The Shameful Abuse of Bradley Manning

From CounterPunch, legendary Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg weighs in on the alleged WikiLeaks accomplice:

The president refused to comment on PJ Crowley's statement that the treatment of Manning is "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid". Those words are true enough as far as they go – which is probably about as far as a state department spokesperson can allow himself to go in condemning actions of the defence department. But at least two other words are called for: abusive and illegal.

Crowley was responding to a question about the "torturing" of an American citizen, and, creditably, he didn't rebut that description. Prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity – that's right out of the manual of the CIA for "enhanced interrogation". We've seen it applied in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. It's what the CIA calls "no-touch torture", and its purpose there, as in this case, is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession. That's what they are after, I suspect, with Manning. They don't care if the confession is true or false, so long as it implicates WikiLeaks in a way that will help them prosecute Julian Assange.

That's just my guess, as to their motives. But it does not affect the illegality of the behaviour. If I'm right, it's likely that such harsh treatment wasn't ordered at the level of a warrant officer or the brig commander.

More here.

My outrage about this has been growing for a few weeks now.

I'm not sure which documents Manning is accused of handing over to WikiLeaks, but I do know that they have something to do with either Afghanistan, Iraq, or both. And I also know that the US has committed war crimes in both theaters--indeed, the invasion of Iraq, in itself, was a war crime, as per the Nuremberg trials. Attempting to show the world what we have done is not treason. Rather, it's the reverse: leaking classified documents that show illegal government action is heroic and patriotic.

But for weeks now the Department of Defense has been treating Manning like he was Al Qaeda. I mean, they didn't charge him until just a few days ago. And he certainly hasn't been found guilty of anything because they haven't even put him on trial yet. It is absolutely horrific that he would be treated in this way; it is definitely a violation of his Constitutional rights. It's also one of many reasons it's a very bad idea for the US to torture prisoners of war: if we do it to our enemies, then it's okay to do it to our own. And we are doing it to our own.

Ralph Nader called for Obama's impeachment last Friday, and my response was that the consumer advocate was totally correct to do so, even though it's something of a drag because I like Obama. But Ellsberg kind of puts it all into perspective: the President just has to know what's going on with Manning, and yet does nothing about it. Obama's pat dismissals of the issue make him thoroughly responsible, if only because he knows and allows it to continue.

I don't want to even imagine that Obama is actually complicit in this, but it's looking more and more like he is. That makes him a torturer, as sure as Cheney and Bush. But this time our leader is torturing a US citizen. And that sends shivers up my spine.

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Student Michelle Ramirez, Kirkwood Middle
School Administrators Argue Over Dress Code

From the Huffington Post news wire:

Michelle Ramirez, a student at North Kirkwood Middle School, wore a shirt to class that read:

"JESUS, HE SCARES THE HELL OUT OF YOU."

She was told to change into a different shirts, as school administrators thought the use of the phrase "the hell" encouraged a slang connotation, which is against school policy.

Ramirez maintains that she used the term literally, to communicate her religious beliefs.

More here.

School dress codes, being generally absurd, tend to create really stupid arguments.

Just for context, this appears to be pretty much open and shut. This little Jesus girl, Ramirez, has an absolute right to express her views in this non-disruptive way, especially considering that this is a religious view, giving her double protection under the first amendment for both freedom of worship and freedom of speech. I mean, kids lose some civil rights when they walk into the school building, but certainly not all of them. She's solid, I'm pretty sure, if she sues or brings in the ACLU, which usually scares the shit out of school administrators. And that's a good thing.

But look at the school's argument in the excerpt above: "the phrase 'the hell' encouraged a slang connotation." WTF? So what? It's a double entendre, you know, the kind of literary device that educators ought to be overjoyed to see students using. But no, a rule's a rule, and all that stupid school disciplinary shit.

And because the school makes a stupid fucking argument to support a stupid fucking rule, enforced in a stupid fucking way, the girl and her mother respond with an equally stupid argument: "she used the term literally." Well yes, she did, but she also made use of the "slang" sense of the phrase, too, in order to get people to pay attention. That's what double entendre is all about. The Ramirezes shouldn't have engaged administrators in their stupid fucking argument on its own stupid fucking terms. Instead, they should have just called on the first amendment.

But this is no surprise: school makes people stupid.

It's like I've said here a billion times. Because the overwhelming emphasis of the American school system is discipline, usually to the exclusion of all other concerns, "teachable moments" like this one often go down the drain, along with logic and reason. And people routinely get into genuine fucktard territory when they could be having a rational discussion. I mean, if you click through and watch the video, you see the school's principal talking about how the shirt might cause a "disruption" in its use of the phrase "the hell"--teachers and school officials love to talk about "disruption" and "distraction;" it's a catch-all that will get you busted for whatever they want to bust you for. Never mind that the "disruption" argument is bullshit; first amendment rights trump such behavioral theory, which has nothing to do with real life--I mean seriously, the shirt's going to drive kids wild? Yeah right.

Once again, I defend a point of view with which I totally disagree. Damned Christians.

