"I think they are all homosexual communists in Satan's army...I espect as well they all live together and bathe together every morning and have the anal sex with one another, with the fisting and the guinea pigs." - Manuel Estimulo
"I can never quite tell if the defeatists are conservative satirists poking fun at the left or simply retards. Or both. Retarded satire, perhaps?" - Kyle
"You're an effete fucktard" - Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom
"This is the most pathetic blog ever..." - Ames Tiedeman
"You two [the Rev and el Comandante] make an erudite pair. I guess it beats thinking." - Matt Cunningham (aka Jubal) of OC Blog
"Can someone please explain to me what the point is behind that roving gang of douchebags? I’m being serious here. It’s not funny, and doesn’t really make anything that qualifies as logical argument. Paint huffers? Drunken high school chess geeks?" - rickinstl
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan largely because they were totally frustrated with their client state's inability to do just about anything that they expected them to do. The people of the former Soviet Union are still suffering the impact of that decision. Russia is still engaged in the continuing kerfluffle in the Caucasus but that at least seems consistent. Chechnya is a small scale version of Afghanistan but Russia has all the cards; we're not arming the Chechens, and the various Islamic cash cows have avoided providing a lot of support beyond prayer and some limited humanitarian. Part of that has to do with the global war on terror's chilling effect on dissident elements in various Islamic nations; part of it has to do with the fact that the Chechens have proven themselves to be basically threats to anybody they don't like very much.
One would have thought that after the almost 12 years of war in Afghanistan with the ongoing unmentioned conflicts in Somalia and Yemen and watching the emerging religious cleansing in Iraq, that we'd have learned to not get involved in another Islamic intramural cluster in Western Asia. The old saw about not getting involved in a land war in Asia really is about the continent of Asia, not just the parts we've already had our asses kicked in. Like it or not, global power projectors, none of our land wars in Asia have turned out well. At best, we've had a draw in Korea lasting almost as long as I've been alive; I guess the Boxer Rebellion turned out ok, and of course, there was Vietnam...But now the US has decided that the Syrian government has crossed a red line and used chemical agents. This horrible crime against humanity that supposedly killed about 200 people in multiple attacks will not stand. (Give me a squad, some .50 cal sniper rifles, Mk19 Automatic grenade launchers, some mortars, some M2 machineguns, a lot of bullets and maybe some close air support -- all of which the Syrians have or at least have the equivalents--and we'll deliver a helluva lot more than 200 casualties if you give us a village or six to take out, if we were the types of guys who slaughter civilians. The Syrian Army doesn't have that squeamish ethical reserve that we have.
McCain and Co. are all in on doing more in Syria and have been for a long time. In fact, the White House let him know that they had decided to start arming the rebels and he went on the Senate floor before the either the President or the White House could make the announcement to complain that the offer of aid was obviously insufficient and we need a no-fly zone and a CAP. Hard for me to see much of an up side, given that once again, they're all evil bastards and whatever we do will turn out wrong. On one side, we have the Assad regime which is a totally awful bunch of psychopaths assisted by Hezbollah another total bunch of psychopaths and funded by the Iranians whose government is almost but not quite in the North Korean government mode of batshit insane. Yeah, anything might be better -- until we look at the rebels, who are a hodgepodge of factions and elements who are opposed to the Assad control because of tyranny and evil and...oh yeah, the Assad family is Alawite, a Shiite sect that is a minority in Syria but seized power back in the day as part of the Baathist movement under this Assad's dad. If you recall the Sadr clan in Iraq fondly, then you'll love the rebels because they represent the mirror image of the Shiites in Iraq. In Syria, the Sunnis are the majority and they've been jerked around unconscionably by the Shiites under the Assad family. So, there are people who are opposed to the regime because the regime is bad and they want to do better; and, there are people who just want to kill the Alawites.
I've been out of the Army for 16 years and seldom worked in my original MOS during it. However, I remained really good at the technical aspects of it, and was in fact distinguished graduate of my advanced course where we focused largely on the technical stuff. I was an expert on Chemical, Biological and Chemical weapons. We did a lot of experimentation with chemical weapons in places like Toole and Dugway, and we have a really good idea of how the lousy things work. So, the news that the Syrians have chemical weapons wasn't surprising to me bu the news that they had used them was pretty surprising, and the way that they've been employed is really weird. They appear to have used them in isolated attacks against small targets with very light casualties resulting. I'd like to know more, just from a student of stupid ways to fight bad guys point of view. The news that they have managed to inflict 150-200 casualties in a war that has killed 93000 people so far with Saran Nerve Agent is absolutely dumbfounding. If some dipshit told me he could take out 200 people in a single attack with nerve agent, I'd refuse to waste the rounds. That simple -- the casualties aren't worth the effort of issuing and safeguarding the munitions or of the bad press resulting in the US now announcing it will arm the rebels while John Napoleon McCain demands we do more. You terrify the rebels, maybe; but you really piss off the Israelis and the Turks and Europe and we've got that red line rhetoric hanging out there. Assad may be a lousy dentist and sit at the head of a politic0-criminal gang of thugs, thieves, torturers and sociopaths; but, he is not stupid. Pissing on the US is just not a great idea because, well, we've been feeling testy lately.
Iranian Soldiers in Iraq-Iranian war in Chemical Protective equipment.
So, who'd be dumb enough to do this? I am not an advocate of everything that happens has a false flag aspect, but I'm pretty open to the idea in this case. The use of the weapon really makes no sense. But, for Israel or Iraq or the Rebels, it makes a lot of sense. There is another possibility, that these numbers are based on the number of people who had their blood tested and showed some sign of a lack of acetyl-cholinesterase, the cause of casualty with nerve agents. There have been multiple attacks and 200 deaths is just not something worth doing; but, 20000 might be worth it. The Islamic reqirement to get bodies buried as soon as possible really works against any scenario of heaps of dead bodies to check; if I wanted to mazimize casualties, I'd have used a persistent agent, VR55 or VX. You have something like motor oil hanging around and in the case of VR55 actually producing significant amounts of vapor casualties as well as contact casualties for anyone who gets a drop on bare skin. There's no upside in a war like this to using an aerosol agent unless you're just using it stupidly out of sheer anally fixated evil stupidity. Which is certainly possible, given the nature of the players in this snake rodeo.
The geo-political aspect of this are pretty obvious -- we need to do something different than rush into the Syrian goat rodeo with all the gusto of a starving middle linebacker going to an all you can eat ribs dinner. My thought is that we take the old Churchillian description of the area as correct, a collection of tribes with flags, and act accordingly. In this case, we need to be very careful about strategic interests of ourselves and our allies. And we need to be very conscious of what looks like a resurgence of the Islamic civil war between Shi'ia and Sunni. There is a belt of Shiite power running from Iran through Iraq to Syria; in Syria, however the balance of population shifts from predominantly Shiite to predominately Sunni. Long range goal for a peaceful solution would probably involve a people and land swap; that probably won't happen, but if the Sunni in Iraq were to move to Syria and the Alawites from Syria to Iraq, then the problem of minority majority would be eliminated.
I'm not sure who is most deserving of aid here -- probably Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon for having to deal with the refugee problem. It would be interesting to have the new Sunni state of Syria declared a demilitarized zone under UN protection, but that probably can't happen. And, I suspect the Iraqi Sunni and the Syrian Sunni would have plenty of conflict; the Alawites and the more traditional Shiites of Iraq and Iran would probably have issues. Probably just degenerate into constant civil war regardless of what we do.
Ireland found some peace after 800 years, but largely because both sides were stuck with an outside mediator they had to trust and to whom they had ties. More importantly, the people of Ireland, especially in Ulster, were sick of fighting, the British were sick of fighting and the people -- the sea in which the IRA and the Orange paramilitaries swam to steal an allusion from cousin Mao -- were desperate for an alternative. In the great clash of Islamic sects, the people respond to the demagogues and the demagogues are even warmed up yet. So, we need to assist Turkey and probably Jordan, and actively quarantine this area of conflict. That would be our strategic interest. I suspect we won't do that, but the idea of US forces, even if primarily Air and perhaps Naval getting involved with a proxy war with Iran -- because of the Shi'ia versus Sunni thing, the financial and weapons support of Iran and the involvement of Hezbollah -- is just not a good idea.
Or, we can get involved in another land war in Asia. It worked so well the last time...After all, if you've done something multiple times with lousy results, doing it again has got to be a good idea.
Go tell the Spartans, passerby: That here, by Spartan law, we lie -Herodotus
Also obedience in its highest form is not obedience to a constant and compulsory law, but a persuaded or voluntary yielded obedience to an issued command .... His name who leads the armies of Heaven is "Faithful and True"... and all deeds which are done in alliance with these armies ... are essentially deeds of faith, which therefore ... is at once the source and the substance of all known deed, rightly so called ... as set forth in the last word of the noblest group of words ever, so far as I know, uttered by simple man concerning his practice, being the final testimony of the leaders of a great practical nation:
Going through email and stuff this morning, I was looking at something on Linked In and instead of clicking through, I decided to read the link. It takes you to an article in an Australian Business News Journal, and frankly, I'm trying to figure out why we haven't seen it before. Recounting a speech by Lieutenant General John Kelly concerning the valor of two Marines, it should have received national attention at the time -- the attack, their valor and Kelly's speech should be shouted from a lot of podiums. Damn few heroes decide to be heroes -- they do their jobs and do what they have to do. In some ways, Kelly's speech was an example of that sort of heroism -- the speech was given just four days after his son, Lieutenant Robert Kelly, USMC was killed in action. Kelly doesn't mention his son--the two young men he chose to highlight represent all who serve.
Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter
Two Marines from separate battalions, a Corporal and a Lance Corporal, are assigned to guard a checkpoint. Kelly describes it as only someone who's not only got the t-shirt but washed, ironed and starched it can:
The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “OK you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorised personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.
A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. 20-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.
Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.
Now, to be clear, this kind of thing happens all around the world, everywhere American soldiers, sailors, Marines, Air Men and Coast Guardsman are stationed. Anybody else recall "I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved"? But, this is what that statement means -- everywhere, these young women and men are there, maybe not conscious of it, prepared to do the same thing. The vast, vast majority of us are not called to any sacrifice beyond inconvenience and loss of sleep. But, the reality is that the world is a strange place, full of dragons, and something we must be prepared to respond to.
Kelly was the US and Iraqi Force commander at the time: CINCWORLD, Iraqi Time. When he read the SITREP, he was struck by something that just didn't seem right. He began to dig a bit, calling the Regimental Commander to see what was the real story. The Regimental Commander agreed that there was more happening here than it seemed -- this is the sort of story that probably didn't even register on the national media radar. I can understand why it didn't...Jarheads and Doggies and Swabbies and Zoomies getting killed in Iraq was soooo 2004. Our national attention deficit disorder is both cause and effect of the problem -- and the national media is the victim as well as perpetrator. One of the reasons people became focused on the Vietnam was was that people in the field kept reporting it. The Military has learned how to control journalists now. Anyway, I suspect that it didn't make the President's Daily Intelligence briefing on April 22, 2008 although, given what we know about President Bush's briefing habits, he wouldn't have understood it anyway.
Kelly decided to take a look on the ground and discovered that there were no US witnesses, just Iraqi Forces who had also been there, all of whom survived. He spoke with several of these guys, and they described a bit of exceptional heroism --
I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.
All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”
What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”
“No sane man.”
“They saved us all.”
Acts of exceptional valor and heroism aren't acts of sane men and women. They are acts of exceptional human beings and again, we are all called to that standard when we raise our hands repeating the oath at enlistment or at commissioning. Interestingly, after he had written the summary and recommended then for the award of the Navy Cross, Kelly learned that one of the security cameras caught the entire thing. Here's the meat of his description
It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated...You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “… let no unauthorised personnel or vehicles pass.”...
The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread should width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty…into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.
What makes this piece particularly hard for me to read and respond to is simple: No act of valor or sacrifice is meaningless. But, to waste that act and sacrifice is to profane something sacred, to piss on the courage, honor, integrity and dedication of those who performed heroically. The greedy and power mad assisted by the the ignorant and the fools who got us into Iraq are beating the drums and ring those bells and shooting those pistols to paraphrase their patroness, St Sarah of Wasilla with the goal of getting us into another one. Now, at least McCain and Graham served, and Palin's on also served. But, the vast majority of the opinion makers and political powers have no idea about what this means. Two Marines died; four sailors drowned; a plane went into a mountain side flying air support; a patrol of soldiers was hit by motors and wiped out. Ah, well, it's time to go ride the mountain bike, shoot some hoops, and and complain about the Democrats, the Congress, the Media. Who cares about these guys? That's what they signed up for.
So all honor to the fallen; for the rest of us, we have a solemn duty to make certain it doesn't happen again without a lot of foot stamping, shouting and flag waiving by those of us who have earned the right, at least in part to do so. Those who have paid the full price for that right are no longer able to speak, but they depend on us to act for them.
I'm struggling to write an article about critical thinking and issues like government, conspiracy theories and related nonsense. However, doing other things. Two key issues popped up this week that are worth commenting on. The first is the Bob Dole repudiation of the current Republican party. Dole was an authentic American hero and statesman -- let's remember that he resigned his seat in the Senate and as Majority Leader in his run for the Presidency in 1996. And yeah, he had fun with himself in the Viagra thing as well as with the American Express commercials and others. He was renowned as a man of his word, a true statesman and an authentic American hero. I voted for Clinton; but, I would have been fine with Dole as President.
Next, of course, we have Michelle Bachmann leaving the political stage, for no reason that anyone can discern from her chopped word salad of an explanation...well actually, that she can discern. I have my own thoughts on this -- one of the on-going bits of snark about her has been the continuing question of her husband's masculinity. I suspect that they are pretty much like Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver in Iowa circa 1957, although the thought of a bi-sexual S&M coven in the basement of his "Pray Away the Gay" clinical psychology practice is amusing to some extent while being very creepy in others. How screwed up do you have to be or does your insurance have to be to go to MICHELLE FREAKIN" BACHMANN'S husband for therapy? The timing of her announcement -- on YouTube, while visiting Russia in her role as a member of the House Intelligence Committee (OXYMORNOS are US in the Modern ReAublican Party under the leadership of John Boehner and Eric Cantor) saying it has nothing to do with the on-going investigations is too cute by a long, long mile. Still, FOX needs a replacement for Sarah Palin and Bachman is smarter, better educated, better credentialed and has far more disciplined that the Madonna of Wasilla. She's better looking than Palin, dances better and won't say "gotcha, whatcha" so often. And, she's not as insane as Alan West. WIN/WIN. So, I suspect we'll still have her to kick around....
Finally, and what led to this brief post, was the shocking news that Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Michael Caine and Emma Watson are not going to appear in Machete Kills. Instead, we get the exciting vision of Charlie Sheen as US President saying those immortal words ranking up there with Harrison Ford's "Get off of my plane!" I'm president of the United States, man..." while holding a machinegun. Sophia Vergera is wandering around screaming "Ma-chete!" wearing rags and a steel cone bra; Mel Gibson is in it as is Lady GaGa in her acting debut, and Jennifer Biel. And, of course, Dany Trejo as US Federal Agent Machete recruited by President Sheen...Nothing so captures our current zeitgeist so well as this thing. We are soooooooo screwed.
Why is reality turning into that AT&T wireless commercial with the guy talking to the first graders about speed and savings and change machines and ponies and werewolves? This was not a great day for old Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes – I got to go to the dentist and realized that I'm coming down with some sort of upper respiratory thing that made having a suction thing in my mouth and being tilted past 90 degrees was just a bad idea. The initial pair of safety glasses the hygienist handed me had a broken stem, so she covered my face with a cloth…so, a minor similarity to water boarding, and I have to say, I didn't like it all. Combination of PTSD induced claustrophobia plus breathing problems literally had me coming up for air. Which didn't help digest the news I'd been watching in the waiting room.
For some reason, most hospitals, doctors' offices, dentists and for all I know funeral directors in the High Desert of California set their waiting room TVs to Fox News. This normally ensures that I'll initially screen for high blood pressure anyway; this morning, the gang was discussing the no-longer secret war against the public's right to know what's going on, where a Fox reporter has not just been a person of interest due to their reporting but has in fact become a subject of an investigation, a suspect in a case of espionage. Lots of meaty issues here to digest – like, why am I agreeing about Fox News about anything? Possibly, because the panelists had gotten their talking points from people like Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker and Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, both of whom were referred to rather snarkily as "leftist writes" and in Greenwald's case "for a leftist publication." (Even the commies think we're getting screwed!)Or, possibly after five years of raving lunacy, they actually have something right and might be largely – if not completely – on the side of the angels. The Fox host actually quoted the old hacker-ism about "the truth wants to be free…" True, but so does a lot of absolute bullshit.
Let's look at what appears to have happened. The reporter, James Rosen solicited information concerning something or another about the North Korean nuclear capability from a State Department Contractor. Based on this, the Feds have charged the contractor, Stephen Kim, with espionage. Ok, if you pass on classified information, you're subject to punishment. Since the US doesn't have anything like an Official Secrets Act, the organization that publishes this information isn't guilty of any crime. Sure, the pointy-headed liberals have done betrayed the country and allowed our enemies to piss all over our shoes because "Freedom" …a song I've heard going back to the day the Pentagon Papers were released. The least the journalistic organization can expect to be charged with being irresponsible and un-American and disloyal and not supporting the troops and betraying the homeland and blah, blah, blah but possibly since the Alien and Sedition Acts, the press hasn't really been subject to government sanctions. What makes this case really troubling is that Rosen is being considered as a co-conspirator, and could be charged as well. After all, he "solicited" information from Kim and got it. No different than an al Qaeda operative getting the plans to a nuclear weapon from Bradley Manning or some other twit, right?
Ok. That means that Rosen is guilty of the crime of journalism. That's how journalists get information. They ask people they know questions. There are some similarities between effective espionage-intelligence and good reporting-journalism: you ask questions, there are follow-ups, the search for collaboration from multiple, unrelated sources, and on and on. ( I confess that while I may have committed some random acts of journalism over the years, I really can't consider myself a journalist. I'm a commentator, an analyst, a critic – but, it's really rare that I ask a human being a question and then write about it. Without actual journalists, I'd be writing largely about…well, I already write a lot about music, history, philosophy and literature. So, I'd have been writing about Montaigne's pet amontrolado or something.) If you don't solicit information from people who know and might actually tell the truth, all you'll be doing is repeating talking points provided by the flacks who are deciding what they want you to know.
Here's the deal – most people in power really don't want you to know a lot. Some are more obvious about it than others; some are better than others. Churchill famously wrote that in conflict truth "has a bodyguard of lies." Deception of the enemy is considered a laudable strategy by the journalists who uncover the deception. Unless it doesn't work…truth has the advantage of being messy and convoluted by these things called facts. Talking Points are not facts. They are Bullshit. They may contain some facts, but they direct the mind of the listener to certain things, and since conceal by misdirection. They are often irrelevant to the actual story; and as each side churns out this crap, the truth seeker – and despite the possibility of wearing a trench coat on TV, most journalists are primarily truth seekers at heart – may despair or may actually decide to go figure out what's real.
