W. Bush or David Vitter. We are the white guys in shining armor, and we are going to come in and save the city from years of corruption.' That was their story and they sold it very well."

Rove sold the story, as he had in the past, through the media. On Wednesday, while Blanco was trying to get help from the White House, her staff began receiving calls from reporters questioning her handling of the disaster, almost all of them citing as their sources unnamed senior White House officials.

Click here for the rest.

This brings up some bad memories.

I mean, at the time it was completely obvious what the White House was doing, playing their usual game of blame and divert. Also at the time, however, it wasn't possible to be completely sure of who it was that was screwing up. I was just scanning through some of my posts from September of '05, and I was saying, here and there, that there was plenty of blame to go around, but that the lion's share had to go to the feds, which was so achingly obvious, seeing as how they didn't even show up until a week after Katrina hit, and their Department of Homeland Security website was literally declaring that huge emergencies are their responsibility. But maybe Louisiana state government was screwing up too. Maybe Nagin was somehow fucking it all up. Maybe New Orleans corruption was finally doing the city in.

Now we know: the "failures" of state and local government, the role that corruption supposedly played, were a near total fabrication, invented by Karl Rove, and then blasted 24/7 by the always compliant corporate media. Well, maybe Rove's good buddy Ray Nagin can take some of the blame, but his failure is nothing when compared to Bush's failure--if anything, Nagin's worst deed was allowing himself to be made a propaganda puppet by Rove. Ironically, in the end, it was the Louisiana National Guard, not FEMA or Federal troops, that rescued everybody--by the time Bush's people showed up, there was virtually nobody left who needed to be rescued. But the constructed "controversy" continues, to some extent, to this very day.

Fortunately, the American public very quickly saw through Rove's traditional tactics, making Bush's approval ratings drop significantly for the first time since 9/11, but I continue to be amazed by how easy it appears to be for the White House to get the corporate news media to endlessly repeat its bullshit as fact. Even today, when everybody knows how full of shit W is.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Reine



Phil



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

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PUBLIC EDUCATION ATROCITIES
Principal has new job after 'Islam 101' controversy

From the Houston Chronicle:

The Friendswood Junior High principal who outraged some parents by allowing an Islamic group to make a 40-minute presentation to students last month is now off the job.

In a two-sentence statement sent late Wednesday, the school district said Robin Lowe "has accepted another administrative position effective immediately."

The news drew relief from some who were incensed by the May 22 presentation and concern from others who considered the assembly a good way for students in the predominantly Anglo Christian school to learn about other cultures.

About 875 seventh- and eighth-grade students attended the presentation given by two women with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Houston, according to the school district.

The president of the nonprofit council, Tarek Hussein, said he contacted Lowe about conducting an educational presentation after hearing from a father who said his son was physically attacked at the school because he is Muslim.

Click here for the rest.

As far as I can tell from reading the article, the actual issue for which this principal has been forced to resign is both mundane and bureaucratic. That is, she failed to inform parents that the assembly was taking place. But the outrage from these Christian nuts in Friendswood is about having the assembly at all. And really, again according to the article, the information offered by these Muslim women was fairly mundane, you know, this our culture, this is what we believe, that kind of thing, the kind of material routinely covered about numerous cultures in sixth grade geography class.

So this is just plain nuts, and only in these fundamentalist, xenophobic, Muslim-hating times does it become "controversial." And given the school district, which I know because it's not far from the district where I used to teach, it's a wildly hypocritical "controversy."

Here's the comment that I posted on the story at the Chronicle's website:

In a scholastic environment where most students self-identify as Christian, where student/teacher groups such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Christian Students Union regularly use school facilities, where "non-sectarian" but obviously Christian prayers are offered before graduation ceremonies, where "abstinence based" sex education classes are thinly veiled propaganda efforts promoting Christian sexuality, I find it both amazing and absurd that ANYBODY would regard this principal's attempt to educate her students about this major world religion, which plays such a significant role in our bogus "war on terror," as some kind of anti-Christian breach of the separation of church and state.

This woman was doing the right thing. And now she's been thanked with a forced resignation. Her critics understand neither education nor the first amendment. Consequently, they should just shut up.

(Slightly altered for clarity. Also, even though it's rather meaningless in the grand scheme, this is currently on top of the Chronicle's list for "Most Commented On Stories," and, I happily add, my comment, with 220 votes, is the "most recommended" comment. Yay me!)