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Nader Calls for Impeachment of Obama

From Democracy Now:

RALPH NADER: You know, let’s be very forthright, though, Juan. George W. Bush and Cheney committed war crimes. They had surveillance of Americans illegally. They unconstitutionally pursued wars in Asia. They slaughtered innocents. And they were considered war criminals by many people, including Republican former judge Andrew Napolitano, author of four books on the Constitution, and Republican Bruce Fein. Now, Barack Obama is committing the same crimes—in fact, worse ones in Afghanistan. And innocents are being slaughtered. We’re creating more enemies. He’s violating international law. He is not constitutionally authorized to do what he’s doing. He’s using state secrets. He’s engaging in illegal surveillance. The CIA is running wild without any kind of circumscribed legal standards or disclosure.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We have just a few seconds.

RALPH NADER: And so, why don’t we—why don’t we—yes, why don’t we say what’s on the minds of many legal experts? That the Obama administration is committing war crimes. And if Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached.

Click here to watch, read, or listen to the rest.

Morals and ethics aren't easy.

I genuinely like President Obama, in spite of my many political differences with him. I like his style. I like what he, as an African-American man, has achieved in rising to the top of what Malcolm X once called the "white power structure." I like his uplifting rhetoric. I like his intellectual approach to politics and governing. I like his urge to reconcile differing points of view.

And, of course, I mostly like that he's not a Republican.

But morals have meaning. Laws have meaning. It was extraordinarily easy for me to call for President Bush's impeachment when he was in the White House, extraordinarily easy for me to call for the investigation and prosecution of Bush and his cadre for war crimes now that they're out of office. It was easy because Bush was so obviously guilty, and even easier now that he has publicly admitted, even boasted of, ordering the torture of prisoners of war. But it was, and is, also easy because I don't like Bush.

I do like Obama.

But my, indeed our, principles would be utterly without meaning if we applied them only to people we do not like. I like President Obama. But, by the same standard to which we should hold the previous administration, the same standard to which we held leaders of the German Nazi regime in the 1940s, he is a war criminal, and should be thrown out of office and put on trial for crimes against humanity.

I mean, I know that's even less likely than putting Bush and Cheney on trial is, but it is the only course of moral action we can take. Otherwise, morality and the law are meaningless. And America stands for nothing.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy and Frankie



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

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Sarah Palin trashes National Endowment for the Arts

From the Los Angeles Times courtesy of the Huffington Post news wire:

"NPR, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, all those kind of frivolous things that government shouldn't be in the business of funding with tax dollars -- those should all be on the chopping block as we talk about the $14-trillion debt that we're going to hand to our kids and our grandkids," Palin told right-wing host Sean Hannity. "Yes, those are the type of things that for more than one reason need to be cut."

Palin did not elaborate on what the other reasons might be for chopping the NEA budget. But the government of every major civilization in world history has also prominently funded the arts.

More here.

"Frivolous" indeed. Can't spend money on luxuries when we're having trouble finding ways to pay for billion dollar tax breaks to placate our corporate overlords. Luxuries...

It's been some years since we've heard any prominent conservatives reciting their traditional scorn for the NEA; I had kind of forgotten how much it pisses me off. If you want some reasons why funding the arts is important, click through the link, ditto if you want to see why cutting funding is irrelevant in terms of deficit reduction. I'm not even going to try to make such arguments myself because they're self-evident, and really, the burden of proof belongs to the inbred redneck anti-art crowd, as far as this debate goes.

Instead, I'm just going to make one statement:

The arts, the kind that don't make any money, are deeply embedded in our culture, a very large part of who we are as a people, as Americans. In the constant cacophony of mass media continually rammed down our throats, the arts serve as a quiet but vitally important reminder that we Americans are about much more than simple commerce and material riches, about much more than narcissism and self-gratification. The arts are our national soul. If anything, we should be discussing how we can increase arts funding. By a factor of about a thousand.

Anybody who doesn't understand that is either ignorant or stupid or both. I guess that's why Sarah Palin is the perfect person to pitch this bullshit.

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Texas Bill Would Outlaw Discrimination Against Creationists

From Mother Jones:

Last week, Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler introduced HB 2454, a bill that would establish new workplace protections for proponents of intelligent design. Here's the key part:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

More here.

Um...this is like a guy with a peanut allergy claiming discrimination because he wasn't hired to work at the peanut farm. Or a man getting pissed off because he wasn't allowed to use the women's restroom. That is, there's a damned good reason "intelligent design," or more simply "creationism" if you want to be honest about it, doesn't get much support in academia: the notion is the very antithesis of science, or any other kind of honest intellectual inquiry, for that matter.

I mean, I suppose there's some room to study "intelligent design" as a sort of cultural phenomenon, depending on the field, but that's about it.

I had thought that my home state had reached its nadir as far as education goes with the approval of its recent history textbook standards, which, among other things, glorify President Reagan, while diminishing the accomplishments of Texans and Americans who are not white. But this one really gives those textbooks a run for their money.

