FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
TEXAS TAKES CARE OF BUSINESS, LSU AVOIDS EMBARRASSING LOSS

From the AP via ESPN:

Texas QB McCoy burns Kansas for two TDs to set season record

If the Big 12 South title is ultimately decided on who handed Kansas the most lopsided loss, give Texas Tech the nod. The No. 2 Red Raiders crushed the Jayhawks 63-21 while No. 5 Oklahoma beat them 45-31.

But No. 3 Texas will not apologize for its 35-7 victory on Saturday no matter what the final BCS rankings might show.

"If 35-7 against Kansas on the road isn't a good enough win for someone, we'll just go wherever they tell us to go," said Texas coach Mack Brown.

The Red Raiders, Sooners and Longhorns (10-1, 6-1 Big 12) could wind up in a three-way tie for the South title, which might mean the tiebreaker would be BCS standings. Those, of course, could be influenced by "style" points, including things like how they did against common opponents.

More here.

And again from the AP via ESPN:

LSU rallies from 28 down to trip Troy in Baton Rouge

Most of the fans already had left the stadium. Quarterback Jarrett Lee had been booed and benched in the first half. But somehow, LSU found a way to follow one of its most disheartening losses with the biggest comeback in school history.

LSU rallied from 28 points down to beat Troy, completing the comeback when Charles Scott scored with 4:50 left to put the 20th-ranked Tigers ahead in a 40-31 win Saturday night.

And

Troy went up 31-3 midway through the third, but LSU (7-3) answered with a touchdown late in the quarter and then ran off 30 points in the fourth to avoid an embarrassing loss.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, the Texas/Kansas game was fun to watch: the Longhorns dominated almost all the way, which is exactly how I love to watch Texas football. Of course, I'm greatly anticipating the savage beating the Aggies will receive Thanksgiving, but it's all about the BCS right now, which means I'm a Sooner fan for one weekend only. That is, the BCS rankings over the weekend remained the same for the top five, so the 'Horns need some help from ultra-evil rival OU. They're playing in Norman, which makes me hopeful that Tech will lose. But not by much. As the announcers were speculating during UT/KU, if the Sooners beat the shit out of Tech, they might leapfrog Texas into the number two slot.

I hate this waiting.

LSU, however, is another story entirely. Yeah yeah, big comeback, all that good shit, but it was against Troy. A Sun Belt team. You know, the shitty Sun Belt, which includes North Texas State and other shitty second tier teams--I'm not even sure why this conference exists. LSU should have never, never, never ended up in such an enormous hole at any point in the game, let alone the fourth quarter. I was musing last week that maybe it's all about Lee's incompetence as QB, but LSU's defense allowed a great deal of bullshit Saturday.

I have no idea what the deal is--I mean, if I did, I could probably be a sports writer or announcer or something along those lines. The bottom line is that LSU sucks this year. Okay, seven wins isn't too shabby, but it's horrible for a team that won the national championship last year. What on earth is going on with the Tigers?

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No Communion For Obama Supporters, Says South Carolina Priest

From the AP via the Huffington Post news wire:

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

Click here for the rest.

...but it's okay, apparently, to vote for McCain, who supports aggressive preemptive war, and the death penalty, both of which are opposed by the Catholic Church. I feel reasonably certain that this priest issued no such edict against supporters of President Bush, either, who actually has the blood of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions on his hands.

Clearly, this makes no fucking sense. I mean, even if this priest was consistent with his condemnation, it still wouldn't make any sense because he would essentially be telling his parishioners to refrain from the political process altogether, which is just a really bad idea in a democracy; citizens need to participate or it isn't really democracy--on the other hand, first century Christianity was able to thrive in the Roman world only because the new religion was apolitical, but then Rome was no democracy.

But I digress.

This "can't take communion" thing is the necessary result of mixing politics and religion, which happens all the time in the United States, but is more often than not something that fucks up both country and religion alike. Whatever. The cultural, political, and economic institutions of power known as churches are what they are, and will do what they will. They are, after all, private organizations, funded by private donations, and like other private organizations such as the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan, can say whatever crazy kind of shit they want, whenever they want.

So here's a little unsolicited advice for any of my fellow countrymen of the Catholic persuasion who are feeling politically repressed by their Church: quit. You don't have to take this shit. You don't have to divide your political self from your spiritual self. Indeed, I'm not telling you to be an atheist or agnostic or anything like that; quite the reverse, I'm telling you to keep your relationship with God while abandoning your relationship with an institution of power that insists on pitting loyalty to country against loyalty to the Almighty. Fuck 'em. They can't tell you what to do. You don't need any fucking priests dangling wine and wafer over your mouth only to yank it away if you don't beg correctly. Just quit. Millions of American Catholics have already done it. It's cool. It's very American.