Anyway, this is disgusting, but not at all surprising: the schools' primary role is indoctrinational in nature, and zealous fundamentalist Christianity and anti-Islam are the latest and best-selling flavors of the month; of course the suburban rednecks in Friendswood are freaking out over a little Islam in the schools--public education is about creating American clone workers, not free thinkers! It is also worth noting that teachers and administrators are just as subject to pro-authority indoctrination forces as their students, in fact, more so. Axing a principal for showing some individual thought and independent action serves as a strong message of propaganda for everybody in the district: obedience has its rewards; disobedience has its punishments.

Sad, sad, sad.

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America's Democratic Collapse

From AlterNet, a speech recently given at Furman University by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges:

The country I live in today uses the same words to describe itself, the same patriotic symbols and iconography, the same national myths, but only the shell remains. America, the country of my birth, the country that formed and shaped me, the country of my father, my father's father and his father's father, stretching back to the generations of my family that were here for the country's founding, is so diminished as to be nearly unrecognizable. I do not know if this America will return, even as I pray and work and strive for its return. The "consent of the governed" has become an empty phrase. Our textbooks on political science are obsolete. Our state, our nation, has been hijacked by oligarchs, corporations and a narrow, selfish political elite, a small and privileged group which governs on behalf of moneyed interests. We are undergoing, as John Ralston Saul wrote, "a coup d'etat in slow motion." We are being impoverished -- legally, economically, spiritually and politically. And unless we soon reverse this tide, unless we wrest the state away from corporate hands, we will be sucked into the dark and turbulent world of globalization where there are only masters and serfs, where the American dream will be no more than that -- a dream, where those who work hard for a living can no longer earn a decent wage to sustain themselves or their families, whether in sweatshops in China or the decaying rust belt of Ohio, where democratic dissent is condemned as treason and ruthlessly silenced.

I single out no party. The Democratic Party has been as guilty as the Republicans. It was Bill Clinton who led the Democratic Party to the corporate watering trough.

And

How did we get here? How did this happen? In a word, deregulation -- the systematic dismantling of the managed capitalism that was the hallmark of the American democratic state. Our political decline came about because of deregulation, the repeal of antitrust laws, and the radical transformation from a manufacturing economy to a capital economy. This understanding led Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 29, 1938, to send a message to Congress titled "Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power." In it, he wrote:

The first truth is that the liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way to sustain an acceptable standard of living.

The rise of the corporate state has grave political consequences, as we saw in Italy and Germany in the early part of the 20th century. Antitrust laws not only regulate and control the marketplace, they serve as bulwarks to protect democracy. And now that they are gone, now that we have a state that is run by and on behalf of corporations, we must expect inevitable and perhaps terrifying political consequences.

Click here for the rest.

If you want a "theory of everything," at least as far as politics and economics go, for where I'm coming from as a blogger, and more importantly as a United States citizen, this speech is it. I mean, I tend to focus more on how our public education system and American culture, both popular and "high," function so as to aid and abet this "coup d'etat in slow motion," but Hedges' words pretty much nail it: all that good shit you were taught in school about how great America is, all the stuff in movies that makes your eyes tear up about our freedom loving nation, it doesn't count for shit anymore; the American experiment is over.

In short, private power, a.k.a. the economic might of corporations and the fabulously wealthy, now rivals public power, and in many cases far surpasses it. Sure, we're still a relatively free nation, but what good is freedom without democracy? That is, our freedoms amount to nothing if we, the people, don't have the lion's share of say in how the country is run. Conventional wisdom continues to assert strongly that it's all about Democrats and Republicans, but both parties are far more beholden to the sources of their campaign monies than they are to voters--the more dollars you give, the more "access" you have, the more influence and sway you have; it's good that so many voters have given five and ten bucks here and there to the Obama campaign, but that's not going to give anybody five minutes in the Oval Office with him.

I'm very excited by the very real prospect that the next President could be a Black man. But the collapse of our democracy is clearly the most dire threat this nation has ever faced, bigger than the forces of fascism, bigger than the Confederacy, bigger than the Great Depression. And Obama says nothing about it. I have no hope that he will start speaking about it anytime soon. Bloody hell, in his ascendancy to the top of the Democratic Party Obama has played this new anti-democratic system like a violin: I have every reason to believe that he's as much a part of the problem as the Clintons are.

I'm sad and scared. Sad because of the end of everything I've believed in since I was a little boy. Scared for the same reason. At least I'll have plenty of material to blog about if Obama wins it.