Can right-wing self-imposed stupidity get any worse than this? I'd like to say no, but I'd probably be wrong.

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Americans Oppose Afghanistan War Overwhelmingly

From AlterNet:

A new poll from the Washington Post shows Americans have turned decisively against our military engagement in Afghanistan. Nearly two-thirds oppose the war, and even larger percentage believes in a considerable withdrawal from the region:

The poll began asking only in 2007 whether the Afghan war is worth fighting, but support has almost certainly never been as low as it is in the most recent survey.The growing opposition pre­sents Obama with a difficult political challenge ahead of his 2012 reelection effort, especially in his pursuit of independent voters.

More here.

So...if two thirds of the country want out...why the fuck are we still there?

Oh yeah, that's right: I keep forgetting that we don't live in a democracy anymore. I mean okay, technically we've never lived in a democracy; rather, we've been living in what the political scientists call a "democratic republic," where elected representatives presumably enact the will of the people. So, to be fair, we no longer live in a democratic republic. We do continue to live in a republic, however, and elections seemingly continue to determine who our representatives will be, but the whole part about enacting the will of the people is no longer operative.

In short, it doesn't matter what two thirds of the nation wants. It's all about the will of the corporations and special interests now. Apparently, they want the war in Afghanistan to continue. As to why these people want us to keep wasting money and human lives over there, I can't say--it seems like a bad idea for everybody at this point. But that's what they want. So that's what we'll do.

Whether the people like it or not.

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Further Analysis Finds Deceptive Editing In
Sting Tape, As NPR Gains An Unlikely Defender

From the Huffington Post news wire:

Last week, a Project Veritas "sting" operation directed at National Public Radio cost some NPR executives their jobs. Beginning with Senior Vice President for Fundraising Ron Schiller, who was depicted on tape disparaging the Tea Party movement and suggesting that NPR should move away from federal funding (a position with arguable merit, but probably very unpopular at NPR), the fallout eventually cost NPR CEO Vivian Schiller her job as well.

That's sort of the NPR way: when one of the humans under their employ gets in trouble for expressing their opinions, everyone starts panicking and people start getting fired. Further analysis of the original video, however, demonstrates the wisdom of the old maxim, "act in haste, repent in leisure."

Glenn Beck-branded website The Blaze may seem an unlikely defender of NPR, but when the site's editor, Scott Baker, and video production specialist, Pam Key, examined the raw footage, they found "questionable editing and tactics" and reported them all out.

More here.

Okay, these are the same people who did the ACORN pimp tape, which resulted in the federal defunding of the group, and its eventual dissolution. These are the same people who got that African-American USDA worker fired for presumably making anti-white statements. Same with the Planned Parenthood thing, which hasn't yet killed the women's health organization, but has created momentum in Congress to yank its federal funding, too. And now NPR.

In every case, these organizations are either liberal, or perceived as liberal, institutions. But more importantly, in every case, every case, the tapes were doctored to portray their victims in the worst light possible. That is, this group, Veritas, is totally full of shit. Indeed, they're lying right-wing scum bags.

So I understand completely what Veritas is about. They're utterly unethical people with an ideological axe to grind, who think it's nothing to destroy lives and careers in order to line their caps with feathers and make liberals look bad. And, strangely, they're succeeding. What I don't understand is why anybody, anybody at all, listens to anything they have to say. Fool me once and all that. Their "stings" have been unmasked as bullshit four fucking times!!!!! Four times! But politicians and the press continue to take them seriously. I thought the whole WMD herd mentality back in '02-'03 was nuts, but this just takes the cake.

I'm really starting to think that our leaders aren't simply crazy: they're stupid, too. I mean, just drooling flibgiberty idiotic. How can you be taken for a ride like this four times in a row? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

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Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify

From the New York Times:

Japan reeled from a rapidly unfolding disaster of epic scale on Sunday, pummeled by the death toll, destruction and homelessness caused by the earthquake and tsunami and new hazards from damaged nuclear reactors that were leaking radiation. The prime minister called it Japan’s worst crisis since World War II.

Japan’s $5 trillion economy, the third largest in the world, was threatened with severe disruptions and partial paralysis as many industries shut down and the armed forces and volunteers mobilized for the far more urgent effort of finding survivors, evacuating residents near the stricken power plants and caring for the victims of the 8.9 magnitude quake that struck on Friday.

The disaster has left more than 10,000 people dead, many thousands homeless and millions without water, power, heat or transportation.

The most urgent worries concerned the failures at two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where engineers were still struggling to avert meltdowns and where some radiation had already leaked. An explosion at one of the reactors on Monday did not appear to have harmed it, Japanese officials said.

And

The quake and tsunami did not reach Japan’s industrial heartland, although economists said the power blackouts could affect industrial production — notably carmakers, electronics manufacturers and steel plants — and interrupt the nation’s famously efficient supply chain. Tourism was also bound to plummet, as the United States, France and other nations urged citizens to avoid traveling to Japan.

More here.