Quit the Catholic Church!

Of course, that's easy for me to say with my Protestant background. The entire Reformation was about quitting the Catholic Church. Protestants love to quit. Fuck man, I quit being a Southern Baptist long ago, myself, which is just soooo Protestant. You can take the boy out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the boy.

Actually, we'd all be much better off if everybody quit their churches. As if that's going to happen. But it's still a good idea.

UPDATE: You know, I'm really only telling people to quit their churches half-heartedly, with tongue in cheek, but check this shit out. That's what I'm talking about. Good stuff.

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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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Theater Director Resigns Amid Gay-Rights Ire

From the New York Times:

The artistic director of the California Musical Theater, a major nonprofit producing company here in the state’s capital, resigned on Wednesday in the face of growing outrage over his support for a ballot measure this month that outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

The artistic director, Scott Eckern, came under fire recently after it became known that he contributed $1,000 to support Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to recognize only male-female marriages. The measure was approved by 52 percent of California voters on Election Day. (Same-sex marriages had been performed in California since June.)

In a statement issued on Wednesday morning, Mr. Eckern said that his donation stemmed from his religious beliefs — he is a Mormon — and that he was “deeply saddened that my personal beliefs and convictions have offended others.”

His donation was brought to light by online activists angry about the measure’s success at the polls.

And

For its part, the theater disavowed Mr. Eckern’s donation and issued only a brief statement on Wednesday accepting his resignation, while emphasizing that it would not “impinge on the rights of its employees to engage in political activities.” A longtime employee, Mr. Eckern had been artistic director since 2002.

More here.

My suspicion is that if this theater really is concerned with not "imping[ing] on the rights of its employees" Eckern would not have been forced to resign for exercising his rights.

Back in 2002, as many Real Art readers know, I was teaching theater at a public high school in a conservative town. I was scared shitless that I would lose my job for voicing opposition to the war in Afghanistan and the upcoming invasion of Iraq. I mean, I knew that I had a perfect right to do so especially because I knew that most of the faculty was voicing support for American aggression abroad--if other teachers have the right to be pro-war in the classroom, then I have the right to be anti-war in the classroom. But rights exist only when they are enforced, and I had a very reasonable fear that my right to speak would not be enforced. I spoke my mind, but I measured my words carefully, and always gave ample opportunity for students to disagree with me, something many pro-war faculty members at my school did not do.

Indeed, my need to speak out combined with my fear of retaliation for it gave birth to this blog.

Fortunately, I got away with it, I think, because I used a lot of common sense, soft-pedaling my views, trying to be fair and balanced in a non FOX way. But this Mormon guy out in California is another matter entirely. He didn't get away with it, and that's a fucking shame.

Don't get me wrong. I completely disagree with his anti gay marriage stance. But he is entitled to his views; he, like all Americans, has freedom of speech. There's something very un-American about hounding him out of his position because of his politics. I mean, okay, argue with him, try to persuade him that he's wrong, but don't fuck him over because of his beliefs. As if targeting an individual private citizen would do anything to change the electoral reality that Proposition 8 won.

Neither the left nor the right in this country have a monopoly on McCarthyesque tactics, and it disgusts me to no end.

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Sarah Palin Blamed by the US Secret Service
Over Death Threats Against Barack Obama

From AlterNet:

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

And

Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."

Click here for the rest.

Okay, this is very frightening, but nothing new. That is, Sarah Palin has done nothing that right-wing radio hosts haven't done, again and again, before her. The racism is something of a new angle here, but this kind of libelous hate speech has been directed at Democrats and the left in general for many years. O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Reagan, Savage, all these assholes have called liberals traitors, murderers, terrorists, perverts, vermin, stuff right out of Goebbels' playbook.

The bottom line here is that, while all Americans have freedom of speech and can say whatever they want, there are consequences to extreme lies and libel. Many on the left have been warning for a long time that some kook someday is going to take all this vile rhetoric seriously, and start shooting up liberals. We've already seen such consequences played out at a Unitarian church in Tennessee.

This Secret Service report only makes the danger more credible: the longer the right wing engages in dehumanizing rhetoric aimed at liberals, the more likely it is that liberals will be targeted by psychotic right-wingers. I know how anti-social it is to compare Americans to Nazis, but there are some terrifying parallels here.

Given the free speech issues at stake here, I don't advocate adoption of the kind of hate speech codes we've seen at some liberal universities over the years, but it is important to note that slander and libel laws are on the books for some very good reasons. I think it's high time that liberals got serious about fighting this shit, hitting the corporations profiting from conservative lies where it hurts the most, in their pocketbooks. That is, it's time for a massive campaign of thousands of lawsuits.

Fuck these assholes.

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



...Mr. Spock!

