"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 generic concept of “The Union” might be big and on the big scale it might over-reach and when you look at it only in the largest context it might sometimes be as irresponsible as some of the smaller of the big corporations, when you look at what it really is – the collected drops-in-the-bucket of the individually powerless $18,568 teacher’s aide in Fond du Lac or the $23,559 traffic warden in Milwaukee or the $48,152 cop in Appleton, or the $22,233 radio sportscaster in New York in 1980 – “The Union” is the only protection you have when the drunken boss comes in to fire you because he doesn’t like you, or because he got elected on a promise to his puppet-masters that he’d fire you and everybody else like you so as to soften this country up to pit the urban middle class against the rural middle class so nobody’s paying attention as the corporations reduce everybody they can to subsistence levels while they take the collected drops-in-the-bucket of the mere thousands of bucks stolen from the fired or the de-unionized or the retirement-delayed, and turn them into more millions to stuff into their own pockets.
Hey, Keith Olbermann can be a smug pain in the ass; on the other hand, he's knowledgable, consistent to his principles and doesn't hesitate to piss off the powers that be. It appears that he has a problem I've shared, great bosses who have lousy bosses. His new blog is up and it's got some interesting stuff in it. If I had been his boss, would I have shoved him out the door the day we made the decision? Probably not --I understand why MSNBC might have been nervous about a prolonged farewell, Lawrence O'Donnell has done a decent job and Rachel Maddow has stayed on target. I have no fondness for Ed Schultz, since he brings his right wing radio host who became a liberal schtick to the air at a time I am looking for something to watch. On the other hand, 2-3 hours of TV news over dinner is more than enough for this Irishman.
Olbermann's initial piece is about the Wisconsin brouhaha, and the place of unions. Like a lot of us, he had a union card or two as he trundled through his career. And, since being in the union saved his job once when a drunken exec decided to fire him because he didn't like him and thought that Keith's argument with his direct boss was grounds for firing and some character defamation, he's invested.
I'm sure Keith Olbermann is still a pain in the ass to his bosses. I suspect that I have been one to my bosses; I'm fairly sure most of the contributors here have been difficult to control at times... However, while I pride myself on not bowing to any Moloch-like Wannabe Toughguy or Gal, there are times when I wish there were rules enforced by an agreement to protect people like me; at the end, our only recourse is to sue, and that's not good for your wa or your karma. Although, it can be lucrative and a lot of folks are forced to do so.
Here's another thought -- unions may have problems, but in a company versus the union argument, justice will probably side with the employees. There are times when union work rules result in some injustice, but for the most part, the scales of justice are very heavily weighted toward the employee and the employee's representative.
Well, I tend to generally agree with Matt Taibbi, but there's a problem here. If you buy a quarter bag of dope and find that it's oregano, it's actually better for you than the promised product and you can do something worthwhile with it. In this case, there's really nothing to do with it. The Credit Default Swaps were primarily issued electronically, so there's not even paper to use as toilet paper...or to frame as a joke item.
(Remember the silly commercial for Direct TV about "Opulence, I haves it?" Well, when I think about what's happening politically and economically anymore, I kind of have thoughts of that...it's hard to picture some one like Rep. Jean Smith or John Boehner as one of those leggy broads pandering to the every need of the Russian Oligarch weasel, but work with me here...I mean, have you seen the Koch Brothers? Picture them in a suede suit with a gold turtelneck and a midget giraffe to kiss, kiss with?)
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross—Sinclair Lewis
This morning, the brilliant cellist and pastrami artist SB Glover made a comment on the Taibbi piece. He said that he could learn to stomach the Republicans if only they’d be up front about their goals – maybe put on T-Shirts or have a motto that really described what they are trying to do. “Together we CAN make the USA the next Guatemala!” was his suggestion. Of course, my correspondent said that the Democrats already have one, “I don’t care what you’re talking about, please stop yelling at me!” Well, since I’m quoting Lewis or quotes attributed to Lewis, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this one: The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is..."