I don't really have much to say about this. I mean, I'm posting on it because I want to acknowledge here that this is going on and that it's blowing me away: they're estimating a death toll of ten thousand, which will probably rise, and then all these nuclear reactors threatening to melt down. I'm speechless. Sure, I could pontificate on how nuclear power has very little margin for error, which is why it's generally a really bad idea, but I've said as much before, and there will be time for more of that later.

But right now, I just want to say that I've always really liked Japan, no doubt because of the role that the island nation has played through decades of World War II mythology, the dignified and noble enemy that gave us a run for our money in the Pacific theater, but also just because Japanese culture is totally fucking cool. No one deserves destruction on this scale, but it sucks all the more when it happens to a nation you respect and admire.

The good news here, if there is any, is that Japan wasn't totally devastated. Like the excerpt above notes, the nation's industrial infrastructure remains essentially intact, which means that they're well primed to recover, even though it will probably take a decade or more.

In the meantime, I'm just watching. If anything to say occurs to me, I'll post it here.

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DIE ANTWOORD

From Wikipedia:

Die Antwoord (Afrikaans: "The Answer") is a rap-rave group from Cape Town, South Africa consisting of three members: Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek. The band self-identifies as a mélange of several diverse cultures.

The band toured Europe starting in April 2010 and the USA and Canada later that same year.

More here.

My buddy Doug has been turning me onto these people for the last few days. If you know me, or have followed my blog for a while, you might be thinking that "rap-rave" music isn't quite what I'm into, especially rave stuff, but the deal with Die Antwoord is...well...it's hard to say.

Here, just check it out:



And the more you delve into their stuff, the weirder it gets. My take, and I'm probably right about this, even though, like professional wrestlers, Die Antwoord isn't really telling, is that these people are performance artists, walking a fine line between parody and tribute, and throwing in whatever other ideas may occur to them, as well. And it's not like they're just some avant garde music group, either: for Die Antwoord image is just as important as sound, revelling in a sort of euro-trash/white-trash aesthetic, bejewelled with bling-trappings of American hip-hop filtered through bizarre working class white South African culture.

I have to admit that I don't fully understand what they're about. On the other hand, that's most of the fun for me. I watch their videos with my jaw hanging and think to myself, "what the fuck is this shit?"

And the chick, Yo Landi Vi$$er, is hot--I also like how she uses dollar signs for spelling her name instead of the letter "s." Go check 'em out. I think you can download their first album for free.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash



Reine



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

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STAR TREK
"Turnabout Intruder"

From Wikipedia:

"Turnabout Intruder" is a third season, as well as the final first-run, episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #79, production #79, written by Arthur H. Singer, based on a story by Gene Roddenberry, and directed by Herb Wallerstein. This was the last original episode of Star Trek to air on NBC.

Originally scheduled to air at 10pm on Friday, March 28, 1969, the network pre-empted it at the last minute with a special report on former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had died earlier that day. On June 3, 1969, after an absence of 2 months, Star Trek was brought back on a new night and time: Tuesdays at 7:30pm EDT. "Turnabout Intruder" was the first episode to be shown in this new time slot.

Overview: Kirk becomes trapped in the body of a woman bent on killing him and taking over his command under his guise.

More here.

Watch it here.

(Note: this is not CBS.com--it's some pirate site. Apparently CBS has replaced all TOS stuff with the animated series, which is okay, I guess, because I can review those episodes now, too. Still, I wonder why they pulled the original show. Ah, it'll probably come back in a few months. Anyway, better go watch this one soon before the giant mega-media corporation threatens to sue these pirate guys.)

Notes and pics:

* It makes no sense that Star Fleet wouldn't allow women to be starship captains. Chalk it up to the fact that the show was made in the 1960s, and the women's lib movement was only just getting started. Still, given how far we've come, with female American soldiers killing and being killed over in the Middle East, and on and on, that the 21st century is somehow more progressive on gender issues than the 23rd century is just a bit hard to swallow.

But I do like the woman scorned theme we've got here. And I like a woman hating Kirk much more than I like a woman loving Kirk.

* The actress playing Dr. Lester is really good. This mutes the weird future chauvinism problem a bit, which is good.



* William Shatner is playing Kirk literally possessed by a crazy and evil woman. This is one of his best performances of the series. It suits his technique, and he just throws himself into it, having a grand time all the way. It might also have something to do with the fact that he knew this was the last one they were doing. Like the Beatles finally devoting themselves to Abbey Road after months of bickering and fucking around. Shatner is saying, "No, really, I'm a great fucking actor," and then pulling every trick out of his bag in an attempt to prove it.





* Kirk: "Quiet! QUIEEeet..." Oh man, he's pulling out all the stops.

* I love this guy playing the sleazy doctor. You kind of want to punch him in the face.



* Shatner uses his "uncertainty" technique while talking to Scotty over the communicator. We've seen it many times before, most notably when he talks to his lover about the Tantalus Device, "Yes...", in "Mirror, Mirror." Authentic and natural it's not, but it sure is interesting and cool. Another Shatner show-off moment.