Which the flacks generally don't know and wouldn't understand anyway. Moral philosopher and bestselling authority on the topic of bullshit Harry Frankfurt describes it this way:
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
It's been a long time since Newman threatened Jerry with "when you control the mail, you control information." There are just too damned many ways for information to flow, and mail is almost irrelevant. Should be the same thing with talking points, only maybe more so. Instead, the explosion of talking points on any subject can be amazing – the story of the full court snake-mate-goat-rodeo of the talking points on Benghazi should make everyone stop for a second when they consider what some figure says at the podium with a prepared statement, or what they say when they keep repeating the same crap. Repetition may make some lunacy sound true, but doesn't make it true. The use of carefully scripted talking points basically stalled Susan Rice's career and wasted a lot of time. I'm not exactly sure why they chose her as the sacrificial lamb on this one; they may have done it because she was auditioning for Secretary of State or because she was perceived as a better teller of this crap than any other key State department figure because, well, she wasn't in the loop on this. The Ambassador to that Debating, Chowder and Marching Society in Manhattan is a key spokesperson on policy, but doesn't really know a lot about the nitty-gritty of policy anywhere, unless it's something hot and relevant to US relations with the world. Ambassador Rice could probably have talked off the cuff and very illuminatingly about a lot of things involving Libya, the anti-government forces, the problems facing the US in that part of the world, the economic issues and so on; the security arrangements at a single consulate wouldn't be in her wheelhouse. So, all she could say about what the tragedy was what she was told; unlike Colin Powell prepping for the UN on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, she trusted the people telling her things. She was wrong to do so. Powell knew he couldn't trust the CIA or the White House so he scrubbed, argued and demanded verification, and they still set him up. The folks who set up Susan Rice were probably of a different political party – or, maybe not, maybe they were bureaucratic drones doing what their masters told them or what they thought their masters wanted or worse, doing what they thought their masters should want –but the effect was the same. Unlike Powell, she never got a free pass from journalists, but she was a lot more vulnerable – she was parroting nonsense about something that had in fact happened, not about what might exist and what could happen if what might have existed actually did, but it didn't…
All press secretaries are purveyors of talking points. I doubt that anyone thinks that Dana Perino was ever consulted by anybody in the Bush administration about anything of substance beyond whether or not to have fries with the takeout burger she was picking for them over at the mess. Some are earnest like Scott Fletcher; some are arrogant like Ari Fleisher; some are glib like Robert Gibbs; some really should know better, like Jay Carney. Fletcher seems like the most honest of this gang – after leaving the White House, he went on the record about being lied to by the Rove and the Chenyites concerning the Valerie Plame debacle. Carney would be well advised to have a long talk with the man in the mirror tonight, and figure out if being the White House Press Secretary is worth the cost of his immortal soul. The exchange described in the HuffPo article makes it pretty clear that at the moment, the dark side is winning.
After addressing the IRS scandal, Carney was asked about Rosen. The press secretary echoed -- almost verbatim -- his comments from last week when asked about the AP scandal. He said the president was "a strong defender of the First Amendment and a firm believer in the needs of the press to obtain information." He added that the administration took leaks "very seriously because leaks can endanger the lives of men and women serving in uniform overseas." He pointed to the president's support for a federal shield law, legislation for which the administration asked Sen. Chuck Schumer to reintroduce last week.
Reporters tried to appeal to Carney's decades-long career in journalism, asking him how he could condone the Rosen investigation as a "former reporter." Carney refused to bite. When continuously pressed by CBS News' Major Garrett, he returned to his go-to response: "I cannot, of course, comment on a specific ongoing investigation."
I wish I had seen the presser, if only because we'd have an example of how to respond to nonsense disguised in a talking point as a principled response to the ongoing issues. I would have liked a follow-up question along the lines of "Jay, if this turns out to be true, will you resign?" Followed as he danced around, of course, with "Jay, why aren't you answering the question?" "Jay, I always respected your reporting – are you feeling conflicted here?" "Jay, need a moment?" "Jay, want to get a shower…" or, "Hey, Jay, let's get a beer and talk off the record!" That would be fun.
Speaker Boehner has had the privilege, which he screwed up both times, of swearing in the members of the House of Representatives. In that oath, they swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies and then engage in a ceremonial reading of the Constitution which they have screwed up both times. What I'm missing is how a party that crows so much about patriotism and country can then turn around and do everything they can to undermine the Constitution and the government that is the instrument of upholding and enforcing it?
The 14th Amendment primarily is the guarantee of due process to all citizens and has language that may confer the same guarantees on all persons under the jurisdiction of the United States or the various states. But, Section 4 is even more clear --
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
By voting for it, I believe they have engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the United States government and violate the Constitution.
The fact that so many of the Republicans in the House voted for this abomination should scare anyone with a bit of sense. If you begin to stake out the debate by establishing the pattern of taking your marbles and going home, it gets to be difficult for the other side to take you seriously. And, if you response to a systemic problem is to dance around like capering apes, well, it gets even more difficult to stand to be around you. Frankly, neither Boehner nor McConnell have shown any tendency to keep their words, promises or principles. They don't want to lose their jobs -- which is interesting, since I would think that passing out campaign money and other bribes...err, gratuities...no, bribes in the name of whomever is paying them would be right in their G-spot. Together, they could be the Dancing Queens of the K-Street Crowd.
Ok, the bill violates the Constitution It also has no chance of passing the Senate, and if it somehow passed the Senate, it would be vetoed by the President. It's pure stubborn ignorance and obliviousness. The President is hampered here by the fact that he's a constitutional law professor and has read the document a few times. The President can recommend policy and the President gets to enforce the law, but the tax code and taxes begins in the House. The Debt Limit isn't like the filibuster where you can imagine a bill or a nomination so mindbogglingly awful to demand a response like it. It's a done deal, and all the spending cuts in the world -- most ill-advised, of course, can't fix that. We spent the money...now it's debt and "shall not be questioned."
A great deal of the discussion of this ploy, as with so many of the things coming from this version of the House, is easily summed up with the question "What the HELL are these fools thinking?" What they're thinking is that the last debt ceiling thing worked out so well for them, that they should just go for round 2 only with a bill that is unpassable and unconstitutional because, well, Michelle Bachman brought a Minnesota Hotpot and Mitch McConnell is sending over a couple of cases of the best Kentucky White Lightning.
Of course, what makes this particularly funny is that China is not even close to being our largest debt holder. If you do as they suggest, paying China first and then do the rest of it however they get around it it, the Republicans are screwing with the American people in order to benefit Asian-Commie-Atheists. I'm as fond of Asian-Chinese Commie Atheists as anybody, but this is probably not the way to show it.
The Republican strategy in this case actually will have the impact of hurting the economy and American business. If the bill were to become law -- which it won't -- the current accounts would be the thing that doesn't get paid. Defense Contractors are like everybody else -- they bill monthly and get paid eventually. So, Boeing, NGC, Lockheed and all the rest might have to lay off everybody.The ripple effect will be profound...More to come.
"It's criminal and scandalous that we are ignoring the effect of sequestration on our national security," he said. "Yeah, I'm glad to see all of the focus on whether we have to wait in line longer, or there's flight delays, but I wish to God Congress would sometimes focus on the threats to our national security."
John McCain
I've been amused by the complaints about nd Air Traffic Control and how awful it is that the President is selectively attacking the airline industry and the heartland by shuttering the various air traffic control towers around the country. Jackson Brown has a line in The Pretender "I'll be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender..." Well, the Republicans in the House have done this to the nation and there are things more important than missed airline connections to Cousin's Fud's wedding happening. And yet, because that inconvenience touches people who will pick up the phone and call their Congressional Office, the idiots feel that someone has to be responsible. Some one is -- the person or persons who decided that the Sequestration process was a good thing and that they needed to actually implement it because they could. Now, there were Democrats who agreed to this so it could pass, but it was a lousy idea if implemented, but they assumed it was never going to be implemented.. IT WAS INTENTIONALLY A LOUSY IDEA!No fool would let this happen...no fool would let the government default on its debt. No fool would advocate tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the middle class. No fool would cut taxes based on a projected surplus ten years down the road. No fool ....but, a whole confederation of fools are capable of doing what no fool could do.
""What I'm trying to do is to wake up members of the Congress on the Republican side to the idea that they need to come to the table, offer a proposal so that we don't have to have this kind of calamity in air service in America." LaHood said members of Congress would quickly feel the heat. "Your phones are gonna start ringing off the hook," LaHood predicted. LaHood said a majority of the FAA's 47,000 employees, including air traffic controllers, would face furloughs of one day a week and, in some cases, two days a week, to close a $1 billion hole sequester would create in the Department of Transportation's budget."
He said this in February 2013. In English. Other people said the same sort of stuff. In English. To Congress. The whole concept of sequestration was to present such unpalatable options to Congress that they would find a way to work together to come up with something the nation could live with. Well, fooled us -- not only are the Republicans unable to do arithmetic competently, they don't understand English. Of course, they're busy hiring interns to do the whole sexual exploitation thing, and introducing bills accusing Michelle Obama of planning the Boston bombing and other things of great national importance.
You know, like it or not, we have a government that does a lot of stuff -- could do less, could do more -- but there are things that it has to do. And, laws actually have consequences beyond whether or not the incumbent gets re-elected. Consequences that are far more important. The best argument for campaign finance reform including public financing and spending limits is there...if they're not busy working the phones and do fundraisers, maybe they'll actually ask the simplest of questions -- "What exactly is this going to mean to my constituents?" since the only thing motivating these clowns is whether or not they're going to be primaried or re-elected. John McCain is fairly irate about the Sequestration. He should be, of course...he sees it as unfairly cutting defense; while I am not one to oppose Defense spending, it's taken a lot fewer shots than lots of other programs over the decades. Still, McCain despite his blinders, is on to something when he talks about sequestration. McCain has been talking about this for months, but he's only talked about the effect on Defense. McCain is perturbed that it took the Air Traffic Controller furlough to go into effect for Congress to wake up. Well, one thing these guys have done is make Phil Ochs a real prophet in upsidedownland...Ochs said when introducing his "Love Me, Love Me, Love Me I'm a Liberal!" that "You know what a liberal is? 10% to the left of center in good times...10% to the right of center when it affects him personally. And, now for a lesson in safe logic..." Well, now the Republicans have managed to turn themselves into mirror liberals, pushing for the little guy waiting to take off from Slippery Hollow International for an extra 20 minutes because the GOOBERMENT closed the control towers.
Well, if I thought they'd found Jesus, I'd be ok with this. Everyone is happy to see a sinner repent. But, let's not get excited here and mistake expedience for penance I expect to hear some condescending words directed at McCain by the Republicans in the Senate who are fine with this disaster and think they can blame the President; something might get done on Air Traffic Controllers and some defense cuts; but it's all going to be piecemeal and stupid. The kid depending on the free breakfast subsidized by the DOA or the disabled Vet forced to wait longer by some exponential factor for a rating or the researcher this close, this bloody close to a cure for uterine cancer will just have to wait. The long term unemployed, the kid needing the student loan, the parents whose child was just sent home from Head Start because he lost in a lottery for a seat, the Fertilizer Factory waiting for the fire inspectors and OSHA will all have to wait..."10% to the right of center when,.,,"
MG Larry Lust representing the United States Army at a Ceremony in the Republic of Ireland.
The Great Larry J. Lust, Major General, US Army (Retired) was one of my commanding officers. He and I occasionally communicate and while he made me crazy at times when I worked for him, I appreciate his honor, integrity and kindness greatly. And, in addition to being a royal pain in the ass, I have to acknowledge that his requirements resulted in my doing some of my best work as a First Sergeant and eventually figured out that was actually the idea for all of the COSCOM.
The boss and I stay in loose contact. He sends out some weekly bits of advice, and frankly, some of them are kind of weird, but most of them are both relevant and worth thinking. The weirdness I attribute to him being from Kansas and a Republican. Anyway, he recently sent a couple, and I have incorporated them into my rules for living.
So, here are my rules for living. I invite comment. Citations provided where they exist and are not syntheses from my fevered mind.
1. Don't be a jerk.
2. Nobody has to be in charge, but if the situation requires and nobody else wants to be in charge or can do it well, take charge but do it as well as possible.
3. In the face of jerks, see rule 1.
4. In anger, take a deep breath, close your eyes and turn away for a minute. Gain composure and return to conversation. Scares the hell out of the bastards...and makes your point.
5. Somethings are worth dying for; most things are not. Choose wisely. No mere job is worth an aneurysm.
6. There are only two things in life -- things we can control, things we can't. Focus effort on what you can control but watch the other stuff carefully. (My loose translation from Epictetus.)
7. Things are always screwed up. So, any improvement, no matter how slight, is a meaningful accomplishment. (My loose translation from Marcus Aurelius)
8. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living; I say, the unexamined life is not led. (Kierkegaard, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript)
9. The true measure of an individual is how he or she treats others who can do him or her absolutely no good. (L.J. Lust, MG, USA)
10. Anger is an honest emotion. William James) You have the right to be angry; you don't have the right to be cruel. (L.J. Lust, MG, USA)
11. I beseech thee, by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, to remember that thee may be wrong! (Noted Liberation Theologian and Democratic Activist, Oliver Cromwell)
12. Some days you do things that change the world; some days, you pardon a turkey. (Barrack Obama) So, do what you are doing as best you can without regard for the consequences. (Ignatius Loyola)
Not Lust, but Cromwell
After retirement, General Lust went off to war again, this time in Iraq as a senior Manager with KBR. We communicated occasionally, and I got the strong feeling that he wasn't happy with the situation, but thought that he could make a difference. I do know that stress, heat, and the fact that retired generals are by definition old farts caught up and he had some severe health problems. On home leave, he had a serious health issue, and his wife and high school sweetheart dragged his reluctant old ass off to the emergency room and he got to leave KBR. He's never shared with me, but I got the strong impression that he ultimately decided that was a better result than going back. He now is a faculty member at the Command and General Staff College and I shudder to think of his attention to detail, wit and directness applied to a paper of mine. Fortunately, I'm not one of his students or subordinates today; just a friend.
As the Army returns to full spectrum warfare which used to be called High Intensity warfare which was called Airland Battle which was called Warfighting...anyway, in 2006 General Lust pointed out to me that he was meeting lots of Armored Battalion Officers who had never qualified a company at Tank Gunnery who were now Battalion S3s or XOs as well as Brigade Commanders who had never qualified a battalion at Gunnery. I was finding tank mechanics who had never worked on a tank after AIT that we were hiring at the NTC to work on tracks. Kind of an interesting conundrum there, ehh?We both politely indicated that we thought this was just a helluva problem and worried about what was going to happen to our Army. Guess we still do. Well, neither one of us is in the Defense Contracting business anymore, and I doubt the Russians are going to invade Western Europe anytime soon. But...
I think the old man will be happy with the company. Well, maybe not Obama and Cromwell. Maybe Cromwell -- in addition to regicide and religious dictatorship, Cromwell started off as a pretty strong Cavalry Commander. So did Lust.
As for the Music, well, probably the Allison Krause. Maybe not Traffic. But, we're all about the same age and he's surprised me before.
My friend Katey Laurel of Denver and Steamboat, Colorado is sort of a contradiction – persona and attitude of a hippie Dale Evans – which she loved when I called her, admitting to having proudly swung a Dale Evans lunch box as a kid despite being younger by a decade or two of those who were truly Roy and Dale's TV family. She counters that sunny and positive vibe with a deeply reflective nature and a depth that is often missing in sing-songwriters. She's not really a country singer, she's not a rock singer, she's a singer-songwriter who takes her craft seriously while staying true to whom she seeks to be. I got to know her through social media, chat with her often and she has kindly listened to some of my musical advice…not saying she followed it, but hearing a fan tell you the same thing producers tell you makes it seem a bit harder to ignore. I'd like to see more edge and a bit of darkness to her work; more realism, less "Happy Trails" and more "Last Gunfighter Ballad." She's working on it, but I think no matter what she does, it will have that optimism and hope that the world needs.
Katey's family includes a number of vets including her father, I believe as well as various uncles and cousins and I think an aunt or two. She's very active in the Denver Music scene which is really interesting in a lot of ways. We normally think of Denver as John Denver country. Well, there was a great Tucson Country-Swing band that migrated to Denver back in the 80s, Chuck Wagon and the Wheels.(Now playing as Chuck Maulsby and That Band, I believe.) Neither Tucson nor Denver is Music City Mountain States, but they could be. Lots of music, lots of art, lots of strong visions. In addition to her music, Katey also is an artist, and some of the premiums in her recent Kick Starter effort to fund her new CD "Up Periscope" included some of her original work. (In full disclosure, I opted for the signed CD, a download and a T-shirt.) She's very talented and I will follow her work with a great deal of interest going forward.
In October, Katey performed at a Wounded Warrior Benefit in Denver. This was a reasonably big deal and the local acoustic music community as well as some rockers came out to help raise money, awareness and to show the Vets and their families that somebody not only knew what they had done but wanted to thank them and honor them for it. Katey is kind of a leading light in the music community there, which is not the same as being Taylor Swift. Most of the folks in Denver, for one thing, don't use auto-tune all that much. Since I haven't seen her record in person, I can't swear that Katey is Katey, but I've listened to various versions of some of her material, and there's enough variation and immediacy (word I'm looking for is soul, I think) and my informed guess is this is her singing. This is a song she wrote in honor of that occasion, and her explanation of it is worth noting. She says on the video that
"I wrote this song this morning thinking of each of our daily battles in life and coming home to a place of peace and rest. I also considered our service men and women as they come home from protecting our rights and freedom."
You know, everybody at some points leaves home to go slay some dragons. If you miss out on that quest, then your soul is vastly diminished for it. Soldiers do this repeatedly – you deploy, your slay some dragons, you go home. Maybe the dragon is the enemy; maybe the Dragon is the BUDS course for the SEALS; maybe it's Jump School; maybe it's taking your first formation as a Company Commander or First Sergeant; maybe it's the first time you have to call Roll at a memorial service; maybe…maybe. Maybe you got the bastard dragon, maybe he got you, maybe -perhaps most often -- it's a draw. Everyone in uniform has done it, is stronger for it and at the same time is scared by it. Lots of times, the dragons are things you would not expect. Fear, loneliness, doubt, success and failure come to us all. They keep on coming, we keep slaying them over and over again. And at some point, we want to, we need to and we deserve to go home again. Probably can't, but we want to, we need to and we deserve to do so. Katey's song "No More Battlesongs" expresses that and the fulfillment of that hope. Love Her.
HYou will be able to order the CD through I-Tunes and other services as well as through Katey's Website. Up Periscope should be excellent. She's been sharing other tracks with the contributors to her Kick Starter and they showcase an excellent talent. Visit her Webpage and check out her offerings on YouTube. You will be glad that you did.
I've been on the road so long This is all I can afford to give Just a sad and lonely battlesong Of a soldier marching in the war to live
Girl, pick 'em up and put 'em down My soles are worn thinner than my smile These boots were made for marching 'round I think that I will lay them down a while
I am coming home
'cause you won't let the sun go down again You remind me who I've always been Just a hometown hero coming back to be where I belong No more battlesongs
Worn and weary, here I stand Your open arms are all I'm longing for I leave behind the foreign lands So glad to finally wash up on your shore
The end has never looked so near Your best girl is comin' home to you From enemies I've fought and feared And every shade of red and black and blue
I am coming home
cause you won't let the sun go down again You remind me who I've always been Just a hometown hero coming back to be where I belong No more battlesongs
I see buildings, houses down the street Friendly strangers where we used to meet And it feels like a reunion of the souls I'll greet someday All the ones I passed along the way
You won't let the sun go down again You remind me who I've always been Just a hometown hero coming back to be where I belong cause you won't let the sun go down again You remind me who I've always been Just a hometown hero coming back to be where I belong No more battlesongs No more battlesongs No more battlesongs
One of my buddies lives in the hills of rural New England. He's involved in structural steel design and fabrication and does work on the side as well as an independent. This is of course very common in this economy; he was laid off last year, and the family survived fine on his wife's salary as a teacher – not the most secure of jobs today which is a horrible indictment of the system – and what he made. Because of the oddball income streams, he has somebody local do his tax work. Well, he went to get his taxes done and the guy – an older guy, by which he means a guy a few years older than me – started complaining about how the blacks have taken over and it's all Obama's fault. My buddy changed the subject and mentioned that he was interested in craft beer and maybe small time distilling. Well, the guy stopped ranting and raving and got up and shut the door to his office. He then confided that in addition to doing taxes and bookkeeping, he was a moonshiner. Had been doing it for years out in the woods and now it was hard to keep up with demand because he was older and had shoulder problems so lugging the supplies up in the hills was a bit of a problem. If my pal would help him, he'd teach him everything he knows about distilling alcohol. My buddy is more interested in craft vodka than white lightning, although having tried both back in my drinking days, I can't recall any real difference. My pal thinks he can keep the conversation turned to the Red Sox and such, avoiding politics and incendiary nonsense that might make his head explode long enough to learn some things; at the same time, he's investigating what he needs to do to set up a craft distillery legally. I guess vodka aged in maple syrup barrels might have a unique flavor and texture. I suspect the first thing he needs to do is avoid killing the guy for general pinheaded racism and jerkiness; next, not get caught by the " G-men, T-Men and Revenooers too"; then see what he has to do to use his skills and craft legally.