God, I love this picture.

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WELCOME BACK BLACK HELICOPTERS!

From the AP via the Huffington Post:

Georgia Congressman Warns Of Obama Dictatorship

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may _ may not, I hope not _ but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

And

Obama was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure _ an idea endorsed by the Bush administration.

More here.

And so the new lunatic fringe begins.

Remember the weirdo patriot movement, militia movement, whatever you want to call it, that ran around in the woods with guns and fatigues on weekends worrying about "the new world order" back during the Clinton era? Boy, I sure do. The homegrown terrorists who blew up that federal building in Oklahoma came from these ranks: they were, and probably still are, a much bigger threat to our "homeland security" than Muslim terrorists have ever been.

Black helicopters, indeed.

Looking back on it all, it's really difficult to avoid seeing the militia movement as being an extreme manifestation of conservative anxiety about having a Democrat in the White House after twelve years of Republican rule. I mean, just look at all the bullshit conspiracy theories back in the day about President Clinton himself, the drug dealing, the murders, and on and on and on. We've really got to face it; there are some big time lunatics among the American right wing.

And now they're freaking out again, and Obama hasn't even been sworn in.

That's no surprise, I suppose. Bill Clinton, the "best Republican president we've ever had" as Michael Moore has joked, really did govern to the right of Nixon. Old Bill was always a false liberal, and the 90s was essentially a conservative era. But that didn't matter. To the right wing, he was the devil personified as a leftist, and they were scared shitless of him, willing to belive the most ludicrous stories about him because they had to be true.

A bartender where I work told me about the astonishment of an obviously conservative customer on election night, "Well that's it. It's going to be white slavery now." Yeah that's right, this guy actually believes that the blacks are taking over and that they're going to put all us white folk on the plantations. Seriously. I mean, that's fucked up. And I have a sneaking suspicion that there are quite a few more irrational right-wing freaks out there with similar fears.

I would say that I'm hopeful that the lunatic fringe will calm down once they see how conservative Obama actually is, but Clinton's conservatism did nothing in this area back in the day. That is, I'm not hopeful at all. These people are fucking nuts. And I bet the corporate media, in its continual drive to be "balanced," will treat their views as serious and credible.

The next four years are going to be extraordinarily fun.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
TEXAS BEATS BAYLOR, LSU BLOWS CHANCE TO HELP OUT TEXAS

From the AP via ESPN:

QB McCoy in charge as Texas bashes Baylor

Colt McCoy and Quan Cosby spent several late nights together in the Texas training room this week trying to heal their aching bodies.

Together on the field Saturday, they helped the No. 4 Longhorns get over the red-and-black blues -- that last-second loss at Texas Tech that knocked them out of the No. 1 spots in the AP poll, BCS standings and Big 12 South.

"I don't ever want to feel like I did last week again," Cosby said. "Not only getting hurt, but losing. It was important to come out and play like we today."

McCoy passed for 300 yards and five touchdowns, two to Cosby, as Texas rebounded with a 45-21 victory over Baylor.

"You want to get the bad taste out of your mouth," coach Mack Brown said. "More than anything I felt that Monday, and I know the kids did too."

Click here for the rest.

And again from the AP via ESPN:

Saban makes victorious return to Tiger Stadium as Bama stays unbeaten

In a bittersweet return to the school he once coached, Saban kept his current team on course for a shot at the national championship with a thrilling win Saturday. After missing a chip-shot field goal on the final play of regulation, No. 1 Alabama stayed perfect when John Parker Wilson scored on a 1-yard sneak in overtime for a 27-21 victory over the 16th-ranked Tigers.

And

LSU got the ball first in overtime, only to give away even a shot at the field goal when Jarrett Lee threw his fourth interception -- the third pick of the game by Alabama's Rashad Johnson, tying the school record. The Tide didn't even bother with another field goal try, having already missed twice.

More here.

You know, I' really beginning to wonder if most of LSU's blues this year come from Jarrett Lee's tendency to throw to receivers on other teams. I'm no analyst or anything, but when you throw three INTs per game, you're going to lose to good teams. Just a thought. At any rate, LSU missed a chance to help out my other school's team a great deal. Upsetting 'Bama would have, maybe, put Texas back into the top two. But it didn't happen. I mean, the Tigers played well, taking it to overtime and all, but to no avail.

Texas played well, too, albeit against a much inferior team. Okay, the Bears are playing better than they have in recent memory, but you know. I suppose that's how they got 21 points--well, okay, that last TD was against the Longhorn bench, but still.

Okay, let's talk BCS.