* Nice little take from Shatner when Scotty starts off his sentence with "Dr. Lester..."

* So we have Shatner playing Lester who is, in turn, playing Kirk because she's inhabiting his body. Very Shakespearean, but also weird and cool. I only noticed this when Lester drops her Kirk act later in the sickbay. This is getting confusing, but in a fun way.

* Lester-as-Kirk: "Love! Him?" This is all classic Shatner. Is this one his absolute best performance? I'm starting to wonder.

* It's also very homoerotic in that Lester is apparently having some sleazy affair with the sleazy doctor. No wonder people write fantasy stories about Kirk being gay. I'm reminded of the relationship between the Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman characters in High Anxiety.

* Fabulous scene when Lester-as-Kirk removes McCoy from Kirk-as-Lester's case.



* Wonderful weird montage flashes to represent Kirk-as-Lester's in-and-out-of-consciousness state.

* The bridge scene when Lester-as-Kirk changes course is all very Caine Mutiny, which is welcome.

* Good scene with McCoy.

* Nice. He's trying to convince Kirk-as-Lester that he's insane. I love space madness.



* Lester-as-Kirk takes her the fuck down! Yeah!



* Love the logic-heavy scene with Lester and Spock,which ends in a quick mind meld, complete with traditional Spock music.



* Great idiot red shirts guarding Lester.



* Love Spock going totally rogue.



* An on ship court martial, very Star Trek.



* Lester-as-Kirk just gets totally screwy here. It's all in good fun, of course.

* Excellent speech of repudiation from Spock: "You are NOT Captain Kirk..."



* Oh yeah, Lester-as-Kirk is freaking out!



* I love that Scotty describes Lester-as-Kirk's behavior as "hysterical." That's kind of sexist writing in itself, given the circumstances.

* I love Scotty's no-nonsense argument for mutiny.



* Sulu: "The death penalty is FORBIDDEN." I've always loved this moment.



* Shatner's got some really nice pain-face work going on here for the momentary psyche reversal. Another classic Kirk moment.



* Oh nice. Kirk becomes femme fatale. This is sooooooo gay. But in a good way.



* Is that a brain sitting in a big jar on the lab table?

* Very cool. We haven't seen this pain-face since "Man Trap."

* And now she's just another crazy ex.



* The sleazy doctor's pretty pathetic here. You want to punch him in the face again.



* In spite of the ridiculously anachronistic narrative device that women in the future cannot be starship captains, this episode really hums and zings, mostly, it appears, because everybody knew this was going to be the last one. Shatner hasn't had this much fun since early in the show's run, and he seems more relaxed, totally within his element after three years playing the role. All the other regulars turn in very solid performances, and the guest stars work well, too. And the story itself is pretty good, too, if you don't think about Dr. Lester's career motivation too much. Lots of weirdness from the body exchange, and the trial's just a fucking hoot.

This really is something of an Abbey Road for Star Trek. A great show on its way out, making sure to turn in something to make them all proud. Four and a half stars.

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"Climate change really is a profound threat to a great
many things that right-wing ideologues believe in."

From Democracy Now:

NAOMI KLEIN: But something very different is going on on the right, and I think we need to understand what that is. Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it is—it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.

Well, it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.

You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, "you broke it, you bought it," polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.

You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.

You would have to have a really strong United Nations, because individual countries can’t do this alone. You absolutely have to have a strong international architecture.

Watch, read, or listen to the rest here.

It really is amazing, isn't it? Global warming, caused by human industrial activity, has been long established as a scientific fact, but conservatives totally reject it. And they're extraordinarily desperate about it. I mean, they speak in terms of belief, even though belief is something that you do with Santa Claus or God, not scientifically verified aspects of material reality. And almost everybody who uses the term "conservative" as a self-identifying moniker, from true blue Movement Conservatives, to Libertarians, to fundamentalist Christians, to neoliberals, to just plain old Republicans, has adopted this point of view.

Communicating with these people on this topic is not too far from trying to get a caveman to understand that fire isn't magic or the Sun isn't a god. Seriously. Really intelligent people go into intense contortions of logic, or cite the obscure dissenting minority of scientists quoted in the National Review, or engage in wild conspiracy theory, in order to make themselves comfortable with the fact that they are essentially insisting that the world is flat. Conservatives are simply not rational on this issue, which is an enormous drag because, given the political power the right wing wields these days, it will probably mean the eventual destruction of human civilization.

It's been pretty obvious for years now that the real reason conservatives are such weird psychos on global warming is that it means their entire understanding of human relationships is wrong. Just plain wrong. And they don't have the balls to admit it, even to themselves. Caught between reality and their false "beliefs," the right wing has descended into deep, deep denial, which makes them behave and speak in increasingly bizarre and irrational ways.

Ever wonder why President Obama, a neoliberal conservative Democrat, has been branded an infinite number of times as a socialist? I don't think global warming is the only factor at work in this strange phenomenon, but it definitely plays a role: conservatives feel the concept of climate change breathing down their necks, and it's making them crazy. I mean, literally. Like, Obama's a fucking socialist? Yeah, right.