Another friend lusts to start his own craft brewery. They all started small, so what the hell? He has a somewhat more stable job and engineering degrees. He hates engineering and working for engineers, with engineers, about engineering stuff. Actually, I think he likes the actual engineering profession and problem solving but has problems with the BS. He's from basically the same neighborhood although he now lives in Philly; guy is so serious that he's seriously looking to get fired or laid off and just quit so he can intern with one of the dozens of craft breweries in the area. He mentioned this morning in our daily email dump and soiree that he'd had a dream where he was standing looking out at a harbor when an incoming airliner crashed into the water, flipped and burned. He then was surrounded by crowds of people screaming that they had seen the whole thing and that THEY WERE THE VICTIMS! They needed help because they were Americans and they had seen this thing. He woke up shuddering a bit. For the record, the guy is a left-libertarian with some socialist leanings, despises the Tea Party-Fox News types but also hates listening to whiney assholes.
Both of these guys are very normal so they really are pretty abnormal. The first's story doesn't surprise me; the rural parts of the country have long been home to generations of a more literate class of hillbillies than people think. Quite frankly, you can bump into some really smart and well educated folk when you get off the interstate in places like Kentucky and East Texas, let alone New England. I remember one "old boy" in a reserve unit I served with as an adviser. Guy had graduated from Texas A&M and had been an Army helicopter pilot in the later stages of Vietnam; he then became a logistics manager for the Army Reserve. Typical of reserve officers in east Texas; however, he had majored in French and English while an Aggie. Lots of guys from that generation who went through the Corps of Cadets majored in things like Mechanical Agriculture and Poultry Science. He didn't let it show too often, but occasionally old Major JimBob (which was his first name) would wander over to my desk where he would say things like "I just spent five hours in a car driving back from Louisiana with LTC Jacque Offe (not real name) after inspecting that Coon-ass Battalion. Top, it's true what that ole French Boy said one time….Sartre, wasn't it. "L'enfer est d'autres personnes… Hell is other people. Sapsucker nailed that shit…" And then he walked out. Another time, "I just spent an hour listening to two colonels and a politician talking about how good everything is going to be when Bush gets the presidency. Those guys are Aggies sitting in Plato's cave, but they just put out the fire…" poured himself some coffee, took some dip and walked out.
While I don't think anybody anywhere needs to worry an incipient rebellion by "angry Negroes", rural New England is really an unlikely venue. That idea enrages my friend, but he can deal with it. The other guy, well, his dream indicates that he's got the soul of a poet trapped in the body of an endurance athlete – very good amateur bike racer – along with the mind of an engineer. Since these three classes of people are prone to eccentricity, hallucination, delusion, paranoia and general madness, he has the perfect psyche for somebody who lives in Philadelphia. We do worry that at some point, his daughter will put a leash on him and take him to a kindergarten show as an example of cognitive dissonance and abnormal psychology. (Kid's not quite two, but she's got skills.)
But, here's the thing – I think both of these guys have great ideas. They'd be happier, their wives are supportive, and what the hell. Although the guy currently wandering around between Kennebunkport and Lake Champlain is a Yankee and the other guy is very, very Polish, bootlegging and illegal stills are a fine Scots-Irish-American tradition. We need to remember that the first revenue sought by the nascent United States was going to be a tax on whiskey, resulting in an actual as opposed to make-believe (Tea Party) rebellion that fizzled out when Washington and Hamilton took the well-regulated militia to the field. Corn whiskey was money on the frontier. Although Appalachia is its home, it deserves more attention as a sign of something in the American character. There's a verse in Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Choctaw Bingo" about mean old Uncle Slayton…
Uncle Slayton's got his Texan pride Back in the thickets with his Asian bride He's got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow He still makes whiskey 'cause he still knows how He plays that Choctaw bingo every Friday night You know he had to leave Texas but he won't say why He owns a quarter section up by Lake Eufala Caught a great big ol' blue cat on a driftin' jug line Sells his hardwood timber to the shipping mill Cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell He cooks that crystal meth because the shine don't sell You know he likes his money he don't mind the smell
..."
Sadly the shine doesn't sell so well anymore. There are cheaper, faster and easier ways to parlay an isolated location and some rudimentary materials into a profit making enterprise. Meth is the one that should concern us; instead, we spend billions worrying about marijuana. Which isn't much different in effect than moonshine, beer, vodka or Romilar CF. Now, crystal meth is a tad bit different than moonshine or craft beer or craft vodka. I've advocated legalization of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and just about any other drug but meth is evil. Meth cookers should have a bounty put on them, like coyotes in some western states when they start taking too many cattle. I've seen lives snuffed out by meth that were tragic in so many ways; same with alcohol and traditional drugs, but it takes so much longer. Meth kills quickly. A bit of moonshining won't do that unless the still explodes…
Things get weird in this country. At times, it seems like we don't have enough stupid problems of our own, we need to import more. Hookah bars…what the hell is that all about? Kid in the gym yesterday told me about her part-time job after her part-time job at the gym working in a Hookah Lounge in the next city. I told her I didn't get it, and asked what the hell is attractive about it. She said it's a "chill" atmosphere...you sit around, drink coffee, listen to music and smoke. Through hookahs...which have the tar and nicotine dose of several packs of cigarettes per hour. She said 200, but if that were the case, the leading cause of death in Hookah-countries would be lung cancer instead of camel transmitted venereal disease, intestinal parasites, and gunfire. Stylist this morning tried to explain it, although she thinks it's stupid too -- the smoke is less harsh and they flavor it so you get the tobacco effects with...STOP! I smoked for 20 years. What effects? Seriously, what effects besides bad breathe, stained teeth, bleeding gums, cancer, and on and on and on. We can't figure out enough ways to kill ourselves in this country, we import more. And, I know all about the Native American/organic stuff -- I've even had to take a pull or two on a ceremonial pipe filled with naturally grown tobacco. Those pipes are hard to draw from and the ceremonial stuff isn't really that dry so it's like smoking mud. If they're burning it for "medicine" it's mixed with sage (sweet grass) or cedar chips depending on what part of the country you're talking about. WHAT EFFECTS? The only positive effects come after you are addicted...then it calms you down from the urge to rip your skin off, tear off that annoying bastard's head and shit down the hole and then check his corpse to see if HE"S GOT ANY GODDAMNED Tobacco...
Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are seriously deranged; it's one thing to roll out the same old talking points, but they have responded to the perceived threats to gun ownership (there is none) with a combination of hysteria, hyperbole and plain mean-spirited bullshit. Frankly, the idea of having trained armed guards patrolling schools doesn't bother me that much – they're called police. We don't have enough because the NRA's Republican allies have been devastating state and local government by cutting grants and not approving money for more cops. What the hell is wrong with these people? We originally closed the state and local mental health institutions because they were underfunded, understaffed, unprofessional hell holes. The response that we need to have a bunch of fully armed Paul Blart's running around school campuses because of mental health issues is seriously warped.
Now, it is true that if the government knows who has guns and where the guns are, they could conceivably confiscate them as part of the war on Christmas or something. They know who's got the cars and pickup trucks, right? The speedboats, the private planes…when someone like Antonin "Cicero" Scalia starts talking about how some regulation is obviously constitutional, the game is over and it's just a matter of time. So, saying the President's children are protected and therefore the President doesn't care about children if he takes away the right of every 18 year old junior high school dropout to have an AK47 with multiple banana clips taped together to channel his testosterone warped dreams is a combination of non-sequitur, madness and viciousness. Now, from what I've seen the two Obama daughters are pretty cool young women. Not as much fun as Huntsman's daughters would have been – I recall them drinking wine in some of their videos, which makes me wonder about the whole Mormon thing's pervasiveness at 1313 Mocking Bird Lane or wherever the Huntsman family hangs out – but they're obviously brighter than the Bush girls and Dad isn't a mean drunk. Or paint himself in the nude and send the paintings to his mother. They're nice kids. The reason that they have guards is the same reason that Michelle has guards; the same reason that Speaker Boehner has guards; the same reason that GW Bush has guards – they are high value targets for terrorists, nutcases and criminals. Individual high value targets…under threat.
The NRA is a sad organization, out of step with its members and really in thrall to the gun manufacturers and distributors. Sad, because there are a lot of things it could and should be doing and advocating. I'd like to see mandatory training, licensing, and refresher courses for example. Push that hard, and there will be an increase in ranges, shooting clubs and similar organizations. If you want to protect gun ownership, get the gun owners involved in shooting sports. And, plunking locals driving down the street doesn't count nor students on a campus.
The Debt Limit
Although he can't resist the digs at Social Security and Medicare that are intertwined with current Republican DNA, David Brooks has a generally excellent column in the February 12 edition of the Times. While I get a bit a bit irritable when some rich bastard – and Brooks is a wealthy man from a wealthy family – starts knocking entitlement programs, the thrust of the column is that the United States has always been about the future, not the present. We mortgaged the present, from the beginning, for the future. People forget when they babble about American exceptionalism that the whole "City on a Hill" thing by Winthrop was written when the hills were covered with beaver, muskrats, swamps and cranberry bogs….ok, Southey and Charleston were bogs, the hills were probably just trees…and muskrats…and Pequot Indians. The payback time for things like the Transcontinental Railroad, the Erie Canal, the Land Grant College, the TVA, the Hoover Dam and on and on and on should be measured in centuries. By forgetting that, we have shifted from mortgaging the future to pay for the present. Brooks knocks Medicare and Social Security – I suggest that the move from pensions to 401K plans did great things for current salaries for CEOs. The folks who pay into Social Security and Medicare think they are paying now for a future benefit.
Brooks also points out that business has a major role here. It's not just the government that needs to fund education, innovation, research and infrastructure. The entire Ayn Randian/ Milton Friedman (talk about a love that dares not speak its name) riff on greed and "shareholder value" has encouraged business to focus the efforts of executives on short term results. Banks used to lend primarily for investment in innovation and productivity; now, they are focused on lending for consumption and real estate.
I am personally not concerned this afternoon as to whether or not the President has the guts to cut spending. I'm concerned that he might not have the courage to spend more and use the bully pulpit of the presidency to force the House to approve more of it in the right places. The government acts primarily as a bank with an army, as Paul Krugman and other Times Op-Ed writers have described it. Most of what it does is transfer funds; the government borrows money to accomplish the things the government wants to do because the Congress has legislated it –spent the money – and the executive branch is trying to comply with Congress' guidance. I'm not certain how the geniuses on the right came up with the strategy of reneging on debts as a way of decreasing spending – ever miss a payment on a credit card? Is there a difference? Or have your credit rating drop a bit? If you miss payments or have a downgrade in your credit rating, you will not be able to borrow money at the sweetheart rates you were using before. Most of the various house of cards that collapsed in the early Bush years – ENRON, anyone – did so because the ratings agencies downgraded their debt and they couldn't borrow to pay current costs. There is probably a large firm someplace that doesn't borrow; but for the most part, it's small businesses with little inventory, no production and simple products. In other words, lemonade stands.
So, by screwing around with the debt limit, the Republican Party is saying "We were drunk! Now, we're crazy. We're still drunk, but we're crazy now…" Downgrading the good faith and credit of the United States is exactly what they shouldn't be doing. The debt limit is reached by doing things like paying Social Security, Veterans Benefits, fighting wars, having the FAA control the airports and so on. Be freaking serious – we have never had a real government shutdown. If the Federal Government did a real shutdown, and just closed it's doors on EVERYTHING! For a day or two, some people living the peaceful life of the Unabomber in cabins in the Montana Wilderness would be fine with it. Everyone else, not so much. The way the Federal Government gets the money to avoid shutting down is to borrow it and raise income to pay it. Makes sense to borrow money at low interest rates; makes no sense if you are a net borrower to jack up interest rates. Unless you're drunk and crazy…or, aligned with the enemies of the United States. Now, obviously they can't just raise money by borrowing – it has to be paid back. The way to pay it back is through taxes; since everyone hates taxes but most people love the services government provides, well, the best way is to spread the pain. Flat tax rates don't spread the pain equitably, because this is not North Korea. Some of us have a lot more, some of us have a lot less. In theory, if you take 20% from me and 20% from the guy begging for change on the on-ramp of the interstate and 20% from Donald Trump, that might be fair. Insane of course, because 20% of my income isn't that much and 20% of the income from the guy on the onramp isn't that much; 20% of Trump's income, on the other hand might be reasonable. That's tax policy and it's complex. What we do know is that when government uses progressive tax rates tied to the GDP and perceived requirements, it raises more money. What we also learned from George W. Bush is that there is no room with a big pile of money in it.
This is where the "living within our means" meme comparing government to families is absurd. As Krugman, Stieglitz and Keynes all pointed out (along with Friedman, Heller and Galbraith), there is a major difference of scale between government spending and borrowing and lending and what a family does. A family has an income to manage; the government has an economy. If I am the Vicuna industry, I depend on government subsidies to help my Vicunas go to college or wherever Vicunas go. If the government isn't able to fund Vicuna education and research anymore, well, my Vicunas will be screwed. We need to spend money in order to get the economy moving; get the engine turning over and it will generate more than enough to repeat the Clinton-Gingrich miracle of deficit reduction and surpluses, unless screwed up by the Republican House or the American disease of national attention deficit disorder.
The Papal Resignation
What did the Knights of Malta tell the Pope that caused His Holiness to take the "unprecedented" step of stepping down?
Was it a simple "you're fired"?
The Knights of Malta are one of the most feared and whispered-about secret societies in the world. Originally a gang of fanatical crusaders dedicated to perpetrating genocide in the Holy Land, the Knights apparently have not changed very much – at least if you believe Seymour Hersh. He says the Knights of Malta are a key part of "how eight or nine neoconservatives, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government." (Hersh is too polite to mention that they did it by way of the 9/11 inside job.)
Seymour Hersh explains:
"[The] attitude (toward the Iraq invasion) was, 'What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting?" Hersh was quoted as saying. "Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.' That's the attitude. We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC]."
Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today, 2/12/2003
When I saw the other morning that Pope Benedict, aka "Benny the Rat" had decided to go somewhere else and do something different, I thought it made sense. The last time this happened, of course, a Pope's attempt at resignation resulted in the Babylonian Captivity, the farce of multiple Popes ultimately resolved by resignation and return to Italy by the French Pope while the Italian-Holy Roman Empire's pope headed off for retirement in a monastery. While nothing so dramatic prompted this, the resignation of one Pope because he felt incapable of doing the job followed by self imposed exile, imprisonment, death, and canonization. That debacle resulted in the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon, followed ultimately by another's resignation to end a schism. seems reasonable. Assume a modicum of sincerity on the part of men who spend their lives defending the institution. They're prepared to do whatever needs to be done in the best interests of the Church. Lots of them over the centuries have chosen to do other things than what was best for Catholicism, but they did so thinking that what was best for them was best for Catholicism, Christianity and God. John Paul II was an important symbol of the relevance of Catholicism; it made sense for him to serve until death. Benedict was a caretaker from the beginning, and when the shepherd can't defend the sheep or control them, it makes sense for him to go off to sit by the fire and think. Theologically, philosophically and intellectually.
So, when I glanced at this piece in Veterans Today, I felt my head spin around. As the responses piled up, I got twitchier. We do have some interesting mindsets represented by the readers of Vets, and I'm generally ok with that. We also have a widely diverse crew of writers who have a lot of different things to say. Some of us are insane; some of us are fixated on Israeli policy; some of us are scared of the Jews. The staff tries very hard to ensure that the critique stays focused on policy and verifiable history. Since I respect the right of folks to believe and say bizarre stuff like the earth is flat or that Stalin was a Jew, I tend to be perhaps an outlier. They get to write what they think, I get to I think they're crazy, and at times I'll say so. The author, Dr. Kevin Barrett, is an Islamic scholar, teacher, writer and nonprofit organizer. He is a frequent contributor to Veterans Today, and has his own blog at Truth Jihad. Although he's a persuasive advocate for his beliefs and positions, I generally don't agree with his analysis. I have my issues with this article; frankly, the idea of some combination of the Knights of Malta and the Turkish government unintentionally conspiring to blast God's Rottweiler out of the Papacy strikes me as too clever by half. Reality is not some deranged Da Vinci Code, nor some other variation on it.
First of all, Benedict and John Paul II were a powerful force largely because of their very strong intellects. Agree with them or not, they knew their stuff. I suspect that Benedict may have been showing some signs of some debilitating disease -- Alzheimer's? Dementia? Cardio-issues? -- or something spooked him. Remember, he served John Paul II until the end and to a certain extent acted in the way that Haig acted for Nixon, keeping his legacy safe while moderating behavior while watching his friend, mentor and leader drift off into something entirely less.
Next, what could make the Pope tired? Well, the revelation that the cover-up of priestly abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles could have been the final straw; certainly, the sexual abuse issues and the serious challenges to the Magisterium within the Church might have led the old man to say the hell with this. Ireland, the US, the Nuns, the theologians...Challenges for a younger man. When the shepherd gets really tired of the flock, time to find a new shepherd while he goes off to doze by the fire, pet the Dauschund, sip some Maltiser and reflect.
While most public Papal audiences are pretty tame, if not lame, private ones can be different. The Knights of Malta are a military order to some extent, not unlike the Jesuits. Except, of course, the Knights are very wealthy; always have been, by the way, even after being kicked out of Malta by Napoleon. They were exceptional fighters in the Crusades, although they maintained the hospitals and caring far more than the Templars. Which is probably one reason why they were never thought of as easy pickings for greedy monarchs. Until they became more secularized, they were an extraordinarily potent Naval and Military force. It would be a mistake to think of them as something like the Knights of Columbus. At the same time, they aren't the KGB or the Mossad. What they are is incredibly rich, with lots of very wealthy members and patrons. The Church has been facing money issues for decades; an audience with the leadership of the Knights that had any working aspects would have tired anyone who isn't well-versed in international finance. The Knights of Malta also have a lot of diplomatic ties and influence in Africa and Latin America – places where the Church seeks more influence and power.
Cardinal Ratzinger wasn't all that excited about being selected as Pope, and he saw himself from the beginning as a caretaker. What happens next will be interesting; my own thought is that we're going to see some radical change -- either strongly reactionary or strongly revolutionary.
The Gospel of Barabbas is an interesting red herring. If you seriously think that the publication of a non-canonical gospel is going to undue Christianity, you're overestimating the impact of these things. The idea of Catholics moving toward something like Sharia especially in Europe or the US/Canada flies in the face of the move toward greater liberation on the parts of Catholics. This is especially true because, frankly, the Bible is not primary driver behind Catholicism theologically. It's one of three, of course -- the Bible, the traditions of the Church, and the Magisterium. A non-canonical text will be added to the historical and systematic theological studies as have the rest of them. Rather, I see that as a distraction, frankly.
An openly gay pope undoing In Humanae Vitae, Papal Infallibility, Celibacy and the prohibition on Homosexuality would be interesting indeed. An intellectual of the sort of power of John Paul and Benedict but with greater flexibility and openness would be fascinating. My guess -- either a total outsider or another caretaker. Of course, given the continuing power of conservatives in the College of Cardinals, who knows? We could see the re-institution of burning at the stakes for heretics.
One of my friends, Dr. Mary Hunt, has been cited by me before. Mary is a radical feminist Catholic theologian and has had a fascinating career. She is no fan of the institutional Catholic Church, and has devoted most of her life to an organization she and her partner founded in Bethesda, the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. While I'm sure she'll be vaguely amused and equally troubled by Barnett's reading on this, I suspect she cluck knowingly that Michael is still hanging around with dubious companions. Like her. We were once dubious companions together. She is now a respected pillar of the religious and spiritual community. Me, I play guitar and write for blogs. Water's post on this story is clear, concise and worth considering. Mary was a Neo-Thomist philosophy student before Harvard Divinity tempted her to theology, and like me, she's still fond, I think, of Occam's razor. Don't multiply bloody entities…sometimes, a cigar and a retiring Pope are a cigar and retiring Pope.
This is WATER's statement.
Let an Inclusive Church Rise!
WATER welcomes the news of the Pope Benedict XVI's resignation and wishes him a peaceful and dignified future.
The Pope's conscience-based decision reflects an honest assessment of his diminished capacity and an enlightened view of the job. We support freedom of conscience in this and in all things, including reproductive and sexual choices.
The Pope demonstrated by his abdication that change is afoot in the Catholic community. Rather than business as usual in the election of his successor, we take this as an opportunity to develop new forms of participatory leadership reflecting the diversity and maturity of the Catholic community. Let an inclusive church rise!