Wisconsin is probably the beginning of our potential devolution to the next Guatemala, although I think that’s probably unfair to Guatemala. Since Citizens United and the buying of the last election by the Chamber of Commerce and the big corporate interests, I’m starting to think that the level of corruption and general disaster is starting to look more and more like Russia or Ukraine. The nonsensical drills going on in the House of Representatives this week, with John “Snooki” Boehner alternately saying things like “So Be It” to job loss and “Read My Lips!” while his members pass amendments to the continuing resolution and budget that indicate that Helen Bonham Carter must have prepped for her role as the Red Queen in “Alice” by visiting Tea Party events in places like Council Bluffs and Anniston is another example of the slide into becoming the next, I don’t know, Albania?
So, we have a situation in Wisconsin that probably shouldn’t be surprising. The state is going to run a surplus, so the incoming governor, a wealthy man whose campaign appears to have been bankrolled by the Koch brothers, convinces his Tea Party dominated legislature to pass a lot of tax breaks for business. He then proposes a state budget that includes some non-budgetary aspects that basically will strip the state employees of their right to collectively bargain except for wages – wages which are already limited by law to the increases in the Consumer Price Index. The governor also wants this to happen by Monday, February 14; he announces his plan the previous Wednesday or so. Hilarity ensues – we got state workers doing sickouts and showing up in Madison, we got the Democrats in the State Senate shuffling off to Illinois or Minnesota so that the Senate doesn’t have a quorum thus invoking memories of Texas and Tom Delay’s gerrymandering, we got the Tea Party showing up en masse tomorrow to protest the protesters, we got kids out of school. However, the comedic aspects beside the point, what we have is really an attack on workers by bosses.
I’ve done labor relations consulting in government and all the frustrations that the Republicans allege have some validity. The problem is that the reasons for the frustrations arise from abusive acts in the past. As an employee, if there are no limitations placed on the employer, I’m naked to abuse in many forms. There is no law requiring the employer to provide affordable health insurance; there is no divine precept about vacations; there is no requirement for sick leave enshrined anywhere. Overtime, limits to the work weeks, limits to child labor, freedom from abuse and discrimination are legal protections that were largely enacted because of pressure from unions.
As a professional, I have always been an at will employee. This is an English Common Law Concept: My work is at will – they can fire me at any time and I can chose to quit anytime. For any or no reason. They don’t have to pay me severance, and I don’t have to give them notice. That’s about as fair and balanced as Glen Beck and Fox booking a guy who compares the President to the Anti-Christ. Seriously.
For employees who belong to unions, there is usually some redress here. I have had to explain to a lot of my professional and manager friends who wanted to sue someone who fired them for bad but not illegal reasons that we are protected by government for a lot of things. We are not protected from mismanagement. Unions provide workers with some protection against that. They level the playing field significantly. Bosses hate that. Much as I personally liked one of my past bosses, it used to drive me crazy when we were discussing some aspect of our relations with the union that he’d inevitably go into a rant about “Damn socialist-communist union Democratic California Liberals…” I’m a product of the 60s, and I recall that Unions were pro-Vietnam War and in fact busted a lot of “liberal heads.”
That, of course, is why we are where we are today. The big unions became more and more irrelevant; they were co-opted and when the Teamsters backed Nixon they eviscerated labor’s ability to influence elections as much as they did before. Fewer and fewer employees are members of unions because there are fewer and fewer exempt employees. Employers can browbeat employees if they have reason to believe that someone is interested in starting a union; there can be equal browbeating the other way, but working class solidarity is largely a thing of the past. Union jobs are in Thailand now, and Matamoros and Costa Rica…and China, as companies like Boeing outsource work to “partners” over there. We struggle to be become “exempt” employees, which means we struggle to become salary-slaves without any protections for work weeks.
Bosses can be abusive. Supervisors can be arbitrary. Employees can find themselves having their jobs threatened for no good reason. In Wisconsin, the public employee unions are primarily opposing the changes in collective bargaining and the abrogation of work rules. The workers in unions – public and private –have the right to negotiate work rules; hours of work, standards of conduct, uniforms, special pays and so on. The guy that MSNBC has found from the Republican side of the Senate is frothing at the mouth because the unions have the right to negotiate these. There is an issue there – the states and local governments need to have better negotiators. As do companies that have unions…
Here’s why. The union member pays dues, and most of that money goes to support the collective bargaining function. As a result, the unions spend a lot of money training their negotiators, their stewards and their reps; business, not so much. The union sees the cost of spending that money on training and on preparation as an investment; in general, management sees it as an expense. Absurd, no doubt, but real. For example, the last collective bargaining I was involved in was fascinating – our lead negotiator on management’s side was an employment law attorney and he’s a very competent and knowledgeable guy. He was handicapped because he was acting as our spokesman but he and I had to constantly fight with the local and in some cases corporate leadership as to what we could do. He also had a full plate of his normal corporate lawyer stuff to do; and, he admitted that he hadn’t negotiated a contract in years.