I really have no idea how to deal with this problem. What do you do when the guy you're arguing with is an arrogant asshole insisting that day is night, black is white, and up is down? But I do know what I'm going to do. No more arguments about whether climate change is happening, no more arguments about whether it's man made. This is all about irrational emotion for conservatives, so I'm going to give them some of their own authoritarian medicine. The next time I hear some right-wing ideologue bashing the notion of global warming, I'm calling him a fucking idiot. No explanation. No discussion. I'm calling him a primitive piece of shit who's trying to kill us all.

I mean, that's about as substantive as their "arguments" debunking climate change are, right? Let's see what happens when irresistible force meets unmovable object. At the very least, it ought to be fun and gratifying.

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FREEDOM OF WORSHIP, BUT NOT FOR MUSLIMS

From the New York Times editorial board:

Peter King's Obsession

Not much spreads fear and bigotry faster than a public official intent on playing the politics of division. On Thursday, Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is scheduled to open a series of hearings that seem designed to stoke fear against American Muslims. His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.

Mr. King, a Republican whose district is centered in Nassau County on Long Island, says the hearings will examine the supposed radicalization of American Muslims. Al Qaeda is aggressively recruiting Muslims in this country, he says. He wants to investigate the terror group’s methods and what he claims is the eagerness of many young American Muslims to embrace it.

Notice that the hearing is solely about Muslims. It might be perfectly legitimate for the Homeland Security Committee to investigate violent radicalism in America among a wide variety of groups, but that doesn’t seem to be Mr. King’s real interest.

More here.

Part of me is like, "oh wow, there go the crazy Republicans again." But that just shows how numb I've become to this kind of bullshit over the years. I mean, after 9/11 for a while there we had the Bush administration officially pronouncing that the "War on Terror" was absolutely not a war on Muslims, which managed, apparently, to mute to some extent the vilest of anti-Islamic bigotry coming from America's loony right wing. With Bush now gone from office, however, and no real leader for the Republicans out there short of Rush Limbaugh and his idiot-ilk, the Muslim hate has ramped up among the conservative mob quite a bit as of late. But make no mistake: we've been hearing anti-Muslim rhetoric for nearly a decade, with only the worst of it manifesting in the Obama era.

That is, it's taken me a couple of days since these pathetic hearings were announced for me to fully realize just how fucked up a venture this is: the United States government is singling out Americans who practice one of the major world religions for HUAC style persecution and scrutiny.

Never mind the fact that there's just no evidence that the American Muslim community is undergoing some sort of process of "radicalization"--indeed, these hearings are the result of the decade of Muslim bashing I mentioned above, not a mass wave of American suicide bombers waiting in the wings, or anything else along these lines. Instead, try to imagine what it would be like if the House Homeland Security Committee announced that it was going to have highly confrontational hearings on how the Southern Baptists have evil in their hearts, or the Reform Jews, or the Pentecostals, or even the barbaric atheists. I mean, after all, "radicalization" essentially means "evil in their hearts" or something to that extent. In other words, these hearings exist only to brand American Muslims as bad people. That's what this really is, an exercise in Muslim bashing live on TV, an opportunity for gasbag Republicans to thump their chests and hurl prejudices at the expense of Americans who have done nothing but sincerely believe in their religion.

This is in blatant violation of the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But worse, it is deeply immoral, and the Republicans in pursuing this folly do nothing but bring shame down on all of us.

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FAT TUESDAY...

...is tomorrow. I haven't done a lot of merry-making thus far this season, but I plan to make up for that starting early in the morning. So no real post tonight, just a pic and the usual link to the Wikipedia Mardi Gras article. I've got to prepare, you know.


Me back in 2005 after attending my first Mardi Gras parade. In Baton Rouge,
which kind of isn't the same thing as here in NOLA, but it was an important first for me.

Happy Mardi Gras!

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"GET YOUR EDUCATION" IS NOT A JOBS PLAN

From the New York Times' resident Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman:

Degrees and Dollars

But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.

What we can’t do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.

More here.

Yeah, this has driven me crazy for years now. I mean, Krugman's point is absolutely correct in this current era when large numbers of even good white collar jobs are being outsourced to other nations or lost permanently to technology, but the notion that everybody going and getting a college degree is going to get us all good jobs has always been fucking stupid.

Sure, for you, the individual, getting a college degree is probably going to improve your job prospects to some extent, although, as Krugman observes in his essay, this is becoming less and less so as the years go by. But trying to get Americans to go to college en masse has been essentially all that Washington has had to offer in the face of the continual massive layoffs we've been suffering for three or four decades now, which have shattered the middle class: "Well, your blue collar manufacturing jobs with good pay and benefits are gone forever, but if you would just get a college degree all your problems are over." Like I said, that may help you, but it's just a joke to suggest that's going to help everybody, or even large numbers of workers, which is the implicit notion stinking up all these calls for everybody to go to college.