Texas is number three. 'Bama and Tech are one and two respectively, with Florida at four, and Oklahoma at five. Tech and OU play on the 22nd; obviously, I want OU to win this one. 'Bama has Mississippi State and Auburn to round out their regular season schedule, which they ought to win handily, so I'm looking forward to the probable showdown with Florida in the SEC championship game. In short, with UT at three, I want the one and two teams to lose. Problem is, the teams most likely to beat them are ranked four and five, and big fucking wins for them could easily mean a BCS rankings jump over Texas. Worst case scenario: Florida and OU end up in the top two slots, with Texas remaining at number three--another worst case scenario: everything remains the same and Texas goes to the Cotton Bowl or the Independence Bowl or some such.

This shit makes my head spin. I'm also assuming Texas doesn't falter against Kansas or the vile Aggies of Texas A&M. Okay, that's the real worst case scenario: Texas loses for the third time in a row against the Aggies.

You know, I'll be happy if we just beat A&M. Fucking Aggies.

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NEW NEW DEAL

From the New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman makes suggestions for President Elect Obama's upcoming economic program:

The Obama Agenda

Now, the Obama administration shouldn’t emulate the Bush administration’s habit of turning anything and everything into an argument for its preferred policies. (Recession? The economy needs help — let’s cut taxes on rich people! Recovery? Tax cuts for rich people work — let’s do some more!)

But it would be fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” — has never rung truer.

And right now happens to be one of those times when the converse is also true, and good morals are good economics. Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it’s also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax. Providing aid to beleaguered state and local governments, so that they can sustain essential public services, is important for those who depend on those services; it’s also a way to avoid job losses and limit the depth of the economy’s slump.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.

The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn’t listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president.

More here.

What Krugman is describing here is a big return to Keynesian economics, the paradigm that ruled US economic policy for a couple of generations. The stagflation of the 70s however, recession coupled with inflation, caused by LBJ's Great Society domestic programs combined with Vietnam War military spending and dramatic OPEC created oil price increases, was a problem unforeseen by Keynes, and his point of view was replaced by the current failed neoliberal model.

In political practice, one of the biggest parts of neoliberalism, as observed by Krugman, is cutting taxes for the rich. Once upon a time, this was actually effective, albeit in a very specific way. Former Reagan administration economist Paul Craig Roberts has explained that capital gains tax cuts in the early 80s assured that industry could increase capacity to meet increased demand, instead of having to raise prices, which would add to the inflationary spiral. When combined with increased interest rates, which deflated the dollar supply, these tax cuts helped to kill stagflation in its tracks. In popular lore, however, as pushed relentlessly by the right-wing mythology machine, the true story was suppressed, and replaced by the fictional narrative that all tax cuts, especially for the rich, always stimulate the economy. After years and years of tax cuts for the rich with only recession to show for it today, however, we now know for sure that the conservative economic myth is, in fact, a myth.

Our economy is now facing the kinds of problems with which Keynes was all too familiar. Before the unique and situationally specific stagflation of the 70s, Keynesiansim was extraordinarily effective in creating and maintaining stable industrial economies. And a big part of that was, as our incoming President has described it, "spreading the wealth around." A dirty little secret of neoliberalism is that the rich aren't particularly effective spenders as far as macroeconomic stimulus is concerned: nothing can beat millions of consumers buying toothpaste, hamburgers, televisions, and refrigerators, certainly not the relatively few Mr. Howells and Monopoly Men out there buying yahts and palatial New England mansions.

Getting money into actual consumers' hands will rev up the economy in numerous ways that tax rebate checks and another round of handovers to the fabulously wealthy cannot. And it will also go a long way toward reversing the three decade long shift in economic fortunes toward the rich and away from everybody else. That is, it will make most American lives better.

It really is the right thing to do, both morally and economically.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Reine and Phil



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

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South Park Obama Victory Episode Aired Wednesday Night

From the Huffington Post news wire:

It didn't take long for the notoriously-fast-working folks at South Park to lampoon President-Elect Obama. Last night's episode featured the president-elect, Michelle Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin. The episode, "About Last Night," revolves around an Ocean's 11-style plot to steal the Hope diamond.

Click here to watch a clip of the episode over at Huffington Post.

Obviously, South Park's creators, Parker and Stone, were making the same gamble that Garry Trudeau made with Doonesbury, that the polls were correct, and Obama was certain to win. I haven't checked out the Doonesbury Daily Dose yet to see what's up in Baby Boomer land, but I did watch South Park last night, and was impressed, as usual. I mean, it was less politically poignant than I've seen with SP before, but it was pretty fucking spot on in a couple of ways, the absurdity of Obamamania, and the irrationality of conservative fears about our new President Elect.

It's very amusing. Check it out here.

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NOT THE END OF RACISM

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Baylor University denounces Election Day noose

WACO — Baylor University officials said they are investigating an apparent noose hanging from a tree the day Barack Obama was elected the nation's first black president.