If substantive structural changes in the church begin to emerge, history will record Pope Benedict XVI with more than an asterisk for having retired. Rather, he will be remembered for ending a period of patriarchal rule and making way for a new era of equality. This is our prayer. Read more.
Friend of mine in Concord, California has an incredibly bizarre job – he's a coordinator for Disabled Student services at a district junior college. He's actually a pretty nice guy, like a lot of other cops, soldiers, firefighters, social workers, hospice workers and so on, but the clients drive him crazy. Fat people, blind people, crazy people, mildly retarded people, crippled people, deaf people and on and on and on and on. Lots of people in the college administration have great ideas about how to save money, how to take care of students, how to do just about everything but no one has the money to do any of it, including saving money. A student who had never approached his office for assistance is suing the college for lack of access to some classes; a Dean decides to sell a perfectly good van and replace it with some extended golf carts that do not have the ground clearance for the easy navigation of the myriad speed bumps; cuts in staff have everyone on edge. He is saved from madness by being a cancer survivor, which is a fairly consuming hobby of course and by being interested in a lot of strange stuff. He announced today that some new study shows that the proton is even SMALLER than previously thought, by about 4%. How exciting, as Doc Holliday might say apropos of Kate's non-utilization of the bustle, how lewd. Well, not really.
Instead of celebration, however, the result has caused consternation. Such a big discrepancy, say the physicists, led by Randolf Pohl of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, could mean that the most accurate theory in the history of physics, quantum electrodynamics, which describes how light and matter interact, is in trouble.
"What you have is a result that actually shocked us," said Paul Rabinowitz, a chemist from Princeton University, who was a member of Dr. Pohl's team.
The results were published in Nature. Protons, of course, have not shrunk. They have been whatever size they are ever since they congealed out of a primordial soup of energy and even smaller particles — quarks and gluons — in the early moments of the Big Bang. Determining how big they are, however, is both important to fundamental physics and extremely difficult.
At the risk of being cynical, duh! Most theories are resolved as proven or unproven or wrong when a new fact – the existence of gravity, the non-monadial construction of the universe, the estimation of the area under a curve, the utility of bread mold in treatment of disease, the size of protons – becomes known and screws the theories up. The Author points out that everything is still the same, but the calculations will probably come out significantly different. By, oh, some factor of 4%. But, the universe will still move.
Should have heard him about Higgs Boson. By the way, he was a theatre major. Go figure.
My thought when I read the note and article was that well, that just means there is maybe more nothing that everything is made of. In the general understanding of nuclear physics as a model for the universe, most of the atom is empty space through which electrons zing and zip and zig and zag. They now have four percent more space to do it in. There's even more nothing; and, you take all that nothing, and suddenly you have something. What that something is may be surprising, or not. But sometimes, there is just too much of nothing to make something of… Which, of course, leads to current events, non-events, imaginary happenings and so on.
Fiscal Cliff/Debt Ceiling/ Budgeting Kerfluffle
If there was any great doubt as to the wholly owned subsidiary nature of the Republicans in Congress to the Big Money, well, those results were made abundantly clear through out this. Not good news in terms of liberty, of course, but you'd think that the House could be quickly brought to heel. Nope, not likely. John Boehner has a coalition party up against Pelosi and her coalition party. However, Nancy Pelosi has built a pretty strong framework, a pretty strong bond of loyalty and we're all Democrats while allowing room for conscience. Since the idiocy and hyper-partisanship of the Hastert rule, the Republicans have pretty much emasculated the speaker. For those of you who don't know what the Hastert rule may be, don't be surprised. It's more Capital Hill gobbledegook, Gingrichian-Rovian madness that discourages compromise and working across the aisle. For the Speaker to allow a bill to come to the floor, he must have a Majority of the Majority. In other words, with 233 Republicans, Boehner feels compelled by that non-rule rule to not bring a vote until his whips assure him he has at 162 solid, sure, no shit votes. There are times when he just can't get there; he could pass the legislation, but he'd need to go to Pelosi and Hoyer to get them to agree to give him enough Democrats to pass the bill. He doesn't want to do that because it makes him look weak. So, while there have been things done lately with some necessary Democratic support, Boehner knows that there are a lot of things he can't get done unless Nancy P agrees, and he's afraid of the price for her agreement.
Now, when the Koch Bros tell you to put a schnizzle on that konizzel, so to speak, about deficits and spending cuts and debt limits, you're pretty far out there into tinfoil hat conspiracy country. Yet, despite the fact to which I will stipulate – most congressional Republicans are not teriary stage syphilitic madmen and women babbling this nonsense at home and in their sleep, most of them know it's all insane and they just went along with this, you know, out of poltics and foolin' around and now, Jesus Christ, what have we done! – they have to worry about the majority of their majority. How many of their base voters in their gerrymandered districts are this crazy? Do they have to worry about a primary challenge in their safe little home? Well, yeah – if Mitch Turtle McConnell is worried about a Tea Party challenge, then they need to worry in the house if Representative Katey "I'm conservative not crazy" Kracker might get opposed by someone who confuses World Net Daily with the Daily News and thinks they can channel Adam Smith and Joe McCarthy through their smart phone. A World Nut Daily type, who may win the nomination and then the seat unless they're able to do the whole Christine O'Donnell and the Democrat wins…and the former incumbent has to get a real job. How many lobbyists can K street accommodate?
So, the R's will continue to do stupid shit – retire the deficit without massive new revenue in ten years? Violate the constitution? Hold their breath and turn blue? Recite the Constitution but this time on helium? – that will be meaningless, and if they are in danger of actually hurting the economy as opposed to just not helping it, the big money dogs will pull them to heel. Nothing much to see here – intellectual and moral bankruptcy is more of a void than a spectacle.
Women in Combat – Ever Hear Boudicca? Joan of Arc?
Possibly apocryphal, but the story goes that for years, the Ranger Training Regiment has never outright refused a woman candidate. Come on in and join the fun; so far, no one has wanted to hang around too long. I can understand that – it takes a certain degree of testosterone charged madness to want to go through twelve weeks of deprivation, exhaustion, bullying and macho mind games. For the record, I'm in favor of all of that, by the way.
The issue in the Army and Marines has been locations on the battlefield; the issue for the Navy has been largely types of ships to which women could be assigned. I don't expect to see a woman command Special Operations Command or the Combined Arms School at Fort Benning any time soon. I do, however, expect that any supposedly closed opportunities in logistics, maintenance, intelligence, aviation or missiles will be seriously evaluated and there will be some openings. As for the issue of women receiving recognition for the combat they have seen and supposedly have been denied, well, again I can only speak with some comfort for the Army but I suspect it's largely BS. Granted, the Army is the only service with the combat patch and the combat infantry badge. However, the initiation of the Close Combat Badge a few years ago was intended to address the problem of folks without infantry MOS who deserved some sort of recognition. I know a number of women soldiers who won that thing in Iraq and they tend to make light of it which generally means in Army culture that they're very, very proud of the award and earned it not to get the award but to get the job done. One of them, Captain Nastashia Faye (USAR) joked about being under fire under her desk…in Takrit. (Stash, by the way, is very heavily into Extreme Cross Fit to the point where she doesn't make my teeth hurt, she scares me…she gets mad at me, I'm rolling over on my back and whimpering. Incredibly fit, very smart, very focused and nastily subtle sense of evil humor. ) Combat patches for women started showing up very quickly after Desert Shield. There is no way to ignore the assignment of women to units in combat without willful blindness. Not, of course, that I deny the existence of willful blindness in the military, government or the world at large. That would require willful blindness…
I suspect we'll see a change in assignment trees and such. But, the nature of the modern battlefield makes all lines pretty arbitrary. Where, when a major offensive weapon for the other side is a vest full of explosives detonated in a crowded marketplace or movie theatre is the combat zone? You can't delineate it anymore with maps and signs. It's there…Even more obvious to me is the change in the nature of war. A friend of mine, someone I love and admire greatly is a retired Navy Nurse, Mary Kelly. A mustang, Mary was a First Class Petty Officer and realized that she was never going to get the sort of assignments that would let her make Chief; so, she went into a nursing education program at 12 years or so service. Mary was the first female Officer in Charge of the Independent Corpsman program for the Naval Training Center at San Diego. Navy Corpsman provide the medics for the Marines – independent corpsman provide service both to the Marines combat units as their medics and for smaller ships where no doctor is assigned. She had a bought with cancer and another one with bureaucracy and retired at 28 years as a Lieutenant Commander. Anyway, my main reason for mentioning this is in this shot…a Marine Sergeant, a Marine Lance Corporal, and a Navy Corpsman working Psyops and Community Relations in Afghanistan. You cross the border into Afghanistan and you're in combat. (It's been that way since Elphinstone led his Army into Pathan country back in Flashman days, by the way. Somethings never freaking change…) The photo above shows Women Marines coming back from a patrol with AFGHAN FORCES, unloading weapons. These warriors are extraordinary, not because they are women but because of the nature of what they are doing. Making a big deal of an administrative and clerical change is just silly.
A friend of mine, a radical Catholic Feminist theologian named Mary Hunt recently published an article comparing the opening of combat assignments to women to what she regards as the inevitable opening of ordination to women to the Catholic priesthood. To an interesting extent, she's not so sure that either is really a good idea but that's just the way life is. She points out that the original opening of the majority of military occupations to women was driven by demographic realities inherent in the volunteer force. With a huge amount of the American Catholic priesthood being over 70, she doesn't see anyway the Catholic Church can avoid this. She's just not sure that on the whole, that would work to the individual woman's or women in general's advantage. There's some really cogent thinking and argument here; Mary reminds me of George Will at times, but in a good way.
Like women in combat, non-ordained people do what needs to be done pastorally and argue the details later. This is how social change happens. Laws are made and changed in response to already existing situations, not to fantasies. (My emphasis)
There are plenty of differences between these two cases. Those who promote women in combat probably do not want to change the fundamental nature of the military. Women priests already exist through ordination processes that parallel the official one, and plenty of Catholic women minister in their own ways. But what feels so dismayingly familiar is that we who struggle for justice only live to see such a fraction of what we envision.
I am not persuaded by incrementalist arguments. I do not think that women entering combat will change the bellicose ways of the US military. If anything, I think it will reinforce the importance of the warrior, re-inscribe the role of the hero who risks death and kills the enemy. That seems to me an awfully high price for equality. For priests, the entrance of women into the Roman Catholic clerical caste will reinforce the status and role of clergy and re-inscribe the power of difference (they are not lay people anymore). What a steep tab for proving the simple point of gender equality.
I find that viewpoint interesting, on target but probably not particularly relevant. Tell a group of human beings that they can't do something, however awful the something might be, and there will be some who won't be able to resist demanding to try. The presence of women in combat will not alter the nature of combat; the presence of women in the priesthood will not alter the priesthood. Fundamental change requires fundamental change. A woman warrior is a warrior; a woman priest is a priest. A cup of coffee is a cup of coffee. Lots of space inside the atom for variations that don't really alter the atom; lots of places in the organism for variation without fundamentally changing the organism. Lots of emptiness out there, more than we can fill… (To be continued, with the Filibuster, al Jazeera and related madness)
For no good reason except that my wife's ongoing adventure with colon cancer made me wonder, I scheduled a colonoscopy, and went to the Weed Army Community Hospital at Fort Irwin yesterday to do the pre-surgical consult, take the tests, fill out the paperwork. I wasn't thinking about a lot -- I was fasting in preparation for the bizillion labs I figured would be ordered, and was curious only about how long it was going to take. I had my Kindle, set to Marching With Caesar - Civil War, by R.W. Peake. Peake is a retired Marine Grunt, who has bothered to research this series of novels about a leading Centurion, one of two that Caesar mentions by name by doing such things as humping around Hadrian's Wall wearing the plate armor and carrying the gladius that these men carried. Fascinating read, and worth it...I was reasonably ready for a miserable day.
Ok, got there on-time, which meant I only had a short wait. Fox News, that staple of TV in waiting rooms throughout Pax Americana was on and the usual cast of dolts was babbling about Newtown. A couple of chairs down, a 30ish NCO getting ready for leave was waiting, and he made eye contact. Must have figured that I was wise or important or new something -- be an older, short,grey-haired, sorta in-shape guy on a military base, and people assume you're some kind of Colonel or General or something. As a retired First Sergeant, I find that amusing, not unlike Peake's Primus Pilum would have. Usually I don't get into conversations with strangers, particularly when the Right Wing Noise Machine is in full flight. But, the guy started talking..."I don't understand this. They're trying to say this guy was crazy; but man, he shot kids. He needs to be executed." Dude, the kid did have a disorder, autism, and he committed suicide. "But, I used to be a cop. How'd he get the guns? Why didn't anybody do something?" Guy was broken up about this, which surprised me a bit. He then told me that he had been talking to an Afghani while deployed who was convinced that these sorts of attacks indicated that we were an evil country. This bothered him; he was having to come to some sort of decision as to whether or not that ragheaded mofo might have actually been right.
They called me back, filled out some paperwork, took me to admitting who sent me back to the waiting room. Guy was walking down the hall to his appointment, but when he saw me, he smiled and said "Hey, Sir!" I nodded, smiled and said, "Top, not sir, and thanks, brother." While I was sitting there waiting again, the Fox noise was upset about a union organizer talking about following and harassing Republican legislators who backed anti-union measures. The waste of protoplasm babbling complained that the Republicans didn't have any organization to do similar things, that this was only the Communist-Radical-Liberal Democrats. I looked up, and made eye contact with an elderly black gentleman and asked, " Am I carzy or do these people not remember the last 6 years? did I dream that the tea party had posters calling for the execution of the President, signs with him as the Joker and people going to political meetings carrying guns? Am I crazy?" Guy looked at me, smiled and nodded.
Next stop after admitting was an EKG, more paperwork processing and a consult with the anesthesiologist. The OIC was a mid-40s Captain who told me that she had joined the Army a couple of years ago because she felt she should after a successful career as a civilian nurse. This gal has kids in college and now she's starting a career patching up kids ranging from her youngest's age through her own. She fell into the same trap as the first guy, and decided that I must be some source of wisdom. Anyway, she told me that she was troubled by so many of the young soldiers she sees. It turns out that they get a lot of soldiers admitted for basically sleep deprivation -- unable to sleep more than two or three hours in a night. Welcome to NTC, where PTSD makes you fit in! Even if admitted and medicated lightly, they can't sleep and spend the night pacing. She felt kind of helpless to help, because she'd only been in the Army two years and had only experienced Fort Sam Houston and Fort Irwin. I suggested that she think of Weed as a rural hospital with a really good trauma center...
Then they took the EKG. At 61, I have a perfect EKG for a guy in his lower 20s. This confused them, because they don't see that with people in their lower 20s. People in their lower 20s have that they see have EKGs usually suitable for someone in their 50s or 60s. I pointed out that I haven't smoked or used tobacco for 30 years; haven't drunk for over 20; am reasonably serious about working out with weights and, nobody has been shooting at me lately. Got a sad laugh from everyone.
As I was driving home, I saw lots of flags at half-staff. Public buildings, installation and so on. I thought that this habit of flying the colors at half-staff for any tragedy was a relatively new phenomonon but couldn't think of a more appropriate gesture after things like New Town. Then I learned that Daniel Inouye had died. If we continue to have heroes die and horrible tragedies punctuating our lives, the National Colors should stay at half-staff in perpetuity. I have followed Senator Inouye since I first became aware of the guy, at the Senate Watergate Hearings. A Senator and a Medal of Honor winner and an amputee from the Go for Broke Regiment who willingly took on the No Win gigs his party needed someone to take on is always going to be worth paying attention to. (Is it my imagination, or the MOH winners who have served in the Senate all been Democrats? And both suffered traumatic amputations during combat?)
I knew that I wanted to write something about the Senator, and realized that I wasn't feeling particualrly articulate today. And then I read Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker. The article is well-written, and brief -- and well worth the effort. He writes this in part :
"The point of all this is that sometimes reporters like me know things, or think we know things, and need someone in the know to hear them out, and perhaps provide some guidance or a sense of where to go next—and, above all, why it matters."
Oddly, the first piece I read this monring was Wonkette. Their take on the Senator was as powerful while totally brazenly off-kilter and probably would have had the old man crack a couple of smiles, and offer a drink to Tip O'Neil and Bobby Kennedy and Ted Kennedy and Pat Moynihan saying "See what Commie Girl's buddy Abdill wrote about me?" Put it to music, and he's sound like Davy Crockett...
Upon returning home, Inouye founded the state of Hawaii, which he represented in Congress every day of its statehood until today. Inouye’s approach to governance was very similar to his approach to killing Nazis, which was “shut up, I am busy doing good things here.” He walked around being a good guy and doing good things, and one day, he wanted to eat lunch with a black guy, so they walked into the House cafeteria, and just like that, it was desegregated. Because he was hungry, and that’s that. Inouye died yesterday, after 49 years and 11 months in office, likely because he received an intelligence briefing about somebody causing a ruckus at the Pearly Gates. It’s certainly taken care of by now.
Well, we certainly assume so; and, we need to figure out how, as that generation passes on, what the hell we're going to do for leadership. Clinton and Bush showed that the Boomers don't have it in them; so, we're left with...Eric Cantor? Clare McCaskill? Debbie Wasserman-Schmitt? Louis Gomert...
Yeah, things are definitely going down hill. Hope that Daniel Inouye have room at the bar for an non-politician in the hereafter. I guess if I'm dead some Bushmills would be ok, and I'll play Danny Boy on the house guitar...
While looking for some pictures to
tie this piece together, I discovered this – The Greek Christmas Goblins not to
be confused with Krampus. Krampus is there to screw with the bad children, but
the Kalikantzaroi
are there to screw with Christmas.
Who says Santa
Claus is the only one trying to come down your chimney during the
festive season? According to Greek mythology, a gaggle of goblin-like spirits
are trying to slide into homes -- and instead of presents they are intent on
leaving a trail of destruction. As the
Greeks tell it, it wouldn't be hard to confuse theTwelve
Days of Christmas with the Twelve Days of Hell. That is if you believe
in the Kallikantzaroi.
Well, there’s definitely reason when we think about it to
see this as a definite possibility. The
recent madness in Sandy Hook is a marvelous metaphor for the impact of reality
striking the sensibilities this time of the year. I spend a couple of weeks
before and after braced for the next bad deal – invade someplace?
Pestilence? Riots? Tsunami? Tiffany,
Goddess of the Defeatists and Malcontents, is definitely driven to
distraction by the all the sugar consumed and her consequent inability to fit
into her skinny jeans, so she wrecks havoc on the world around us…part petulant
teenage fit, part evil deity exercise program.
There’s a young artist up in Denver, Katey Laurel, who for some odd reason decided to
follow me on Twitter. Since we don’t actually know each other, I always
react to “Follows” like Henri the Cat would if he actually typed his tweets to
his peeps….I check out who they are. If they are interesting, I follow them.
Katey has a gorgeous voice, excellent guitar taste, plays very well and is very
much an upbeat and positive type of the sort that gets Henri and me feeling
nervous. But, talent, music and beauty cover a multitude of sins. In our
occasional correspondence, I referred to her as
“hippy Dale Evans” which she seemed to like. Snarky as that sounds, I
can’t see a downside.
However, AXE’s world does have some standards. One of them
is a vomit-reaction to anything approaching a sentimental attitude at Christmas
that could be mistaken for commercialism. When I was a practicing Catholic or actively
non-practicing Catholic, I felt that Christmas was a silly feast. If you buy
the whole Christian mythos – and a number of other mythos with similar stories
that pre-date Christianity – the true center is neither word becoming flesh nor
dwelling amongst us but the 36 or so hours between the death of Jesus on the
Cross and the stone rolling away on Sunday morning at dawn. The whole torture,
suffering and death thing serves as a horrible prologue for something outside
of human experience.
But, human beings love cuddly, warm and bright at least for the most part. I’ve
never had a Goth girlfriend, but I suspect that even they feel the need for
warmth, security and brightness in the night. So, Christmas evolved and despite
the best efforts of the Puritans and Roundheads and the Jansenists and bunches
of other people, Christmas is the center
of everyone’s world for six months of so. Good Friday and Easter get a token
nod, maybe some Lenten fasting and abstinence but there’s no real hysteria and
commercial upside to Easter. Eggs, chocolate and hats do very well. Not like
Christmas…
So, Katey decided to do a Christmas song every day.