I mean, think about it for, like, two seconds. For starters, most people just can't go to college. If you have kids, you're too busy working to keep food on the table. And going to school while holding down a full time job, or two, is also extraordinarily difficult. Sure, a few, with the right support, and more than a little luck, can pull it off. Most can't. And then there's tuition. Books. Random student fees. No, not impossible, but with so many road blocks in the way, it is really, really, really unreasonable to even entertain the notion that millions of the underemployed and unemployed are going to try to do this.

But dig a little deeper and you can see just how retarded it is to say "get a degree" rather than coming up with some good ideas about how to create good jobs. Thought experiment: imagine everybody getting college degrees. With the labor market flooded by workers with bachelor's degrees, the value of your piece of paper plummets, and you're still stocking groceries at Safeway. The bottom line is that there have never been enough white collar jobs in our economy to accommodate a labor pool overflowing with college degrees.

That is, "go to college" is not, and has never been, an actual jobs plan. And it's just getting worse: the possibility that a college degree will help you, the individual, is, like I said, becoming ever less a possibility. So if "go to college" is ultimately a fool's errand in terms of rebuilding our once thriving middle class, what can we do?

When Krugman talks about "collective bargaining" he means "unions." The middle class we once had in this country wasn't built by a bunch of college boys demanding what they were worth in the so-called labor market: the mass middle class came into existence because labor unions, by raising their own wages and benefits, raised overall expectations for wages and benefits within the overall culture, among both workers and capitalists, unionized or not. And there is nothing but television, video games, and air conditioning stopping us from making that happen again.

That is, if all the economy has for us is shit-jobs, then we, the people, are going to have to insist that those shit-jobs pay livable wages. Fuck the "labor market." We're people, not products or commodities.

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Transparency in the Art World

From CounterPunch:

80% of work bought from artists and 50% of work bought at auction will fail to reach its original purchase price ever again. Less than 50% of artists featured 25 years ago in Christie’s or Sotheby’s modern and contemporary auctions are still featured in a major auction. 80% of the work brought into the leading auction houses is rejected for the evening auctions. It is not even necessary to wait for a quarter of a decade: recently a glut of Damien Hirst’s from those fallen on hard times led potential vendors being turned away.

The ADAA Guide makes a claim for its members that any art professional would also make, namely that they are “skilled at assessing the relative aesthetic merits of a given work, evaluating it both within the larger context of art history and within the specific context of the artist’s oeuvre.” Any evaluation within the larger context would have to include the caveat that many of the artists considered today to be leading exponents will be of little interest in the future, just as Edwin Long, who held the record price for a living artist in 1882 for his painting, The Babylonian Marriage Market, is now merely another Victorian also-ran, whose work fell to 10% of its previous value within 10 years of his death.

However, even the smaller context of contemporary art study is brushed aside if it proves inconvenient. There are obviously many vested interests, both financial and reputational, in maintaining the value of Damien Hirst’s work, and this, as with the value of all art, is dependent on market confidence, in his case deriving to a large extent from his status as an innovative practitioner.

More here.

So I hit on this very topic some six and a half years ago when I compared Marcel Duchamp's work to the work of contemporary art-whore Jeff Koons. Check out what I said here, but the long and short of it, from my perspective as somebody with both bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts, is that there is an over-the-top sense of bullshit in the high dollar New York avant garde art scene, where hype and reputation are, in the end, far more important than art itself. That means art work created by buddies I had years ago in the University of Texas art department is at least as cool and interesting as anything created by the uber-artistes in NYC whose paintings, sculptures, and installations sell for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

The Emperor wears no clothes. Indeed. But what I missed back in 2004, no doubt, because I was looking at the issue purely from the perspective of an angry artist, is that these high-dollar frauds of art are also investments for billionaires who see themselves as cool and hip. Consequently, you see in the serious art world a phenomenon something akin to what we saw with the subprime mortgage mess: countless investments fraudulently rated as AAA, the safest possible, that are essentially worthless, leaving investors holding the bag once the hype has diminished.

Not that I'm shedding any tears for billionaire investors who buy derivative rip-off bullshit for hundreds of thousands that any high school art student could produce, not me, no way. But this is very revealing in that it shows how all these big financial institutions, and, rest assured, the companies that deal in expensive objets d'art are definitely part of the financial sector, are totally corrupt, with organizational rules and mandates aimed at profiteering that virtually assure some kind of malfeasance will always be happening. If it's not Enron, it's WorldCom, or Lehman Brothers, or Citigroup, or Goldman Sachs, or Sotheby's.

We've had our noses rubbed in it for years now, but business continues as usual. Doesn't anybody in Washington give a shit at all?

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Roi the Impaler



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

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FAT TUESDAY...2010!

I never got around to posting my pics from Fat Tuesday last year, and I'm not doing my usual Thursday Star Trek post tonight, so I figure now is as good a time as any, since, you know, it's almost Fat Tuesday again, and I'll have new Mardi Gras pictures to post soon. At any rate, no major commentary on the photos. Just keep in mind that we started out in the Bywater neighborhood around nine or so in the morning, marched with the Society of St. Anne into Marigny and then finally into the French Quarter for fabulous festivities. I've also got a couple of shots toward the end of the famous Rex parade down on Canal Street.