More here.

From the same source:

Ohio troopers in Klan prank get their jobs back

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Two Ohio troopers have won back their jobs after being fired for pulling a KKK-type costume prank the day before Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

An arbitrator ruled Tuesday that the firings in May violated a union contract.

More here.

And again from the same source:

Fla. board keeps Klan leader's name at high school

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Florida school board voted late Monday night to keep the name of a Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader at a majority black high school, despite opposition from a black board member who said the school's namesake was a "terrorist and racist."

After hearing about three hours of public comments, Duval County School Board members voted 5-2 to the retain the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. The board's two black members cast the only votes to change the name.

Click here for the rest.

Any reflective and rational American fully understands that electing an African-American to the presidency does not signal the end of racism in America--it's a very significant milestone in that direction, to be sure, and indicates a great deal of attitudinal change among the US electorate, but it's very clearly only part of the overall story. Racism lingers, and continues to have often devastating effects on the people it oppresses. But make no mistake about it, you can bet your white ass that buttloads of Americans are going to point to Obama's election, again and again, as "evidence" that we now live in a race-neutral society. That's why it's all the more important to sound the alarm that the American scourge of racism is alive and well.

The above linked stories are obvious examples of racism's tenacious nature. The noose display at Baylor, part of a seeming national trend at universities and in public offices, comes as no surprise to me: Baylor is a Southern Baptist university. Now, I'm not going to say that Southern Baptists are racists, but their denomination, the largest of all Protestants in the United States, was born as a blatant act of racism--Southern Baptists broke off with other American Baptists during the mid 19th century when they started embracing Abolitionist principles; that is, the Southern Baptist genesis was about supporting the institution of slavery, and white supremacism is an inherent part of such a notion. Yes, the Southern Baptists officially apologized for this back in the 1990s, but cultural memory is long, and often subconscious. I know there are many Southern Baptists out there, especially in the South, who are uneasy tonight as they contemplate the concept of a black president, dismissing their unease as political difference, despite the fact that our president elect is just about as establishment as they come.

Obviously, some dumbshit Southern Baptist kids at Baylor don't understand the psychological drill, and properly attribute their Obama angst to racial fear.

Then there are the Ohio cops in KKK suits, another innocent "prank." Part of me is glad that they have good labor union representation, but I wonder how they got a contract that makes what amounts to terroristic threats okay. I mean, cops...Klan...cops...Klan...that's really fucking frightening. Just look at the historic link between the KKK and local law enforcement. I suppose I can accept that these two cops are simply extraordinarily stupid, but the message that they may or may not have sent inadvertantly is just too fucking intimidating. People still get pulled over for driving-while-black. If they think cops dressing up as terrorists is funny, then they simply have no understanding of the American racial dynamic, and have no business wearing badges and carrying guns.

And then there's KKK High down in Jacksonville. I'm almost speechless over this one. I mean, the school board voted to continue honoring a Klan founder. WTF?!? I mean, what the fuck!?!

The overall point is that countless relatively minor stories such as these play themselves out nationally all the time. No single one of these kinds of instances is particularly dangerous in and of themselves, but they do, in their totality, indicate where the overall American culture is right now, and go very far in explaining the much more damaging and dangerous institutional oppressions typically dismissed by even non-racist whites. African-Americans, as a group, still suffer greatly from poverty. African-Americans continue to be wildly disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. African-Americans continue to underachieve in schools, with much higher dropout rates than average. Yes, there is a reasonable issue of personal responsibility to be discussed here, but when you look at these numbers against the backdrop of a national culture that produces noose-hanging incidents at universities, cops "joking around" in white hoods, and KKK glorifying high schools, it is undeniable that there is much, much, much more going on here than blacks shirking their personal responsibilities.

White people who intensely believe that they are not racist will now point to President Obama to "prove" that these social disparities suffered by black Americans are their own fault, that if Obama can do it, anyone can. I'm really happy about our new president, but he did not just single handedly usher in a post racial era. We've got a long way to go, and it will be all the more difficult because we must now deal with people who deny what they see, and what they feel within themselves, and are able to craft reasonably sounding arguments to support their view.

This will be the final struggle against racism, and it may be the toughest one of them all.

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HISTORY

From the Washington Post:

Obama Wins Historic Presidential Victory

Democrat Barack Obama was elected the first African-American president of the United States Tuesday, capping a meteoric rise for the freshman Illinois Senator whose message of change resonated with a broad cross section of anxious voters eager for a clear break from the policies of the past eight years.

"If anyone out there still doubts whether America is a place where all things are possible ... who still questions our democracy, tonight is your answer," Obama said at midnight eastern time, speaking before a massive crowd at Grant Park in Chicago.