Bleech…and post them on her blog. What is nice and authentic about them is that
she just turns on her web cam, sits down with the guitar and plays the song,
and then does whatever a Colorado-Hippy-Cowgirl type does for the rest of her
time. It would be a lot of fun to just sit around with her and play by the
way…she’s got a marvelous voice and an attractiveness in the purest sense that
would make her easy to accompany. What
wasn’t cool was her suggestion that she’d like to do a Christmas album for next
year. My immediate response, on Twitter, was”Are you changing your name to
Bambi?” She obviously got the joke, because she not only favorited it, she
re-tweeted it. However, after hitting send, I thought why not do an
existentialist Christmas album.
Objectively, Christmas is a really schizoid kind of holiday.
For six weeks or so, everything operates at a level of hysteria such that the
entire world is torn between glee, despair, love, hate, anger, angst, joy and
fear. The emotional roller coaster is shadowed by the looming debt, the stress
of “loved ones,” the joys of travel in the US today and so on. It’s
unavoidable…inescapable…insatiable. And then, of course, on the 26th
the post Christmas commercial blitzkrieg takes center stage, the toys don’t
work, the tree comes down, the crumbs are vacuumed, the cats come out of hiding
and every one gets ready for the cycle to begin again. Poorer, older, fatter
and more depressed…sugar high, crashing blood sugar low.
People die around Christmas. It’s not just the uptick in
suicides which may or may not be mythical. A lot of old and sick folks stop
fighting around Christmas and just go. It’s a time of ends and beginnings. The
coldest and darkest time of the year, 3 days into winter which is already
turning from darkness to light.
I fleshed out my
suggestion to Katey for a more Either/Or Christmas album. I could see this as a single
artist project, an ensemble or a larger collaboration. Do a traditional
Christmas song and then counterpoint it with a Christmas song of angst, anger,
despair or whatever that would model the dark side. Perhaps a Harlequin
Christmas although I like the Either/Or concept. I stole the title from
Kierkegaard, one of my favorite thinkers…and, for K at the end, there was an
effort to synthesize the aesthetic and the ethical realms into the religious
realm, the Both/And.
I sent her a tentative song list, and she said she was going to check out the
videos I linked. Now, it is probably not a terribly commercial idea – do you
think? – and I can understand it if she doesn’t jump all over it. Still, I
think Katey and a couple of other guitars, maybe a blues harp, maybe a violin,
some simple drums and a string bass, and Christmas would be honestly and
respectfully portrayed.
Although I never made it to the Stilge Nacht, Helige Nacht
church in Austria, I have attended Midnight Mass in small village churches in
Germany and Austria where the light was from candles and a fireplace and the
instruments were guitars, flutes and zithers. The starker, simpler arrangements
are special. At the same time, some of the greatest commercial songwriters in
the glory days of Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley touched the Christmas
theme. So, why not…
So, here’s my partial play list, proposed from the Dark Side
of the Force for Christmas... The
Guardian has a marvelous piece on how Fairytale came to be. This is one of the most popular contemporary
Christmas songs, and one of the few Christmas songs I have ever bothered to
learn how to play. Part of it is the Irish part of it of course – an early
version has some lyrics beginning “it was a cold dark night in County
Claire/and I looked to the west and wondered what’s over there…” Part of it is of course, it’s America…”it’s
got cars big as bars, it’s got rivers of gold? but the wind blows right through
you it’s no place for the old/when you first took my hand on that cold
Christmas eve/You promised that Broadway was waiting for me”…Failure, loss,
despair and love gone bad: “I could have
been someone/Well so could anyone, You took my dreams from me when I first
found you…”and, maybe hope triumphant…”The Boys of the NYPD Choir still singing
Galway Bay and the bells were ringing out on Christmas Day!”
Robert Earle Keen is one of the non-Gonzo
Texas Alternative Country musicians, closer to Townes Van Zandt in substance
and Guy Clark in style with some Lyle Lovett tones. Which makes a lot of sense,
given that Clark and Lovett were roommates and band mates and fellow English
Majors at Texas A&M. Like Clark he confronts reality in a sort of
off-kilter way that is truer to the whole thing than fantasy or straight
reporting could be. The Robert Earle Classic, Merry Christmas from the Family
is so true to Christmas gatherings and families and family issues. This is the
other Christmas song I’ve bothered to learn. Now, if you love Texas, the song
is pretty whimsically real, but it doesn’t have to be Texas…I was the Irish
boyfriend at a Sicilian Christmas decades ago, and yes they were connected.
“Sister brought her new boyfriend/He was a Mexican/We didn’t know what to think
of him/ Until he sang Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad…”
A
Christmas
Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis is Neko Case singing Tom Watts...Despite
being an acquaintance of mine, Neko Case one of the most talented
singer-songwriters working these days or any days. Powerful voice, expressive
and alternatively yearning, defiant and reflective. Hell, simultaneously
yearning, defiant and reflective. Her twitter remarks are worth the price of
admission alone. She’s a unique talent, responding to a piece of my snark with
“Crusader AXE, if I wanted a father, I’d buy one.” However, she complains about
Christmas and indicates that this is just not her happiest time of the year,
she’s the kind of great soul, kind heart and love-filled spirit sheathed in a
protective coating of red-headed angst and cynicism that makes her perfect to
deliver this song. ”Everyone I used
to know is either dead or in prison/Came back to Minneapolis and this time I
think I’llstay…” Waits
version is perhaps more authentic, but less affecting and less humane. Valid
still, but Neko owns this song.
The
Hives are 90s garage-punk rock from LA and everybody knows Cyndi Lauper.
However, there is more happening here than it seems, and frankly, I’ve heard
arguments like this from lots of people. This is a lot realer than we’d like it
to be. I’m kind of amazed at Lauper – she’s gone a long way musically from
wince-producing to very interesting at times. This was part of the journey, and
I could see Katey laughing her ski boots off but never considering it as a
possible song for the album. Think that would be a mistake though…
When
I heard Dylan say he was going to do a Christmas album with new songs one
morning while listening to Theme Time radio while driving to work, I spit
coffee all over the dash board. And then he produced this…the guy remains
unpredictable and true to his own vision. He’s not unwilling to share it, but
we’ll never understand it in advance. That’s how a scrawny Jewish Kid from
Northern Minnesota was able to change the world – we never saw it coming. Steven
Van Zandt repeatedly tells the Al Cooper legend of how Koop ended up, a guitar
player overshadowed and intimidated by
Mike Bloomfield’s presence in the recording studio so fakinghis way on to the
Hammond B3 for the session that produced Like a Rolling Stone. While that may
define Chutzpah, Dylan gave an insight into the vision that day when he told
the producer to turn up the organ, he wanted to hear the organ louder. The
Engineer apologized and said basically that Cooper wasn’t an organ player and
wasn’t supposed to be there anyway. Bob
said, “I’ll tell you who’s an organ player and who isn’t. Turn up the organ.”
And the rest is rock history. While I
don’t envision rock and roll polka coming anytime soon, this is a helluva lot
better and definitely a subversive take on the whole Santa thing. And, how could it be a music recommendation from Crusader
AXE that didn't include Dylan?
There are dozens of other songs that fit this mold, but from
my point of view, these are probably the best fitting for me. There is an
underlying ethical and existential tension in the whole Christmas story – for
if Jesus was the son of God and fully God and fully man, he would know his
future, even while an infant. So, there is a bit of the dark side in all the
religious carols. Now for me, anti-theist but cultural Irish Catholic, I find
that so incredibly awesome and awful that I can’t approach it. Mr. Deity has fun with it
in the whole “Jesse is a quitter!” thing but it’s a philosophical and theological
problem that I don’t think has been addressed except in Kierkegaard’s Attack on
Christianity.
There are two iconic mainstream Christmas related songs that
I think could fit in this compilation on the dark side. The first is Bing Crosby’s “I’ll be home for
Christmas.” A 1943 release, the
whole I’ll be home for Christmas malarkey is actually a pretty good wartime
meme…wars are always expected to be done by Christmas, and they never seem to
end quite that way. I sense, and this is
probably just me reading into it, a connection thematically between this and
the country song, “The Green, Green
Grass of Home.” Still, I’ll be home for Christmas is all positive buildup
until the end, with “I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams…”
The next one is another in Crosby canon, “White
Christmas.” Katey commented on Twitter
to how she can’t see how people in warm areas can get in the Christmas spirit
without snow. Well, Christmas is largely about Walmart’s bottom line these days,
so in SOCAL and similar locations, it
just removes a distraction from what it really important.
It would be possible on a concept album to use these two
numbers with a pretty simple arrangement to bridge the dark side to the cheery
sides. Thus, the Either/Or. Worth considering, I think.
George Will made a comment concerning gay marriage this morning on his weekly attempt to pretend his baseball writing isn't the only thing anyone will remember him for to the effect that the opposition to gay marriage is literally dying. Mitt Romney went to a boxing match and jinxed the guy who lost by encouraging him. Common Cause and the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives filed suit against the Senate for using the filabuster. As absentee ballots and provisional ballots continue to be counted, Romney appears to have lost by more...
Well, life sucks if you're willing yourself extinct. If you've been reading my stuff, you know that I have an unrequitted, secret love for Maureen Dowd. We're about the same age, same ethnciity, same cultural bias, same religious roots -- although I suspect she's still a practicing Catholic as opposed to an anti-theist -- and we both like words, wit and traditional Catholic social values. She went to Catholic University, I went to Holy Cross. She graduated and went off to become a practicing political reporter, then occasional columnist and then anchor columnist on Sunday and Wednesday for the Times. Me, I joined the Army so I could extend my adolescence for another 23 years, playing with guns, working out, blowing things up...I think in a lot of ways, I got the better deal.
But damn, she writes well. When she's really off her game, she's pretty good. When she's good, she's very good indeed. When she's really good, DAMN. This is one of those columns.
Her thesis, not all that different from Will's insight, is that the Republicans are going willfully extinct as a national party. She begins with an interesting anecdote:
My college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn. My mom would periodically call to warn me in a dire tone, “Do you know why the Incas are extinct?” Her maize hazing left me with a deeply ingrained fear of being part of a civilization that was obliviously engaging in behavior that would lead to its extinction. Too bad the Republican Party didn’t have my mom to keep it on its toes. Then it might not have gone all Apocalypto on us — becoming the first civilization in modern history to spiral the way of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans. The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.
While there were a lot of contributing factors in 2012, there are moments when you just had to stand there and wonder WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING? The only really viable candidates nationally were probably Pawlenty and Huntsman and only Huntsman had a vision that didn't seem to involve hiring a witch hunter profundis and taking us all back to the dark ages. So, Pawlenty and Huntsman were gone very early. A pizza magnate, a menopausal madwoman who confused John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy when announcing her candidacy, a ego-drunk sack of hypocritical yesteryears claiming with some justification to being the intellectual center of the Republican world, W.2 -- a tall Aggie who was meaner, dumber and in this case zonked on pain medicationa troll from Texas who thinks it makes sense to base the modern world on the standards of the Roman empire, and Mitt Romney were the possibilities; in fact, most of the possibilities arose as temporarily viable because they had the virtue of not being Mitt Romney. After Romney survives a war of attrition, he then selects an Eddie Munster look alike who actually refused to explain the math behind his tax reform and budgetary plans. Romney is revealed as a lumbering clown -- of course, he did that quite well last time, and the reality showed through to the deniers with the 47% crack -- beginning at the Iowa State Fair when he argues that "Corporations are people too, my friend."
I'm not the Virginian, and you aren't Travis. Don't smile when you say that, you grinning zombie. Don't say it. Don't call me friend when you're not my friend.
Republican Convention 2012
Then we have a comedy of errors going on all 2012. Transvaginal probes. Eighty two members of the Democratic Party are card carrying members of the Communist Party. The Female body has defense mechanisms that kick in when there's legitimate rape. The sky is falling and massive inflation is right around the corner. Obama is a Kenyan Socialist Manchurian Candidate. A child conceived in rape is a blessing from God. (By that logic, Rosemary's Baby would be a blessing from God.) Cut taxes on the rich; cut spending on the poor, on education, on infrastructure. Government can't create jobs! (Particularly liked this when it was some Republican house member or Senator with 20 years seniority saying it.) We love our warfighters -- but if we take care of the Veterans, we're going to bust the budget and raise the deficit. "Hell no you won't!" Success in Libya, Iraq and a end-date to the Afgnasy (Yeah, I'm channeling the Russians here) ordeal are signs of weakness; not bombing Iran and widening that conflict at the bidding of the craziest of the Zionists in Israel; advocating war in Syria; and on and on and on...
What were they thinking?I watched the Karl Rove meltdown on Fox a couple of times and actually found it painful...but you know, facts have a way of biting you in the ass if you ignore them. I kinda, sorta actually felt bad for the guy -- he looked like a fat kid denied someone else's hotdog. The guy who coined the phrase "reality-based" as a pejorative was getting bitchslapped by that reality. As lots of commentators have noted, the facts seem to have a liberal bias these days.
Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?
I think it's possible, and patriotic, to vote against your own interests for the common good. But, the Republicans by hitching their wagons to Ayn Rand, a God not familiar to most readers of the New Testament, denigration of women, denigation of workers, greed, guns, racism and intrusion while trying to wrap it up as "Freedom!" really couldn't claim anything for the common good. Romney's dancing horse really sums them up in a way so apt; he actually believes that saying things like the trees are the right height was a way to connect. Bragging that he had always paid at least 13% was tone-deaf. Demanding greater disclosure from Ryan than he was willing to disclose to the American people on his taxes is kind of amazing. Mormons are not generally considered exemplars of chutzpah, but damn...
Expect more convulsions. We are a deeply divided country in a lot of ways, but if the Democrats stay charged up and the President takes it to the Republicans actually using the bully pulpit as opposed to occasionally polishing it with a deep coat of linseed oil, then we'll see. But right now, I see no way the Republican party as it is now survives as a relevant force.
John Boehner delivers Alternative Proposal to the White House
"Where have you gone Abbie Hoffman, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you..."
My friend, occasional collaborator in the pursuit of intellectual no-good and anarchist philosopher and professor, Crispin Sartwell has a piece up at Chesse it, the Cops that in a wry way points to the existential void of current American politics. I'm talking about, of course, the great moral issue of our time, the proposed increase in the top marginal tax rates. (Cue Jaws Music!) It's an important problem, and it is pretty much what Crispin ironically says it is about -- "what sort of country we want to be" and also, and sadly, "symbolic, I guess." Crispy does it with some panache, using Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech" to provide a rhethoricalcenter and highlighting the wonkishness of the current world contrasted with King's vision in a marvelous little bit of praeteritio and understatement.
"No, no, we are not satisfied, and will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." and this mighty stream consists of 35% to 39.6% in the marginal tax rate..."
Profound irony, isn't it? So many serious issues confronting us, and this somewhat trivial technocratic twist is the sine qua non of our national existence and political discourse. I'm thankful to Crispin because it made me go to the speech and re-read Dr. King's masterpiece of rhetoric and moral passion. And if you substitue the words "ordinary people" for Negro, it is obviously applicable to us all. And, while I don't know if my cynically subtle idealist co-conspirator meant to inspire that awareness, he certainly achieved it. The issue is not the goddamned deficit -- and I am not being blasphemous there at all, because the deficit is a satanic ruse to keep our eyes off the prize. It is in fact the issue of what sort of country we want to be. Despite the professed love -- nay idolatry -- of Ronald Reagan, the right has taken his appropriation fo the phrase from Winthrop who was actually preaching from The Sermon on the Mount and taken it somewhere else. For Matthew's Jesus was talking about the Christian Community that he was willing into being as setting an example and setting a very high bar for success. We seldom read the whole thing -- I know that as a Jeffersonian anti-theist, I seldom revisit the bible. But I probably should revisit the Jefferson bible more often.
13 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.
14 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.
15 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.
16 ¶ Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?
it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
17 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
18 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
19 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
20 ¶ Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
21 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
22 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
23 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of thescribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
So, summing up, Jesus, Wintrhop and Reagan were calling for an exemplar of the best for the illumination of the world. Although the concept is modern, it's a call for inclusion and
Boehner, McConnell, Hannity, Norquist and LaPierre Class Picture
charity. In the days of Jesus, all cities had gates; even Rome had gates. Only the most open and secure cities kept the gates open; what Jesus is calling for, what Winthrop, Kennedy and Reagan were calling for, was that lighted exemplar for the world where not only do the gates never close, there are no gates. What the Republicans and Tea Party and the American Right are calling for, demanding, and screaming for is not an open, fair and just community but a gated community, complete with barbed wire, wage slavery and vast disparities in wealth, education, access to justice and freedom. The Christian Right -- including any Catholic Bishop or higher who endorses this -- is calling for it in the name of Jesus; the libertarian Right is calling for it in the name of Adam Smith -- who thought corporations were not only unhuman but potentially and probably evil -- and Ayn Rand whom Jesus would feel sorry for, Winthrop put in the stocks and then send her off to Rhode Island with Roger Williams and the other nuts, and whom Reagna would give a jelly bean and then tell Nancy to "Please sweetheart, keep the mean crazy woman away from me..."
Not that we're looking a lot smarter on the left. People like Howard Dean and Sherrod Brown get it, but the irony is astonishing. We have a president who is articulate and smart and who, if he lets himself go with his soul, can be an inspiring and mesmerizing figure. However, most of the time he makes like Woodrow Wilson and delivers a technocratic and someone delphic pronouncement. There are a lot of ways to respond to the absurdities underlying the Ryan and the Boehner budget proposals and "fiscal cliff" rushing toward us. Referring to the stupidity of this plan, it's inherent unfairness, intellectual dishonesty and disingenuousness, and silliness as "not balanced" is just playing the game on Boehner's turf. There are big issues confronting us, and due to the last 32 years of wealth concentration at the top of the economic scale, those issues must be confronted as what they are -- fundamental questions of justice, economic fairness and levelling. Yes, the re-distribution of wealth and the re-allocation of assets.
I find particularly interesting the fact that we're harkening back to the Clinton tax era as some kind of golden age of equity and fairness and kum by ya! I don't recall it that way...for a lot of Americans it was kind of disappointing. Less disappointing than waking up today and facing this environment, but still...we're facing the conundrum of one of the corrollaries to Murphy's Law -- Before you can do anything, you have to do something else. But, if you want to do big things, dare to demand big things as a standard and an outcome; then find the methods that get there; then figure out the resources needed and get them. Don't change the outcomes based on the resources. If you have a desired outcome, and you have a workable method, then add resources and do whatever is necessary to get the resources. Screw Clinton's tax rates, you use them and validate the Republican position. USE THE MARGINAL RATES AT THE END OF THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION. Certainly that rate marked something of a high water mark in terms of post World War II recovery and the explosion of American wealth, influence and potential. Scientific, educational, social and economic potential was unlimited, and the government was focused on doing things that the country needed to have done. Highways, infrastructure, power, education and so on. At 39.6% as a top rate, we're looking at less than half what they paid in any of those watershed years where the current rate is less than the second bracket in any year but 1964. This indicates a retreat: this enshrines greed.
Year
>$10K
>$20K
>$60K
>$100K
>$250K
1956
26%
38%
62%
75%
89%
1958
26%
38%,
62%
75%
89%
1960,
26%
38%
62%
75%
89%
1962,
26%
38%
62%
75%
89%
1964,
23%
34%,
56%
66%
76%
As Rock says, stand for something!
The irony is pretty amazing to me. I'm not harkening toward some new version of America. I'm advocating the American at the height of the Pax Americana only with re-allocation of the resources to world-buildind as opposed to bigger holes to hide in and the capacity to produce bigger wholes than the other guy. Greeters and Escorts for Republican Fashonistas in the Beltway -- Making them feel welcome...
This is where Warren Buffett and Bill Gates could help. They can afford it, and the government couldn't spend money for this. It is political in impact, but it's a-political in intent. SHAME THESE BASTARDS. Here's a thought -- have mimes follow the perpetrators of the Bush tax cuts and the "we can go to war if we have more tax cuts" and just do this thing. Liz Cheney, Ann Coulter and Jan Brewer show up at the Mall, and there's a mime troupe doing " deficits don't matter!" Boehner goes to the links, and there's a troupe of mimes in the parking lot and following his party around the links miming the great "Hell no you don't!" speech.At least, do something to shame this jingoistic, ignorant and moronic twits. Or hordes of Sinatra impersonators with boombox karaoke machines, doing his version of Mrs. Robinson whenever one of these fools raises his/her/its/their heads...