The guy across the room – totally different story. He was the head of the Regional Local of the International and had been doing this as a steward, union business representative and Regional Local Head for over 30 years. He knew the old CBA basically by heart, as well as all the other CBAs he had in the local which covers a major slice of Southern California including all of the Inland Empire as well as parts of Nevada. He can do this in his sleep; I kept warning out team that he wasn’t going to get tired, and was going to be prepared. His ass was iron; he mind was focused; and he knew what his members wanted, what he could get from us and how to make it meet in the middle.
That’s what unions provide their members – expertise, leadership and experience representing them. This occurs in grievance procedures where employees are fighting discipline; hell, it starts prior to that, with the Weingarten Rule. This applies to union members only, although there have been a couple of brief periods where the NLRB has flexed its muscles and applied it to all employees. The Weingarten Rule requires that if an employee is going to be interviewed in conjunction with an investigation that could lead to disciplinary action, they are entitled to have a union representative present. They don’t have the right to plead the 5th Amendment; they have to cooperate and are subject to discipline if they don’t. However, they are entitled to have someone there to observe and prevent the arbitrary exercise of power.
Bosses hate that. “When I tell you to jump, boy, you just ask how high!” Well, that works on chain gangs and in the service; it works in organizations run purely by fear and intimidation. It doesn’t work that way in union shops. It shouldn’t work that way anywhere, of course. But again, the protection of the law is distant; the protection of the union is closer. If I lose my job so they can hire someone younger or without bits and pieces of PTSD, as an executive I have limited options. I can sue. Or, I can negotiate a severance package. However, a union member has a right to due process before being fired. Again, this is something bosses hate. “It’s my way or the highway!” God, they like to say that. If I’m running the Road Crew responsible for getting the ice and snow off the highway between Wausau and Madison on Christmas Eve, I want to be able to do what I want. Maybe give the overtime and double-time and call-out pay or something to my buddy Bob or my cousin Melissa. Maybe I’m concerned about productivity and I want my most experienced driver out there; maybe I have budget problems and I want to skimp on how many I call out. However, since Management and the Union have negotiated work rules, I can’t do what I want. I have to follow seniority, keep in mind rest requirements, crew size, relief drivers and so on.
Now, I have worked in Labor Relations in a state DOT. Most of the grievances were about violations of seniority. In fact, most grievances are about violations of seniority for assignment of overtime. This results in weak managers with poor collective bargaining skills getting frustrated. Good managers with good labor relations folks don’t have that problem.
Unions aren’t something new to Wisconsin government. I suspect that they have very practiced managers and well-trained labor relations staffs. Governments do spend a lot of money training their employees, and their practices of tenure within government result in having experienced people on both sides of the table.
This is not about money, and I actually don’t think it’s about work rules. It’s about union-busting. Unions are largely aligned with the Democratic party, except of course back in history when the Dems were largely rural and southern while the Unions were largely urban and…what? Socialist? Anarchist? Monarchist? How about, especially in Wisconsin, Republican? Unions do make it somewhat pricier to do business – there has historically been about a 15% differential between union workforces and non-union workforces in the same area doing the same work. That differential decreases when there’s a threat of a union organizing drive, of course, but in general there are some dollar advantages. However, in addition to the Collective Bargaining expense, a portion of union dues goes to union political activities. Since Citizens United, the only really large organizations to support the Democratic Party are the Union PACs as well as funding things like voter education and get out the vote drives. The DNC can raise some money and grass roots efforts can raise more – nobody ought to forget that after what the Obama campaign was able to do in 2007-08 and what Howard Dean did as head of the DNC. But, if I’m trying to buy TV time for my candidate, I’d rather be able to call up Freedom Works and get a six figure donation as opposed to having a bunch of interns and volunteers call everybody in Iowa asking for a couple of bucks a piece.