Obama said the nation is not a collection of red states and blue states. "We are and always will be the United States of America," he said.

Obama, 47, defeated Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) Tuesday by a convincing margin, appearing to hold every state won by Democrats in the 2004 election while making significant inroads into previously Republican states in the South, Midwest and Mountain West. Obama won the battleground states that drew the bulk of both candidate's attention and resources during the campaign -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Virginia.

His victory, along with the expansion of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, gives the party complete control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since 1994.

More here.

Back in 1992 I attended a small gathering of liberals I knew in Austin to watch the election returns. Clinton won with a plurality of votes, thanks to Ross "the Boss" Perot's weird renegade independent candidacy. The room exploded into joy and dancing when talking heads called it for old Bill. The dancing continued for some time after, hours in fact.

Maybe it was because I had only recently decided that I was a liberal, and instinctively understood that the Reagan revolution was far from over, but while I watched the celebration around me, I had a bad feeling about it all. "The conservatives aren't going to just go away," I thought to myself, "This victory party is premature." Within a year, Clinton's signature proposal, health care reform, went down in flames. Gays-in-the-military only heralded the arguably worse policy of renewed witch hunts called "don't ask; don't tell." Within two years, the Republicans had taken both houses of Congress for the first time since Eisenhower was in office. Within six years, that Republican Congress had impeached the president.

Then came the Bush II era.

So my bad feeling back in '92 turned out to be much more right than I had feared. The Conservative Movement wasn't done; it was only just getting started.

I spent tonight watching election returns with a small gathering of liberals in New Orleans. This time, the Democrat was elected in an electoral landslide. No dancing when the corporate news people declared it for Obama, but we were all very pleased, serious but pleased. And I didn't have a bad feeling this time around. I mean, conservatism has been lying in ruins for some months now, but Obama just drove a stake through its heart. Actually, I'm very hopeful tonight. The Conservative Movement is dead. America is celebrating this new era, but appears to be determined to get it right--people seem to understand that we can't just go home now and expect everything to work out because we put another Democrat in the White House. I think this country is serious about cleaning up the mess left behind by nearly thirty years of Republican leadership.

Things are looking up.

Oh yeah, Nader lost. Bummer.

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'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE HISTORY

Excited? I sure am. I've really got a night-before-Christmas feeling this evening.

As you may have already read here at Real Art, I'm planning on voting for Ralph Nader tomorrow especially because it appears this state, Louisiana, is safe for McCain, not much chance that "the Bradley effect" will play any significant role here--Nader represents my own vision for America much better than the mainstream competition, so he gets my vote.

But that doesn't mean I can't be happy about Tuesday's probable outcome. For starters, the fact that Obama is an African-American bears undeniable symbolic significance in an enormous way: electing a black man to America's highest office will not end racism, no, but it is a big "fuck you" to what is perhaps the most shameful and horrific aspect of this nation's history and social/cultural/political/economic structure. Associated with this significance is the big "fuck you" to the relatively few unrepentant racists left in this country, and the much larger group of self-denialists harboring racist attitudes which they do not recognize as racist.

I'm also really looking forward to the kick I'm going to get out of the simple fact that diehard asshole conservatives will have to watch from the sidelines as the center-right Democrats they despise as "liberals" run the country. These right-wing deadenders believe that only they can rule America legitimately, and will attack as viciously as they did during the Clinton years, but their howls of indignation now have all the credibility of the boy who cried WMD, so they'll just look stupid, which will be very entertaining.

Beyond all that, I greatly anticipate Obama's rolling back the Bush II era to the more moderate, although still conservative, era of Bush I/Clinton. Not the degree of change we need, but still significant.

But then, maybe we will ultimately see the change we need after all. Here's my hope: Obama's coattails allow the Democrats to do as they wish in both houses of Congress, which, when combined with the pissed off mood of the nation during this philosophical moment exposing Conservative Movement principles as false, and also combined with fierce agitation from the true American left taken for granted by Obama after the primary season, will force our new "liberal" president to actually govern as a liberal. That is, FDR was no radical, but circumstances forced him much further to the left than he ever would have imagined before he was in the White House. I'm hoping for a repeat here. We may be facing a new liberal era in the United States if we're lucky.

Unless the Republicans steal it again, which is very possible, considering that it's now appearing more and more likely that they did it in Ohio during the '04 election. If that happens, who wants to join me in a nationwide general strike?

Go vote!

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
AH, SHIT AND HO HUM

From the AP via ESPN:

Crabtree, No. 7 Red Raiders knock off top-ranked Longhorns in Lubbock

It was as risky a pass as Graham Harrell has ever thrown. Also the most important.