You know, it bothers me that I know who Lindsay Lohan is and that I have an opinion on her. Since I remember what Elizabeth Taylor looked like in National Velvet and in Ivanhoe as well as in Cleopatra, I have some problems getting my head around the idea that she could play Ms. Taylor-Somebody-Fisher-Burton-Somebody-Burton-Somebody-Somebody. She shares a bit of the back story, but Disney seems a less paternal organization than MGM, and Lohan is not quite the lady or woman that Taylor was.
Now, I saw movies with Taylor. I've probably seen Cleopatra three times, and Ivanhoe about 6, and Christ only knows how many times I've been around one of the women in my life -- sister, wife, signficant other -- where National Velvet was going on n the background. I saw Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? about three times. I have never seen a Lindsay Lohan anything. But, I know almost as much about Ms Lohan -- in some respects, more -- than I know about Taylor. I care a lot less, but there it is...
Thing is, Lohan looks as bad at 26 and change as Taylor did in full shrew appearance in Viginia Wolfe...So, she starts with less and decays more rapidly and now is going for the gold medal as whore-skank-B-Actress. Which, when I found myself looking at the HUFFPO thing that discusses her dress, I realized that my life is effectively ruled by media. In many cases, by media I don't care at all about and subjects of negative value -- seriously, every second devoted to Lindsay Lohan awareness minus critical thinking is a needless sacrifice of synapse and judgement. Lohan isn't alone in this horrid state of seige-- I know what a Kardashian is. I know who Russell Brand is; I am conscious that there is a thing called Honey Boo-Boo which should be but probably isn't a rip off of Yogi Bear's little buddy. This distrubs me. I know and follow Henri the Existentialist Cat on Twitter; I follow That Fucking Cat @TheFuckingCat on Twitter. They both are far more interesting and intelligent than any Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan.
You know who else I don't understand being conscious of in the media? John McCain. Seriously, if Lindsay Graham...err...ah, yeah ... Lohan is a meaningless media overload, what the hell is he? McCain is a like a fine cheese left in the sun too long...aged to old, looks awful, tasteless to awful and crazy to contemplate. So, why does the media pay attention to him and his deranged nonsense? And, why do any of us owe it credence?
In 2000, he had his finest hour; by 2008 he was reaching Bob Dole levels of irrelevance which made him the perfect Republican nominee and then he picked someone more obnoxious than a cross-bred Kardasian-Lohan as a running mate. He has been babbling nonsense since 2008; and, now he's decided that the UN ambassador is the logical candidate for destruction in the aftermath of a tragedy that was no one's fault -- except a congress that forced stupid cuts in things like embassy security and staffing by paid security guards instead of Marines. Dipshits like Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and McCain's beloved right wing lunatics.
What the hell? If the two most famous prisoners of war in Vietnam were were Senator McCain and Admiral Stockdale, I find it intriguing that McCain has never to my knowledge acknowledged Stockdale's leadership by example or that in reading Stockdale's writings, I can't find anything on McCain. The omission is troubling.
"Don't call me a saint; I don't want to be dismissed that easily." Dorothy Day
Ok, the election is over. The irrelevant continue babbling, and the nonidelogue technocrats who enable the ideological bastards are trying to regain some semblance of groundedness. In the annual meeting of the Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, they couldn't come up with a statement on the economy in the US. But, they decided that they'd unanimously endorse Dorothy Day for sainthood.
Oh happy day...of course, St Dotty of Staten Island would drip cigarette ashes on the proclamation, tell 'em to wrap fish in it and go do something that actually could help somebody.
Taking over the mantle of Irrelevant, clueless nonsense, the American Catholic Bishops are playing into the hands of what my old friend and consulting Feminist Radical Catholic Theologian, Mary Hunt refers to as the second largest religious denomination in the country -- the ex-Catholics some of whom like me who pay attention. By endorsing the Sainthood of Dorothy Day, they're not wrong. But, there are a lot of contradictions in that endorsement that we should probably not forget; they obviously have. Or, and this is troubling on multiple levels they don't care.
If Saint Dorothy Day wandered into the offices of the American Catholic Bishops Cabal and Chowder Sipping-Marching Society, and flipped through the policy letters posted on the bulletin board -- "No birth control paid for by insurance companies!" "Abortion is the unforgivable sin" "Religious freedom is under attack!" "Vote for the Rich, not the Democrats" and "The pederast priests were temped by the dewy butts of the altar boys so they need to be forgiven...", Then Saint Dorothy Day would snub out a cigarette in one of the bishops' cup of coffee, tell them to sell the jewelry and give the proceeds to the poor and then go hold some drunken wino's hand while he had the DTs...
She wouldn't be seen with the people who are going to cannonize her unless they were going to give the
Catholic Workers a bunch of money. This would irritate them, as would her calling them fat Mick and Dago bastards, and telling them to get off their fat asses and follow Jesus...Intentionally undiplomatic, politically incorrect, coherent, focused on the big picture and opposed to crony capitalism and accomomodation with people like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, she's a problem for these guys who are soooooooo smooth and comfortable in the corridors of power.
She was comfortable there as well -- not because she took them seriously, but because she had a knack for cutting to the reality of the issue -- as long as people are cold, hungry, homeless, need health care and clothes and hope and education, we are revealed for the corrupt, ugly and evil species that we are. If you're not doing everything you can to fix it, you're wrong. Greed and pride in greed are sin; allowing people to need the basic necessities of life and a fair share of hope and prosperity is sin. She'd walk up to Ratzinger and say something like "Red Prada pumps? What would Jesus do? Aren't you ashamed? You should be ashamed..."
Oh, they'll pretend they love her. They'll pretend to emulate her. They'll praise her...and then go off to ask Trump and Murdoch for money for the upkeep of the facade and the whitening of the sepluchurs.
There's a combination of schadenfreude and sadness at the Petraeus affairs. A lot of us here know people like the folks involved here, and the problems are basically the fact that we're all human. Too human, maybe. The resignation is a shame in some ways, but in others probably not...it's a distraction, and the timing is pretty awful in that regard. While the beltway press pursues the latest shiney object, well, who knows what nefarious things will go bump in the night.
Here's the thing that bothers me --There's another problem with this. The affair occurred in Afghanistan while Petraeus was the commanding general. Adultery is a serious violation against the UCMJ. In addition, sexual relations in the combat zone -- and under his desk in Kabul or at that monster base we've got outside Kabul -- certainly qualifies as a combat zone. Soldiers are routinely disciplined for this behavior, and this guy probably signed off on a few court martials and other punishments for this during his career. Fun facts to know and tell about generals -- when they retire, they really don't retire. And, this is definitely contrary to good order and discipline. I would expect that some disciplinary action on the Army side would happen for the affair. Possibly just a letter of reprimand or a fine; possibly a reduction in rank to the last rank at which he served honorably, which was 3 stars. Will be interesting to see what, if anything happens with this one...
Of course, Ms. Broadwell was an Academy Graduate. It's interesting to ponder whether or not she retained a reserve commission; if so, an investigation by the Army could conclude that in addition to adultery, there was a violation of the fraternization policy. Basically reflects very badly on his judgement, and he is very clear about that in his resignation. Good for him by the way, and good for her in that she's handling this like an adult.
But, the teenage crush aspect of it is kind of amusing. He gets to be head of the CIA, she decides to end the affair and he pursues her. Sends her dirty emails supposedly and generally acted like a 19 year old boy.Sheesh...
I have an odd take on marriage these days. I think we just live too long these days for marriage to work. The fact that Clem and Elma were married for 77 years always elicits the "Cute, oh, they're so cute response." Not from me -- I've been married for 36 years, and frankly, it's a habit and an economic arrangement. We're fond of each other, but except for NCIS and baseball don't really share very much. Petraeus spent most of the his time since November of 2001 either deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq or getting ready to go -- his wife had a life, his kids are grown and GUESS WHAT! They'd been married for 37 years after getting engaged when he was in the Academy. Not an inevitable thing, but the seeds are there. I'm not making excuses for the guy, by the way -- I don't consider the affair particularly heinous, but the hypocrisy and silliness make you wonder. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. But, I can say that I never let any nuttiness about who was sleeping with who turn into persecution or prosecution when I was in the Army in leadership roles, and stopped more than a few puritanical witch hunts. But, if he ever signed off on a 15-6 for a court martial for any sexual relations issue, he's probably getting a payback in the old Karma Bar, Grill and Continuous Soiree.
Supposedly he was pretty unpopular in the CIA as a know-it-all, outsider, Army guy. Not terribly surprising in a way -- and I never did get the idea that he'd be a great president. Intellectuals and generals have at best a spotty record as President. Washington, Jackson...and Zachery Taylor? Rutherford B. Hays? William Henry Harrison? Woodrow Wilson? Herbert Hoover? Jimmy Carter? Ike and Jefferson are the only ones I can think of to really set the world on fire...or in Ike's case despite the jingoist paranoia of the age, to not set the world on fire. I generally don't have a lot of issues with generals, except if you want to talk about being out of touch with the American people, lots of them are so far removed that, well, they tell young people in good physical condition living in extraordinary stress that having sex is a bad idea. And, frankly, the whole counterinsurgency thing was vastly overrated. The Iraqis figured out that we were going to leave and this was a good way to get us out of there earlier. We basically bribed the militias and let the Shiites take over the country. And left...Afghanistan was never going to work, and the smartest thing to do is draw down quickly but not in a panic and leave. Most soldiers with an actual appreciation of history always saw that war as a mistake. Best thing to do with Afghanistan unless you're willing to kill 3/4 or so of the populace like the Moguls did is to bribe the bastards to stay in their cages and retaliate massively when they stick their heads out. And, I know a few Afghanis and I like them. But, substitue opium for moonshine, and they're hillbillies with Korans.
Petraeus got out of there with his reputation intact because of the Gates-Panetta transfer and the fact that the Rs couldn't oppose his nomination. Logical move on the part of the Obama Administration. But, unlike Colin Powell, Petraeus was not a general with a lot of political experience. He was a light infantry guy, and while not as crazy as a Special Operations Guy like McCrystal, he wasn't used to the corridors of power. Check out his Wikipedia entry and look at his career. His high and mighty assignments were with soldiers. He's a dirty boots kind of guy.
In fairness, he is an extraordinarily bright guy - Princeton PhDs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy don't come easily -- and had a great reputation as just a helluva soldier as a brigade and division commander. And, in the Infantry you don't get stars by being a total prick and incompetent. You can be either -- most aren't -- but the total douchebags are rare. Tankers are different -- all the noise warps their heads. Special OPs guys have a tendency to be outlaws in a lot of ways. But in some ways this is a shame, in some a gut check for the Army , and in some just irony. And yeah, "the powerful are in fact people" realization is important.
It occurs to me that Orwell got a lot right but not quite everything. Newspeak is definitely among us, but at it's most insidious, it's corporate jargon, talk and general nonsense. Where we work has more to do with how we think than news or internet or cellphones. We're bombarded. So, Big Brother will probably look less like James Mason or Burt Lancaster and more like, well, Mitt Romney. The CEO of today is the big brother of today.
Got this from a friend who was wondering what it really means. Since he's an engineer and I am supposedly an expert on this Human Resources-Employee Realtions -- Engagement stuff, he wondered if I might translate. Well, it seems pretty universal to me...you'might be amazed at the number of Human Resources professionals named Erin by the way. The equivalent guy name appears to be Chuck, Chad or Bob. The Erin's usually do not have an Irish last name because their Yuppie parents got a list of the most popular baby names in 1974 and there it was. Can't explain about the guys. Most of the Erins actually still have souls...optimism not completely crushed because, if they keep trying, they can really make a difference, Goddamnit, Mike. But, with their door closed, they tend to cry a lot...
This is the email Verbatim although I did change the consulting firm to something neutral...
Good afternoon,
I wanted to provide you with an update regarding the results of the Employee Engagement Survey.
On September 21st at the Manager’s Off-Site Meeting, the attendees were provided with a general overview of the results by American Social Scientific World People & Process Dynamics. (ASSWPP-D)Additionally, the results were compared to other “Top Workplaces” in the Engineering industry of firms in similar size.
The Executive Team was given all of the aggregate results and each member of the team read all 848 anonymous comments. The Executive Team was asked to look for common themes. I reviewed the specific regional results with each Regional Vice President. The RVPs were then asked to review this information with the managers in their regions.
Tomorrow, the Executive Team and the Regional Vice Presidents will get together for a half-day working session to come up with some next steps in response to the results.
We will continue to keep you updated.
Thanks,
Erin
Erin
Fascinating, right. Typical corporate crap...however, this is from the Man Behind the Mirror...this is what it really means.
Translation:
JESUS, GOD, PLEASE HELP ME ESCAPE from this...SOBSOBSOB, WAAAAAA!
I told them that this was probably not going to work and now it's going to be my fault and I don't care...
We read looked at the statistics done by the HR Stastitics nerds for several thousand dollars an hour each that came out of the bonus fund.
We looked serious.
When they showed us the comparators, we looked concerned.
They gave us the results that they;d just briefed us on. We looked studious.
They gave us the remarks. We reacted like dead clowns with Sticks up our Asses.
We had lunch.
We looked for themes -- big deal. Couldn't take it seriously, because you hate us.
We had coffee and looked tired.
We broke early and had dinner, so " Erin can send out a professional summary of what we'd been doing so the troops will know we really car" and they wouldn't have to watch me sob hysterically at my own hypocrisy....
Money for the coffee, lunch and dinner came out of the employee training fun.
Tomorrow we'll fishbone and storyboard and pareto and all that crap.
Money to pay for breakfast, lunch , dinner, coffee and drinks after will come from the employee raise fun.
Went down to the "Delicious Dinner Buffet" -- the wine was gone, the entree was picked over, there were bugs in the salad and cold peas in the mashed potatoes. I had a dry turkey sandwich on white because they'd run out of mayonaise. A drunken troll VP gulping down a porterhouse slapped me on the ass and told me I was "fucking doing a great job, little lady."I may kill myself.
RUN AWAY AND TAKE ME WITH YOU!!
Erin Kovalikesbarxlshexz ( I hate my name! I hate my job! I hate people!)
Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant
The world is getting to be an odd place these days. There was a time, chronicled particularly well by Robert Sherrill decades ago in Gothic Politics in the Deep South. In it, he chronicles the sort of nonsense engaged by right wing ideologues where someone's capabilities and fitness were maligned by referring to them as a "notorious thesbian." Sherrill's book is still in copywright and available, and can be hilarious -- except it's entirely too true. Could easily be re-written with a new cast of characters, replacing Lester Maddox with Rick Scott and Herman Talmidge with Bob McDonnell. The new version of the old" entitled and progress-threatened" are smoother, don't so obviously smoke big cigars and drop" nigger, faggot, dyke, Cath-O-Lick . Macaca and Kike" as easily as their predecessors did 40 years ago. But, don't kid yourself that the old bigotry, parochial xenophobia and plain ignorance are still there. President Obama has ignored this for the most part, which I think has been a tactical mistake. Being above the struggle doesn't help either the struggle or yourself, when your pillar is torn down and you're dragged off to the nearest sour apple tree for lyniching. He's not confused, and knows exactly what he's up against -- he made a good humored but biting response to some of the nonsense when he told a crowd that the McCain campaign had just accused him of fathering two African American children. He should recycle that line...
Crispin Sartwell is a reasonably well regarded Political Philosopher. I say reasonably because he's entirely too prickly to ever be beloved by the philosophical community. Crispy is as much Demosthenes as Aristotle; a true small government guy, he's an anarchist. Seriously. And an associate professor of Philosophy at Dickinson College adjacent to the Army War College at Carlysle Barracks. Crispin has told me he really enjoys arguing and talking with the students and faculty there; he finds their candor and knowledge refreshing. Well, of course these are the service's intellectual high rollers being groomed for senior leadership roles. He probably never got to hang around a lot of complete idiots with stars like Tommy Franks or up and comming idiots like LTC (retired in lieu of Court Martial for violation of the Laws of Land Warfare) Allen West. Anyway, Crispin despite the being a practicing philosopher is a pretty level-headed guy and he wrote a piece today somewhat despairing of our ability to communicate in a radically polarized world.
"so insulated is each group from the other that the members of the opposite group sink to something like an inhuman or monstrous status. and within each group, the sources of information and opinion are shared, while almost no one, i believe, really goes and looks for something from the other side, which is strange to me. but i guess if it's already obvious that they're monsters or dolts, why would you? the funny thing is that if you subtract the politics and just work out in east berlin, pa or have lunch with a colleague, most all these people seem like ok people, so each one's idea that the other is evil or merely manipulated doesn't seem plausible. "
Crispin writes exceptionally well, especially when he's not writing philosophy. He tries, but as we all know, ever since Kierkegaard died of pneumonia and Wittgenstein got out of the asylum the idea of a philosopher writing something that makes you smile, laugh or yell, "Right On!" is a violation of the professional code and violates all the union rules about mandatory obfuscation and irrelevance. Anyay, he argues against taking your politics off the rack whether from Hannity or Krugman; he wonders about the actual degree of difference and the rhetorical exaggeration on both sides. I slightly part company with him here; the Krugmans, Blows, Finemans, Stiglitzes and others are quantitatively different than the Limbaughs and the Hannitys. MSNBC proudly trundles out Michael Steele and Steve Schmitt to discuss what's happening and I haven't heard Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell tell them to shut up or that they're pinheads. So, the equation of MSNBC and FOX is something of a reach. But, he is right -- there is a separation of the extremes on both sides from reality. You're wrong to equate someone like Barney Frank with Allan West, but someone who is willing to listen to Barney the Dorchester Bear will probably want to strangle West while the West Fan would steam for a few minutes and then run screaming from the room yelling "Barney Fag! Barney Fag!" in loving tribute to Dick Armey and ilk. Crispin has a solution that might have some merit...but only at the far, far extremes. And at those extremes, it won't work....because they're not going to be able to suspend their animus and preconceptions...
anyway: you can do better than that! if you are a dem i assign you to watch fox news's election coverage, if a rep, msnbc. that'd be a start anyway. think of yourself as an anthropologist; you want to try to figure out how these people think. or start with this question: how did these folks, who are indeed folks, i.e. things more or less like myself, come to this orientation?
Persona aside, I tend not to pick fights over politics with
strangers. If they’re saying things that are totally batshit, well, I probably
will not be able to convince them otherwise and the sake of argument is to
convince the other person. If I want to just babble insanely, I can do that in
the bathroom; or, on a blog. Why risk the aggravation?
However, a few weeks ago I was sitting with my wife who has
added macular degeneration to colon cancer as reasons to be happy for modern
medicine or to curse getting old. Or both – it’s a fine line. However, we were
waiting to see the ophthalmologist and the inner waiting room was filled with
seriously old people and on a big screen TV they were showing FOX NEWS. I
almost didn’t go in but decided that was stupid. She needs my support and so on
and so on. Well, the gentleman sitting next to me was in his 70s and both he
and his wife were there for some cataract work and possibly some Lasik. All
covered by Medicare, which is a great program and should have been extended for
all. Of course, the insurance companies and other interests including big
Pharma would have gone bat shit. However, given what happened in 2010, how much
worse could the whole Tea Party thing have been? Anyway, the guy started
talking about how Obama was looting Medicare to pay for Obamacare and…and
I couldn’t take anymore when he started in on the deficit. “Sir, like me you’re
old enough to do the arithmetic yourself; do it.” I then enumerated the factual
errors behind nonsense. The only medical benefit not paid for through taxes or
deductions in any program – Medicare, Medicaid or Obama care is the cost of the
prescription drug benefit. That simple. Want to know why we have a deficit? Two
wars, unpaid for prior to 2010; a galloping bureaucracy called Homeland
Security also largely not paid for; tax cuts with no offsets based on the absurd
idea that a budget surplus projected over 10 years should result in massive
reduction in tax cuts in year ZERO. The conversation was civil, and the guy
listened. I’m sure I’ve figured in some local Bircher conspiracy theory, but
what the hell…
I do not find that metaphorically shooting fish in a barrel
puts me in the same league as Hemingway’s Fisherman; arguing with this guy didn’t
make me the equivalent of Patrick Henry or Clarence Darrow. I decided to drop
the proselytizing. However, on the next visit, I refused to go back in that room
if that was on TV. My wife was grateful because it was making her angry to. One
thing the two of us are not about to complain about is health care that we have
– the health care available to others, on the contrary, deserves nothing but
condemnation. Not the medicine but the absolute BS that surrounds it.