Break the unions, and we have a one party system run by the rich and business because of the Citizens United decision. That simple. That’s what this is about – the end of the American experiment of government for, by and of the people.
Matt Taibbi has a new piece in Rolling Stone that discusses why we've yet to see anyone go to jail as a result of the various pieces of nonsense leading up to the financial meltdown. It's an interesting piece because it points out the difference between Main Street and Wall Street in a very important way -- the more harm you can do to more people, the less likely you are to be punished. Brother Schmedlap sells someone a half ounce of dope in Utah and goes to jail for six months; BOA continues to not play nice with and actually screw with it's customers and pays some fines. Nothing to see here, just move along.
The only big money guy to get sent to jail is Madoff. Chris Matthews had a segment with Jim Cramer of CNBC this afternoon, trying to figure out why Madoff has taken to claiming that the banks and investment houses had to know what he was doing. Well, to my mind Cramer whiffed on this one...he pointed out that there was a lot of speculation about how Madoff could be registering the results he was claiming, and that Barrons, among others, discussed the possibility that he was running a Ponzi scheme. However, the SEC supposedly kept giving him a clean bill of health. Again, I'm not an economist or a banker or an expert on regulatory affairs, but if the SEC kept giving him a clean bill of health, somebody at the SEC needs to be in jail next to Madoff...
Now, I've been reading the various books about the debacle, and there have been a number of them -- well researched, well written and well documented. If I were to sum up what I've read, the problem began with the whole concept of derivatives. These investment instruments are hard to explain because they can be impossible to understand, between the jargon and the general murkiness of the effort. The general conception in the sub-prime derivatives -- the Credit Default Swaps -- was that while most of these mortgages were lousy mortgages, a very small percentage would default and result in foreclosure. The demand would stay high, if not continue to grow exponentially, and therefore prices would continue to rise. When things started to fall apart, well, they fell apart quickly. Lots of people on Wall Street knew that the emperor was wearing no more than a striped loincloth; just nobody wanted to do anything about it.
If you listen to Barney Frank, one of the things he's proudest of is the regulation of derivatives that was included in the financial reform act. Even Jim Cramer thinks that there needs to be effective regulation and an amped up SEC. He says in his interview with Matthews that without a strong regulator, a crook can get away with just about anything. Yet, the Republicans in the house want to cut the funding for the SEC and for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency in half...as well as cut the IRS enforcement budget by half.
Ok, without strong regulations and strong enforcement, in this Ayn Randian world created by Laffler and Greenspan and Reagan and friends, the country is screwed. There used to be a concept of civic duty. Organizations and individuals were expected to share in the maintenance of the public good. We've learned that corporations --those soulless approximations of human beings with the rights of the individual with none of the risk -- have no problem dodging their responsibilities. We know that people cheat on their taxes. The Republican Party has made the screwing with the tax rules their moral equivalent of standing in front of a tank in Tiannamen Square. So, if we are going to tax at a lower rate, shouldn't we be collecting all the damn money owed? If there's no chance of being caught, lots of folks will do whatever they can here.
At some point, revenue has to increase. The states are really in a bad way of course, and it appears that the best idea the new Moses, Chris Christy of New Jersey has that is sweeping statehouses is to piss, moan, insult and condemn public employees. Ok, there's a gaggle of miserable pricks in DMV, say, and we all want to bitchslap those bastards. But, EMTs? Firefighters? Cops? Teachers? Really? That's the solution...
Anyway, Taibbi is right one target as usual, and the screaming match between Cramer and Matthews -- who appear to agree -- is illuminating and interesting on several levels.
you were flaxen-haired, undernourished, and your tar-black face was beautiful. My poor scapegoat,
I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeur
of your brain’s exposed and darkened combs, your muscles’ webbing and all your numbered bones:
I who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the railings,
who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge
Seamus Healy, Punishment, 1975
Crusader AXE is an Irish-Catholic American. My religious beliefs have wandered far from what the good sisters and priests tried to map for me; while I donate to my Jesuit college and to Catholic Charities, I do so because of what they do and do well, not because of who they are. Of course, having made the 9 First Fridays more than once, I can sin very boldly indeed. Of course, the ravings of a French teenager in the 19th century are probably not worth more than a moment of sad reflection; but, Bernadette believed, and so do a lot of people. Still. I can respect that, and I can understand it. Hell, there's a strong possibility that it's my reluctance to get up early on Sundays that led to the whole Tiffany-Anti-Theist thing.