Also, remember that this was only a few weeks after the Saints won last year's Super Bowl, so many of the fleur dis lis images all over the place are of the football variety. Like the flag being held by the Joan of Arc statue across the street from the French Market.

Who dat!

Check it out:









































Happy Mardi Gras!

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DELAYING STAR TREK...ONE LAST TIME

The audition I did on Wednesday has gotten me behind this week and I haven't had a chance to watch Star Trek's final episode "Turnabout Intruder" for review, and, you know, it's Mardi Gras right now, so the whole town is in Big Easy mode. So next week I ought to have my final post in my series of original series reviews.

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



...Mr. Spock!

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PLAYING HOOKY

No post tonight because I'm preparing for an audition tomorrow which has suddenly dropped in my lap. Tell me to break a leg!

Back soon.

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Why a Government Shutdown Would Imperil the Power of Congress

From CounterPunch, former Reagan economist Paul Craig Roberts ponders a possible scenario if House Republicans follow through with their as-of-yet unstated threat to shut down the government unless they get whatever they want:

With these precedents, it is a simple matter for President Obama to declare that, with the U.S. at war in a world of growing instability, he has the inherent power to ignore the debt limit and to continue financing the government with the creation of new money by the Federal Reserve.

Congress could try to protect its loss of the power of the purse by impeaching Obama. But how credible would it be to impeach a wartime president who is using the same “inherent power” of his office that Congress permitted the previous president to use?

The powers that Bush asserted not only violated statutory law, but also set aside constitutionally guaranteed rights that are the essence of American liberty. Yet, Congress made no attempt to restrain him with impeachment. How then does Congress impeach a president who is merely using his power to keep a government at war operating?

More here.

The excerpt above ends with an enormous question for which I have a very short response: GOP rules only apply to Democrats. That is, the Republicans, in this scenario, would have absolutely no problem impeaching Obama. They would see no irony, no contradiction, no hypocrisy. And the Democrats, in both houses, would probably join them. The press, too.

It doesn't matter that the GOP Congresses of the last decade ceded vast amounts of power to the President because we're at war. From their perspective, they only granted those powers to Republican Presidents. As laughable as that sounds, just go back to the Clinton impeachment.

Remember that, even though all the hysteria was about a blowjob, the technical reasons for the attempt to remove a democratically elected President from office had to do with the perjury in which he engaged over a matter that was completely unrelated to the seemingly endless Whitewater investigation that spawned old Bill's testimony, an investigation in which the Clintons were absolved eventually of all wrongdoing. Yes, the President perjured himself, but it was over a marital infidelity with no consequences in terms of the ostensible allegations; that is, the whole thing was a set-up for the express purpose of toppling him. My take, based on hearing the endless stream of opinions offered by Constitutional law scholars on television at the time, was that, while bad, the nature of Clinton's trespass just didn't rise to the level of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which the Constitution calls when Congress contemplates impeachment.

But the way the Republicans were spinning it, a President's perjury, on any topic, at any time, for any reason, under any circumstance, does indeed constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors." Vague philosophical arguments strongly asserting that the entire judicial system of the United States was threatened by Clinton's blowjob lie were offered to explain why the President just had to be thrown out of office. The GOP huffed and puffed and beat their chests for days on end.

Fortunately, the US public, generally being far more reasonable than the class of narcissists who lead us, didn't buy it. That apparently gave Clinton resolve to fight the thing, which ended up with his beating the charges in the Senate. Sometimes sanity does happen in American politics.

Flash forward only a few years to the revelation that Bush stole the White House by having his brother Jeb throw tens of thousands of African Americans off the voter roles in Florida back in 2000. Or a few years after that when it became apparent to everybody that there were no WMD in Iraq, and that the White House had probably lied about them in the first place. Or only a few months after that when reports surfaced of torture at Abu Ghraib, with strong circumstantial evidence that these war crimes were ordered directly from the Oval Office.

What did the impeachment-happy Republicans in Congress do when confronted with evidence of serious crimes committed by the White House? Nothing. Nothing at all. Lie about a blowjob; get impeached. Commit war crimes and steal the White House; get away with it.

So granting Bush all these war-time Presidential powers would mean nothing if Obama did something with them they didn't like. They'd impeach him in a heartbeat. Like I said, GOP rules only apply to Democrats--Republicans are never held to task for such violations; no one even mentions it when a Republican does something for which the GOP has lambasted the Democrats.

Remember, Republicans just don't understand the concepts of irony or hypocrisy.

Besides, it'll never come to that. Democrats just aren't as ballsy as Republicans, and Obama is no different. He'd never defy Congress in the way Roberts suggests. Nonetheless, I'd still give fifty-fifty odds that the House finds something stupid to impeach him with, maybe something like the White House's refusal to defend DOMA--oh wait, there's already rabble-rousing in that vein coming from one of the past's great idiots.

Sigh.

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