With the final seconds ticking off and Texas Tech trailing by a point, the Texas Tech quarterback saw Michael Crabtree in double coverage and let if fly. The All-American wide receiver snagged it on the sideline, shook off a defender and ducked into the end zone with one second left.

With that stunning 28-yard touchdown, the No. 7 Red Raiders turned near-heartbreak into a wild victory, 39-33 against No. 1 Texas.

Texas Tech showed its tops in the Lone Star State -- and maybe even the best team in the land.

More here.

You know, I don't really have anything to say about this other than, "Ah, shit." At least we didn't fall too far in the AP rankings; number five isn't so bad, right?

Shit.

And again from the AP via ESPN:

LSU rolls after scoring two quick TDs late in second quarter

LSU did little to scare former coach Nick Saban and Alabama in a sluggish performance against in-state rival Tulane.

With the Tigers coming off a disheartening loss to Georgia, coach Les Miles was looking for four quarters of intensity against the Green Wave. He settled for a few minutes of dominance as No. 19 LSU won 35-10 on Saturday night.

More here.

And all I have to say about this one is "Ho hum." Beat 'Bama next weekend and I'll be impressed. Otherwise...man, it's tough being a college football fan with high expectations for your two teams.

Shit.

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FAREWELL STUDS TERKEL

From the Nation via AlterNet:

Studs Terkel, You Will Be Missed

Long before others dared do so, the man who immortalized the generation of Americans who fought "the good war" of the 1940s termed the Iraq War "a quagmire for America."

"We were the most honored country in the world at the end of World War II," he noted. "Now we're the most loathed country. We need a media that asks: 'What the hell are we doing there?' "

Studs was delighted when, in 2004, a young Chicago state senator with whom he had marched on picket lines, was elected to the US Senate on an anti-war "what-the-hell-are-we-doing-there?" platform.

He followed Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency with enthusiasm. The old civil rights campaigner wanted to see an African-American elected president in his lifetime.

But he also wanted the Democrat to remember his roots as, dare we say it, a community activist. "Obama can't be a moderate!" Studs said in one of his last interviews. "He's got to remember where he comes from! Obama, he has got to be pushed!"

In particular, the man who well recalled the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency wanted to make sure that Obama was pressed to promote a new New Deal.

More here.

Terkel died Friday at the age of 96. He's been a public figure in the US going back to the 1930s, but I only came to know what he was about during the last decade or so, thanks to the many interviews he gave Democracy Now. He was a working class, left-wing radio and television personality, and personality is a good word to use because you just couldn't stop listening once he started speaking. He was also a prolific and interesting writer, although I've only read a few of his essays, and none of his books.

He was, indeed, a big deal to the American left. But here's what he meant to me. The first time I heard one of those aforementioned Democracy Now interviews, I was blown away by the juxtaposition of his age with what he had to say. I mean, I've known that the class struggle in this country goes back to its beginning and before, but I've always felt unreasonably that old people are necessarily conservative, stuck in the past, with old and out of date values and priorities. But Terkel, the old man, was speaking my language. And he was there for all the great stuff in America's left-wing past. The labor movement, the socialist movement, the fight against fascism and McCarthyism. I felt automatically connected to all that through him. And here he was speaking out against the injustices of today, just as he always did.

Quick aside: screw the hippies for making me think that old equals conservative--if I live to see my 90s, I hope I'm even more radical than I am now.

Studs Terkel connected me to a part of American history that they don't really teach in school, the struggle against rule-by-wealth, and for the empowerment of the common man, the regular guy. He made me love this country all the more by giving me some emotional connection to a side of it I was never really sure existed. Leftism is as American as apple pie and all that shit. And Terkel was a great American.

Farewell, Studs Terkel.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



Frankie



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

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Here, watch Night of the Living Dead:


via videosift.com

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CHARITY: A KIND SWEET GENEROUS PERPETUATION OF INJUSTICE

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Texas Samaritan buys woman her house at auction

A woman distraught over losing her house showed up to watch it auctioned off, but that wasn't the end of the story. Tracy Orr will return home after a stranger bought the house back for her Saturday.

"It means so much to all of us," Orr said. "It's not just a house."

Marilyn Mock said she decided on the spot to buy the house after striking up a conversation with a sobbing Orr at the auction Saturday. Mock was there to help her 27-year-old son bid on a house.

More here.

Marxists have been making this point for many, many years, but it's well worth repeating in this day and age. This woman who bought back the house for its previous owner is clearly being extraordinarily nice. I mean, fuckin' a, that's really really really nice. If I'd just lost my house to foreclosure and had it bought back for me, I'd be eternally grateful. After all, I'd have my house back.

But the wealthy and kind hearted Ms. Mock is only buying one house.