Now, over at the other place where I write under an assumed name, I have been in a bit of a pissing contest over a commentator who thinks that all soldiers who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan are, ipso facto, war criminals. The fact that he also appears to believe that the Jews were behind 9/11 should make me less worried about responding to the idiot, but I'm bothered by it. That sort of simplicity and conspiracy-theory nonsense may reflect strong ties to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion combined with Palinesque desire to blame the mainstream media and the Liberals and the Federal Reserve and the fucking Bildenbergers and George Soros and the Koch brothers and eveybody else including victims for horrible nonsense. While I have none of the volumes of poetry I wrote as an undergraduate -- thank god -- I do remember one line in a poem to girlfriend named Anne Winschel who has led a marvelous and productive life with nothing to do with me with lines to the effect that "But, I said she's too tall!/When what I meant was "I'm too small..."
Self-awareness is a hierophany in a teenage boy, especially an Irish Catholic American teenage boy getting ready to go off to Holy Cross. Rare as they are, hierophanies happen occasionally, and that was one occastion. In something like the Irish Catholic Church and in the Catholic Church as a whole and in all organizations, self-awareness is critical and yet so non-existent. It's called for in fact -- anyone who has attempted or even read the Exercises of Ignatius Loyola and the other people like St John of the Cross or St Teresa knows that. If you want to approach the fundamentals of existence, be you Catholic, Jew, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan or Devil-Worshipper, self-awareness is critical.
Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, of course. And this article by Russell Shorto from the New York Times Magazine about "The Irish Affliction" reflects the problem both from a religious and an organizational dynamic point of view. The Irish Church is Catholicism writ large; as the article points out, the Catholic Church is established as a partner with the government and the Irish Nation in the Irish Constitution. The article cites one activist in this way:
Certainly many Irish people find the idea of abandoning Catholicism to be as counterintuitive as giving up their racial or sexual identity. A televised panel discussion on the abuse crisis last summer ended with a reporter asking a woman who was voicing her anger if she was ready to leave the Catholic Church. She paused, as if befuddled, then said, “Where would I go?”
Certainly there is a reflection here of something deeper than self-identity. I am compelled to think of the Book of Ruth, of all things. The language in the King James Version (Chapter 1, verses 1-20) is marvelous, and I have to admit, the allegory is worth considering.
Naomi is a widow, and with two of her daughters-in-law, decides to go back to Isreal from Moab. She asks her daughters-in-law to leave her and return to their homes. She is old, and has nothing to offer them. Oprah, one daughter in law, kisses her and leaves. Ruth, the other, does not but in the words of the text, "cleaves" to her.
15And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in law.
16And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
17Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
Interestingly, the article describes an organization and website that was intended to help Irish Catholics to leave the church formally. To respond, the Church changed Canon Law, eliminating the ability to defect from the Church. Of course, I'm sure they maintained the right to excommunicate. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I have been excommunicated for years -- and, as a Tiffanyist Anti-Theist, quite comfortable with that.
The totalitarian mindset really doesn't like to let you leave. Like the Book of the Month Club from Hell, they're not ever going to let you go. I left one cable-internet provider about a year ago for another because I was really unhappy with the one I had. They call, they write, they email -- Baby come back. Well, the closed totalitarian organization doesn't need to do that; the Irish are certainly used to that as are any one who's ever joined a secret organization (Illuminati, Masons, Skull and Bones, Delta Tau Chi, the Mafia, whatever). The IRA has a very direct and fairly simple point of view on this -- Once In, Never Out. The Mafia has a rather more florid approach --
"I (NAME GIVEN) want to enter into this secret organization to protect my family and to protect my brothers. ""morte alla Francia Italia anelia!" With my blood. (A knife is used to place a cut on the right index finger or hand) and the blood of all the saints, and the souls of my children. (The sign of the cross is made) I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey with love and omerta. I enter alive into this organization and leave it only in death."