So, last night we went to dinner at a place I haven’t been
since she was in the hospital. Owner had our table, and she made some sly digs
about not having seen me lately; after the second one as she bent over to
refill my tea, I said, “I got the digs…it’s ok.” Which elicited a laugh. Nice
place. Anyway, it was a little louder than usual and people were raising their
voices a bit so I felt like I was in the conversation at the next table, where
this braindead idiot started accusing Candy Crowley of having set up Mitt
Romney, that she and the President were in on it and how else could she have
known what the President had said about the Benghazi attack being an act of
terrorism? This time, the argument would have been unfriendly and impolite and
would have probably included language my young lady friend the owner would not
have wanted in her semi-upscale Bistro. Then the fool started in on Voter
Fraud. Then, they left…so, no political homicide last night by Crusader AXE of
the Lost Causes.
THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR MY KARMA. IT IS NOT GOOD FOR MY BLOOD
PRESSURE. IT NEEDS TO STOP. I AM SOOOOOO COMPLETELY READY FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE A
FOUR DECADE ORDEAL TO BE OVER!
Dr. Dennis Leary, author, Bon Vivant and Worcester native
who did not go to Holy Cross wrote a classic piece of American poetry entitled
“Life’s Gonna Suck”. That’s kind of the
way I feel about this election – regardless of what happens, life will continue
to suck for most of the world and actually, compared to what the potential
situation was compared to what is, for most Americans. I feel grateful, of
course, that this isn’t Darfur, or Bosnia, or Syria or Ukraine or Mogadishu or
Mumbai or any number other locations, hell holes to havens, Nigeria to Norway
and beyond. But, while I try to stay based in the reality world as opposed to
imaginary world loved by Karl Rove and the Republicans, every now and then I’m
overwhelmed by the desire to have things actually be good for once. Truth,
justice, freedom, fairness, great schools, great infrastructure, the babies
well fed, the young educated and optimistic and the old warm and secure. And,
despite my laughter at my Defeatist and Malcontent brothers and sisters over
their disappointment with the Obama Administration to actually, you know, what
for what it believes in, I envy them this – they aren’t willing to be satisfied
with a quarter cup of satisfaction and a promise of tomorrow. So, I am pretty
sure that whether Romney pulls it out, Obama bitch slaps him, or fuck it, Gary
Johnson somehow, in some universe is going to win, life will continue to suck.
More with Romney, less with Obama but still gonna suck.
I’m not the only one who believes this. Muy Amor Maureen Dowd, for example,
finds the idea of contrast between Obama and Romney less stark on the human
level. Romney, like Obama, is probably a great father. He’s probably good to
his wife. He probably doesn’t go down and poison pigeons in the park. He’s got
no reason to be president except that the Republican party is bankrupt of
leadership and it’s his turn using what seems to be their system of nominating
in the next general the guy defeated in previous primaries, based on the idea I
guess that candidates need to age, like fine wine or really foul cheese. But,
they’re not that different in some regards –
Much
was made of the alpha tone of the second presidential debate. But it was more
like a parody of alpha, a couple of pampered, manicured Harvard princes kicking
up “gorilla dust,” as Ross Perot calls it. In a truly commanding performance,
you don’t jab fingers, invade space, bark interruptions. Obama put aside his
disdain for jousts and woke up from the “nice, long nap I had in the first
debate,” as he wryly said at Thursday’s dinner. But he was overcompensating for
the first debacle, and he still didn’t have a vision or memorable zingers or a
knockout punch for a rival who hides in plain sight. Obama’s contempt for
Romney gleamed through as Mitt got all O.C.D. with Candy Crowley about the
rules, and rambled on about his weird retro worldview, where women in binders
have to bound home to make dinner, where the problem of too-easy access to
assault weapons could be helped if, gosh, we just tell “our kids that before
they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone.”
The problem is that Romney doesn’t really care about governing,
he cares about being elected. I envision him winning, turning domestic policy
over to Ryan and foreign policy over to Paul Wolfowitz or someone of his ilk
and then spending his days at one of the various Eastern, Western, Mid-Western,
Mid-Eastern White Houses he’ll have to have. One with a ring where Ann can use
her service animal, the Horse who shall not be named, who will be taken care of
at taxpayer expense because, after all, the Horse is a service animal. You
know, I still people with service animals like Vietnamese Potbellied Pigs and
Ferrets kind of odd…(Meet Jake, my Service Animal Python?) But, a horse? After all, he’ll need to visit the Mormon
Tabernacle frequently to be applauded; he’ll need to ride up and down in the
elevator so he can exercise his cars in California and then there’s boating in
New Hampshire and petting his money at Bain Capital. The dude will be busy.
Now, Maureen Dowd points out that Obama really isn’t that
interested in politics; the things you have to do to get elected or re-elected
either irritate him or amuse him wryly. He’s interested in actually governing;
and, he has problems with people who think they are entitled to office because
of their royal status (Bush, Republican Royalty: McCain, Navy Royalty; Romney, Mormon
Royalty.) Being very much an actual
self-made man, he doesn’t get the idea of having power solely to do what,
exactly.
There’s a famous quote from Jack Kennedy about a
formal dinner at the White House for the American Nobel Winners. Now, JFK
appears to have actually enjoyed the social aspects of politics and the give
and take of what you need to do to get elected as well as govern. He was
friends with people like Barry Goldwater; he liked going to state dinners; his
sense of humor was generally directed at himself or at the pretensions
surrounding him, the White House or personalities. In his speech to honor the
laureates, Kennedy said, "I think this is the most extraordinary
collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together
in the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson
dined alone." Same sensibility, different attitude toward the process that
got him there. He appreciated the irony but reveled in it. Consider these other
quotes:
"Those of you who regard
my profession of political life with distain should remember that it made it
possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States
Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical
competence."
"Politics
is an astonishing profession. It has enabled me to go from being an obscure
member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the
Football Hall of Fame."
If President Obama had really wanted to nail this, he would
have quoted another JFK line continuously since taking office and finding out
what a debacle he had inherited. "When we got into office, the thing that
surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying
they were." (May 27, 1961)
The main point, however, is that the Romney team is
willfully, nakedly, distorting the record, leading Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff
— who aren’t affiliated with either campaign — to protest against “gross misinterpretations of the facts.” And this
should worry you.Look, economics isn’t as much of a science as we’d like. But
when there’s overwhelming evidence for an economic proposition — as there is
for the proposition that financial-crisis recessions are different — we have
the right to expect politicians and their advisers to respect that evidence.
Otherwise, they’ll end up making policy based on fantasies rather than
grappling with reality. And once politicians start refusing to acknowledge
inconvenient facts, where does it stop? Why, the next thing you know Republicans
will start rejecting the overwhelming evidence for man-made climate change. Oh,
wait.
As
Krugman has pointed out repeatedly, this is not rocket science, although
rocket science would do a lot for an economy in Florida and Houston and Shelby
Mississippi and California where there are a lot of out of work rocket
scientists, engineers and blue collar folks. But, it is a variation from the
Gospel of Reagan economics and therefore a lot of people will run screaming
from the room that the idea is unclean. Barrack Obama doesn’t get this – he’s a
rational man who may have lived a chaotic youth but has no affinity for chaos.
He thinks rational people should work from agreed reality, not fantasy. In
comparison to his clown-college opponents Obama wants to be a philosopher king.
Well, the track record of philosopher kings isn’t all that great –Doing policy
that is meaningful demands realizing that he’s a political entity and has to do
the things he doesn’t like that seem unworthy of the office. Mitt Romney wants
an ascension, not accepting that he’s not going to have any room to move and
will be merely a ceremonial figurehead.
The news that there may be an agreement in principle for the
Iranians to sit down directly with the US and negotiate the nuclear question is
fascinating to me; Romney is a salesman, Obama is a Wilsonian figure. Romney
will be all about the deal and any deal will be a great deal; Obama will want a
deal but he’ll want a decent deal that’s reasonably fair to all the
stakeholders. Certainly there are enough of them in the equation – if you’re in
the same time zone as Iran, you’re invested in the outcome of those talks. Who
gets the better deal – the guy who’ll be desperate to prove he’s worthy of
being president and knows nothing about foreign affairs except for what John
Bolton tells him; or the guy who channels Lincoln and selected his greatest
rival to be secretary of State but is super-willing to assume good faith on the
part of people who can’t spell it.. Of course, the White House now says that
there will be no talks soon…I’m not sure that has any meaning anyway, given the
glacial way in which US-Iran relations have staggered along since 1979.
The news that there’s been another mass shooting, this time
in Wisconsin in a Spa is somewhat intriguing at this point despite being a run-of-the
mill domestic violence case gone even further off the tracks. Obama has never,
to my knowledge claimed to have anything to do with guns as an individual;
Romney has claimed to be a life-long hunter shooting “varmints.” Of course,
this example of wanton murder and excess is undoubtedly due to…what, exactly? Violent
video games? Birth control? Abortion? Poor childhood nutrition? Lack of social
services? Jobs? Depression? Fear? Socialism? At the end of the day, there is no
one explanation for evil, but my guess is that abortion and birth control
issues are pretty remotely connected, unless the guy shot up a Planned
Parenthood office. But one thing that I do know is that if guns are less
available, it will be harder for OCD people to fixate on them because they’ll
be harder to get. In this case, it turns out the guy had a restraining order
filed by his wife, was under orders to stay away from her and to not possess
firearms. Yet, there he was. Certainly
in Scott Walker’s beloved Wisconsin there are enough laws to control domestic
violence and it has to be the fault of the unions somehow, right? No. Not
enough cops, not enough controls and too easy to get guns. Be interesting to
know where he got the gun – guns show at a church; from someone at a parking
lot? His mother?
Persona aside, I tend not to pick fights over politics with
strangers. If they’re saying things that are totally batshit, well, I probably
will not be able to convince them otherwise and the sake of argument is to
convince the other person. If I want to just babble insanely, I can do that in
the bathroom; or, on a blog. Why risk the aggravation?
However, a few weeks ago I was sitting with my wife who has
added macular degeneration to colon cancer as reasons to be happy for modern
medicine or to curse getting old. Or both – it’s a fine line. However, we were
waiting to see the ophthalmologist and the inner waiting room was filled with
seriously old people and on a big screen TV they were showing FOX NEWS. I
almost didn’t go in but decided that was stupid. She needs my support and so on
and so on. Well, the gentleman sitting next to me was in his 70s and both he
and his wife were there for some cataract work and possibly some Lasik. All
covered by Medicare, which is a great program and should have been extended for
all. Of course, the insurance companies and other interests including big
Pharma would have gone bat shit. However, given what happened in 2010, how much
worse could the whole Tea Party thing have been? Anyway, the guy started
talking about how Obama was looting Medicare to pay for Obamacare and…and
I couldn’t take anymore when he started in on the deficit. “Sir, like me you’re
old enough to do the arithmetic yourself; do it.” I then enumerated the factual
errors behind nonsense. The only medical benefit not paid for through taxes or
deductions in any program – Medicare, Medicaid or Obama care is the cost of the
prescription drug benefit. That simple. Want to know why we have a deficit? Two
wars, unpaid for prior to 2010; a galloping bureaucracy called Homeland
Security also largely not paid for; tax cuts with no offsets based on the absurd
idea that a budget surplus projected over 10 years should result in massive
reduction in tax cuts in year ZERO. The conversation was civil, and the guy
listened. I’m sure I’ve figured in some local Bircher conspiracy theory, but
what the hell…
I do not find that metaphorically shooting fish in a barrel
puts me in the same league as Hemingway’s Fisherman; arguing with this guy didn’t
make me the equivalent of Patrick Henry or Clarence Darrow. I decided to drop
the proselytizing. However, on the next visit, I refused to go back in that room
if that was on TV. My wife was grateful because it was making her angry to. One
thing the two of us are not about to complain about is health care that we have
– the health care available to others, on the contrary, deserves nothing but
condemnation. Not the medicine but the absolute BS that surrounds it.
So, last night we went to dinner at a place I haven’t been
since she was in the hospital. Owner had our table, and she made some sly digs
about not having seen me lately; after the second one as she bent over to
refill my tea, I said, “I got the digs…it’s ok.” Which elicited a laugh. Nice
place. Anyway, it was a little louder than usual and people were raising their
voices a bit so I felt like I was in the conversation at the next table, where
this braindead idiot started accusing Candy Crowley of having set up Mitt
Romney, that she and the President were in on it and how else could she have
known what the President had said about the Benghazi attack being an act of
terrorism? This time, the argument would have been unfriendly and impolite and
would have probably included language my young lady friend the owner would not
have wanted in her semi-upscale Bistro. Then the fool started in on Voter
Fraud. Then, they left…so, no political homicide last night by Crusader AXE of
the Lost Causes.
THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR MY KARMA. IT IS NOT GOOD FOR MY BLOOD
PRESSURE. IT NEEDS TO STOP. I AM SOOOOOO COMPLETELY READY FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE A
FOUR DECADE ORDEAL TO BE OVER!
Dr. Dennis Leary, author, Bon Vivant and Worcester native
who did not go to Holy Cross wrote a classic piece of American poetry entitled
“Life’s Gonna Suck”. That’s kind of the
way I feel about this election – regardless of what happens, life will continue
to suck for most of the world and actually, compared to what the potential
situation was compared to what is, for most Americans. I feel grateful, of
course, that this isn’t Darfur, or Bosnia, or Syria or Ukraine or Mogadishu or
Mumbai or any number other locations, hell holes to havens, Nigeria to Norway
and beyond. But, while I try to stay based in the reality world as opposed to
imaginary world loved by Karl Rove and the Republicans, every now and then I’m
overwhelmed by the desire to have things actually be good for once. Truth,
justice, freedom, fairness, great schools, great infrastructure, the babies
well fed, the young educated and optimistic and the old warm and secure. And,
despite my laughter at my Defeatist and Malcontent brothers and sisters over
their disappointment with the Obama Administration to actually, you know, what
for what it believes in, I envy them this – they aren’t willing to be satisfied
with a quarter cup of satisfaction and a promise of tomorrow. So, I am pretty
sure that whether Romney pulls it out, Obama bitch slaps him, or fuck it, Gary
Johnson somehow, in some universe is going to win, life will continue to suck.
More with Romney, less with Obama but still gonna suck.
I’m not the only one who believes this. Muy Amor Maureen Dowd, for example,
finds the idea of contrast between Obama and Romney less stark on the human
level. Romney, like Obama, is probably a great father. He’s probably good to
his wife. He probably doesn’t go down and poison pigeons in the park. He’s got
no reason to be president except that the Republican party is bankrupt of
leadership and it’s his turn using what seems to be their system of nominating
in the next general the guy defeated in previous primaries, based on the idea I
guess that candidates need to age, like fine wine or really foul cheese. But,
they’re not that different in some regards –
Much
was made of the alpha tone of the second presidential debate. But it was more
like a parody of alpha, a couple of pampered, manicured Harvard princes kicking
up “gorilla dust,” as Ross Perot calls it. In a truly commanding performance,
you don’t jab fingers, invade space, bark interruptions. Obama put aside his
disdain for jousts and woke up from the “nice, long nap I had in the first
debate,” as he wryly said at Thursday’s dinner. But he was overcompensating for
the first debacle, and he still didn’t have a vision or memorable zingers or a
knockout punch for a rival who hides in plain sight. Obama’s contempt for
Romney gleamed through as Mitt got all O.C.D. with Candy Crowley about the
rules, and rambled on about his weird retro worldview, where women in binders
have to bound home to make dinner, where the problem of too-easy access to
assault weapons could be helped if, gosh, we just tell “our kids that before
they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone.”
The problem is that Romney doesn’t really care about governing,
he cares about being elected. I envision him winning, turning domestic policy
over to Ryan and foreign policy over to Paul Wolfowitz or someone of his ilk
and then spending his days at one of the various Eastern, Western, Mid-Western,
Mid-Eastern White Houses he’ll have to have. One with a ring where Ann can use
her service animal, the Horse who shall not be named, who will be taken care of
at taxpayer expense because, after all, the Horse is a service animal. You
know, I still people with service animals like Vietnamese Potbellied Pigs and
Ferrets kind of odd…(Meet Jake, my Service Animal Python?) But, a horse? After all, he’ll need to visit the Mormon
Tabernacle frequently to be applauded; he’ll need to ride up and down in the
elevator so he can exercise his cars in California and then there’s boating in
New Hampshire and petting his money at Bain Capital. The dude will be busy.
Now, Maureen Dowd points out that Obama really isn’t that
interested in politics; the things you have to do to get elected or re-elected
either irritate him or amuse him wryly. He’s interested in actually governing;
and, he has problems with people who think they are entitled to office because
of their royal status (Bush, Republican Royalty: McCain, Navy Royalty; Romney, Mormon
Royalty.) Being very much an actual
self-made man, he doesn’t get the idea of having power solely to do what,
exactly.
There’s a famous quote from Jack Kennedy about a
formal dinner at the White House for the American Nobel Winners. Now, JFK
appears to have actually enjoyed the social aspects of politics and the give
and take of what you need to do to get elected as well as govern. He was
friends with people like Barry Goldwater; he liked going to state dinners; his
sense of humor was generally directed at himself or at the pretensions
surrounding him, the White House or personalities. In his speech to honor the
laureates, Kennedy said, "I think this is the most extraordinary
collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together
in the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson
dined alone." Same sensibility, different attitude toward the process that
got him there. He appreciated the irony but reveled in it. Consider these other
quotes:
"Those of you who regard
my profession of political life with distain should remember that it made it
possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States
Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical
competence."
"Politics
is an astonishing profession. It has enabled me to go from being an obscure
member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the
Football Hall of Fame."
If President Obama had really wanted to nail this, he would
have quoted another JFK line continuously since taking office and finding out
what a debacle he had inherited. "When we got into office, the thing that
surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying
they were." (May 27, 1961)
The main point, however, is that the Romney team is
willfully, nakedly, distorting the record, leading Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff
— who aren’t affiliated with either campaign — to protest against “gross misinterpretations of the facts.” And this
should worry you.Look, economics isn’t as much of a science as we’d like. But
when there’s overwhelming evidence for an economic proposition — as there is
for the proposition that financial-crisis recessions are different — we have
the right to expect politicians and their advisers to respect that evidence.
Otherwise, they’ll end up making policy based on fantasies rather than
grappling with reality. And once politicians start refusing to acknowledge
inconvenient facts, where does it stop? Why, the next thing you know Republicans
will start rejecting the overwhelming evidence for man-made climate change. Oh,
wait.
As
Krugman has pointed out repeatedly, this is not rocket science, although
rocket science would do a lot for an economy in Florida and Houston and Shelby
Mississippi and California where there are a lot of out of work rocket
scientists, engineers and blue collar folks. But, it is a variation from the
Gospel of Reagan economics and therefore a lot of people will run screaming
from the room that the idea is unclean. Barrack Obama doesn’t get this – he’s a
rational man who may have lived a chaotic youth but has no affinity for chaos.
He thinks rational people should work from agreed reality, not fantasy. In
comparison to his clown-college opponents Obama wants to be a philosopher king.
Well, the track record of philosopher kings isn’t all that great –Doing policy
that is meaningful demands realizing that he’s a political entity and has to do
the things he doesn’t like that seem unworthy of the office. Mitt Romney wants
an ascension, not accepting that he’s not going to have any room to move and
will be merely a ceremonial figurehead.
The news that there may be an agreement in principle for the
Iranians to sit down directly with the US and negotiate the nuclear question is
fascinating to me; Romney is a salesman, Obama is a Wilsonian figure. Romney
will be all about the deal and any deal will be a great deal; Obama will want a
deal but he’ll want a decent deal that’s reasonably fair to all the
stakeholders. Certainly there are enough of them in the equation – if you’re in
the same time zone as Iran, you’re invested in the outcome of those talks. Who
gets the better deal – the guy who’ll be desperate to prove he’s worthy of
being president and knows nothing about foreign affairs except for what John
Bolton tells him; or the guy who channels Lincoln and selected his greatest
rival to be secretary of State but is super-willing to assume good faith on the
part of people who can’t spell it.. Of course, the White House now says that
there will be no talks soon…I’m not sure that has any meaning anyway, given the
glacial way in which US-Iran relations have staggered along since 1979.