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No end in sight

From the Houston Chronicle editorial board:

But the fact remains, like the proverbial elephant in the living room, that American troops are overextended and have been for several years, with no relief in sight, and are paying an extreme penalty. This administration offers no solutions and will leave it to the next to try to sort it all out.

The figures from 2007 do little to illuminate the personal tragedies they enumerate: 115 confirmed suicides, nearly 13 percent more than in 2006; 901 military deaths, up 10 percent from 2006; 4,500 or so new post-traumatic stress disorder cases, up about 46 percent over 2006. Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, 4,087 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and more than 30,000 wounded, and more that 500 killed in Afghanistan.

The much-vaunted decline in U.S. deaths in Iraq last month, at 19 the lowest since the invasion began in 2003, is an unreliable milestone. Previous drops have been followed by increases. Just last Sunday the Iraqi government, under pressure from Shiites, including the forces of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, threatened to reject American demands in the negotiation of a long-term security pact that would determine how long American forces stay in Iraq.

Click here for the rest.

Right. The drop in troop deaths had everything to do with the temporary "surge" and nothing to do with the creation of a viable political and civic infrastructure necessary to provide the national stability that US establishment figures name as the standard for our withdrawal. That is, the "surge" was always intended to be an exercise in smoke and mirrors, keeping the war going until Bush can get the hell out of Dodge; it was never supposed to be a solution, primarily because there is no solution. Furthermore, these US establishment figures who insist that only American troops can create Iraqi stability don't really want us to withdraw, even if the stability standard is achieved: McCain wants us to be there one hundred years or more; Obama wants to keep at least 50,000 troops in Mesopotamia indefinitely. Yeah, that's right. Indefinitely. So much for the anti-war candidate.

If we ever do end up pulling out, I'm not sure how bad it will get. I'm not sure if sectarian violence will get worse or better. But I'm certain that the US presence there is the one thing keeping stability from happening. As long as the Iraqi government is seen as a puppet of the United States, it has zero credibility among Iraqis--it is a cauldron of corruption, to be used only as a source for crooked money, and as a tool for sectarian and personal vendettas. Iraq cannot become a viable and stable nation state as long as American troops are there. We fucked it all up, but only they can put it back together. Our "help" is nothing but hindrance.

Unfortunately, the US political establishment wants us there forever. More disastrous "help" is on the way, no matter which party wins in November.

Vote Nader.

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"Sex and the City" Through a Man's Eyes

From CounterPunch:

In fact, I have no idea how to even review this movie. No matter if I eviscerate it or critically analyze it, the show’s rabid fans will line up just like those “Star Wars” fan boys did nearly 10 years ago. For men, the movie is like being forced to watch the bastard child produced from the unholy threesome of The Lifetime Channel, Oxygen Channel, and The We Channel. The baby is then injected with a Steel Magnolias Red Bull Booster shot. The baby, by the way, walks in Manlo Blahnik high heel shoes [See, women, I did pay attention during the movie. Men, these are designer shoes that women would consider selling one of their family members into indentured servitude just so they could wear a pair for a day.]

Also, the movie is two and half-hours – I repeat – two and half hours of nearly every single female stereotype and melodramatic device amped up to the extreme strung together with a flimsy, almost non existent plot. Again, the women in my audience loved every minute of it and perhaps would’ve lasted another hour.

And

All of the four leads have happy, fulfilling endings, which I won’t dare reveal in this review fearing the wrath of the XX populace. Furthermore, I appreciated how the end acknowledged that some of the characters have to actually grow up, face reality, and swallow their ego and selfishness in order to find love in a “relationship.” If indeed “Sex and the City” is a representation of post feminist feminists, then this male reviewer observed how similar their foibles are to the patriarchy they allegedly rebel against. Despite their professed independence, pride, ego-centricism and hedonism, the women were still unhappy and discontent without the acknowledgment of some form of a fulfilling male relationship. By playing to age-old stereotypes about female materialism and emotional hysteria, the film affirms the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.

More here.

Although I'm in no hurry to go see this movie, I'll probably get around to it someday, even if it's cut to shreds on TNT or something. To be honest, I've actually gotten into the show a bit now that it's on three or four channels three or four times a day--I mean, sometimes it's the only thing on worth watching. Don't get me wrong: it's not like Star Trek to me or anything along those lines. But it's okay. The acting is always solid, and the characters are genuinely likable people, speaking clever dialogue, and usually in amusing situations. I've also become a big fan of Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, who also plays another favorite of mine, Detective Mike Logan of Law and Order fame, another show I've gotten into because it's on all the time on every channel. But yeah, I like Sex and the City. It's good TV.