Okay sure, it isn't reasonable to expect an individual, or groups of individuals, to solve the world's social ills with their altruism--as an extreme example, these hypothetical generous folks would send themselves to the poor house if they tried to save the world with their charity. All charitable people can do is temporarily help out a few lucky souls. That is, charity is a social dead end.

Charity is nice. Very nice. It helps some people in need. But charity does nothing to change the circumstances that put those people in need in the first place. Worse, charity gives the appearance that something is being done to ease suffering. I mean, yeah, charity does indeed ease some suffering, but does nothing to ease all suffering. And defenders of our plutocratic economic and political establishment can always point to these necessarily limited efforts to make the false assertion that the political order enriching them is fair and just. Charity is ultimately nothing but propaganda fodder for rule by the rich--it also makes the well-to-do feel much better about the fact that they have so much when so many others do not.

Ultimately, charity does nothing but perpetuate our unjust society.

Only the government has the power to actually change the economic and social circumstances that keep so many citizens down. And I'm not talking welfare: cash payments to people who don't work is the same as charity. I'm talking about making life easier for those who actually contribute to society. That means "spreading the wealth around" as Senator Obama recently put it. That means making it easier for workers to unionize. That means making access to health care, housing, and good education a right, not a privilege. That means making a society geared toward citizen empowerment instead of what we have now, a society where most citizens are utterly irrelevant to the ruling elite.

Yeah, charity is nice, really nice, but in the end, it's wildly counterproductive.

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Are credit cards the next collapse?

From McClatchy via the Huffington Post news wire:

As the economy slows and unemployment rises, consumers are defaulting on credit-card payments more often. And though that trend is unlikely to create a crisis in line with the mortgage fallout, it's still a headache for banks that are already hurting.

and

To be sure, credit cards don't represent a huge portion of assets for most banks. For example, they comprise about 14 percent of all consumer loans and leases at Bank of America, the country's largest credit-card issuer. The main problem, Nishikawa said, is that "everyone is so weak after what happened with mortgages that another blow to a consumer product would be hard to handle."

Consumer groups have long complained that credit-card issuers push cards onto people who don't need them or can't afford them. They say that rising credit-card defaults – just like mortgage defaults – are largely the fault of banks who lent to risky borrowers.

Innovest estimates that about 30 percent of Bank of America's credit card loans are to subprime borrowers – second only to the failed Washington Mutual Inc., which had almost half of its credit-card loans held by subprime borrowers.

Innovest also estimates that more than half of Bank of America's credit cards are high-limit cards – second only to American Express Co. (Innovest classifies high-limit cards as those with lines of more than $10,000.) Nishikawa says that combination could prove toxic for Bank of America, which may have "lent more than (borrowers) can be expected to pay back."

More here.

Ha! Good, serves those motherfuckers right. That's what they fucking get.

Long ago, during my first few years away from home at college, I noticed that many of my friends were getting pounded with multiple offers for new credit cards. Me too. I thought it strange that kids with no income of their own could possibly be considered a good credit risk. As some of those friends began running up thousands of dollars in credit card debt, I decided that my credit-flush pals were being extraordinarily irresponsible, and that I would go as long as I could without getting one for myself.

To this day, I shun credit cards, using only a debit card when I've got to have plastic for whatever reasons. I was right, back then, in thinking that running up credit card debt is irresponsible, but I only had one tiny piece of the picture: banks issuing credit cards wanted irresponsible people to run up massive debt, and purposely targeted some of the most vulnerable and irresponsible people around, the young. Seriously. The human brain isn't fully mature until sometime in the mid twenties, and part of that immaturity is an inability to fully assess risk. Teens and early twentysomethings are simply incapable of seeing long term consequences in the way that fully developed adults can. Banks have also purposely targeted people in poverty, and people on the verge of poverty, for different reasons amounting to the same thing--the poor find it difficult to avoid credit card debt when they lack money to buy food or pay the bills or pay for health care; they're vulnerable, too.

All of this predatory lending, because that's what it is, came about when banks in the early 80s decided that they could make much more money from credit cards if they could get card holders to run a balance from month to month. It's all about the interest. Back in the day, credit cards were simply a service, making a small profit, and people who didn't pay up at the end of the month were usually cut off. People who didn't have much income couldn't get them in the first place. But when these banking corporations set up shop in the few states allowing usurious interest rates all that went out the window. The credit card industry became all about dicking people over, and turning them into life long sources of cash for the already rich.

And Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, were more than happy to allow it all to happen. Fuck man, they even helped out as much as they could: the bankruptcy reform law passed a few years back was all about keeping people deep in credit card debt from defaulting, a sort of fuck you to the beleaguered consumer.

Well, you reap what you sow. Wah, wah, wah. The credit card companies are hurting. Well, too fucking bad. That's what they get.

Watch Frontline's documentary The Secret History of the Credit Card here.

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