The news that there’s been another mass shooting, this time
in Wisconsin in a Spa is somewhat intriguing at this point despite being a run-of-the
mill domestic violence case gone even further off the tracks. Obama has never,
to my knowledge claimed to have anything to do with guns as an individual;
Romney has claimed to be a life-long hunter shooting “varmints.” Of course,
this example of wanton murder and excess is undoubtedly due to…what, exactly? Violent
video games? Birth control? Abortion? Poor childhood nutrition? Lack of social
services? Jobs? Depression? Fear? Socialism? At the end of the day, there is no
one explanation for evil, but my guess is that abortion and birth control
issues are pretty remotely connected, unless the guy shot up a Planned
Parenthood office. But one thing that I do know is that if guns are less
available, it will be harder for OCD people to fixate on them because they’ll
be harder to get. In this case, it turns out the guy had a restraining order
filed by his wife, was under orders to stay away from her and to not possess
firearms. Yet, there he was. Certainly
in Scott Walker’s beloved Wisconsin there are enough laws to control domestic
violence and it has to be the fault of the unions somehow, right? No. Not
enough cops, not enough controls and too easy to get guns. Be interesting to
know where he got the gun – guns show at a church; from someone at a parking
lot? His mother?
1. IS THERE ANY PURPOSE SERVED ONTOLOGICALLY BY THE NATION STATE AS CURRENTLY UNDERSTOOD AS OPPOSED TO AS PRACTICED?
2. WHICH DECADE HAD THE BEST RIFF DRIVEN ROCK MUSIC?
Metaphysically, both are equally valid questions and worth considering. The first is probably the more common for us to muse about, but the second probably speaks more to my immediate concerns as well as having more to do with something discussable.
Now, I have argued in the past that various rock lists on Rolling Stone or Gibson.Com or PowerPop or other such sites are doomed to arguement and complaint.
Horace is credited with writing, "De gustibus non disputandum est" or"There is no accounting for tastes" or "It's all good, man" in hipster--hippy. Horace was a skirt wearing twit and anyway, all they had to listen to was flute, lyre and cymbal music plus those huge horns that the legion trumpeters played. It gets more difficult and more divisive and there are in fact value judgements to be made about this stuff.
Gibson has a new comparison set up for argument, and this one is intriguing because it's totally impossible to resolve thanks to Horace but opens us up to more interesting questions concerning the arbitrary nature of human time and dating. Isn't the arbitrary division of time into periods of 60-60-24-7-28-29-30-31-10-100-1000 a distortion of space and time?
You see Gibson.com is questioning which decade in the rock and roll chronology (60s-70s-80s) has the best riffs. If you're like me, you see rock music as driven by riffs, the rhythmic slap-dash-dribble that identifies the song before anything else happens to the synapses. One reason that cover songs can go awry is that the covering artist is tryng to take something that belongs to a set of synapses that belong to Mick and Keith and get them accommodated to Barry and Billy. The authors admit it's an arbitrary use of time that disregards people like Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, James Burton and Kurt Kobain. However, my thought is a bit different.
Perhaps a silly quibble, , but I think 10 years in rock is too long; if you're going to use ten years, start in the middle. The 60s get shortchanged because what burst into rock and roll then didn't really start until 65 and what music that was worth talking about wasn't really different until Punk hit. My preference is probably the 60s because I am old and that was the decade that got me. But the period from 72-80 was interesting for Southern Rock, American Kosmic and LedZepp...So classic chronology makes no real sense. If we use Elvis as the benchmark, then pre-Elvis (BE)would end in 55. After Elvis (AE) would have been 56- to today.
Now, the first question is the sort of meaty thing that a lot of us prefer. I'm throwing it out for discussion here because I think it needs discussion during this political period. While I admit to having a very parochial America-centric point of view, when you have the Mexican Navy fighting renegade Army Special Forces over the body of a drug lord, you have to wonder what the hell sense does it make to call Mexico a nation at the moment; at best, it resembles Germany around the time of the Defenestration of Prague. At worst, it's Hobbes-land and in danger of spreading. Or, consider the whole Putin-Pussy Riot-Emperor Cult of the Order of the KGBgoing on in Russia? Is it a nation state as we understand the concept or some throwback with Medvedev and Putin trading offices back and forth?
Consider Israel for example. I do not share the immediate Pavlovian reaction of some of my Veterans Today readers to the mention of the place. But, Mosad has always operated as those borders were arbitrary and didn't apply to the protection of the Jewish State. Frankly, that's a British concept that developed in paralell to Rome's doctrine of "Civis Romanus Sum" which was their way of saying, "You're not the boss of me, so fuck off!" The British applied it during the great Anglo-Spanish war of Jenkins Earbefore making it real doctrine in Palmerston's term as Prime Minister in 1850 concerning the blockade of Greece to protect the rights and privileges of British citizens regardless of what meaningless backwaters they chose to cavort in. So, it's a concept that lies in the territory of arrogance, greed and paranoia.
As for us, are we a nation state anymore? The legislative branch is incapble of legislating, the executive pretty much goes its own ways, and the courts appear to be wholly own subsidiaries of big business and Objectivists set on plunder.
One thing about the most honest devotees of that somewhat horrible person beloved by Paul Ryan and Alan Greenspan is that they make no pretense of actually caring about the rest of the polity. THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR THE NATION STATEsince it's about the nation as a whole not individuals or classes within the nation. Feudalism or some atomized form of tribalism is the ideal state to maximize the potential of individual wealth in the anti-empathetic civilization envisioned by these folks. If you consider the traditional Republican business class, they've compromised with the rabble and the ideologues to the point that they resemble somewhat the Democratic party in the 80s, or the Optimates of Cicero and Cato depending on Milo's gang to stop Caesar and the Populares...capable of vicious bites but unable to chew up the prey. As for the Democrats, they have issues with the exercise of state power. Well, the state exists to protect the polity...
My brothers range from anarchists to Quietists to so Zenned Out I wonder if they're still sentient. Now, I am not an anarchist nor am I a millenium awaiter, hoping that the end times are upon us. Humankind will either kill itself off or not (So long and thanks for all the fish!) and if it manages not to kill itself off, something different will come along. But, it's worth wondering about...is it time for a new game?What will that new game be? Splitting up the world between Drug Cartels and Multinationals doesn't strike me as the greatest solution either.
So, I ask that you respond in the same whimsical but cold-blooded way in which I've posed this. Respond to both or either or call this Cat a Bastard and spit on my rug. We'll see. But, which decade has the best rock riffs and what and why; and, is the nationstate something that has a future, and why or why not?
What the hell? Why not? Ehh...
Oh, while I eagerly await the brilliance on both questions, I think the 60s, although truncated by Teen Idols and Beach Movies had the best hooks. The Beatles initially were a continuation of the Teen Idols, but things rapidly changed -- first great rif for me was probably the Animals House of the Rising Sun; however, that was overcome, overtaken and overwhelmed by The Rolling Stones and The Last Time -- until I heard Like a Rolling Stone. For me, Dylan is god and Keith Richards is his prophet.
But the employment data do suggest an economy that is slowly healing, an economy in which declining consumer debt burdens and a housing revival have finally put us on the road back to full employment.
And that’s the truth that the right can’t handle. The furor over Friday’s report revealed a political movement that is rooting for American failure, so obsessed with taking down Mr. Obama that good news for the nation’s long-suffering workers drives its members into a blind rage. It also revealed a movement that lives in an intellectual bubble, dealing with uncomfortable reality — whether that reality involves polls or economic data — not just by denying the facts, but by spinning wild conspiracy theories.
It is, quite simply, frightening to think that a movement this deranged wields so much political power. --Paul Krugman, 10-8-2012
One of the neglected aspects of the whole Sharia Law concern in the parts of the country where Catfish appear to outnumber sentient human beings is the relation of Islam to the Judeo-Christian stream of thought. Mohammed was heavily influenced by the Old and New Testaments and refers at length to the role of and need for Muslims to care for the "people of the book" by whom he means Christians and Jews. Someone who cares about this should write something ...oh, yeah, it's been written a lot over the centuries. But, we're Amurrekans and we don't need no book learnin' outside of the bible and some cipherin'...
We’ll begin with homosexuality, because it is here that Sharia law and fundamentalist Christianity truly collide. According to a 2012 article in The Guardian, the Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, an Islamic scholar, stated that homosexuals are inferior to dogs and pigs. Citing the Qur’an, he made the argument for killing homosexuals by hanging. Pastor Curtis Knapp recently said, during a sermon, that the United States government should kill all gay people. Pastor Charles Worley wants to put the LGBT community in concentration camps and let them die out. So, fundamentalist Christian leaders agree with an Islamic scholar, a follower of Sharia law, that all homosexuals should be killed.
However, there isn't a lot of difference between Leviticus and the Koran. Witches and adulterers get stoned, blasphemers get stoned, heretics get stoned, and basically if you step out of line, you get stoned. If you steal, you lose a hand; if you lie, you lose a tongue and so on. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth..." Muslims aren't excited about male circumcision, but it's sandy in Arabia and I guess the wound could get sand in it. Female circumcision is a different story in some parts of the Arab world. However, unclean food, ritual slaughterhouses, schools specializing in the Koran or the Torah....lots of similarities. Now, the big difference is that in general Christians and Jews are not overly excited about applying the rules of Leviticus to the community, where some Muslim sects are.
Well, guess what -- fundamentalist Christians appear to be in favor of applying Leviticus to American life. Since it's not their Muslim God's rules but our Christian God's rules, that's OK! USA! USA!
Hey Leviticus, I need a little informationI'm afraid the guys next door are an abominationThey only got one bed, and all their friends are guysHey Leviticus, does god want them to die
Hey Leviticus, I got a kid who's drivin me crazyI'm thinking about sellin her into slaverySo how much do you ask, for a 13-year-old kidHey Leviticus, should I just take the highest bid
Hey Leviticus, I got a problem with my villageWhen I defeat a foe they won't let me plunder and pillageAnd they won't let me burn a lamb on the altar to celebrateHey Leviticus, will god accept a gyro plate --Jim Schwall, 2004
Except, of course, it's not and it's insanely unconstitutional as well as abhorrent to reason. We have one clown telling his constituents that the teaching of evolution is just the mouth of hell or some such insane crap; we have another one babbling about how great slavery really was for African Americans who didn't get how important a good education was, and now we have one advocating the death penalty for disobedient and rebellious children. Granted there'd be judicial review but the bible says it's the way to discipline a child who won't comply so...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Well as is so often the case with Zealots throughout history, you have the nexus of ignorance and manipulation by the unscrupulous. Newt Gingrich is not a stupid man or an ignorant one -- he is a vile toad, of course, but that's Callista's problem. He would seem a better candidate for Islam than Catholicism, given the Islamic ease of divorce as opposed to the Catholic opposition to it. Of course, she was singing in the choir of the National Cathedral while they were cheating on his wife, so what the hell -- I wonder what a Mezzo-Soprano high C does during a Tea Bag session? Anyway, Gingrich warns of Sharia Law creeping, and then warns of the Kenyan Mau Mau Muslim influences on Obama and then buys into the latest conspiracy theory that our friends over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics cooked the books on the Employment Numbers. Nobody is really paying attention to Jack Welch these days, so he chimes in from his pulpit as past CEO of GE and claims some level of divine revelation that the numbers don't feel right so he can get another 15 minutes of fame. Donald Trump pops up to agree...These guys aren't ignorant hillbillies; they are playing to a crowd and pushing buttons for what they see as a greater good.
You know, I can understand not trusting the government. However, we should probably focus more on distrusting the ability of complex systems to interface with a complex world as opposed to the fear that the evil ones (Capitalists, Communists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Space Aliens, Mormons, Templar Knights, Reptilians) have taken it over and are doing all sorts of evil and miguided and criminal and disgusting things to everything just because they can. The more complex the system the more complex the methods needed to game it. At some point, conspiracy theories break down because it just gets too goddamned complicated. In interrogation, and interstingly in Lean Management, there's a system of asking questions -- sometime five, sometimes 7 to get to root causes or to break down a subject's story. Theory is that at some point, the mind is no longer capable of maintaining the lie, unless the subject is totally sociopathic. The more moving parts, the harder it is to keep them functioning together, in sync. This is why Rube Goldberg systems are funny -- we know that the link between the chicken, the bowling ball, the electric light bulb and the piano tuning fork will fail and hilarity will ensue. It's the same with conspiracy theories; it's the same with Sharia Law and Leviticus. The more complex, the more dictatorial, the more unyielding the less realistic, the less responsive and the less effective. It's reassuring at times to see something like the Kennedy Assasination as a big conspiracy -- we feel safer that it takes some monstrous cabal to do monstrous things. However, we delude ourselves. Occam's Razor may not always be right, but in human affairs, it's more right most of the time than any other approach.
But the employment data do suggest an economy that is slowly healing, an economy in which declining consumer debt burdens and a housing revival have finally put us on the road back to full employment.
And that’s the truth that the right can’t handle. The furor over Friday’s report revealed a political movement that is rooting for American failure, so obsessed with taking down Mr. Obama that good news for the nation’s long-suffering workers drives its members into a blind rage. It also revealed a movement that lives in an intellectual bubble, dealing with uncomfortable reality — whether that reality involves polls or economic data — not just by denying the facts, but by spinning wild conspiracy theories.
It is, quite simply, frightening to think that a movement this deranged wields so much political power. --Paul Krugman, 10-8-2012
One of the neglected aspects of the whole Sharia Law concern in the parts of the country where Catfish appear to outnumber sentient human beings is the relation of Islam to the Judeo-Christian stream of thought. Mohammed was heavily influenced by the Old and New Testaments and refers at length to the role of and need for Muslims to care for the "people of the book" by whom he means Christians and Jews. Someone who cares about this should write something ...oh, yeah, it's been written a lot over the centuries. But, we're Amurrekans and we don't need no book learnin' outside of the bible and some cipherin'...
We’ll begin with homosexuality, because it is here that Sharia law and fundamentalist Christianity truly collide. According to a 2012 article in The Guardian, the Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, an Islamic scholar, stated that homosexuals are inferior to dogs and pigs. Citing the Qur’an, he made the argument for killing homosexuals by hanging. Pastor Curtis Knapp recently said, during a sermon, that the United States government should kill all gay people. Pastor Charles Worley wants to put the LGBT community in concentration camps and let them die out. So, fundamentalist Christian leaders agree with an Islamic scholar, a follower of Sharia law, that all homosexuals should be killed.
However, there isn't a lot of difference between Leviticus and the Koran. Witches and adulterers get stoned, blasphemers get stoned, heretics get stoned, and basically if you step out of line, you get stoned. If you steal, you lose a hand; if you lie, you lose a tongue and so on. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth..." Muslims aren't excited about male circumcision, but it's sandy in Arabia and I guess the wound could get sand in it. Female circumcision is a different story in some parts of the Arab world. However, unclean food, ritual slaughterhouses, schools specializing in the Koran or the Torah....lots of similarities. Now, the big difference is that in general Christians and Jews are not overly excited about applying the rules of Leviticus to the community, where some Muslim sects are.
Well, guess what -- fundamentalist Christians appear to be in favor of applying Leviticus to American life. Since it's not their Muslim God's rules but our Christian God's rules, that's OK! USA! USA!
Hey Leviticus, I need a little informationI'm afraid the guys next door are an abominationThey only got one bed, and all their friends are guysHey Leviticus, does god want them to die
Hey Leviticus, I got a kid who's drivin me crazyI'm thinking about sellin her into slaverySo how much do you ask, for a 13-year-old kidHey Leviticus, should I just take the highest bid
Hey Leviticus, I got a problem with my villageWhen I defeat a foe they won't let me plunder and pillageAnd they won't let me burn a lamb on the altar to celebrateHey Leviticus, will god accept a gyro plate --Jim Schwall, 2004
Except, of course, it's not and it's insanely unconstitutional as well as abhorrent to reason. We have one clown telling his constituents that the teaching of evolution is just the mouth of hell or some such insane crap; we have another one babbling about how great slavery really was for African Americans who didn't get how important a good education was, and now we have one advocating the death penalty for disobedient and rebellious children. Granted there'd be judicial review but the bible says it's the way to discipline a child who won't comply so...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Well as is so often the case with Zealots throughout history, you have the nexus of ignorance and manipulation by the unscrupulous. Newt Gingrich is not a stupid man or an ignorant one -- he is a vile toad, of course, but that's Callista's problem. He would seem a better candidate for Islam than Catholicism, given the Islamic ease of divorce as opposed to the Catholic opposition to it. Of course, she was singing in the choir of the National Cathedral while they were cheating on his wife, so what the hell -- I wonder what a Mezzo-Soprano high C does during a Tea Bag session? Anyway, Gingrich warns of Sharia Law creeping, and then warns of the Kenyan Mau Mau Muslim influences on Obama and then buys into the latest conspiracy theory that our friends over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics cooked the books on the Employment Numbers. Nobody is really paying attention to Jack Welch these days, so he chimes in from his pulpit as past CEO of GE and claims some level of divine revelation that the numbers don't feel right so he can get another 15 minutes of fame. Donald Trump pops up to agree...These guys aren't ignorant hillbillies; they are playing to a crowd and pushing buttons for what they see as a greater good.
You know, I can understand not trusting the government. However, we should probably focus more on distrusting the ability of complex systems to interface with a complex world as opposed to the fear that the evil ones (Capitalists, Communists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Space Aliens, Mormons, Templar Knights, Reptilians) have taken it over and are doing all sorts of evil and miguided and criminal and disgusting things to everything just because they can. The more complex the system the more complex the methods needed to game it. At some point, conspiracy theories break down because it just gets too goddamned complicated. In interrogation, and interstingly in Lean Management, there's a system of asking questions -- sometime five, sometimes 7 to get to root causes or to break down a subject's story. Theory is that at some point, the mind is no longer capable of maintaining the lie, unless the subject is totally sociopathic. The more moving parts, the harder it is to keep them functioning together, in sync. This is why Rube Goldberg systems are funny -- we know that the link between the chicken, the bowling ball, the electric light bulb and the piano tuning fork will fail and hilarity will ensue. It's the same with conspiracy theories; it's the same with Sharia Law and Leviticus. The more complex, the more dictatorial, the more unyielding the less realistic, the less responsive and the less effective. It's reassuring at times to see something like the Kennedy Assasination as a big conspiracy -- we feel safer that it takes some monstrous cabal to do monstrous things. However, we delude ourselves. Occam's Razor may not always be right, but in human affairs, it's more right most of the time than any other approach.
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan largely because they were totally frustrated with their client state's inability to do just about anything that they expected them to do. The people of the former Soviet Union are still suffering the impact of that decision. Russia is still engaged in the continuing kerfluffle in the Caucasus but that at least seems consistent. Chechnya is a small scale version of Afghanistan but Russia has all the cards; we're not arming the Chechens, and the various Islamic cash cows have avoided providing a lot of support beyond prayer and some limited humanitarian. Part of that has to do with the global war on terror's chilling effect on dissident elements in various Islamic nations; part of it has to do with the fact that the Chechens have proven themselves to be basically threats to anybody they don't like very much.
Senate floor before the either the President or the White House could make the announcement to complain that the offer of aid was obviously insufficient and we need a no-fly zone and a CAP. Hard for me to see much of an up side, given that once again, they're all evil bastards and whatever we do will turn out wrong. On one side, we have the Assad regime which is a totally awful bunch of psychopaths assisted by Hezbollah another total bunch of psychopaths and funded by the Iranians whose government is almost but not quite in the North Korean government mode of batshit insane. Yeah, anything might be better -- until we look at the rebels, who are a hodgepodge of factions and elements who are opposed to the Assad control because of tyranny and evil and...oh yeah, the Assad family is Alawite, a Shiite sect that is a minority in Syria but seized power back in the day as part of the Baathist movement under this Assad's dad. If you recall the Sadr clan in Iraq fondly, then you'll love the rebels because they represent the mirror image of the Shiites in Iraq. In Syria, the Sunnis are the majority and they've been jerked around unconscionably by the Shiites under the Assad family. So, there are people who are opposed to the regime because the regime is bad and they want to do better; and, there are people who just want to kill the Alawites.
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