On the other hand, I've also noted what the author of the essay excerpt above observes: Sex and the City is very girly. But then, I haven't felt particularly alienated by it, either. Yeah sure, I don't give a shit about their shoes and god-awful designer purses, but wasn't that episode where Charlotte develops the bizarre relationship with the shoe salesman/foot fetishist funny and weird? The show's writers always seemed to make the girly stuff work well as plot devices.

Furthermore, most of the girly shit has always struck me as part of why these characters seem so frustrated and unfulfilled. That is, they live their lives according to a pre-configured consumerist construction of femininity which demands that they go buy things that women are supposed to own in order to be happy women; a second major theme partnered to this one is the notion that they will only feel complete as human beings when they have found Mr. Right, also a construction, heavily employed by the corporate forces behind America's dominant consumerist philosophy--strangely, or perhaps obviously, Mr. Right is never found, at least, not in a "happily ever after" sense. In short, probably because of my own intellectual biases, I tend to watch Sex and the City as a series of morality vignettes on how materialism and other social mythologies make us all unhappy.

But this business about how men aren't supposed to get into the show...well...I guess I can understand why most men might not enjoy shows that don't have a lot of fisticuffs and shooting, but really, I'm at a point in my life where I don't get what masculinity is about anymore. I mean, sure, masculinity is rough and femininity is soft and all that, but these are simply abstractions. What's it all about in the real world? What's a man? What's a woman? Again, I get that men have pee-pees and women have po-pos, but that doesn't have anything to do with shoes or guns. And yeah, I have to admit that guns are way more interesting to me than shoes, but why is it that I don't see Sex and the City as a show about shoes?

Ah, fuck it. I probably like Sex and the City because, in large part, it's a show about sex. Isn't that something on which men and women can agree? Don't we all like sex?

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McClellan: Bush broke promise to U.S. by not firing Rove

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

"I think the president should have stood by the word that we said, which was that if you were involved in this in any way, then you would no longer be in this administration. And Karl was involved in it," McClellan said.

White House press secretary Dana Perino declined comment Sunday, as did Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

The White House had said in 2003 that anyone who leaked classified information in the case would be dismissed. Bush reiterated that promise in June 2004.

By July 2005, Bush qualified his position, saying he would fire anyone for leaking classified information if that person had "committed a crime."

Rove was never charged with a crime.

McClellan writes in his book that Bush backpedaled to protect Rove, a point McClellan repeated in the interview.

"We had higher standards at the White House," McClellan said. "The president said he was going to restore honor and integrity. He said we were going to set the highest of standards. We didn't live up to that. When it become known that his top adviser had been involved, then the bar was moved."

Click here for the rest.

Sigh.

Hey, remember back in the roaring 90s when politicians on both sides of the aisle were pissed off and indignant that a President would lie about a private sexual matter? Never mind whether it was an impeachable offense: Democrats and Republicans alike went on and on about how awful lying is when you're in the Oval Office, how it sets a horrible example for American children, how the Commander-in-Chief should hold himself to a much higher standard than everybody else.

In some ways I'm very happy those bullshit days are long behind us. On the other hand, these new bullshit days in which we are now condemned to live are far worse. In often absurd ways. I mean, the President lies so much now that it seems difficult for the news to even keep up--that is, when the news is actually trying to keep up. Perhaps that's all a function of how both parties don't really seem to care that Bush lies all the time. Like I said, absurd. Clinton lies about a blowjob and Senators and Congressmen turn blue in the face, blowing steam out their ears; Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction, Ariel Sharon being a "man of peace," global warming, tax cuts, Brownie and FEMA, Social Security, nuclear energy - it just goes on and on and on - and business continues as usual.

This info about Rove and Bush from McClellan's book is not new or surprising. But it is a reminder of the massive, massive hornswoggle to which we have all been subjected these past seven years. Facts don't matter anymore. The ruling elite just make shit up, the news media funnels it through a megaphone, and we have to listen to it. It doesn't even matter whether we believe it or not.

Frankly, I don't even really understand how politics actually function anymore. I mean, we're certainly not living in a democracy--what we call democracy is just an elaborate stage show. But as to the actual ebb and flow of governmental electoral power, I just don't get it anymore. It's like everybody's lying, or, at least, "managing" the truth, you know, spin and all that shit.

I've always loved John Lennon's early 70s political howler "Gimme Some Truth" but it means more to me now, today, than it ever has.

Anyway, dig it:



"Uptight short sighted narrow minded hypocrites," indeed.

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