Although the Catholic mass has been simplified, the nature of the priesthood is understood that way -- the Consecration contained the words "Remember you are a priest forever, by the order of Melchisedec."
Well, the problem with this is fairly simple. As Brendan Behan said once about an IRA internal catfight in Dublin, "They tried me in absentia, convicted me in absentia, and sentenced me to death in absentia -- so, I said they could execute me in absentia."
What we're seeing in the Irish response is interesting -- Catholicism is part of our heritage, part of our way of looking at the world. Less so in American Irish, by the bye, than in Ireland. At the same time, the Church has done horrible, horrible things in Ireland to the people. And, the clergy has conspired to not only protect the guilty but to go out of their way to blame the victims. Again, the article cites some fairly horrific examples. Some of them are either hysterical false memories or the sexual abuse was a reflection of out and out Satanic practices in various orders. Shorto quotes an abbot who has achieved some level of awareness light years beyond the senior hierarchy...
“Ireland is a prime example of what the church is facing, because they made this island into a concentration camp where they could control everything,” Mark Patrick Hederman, abbot of Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in County Limerick, told me. “And the control was really all about sex. They told you if you masturbated, it meant you were impure and had allowed the devil to work on you. Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up.” (AXE emphasis added)
One of the things that I note in these accounts as well as others from around the world is that the issues usually are not sexual. Priests and brothers and preachers and politicians and other people who perceive themselves as having power are not so much as reflecting their sexual urges as their power, their ability to inflict themselves on others. This is debased, but it is human. Totalitarian organizations develop these practices because they can. If you consider the treatment of most "heretics" in history, you realize that you're dealing with sexual fantasies played out by people who can play them out. The Templars were accused of horrible practices that were largely sexual in nature -- the Jews of the same sort of things. Priests and Nuns and Catholics in general were accused of sexual deviance, rape and murder of babies by Protestants in Northern Ireland and in the US. The College of the Holy Cross was established in large part as a response to the burning of an Ursuline Abbey in Boston in 1841 by a mob of Know-Nothings convinced that there were tunnels with the aborted fetuses of the nun's babies underneath the place.
So, blanket condemnations tend to make me wonder about large organizations in general. I find something both hopeful and at the same time mournful about this passage from Shoto's piece...
To reach the geographical heart of Irish Catholicism, you leave the main road in windswept County Donegal and drive through miles of gorsy heath, past sheep poised on gray knuckles of rock, until you come to Lough Derg, a wilderness lake edged with pines. Half a mile offshore lies Station Island, where according to legend, St. Patrick had a meditative epiphany in the fifth century, during his mission to convert the Irish.
Station Island has been a place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. Its director, Prior Richard Mohan, who has worked there since 1974, greeted me as I stepped ashore, while a brewing autumn storm roiled the tea-colored water of the lake. Over lunch in the staff dining room, he told me how he has modernized the pilgrimage center. Early pilgrims relived the saint’s experience of huddling in a pit in the ground. Today there are updated dormitories, showers, even a gift shop. Prior Mohan said that Station Island “is in the genes of the Irish people,” so much so that there is a phrase for making the pilgrimage: going in on Station. Indeed, Ireland’s greatest living writer, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, devoted what is perhaps his most beloved collection, “Station Island,” to a meditation on the pilgrimage, the Irish and their tug of war with the church.
Mohan reckoned that the island’s impressive number of visitors — more than 20,000 a year — actually relates to a drop in church attendance in Ireland. Many people have abandoned the institutional church but not their faith, so they come to this wild spot in an effort to plug directly into their historical religious tradition without the mediation of the church. “This is seen as independent,” he said. In fact, the Catholic Church maintains control over the island, as it does over dozens of such places around the world.
After accepting Tiffany as the official Defeatist Goddess, and Cthulhu as our offical Defeatis presidential/gubantatorial/senatorial/school board nominee, we began to fill out our pantheon. Crispin Sartwell, Hipster and Amish Farmer wannabe is the official prophet...
There was Cairo the Offical Defeatist Wonder Dog.
Then there was Fleshy, the Offical Defeatist Cat.
Pearls Before Swine, the Official Defeatist comic strip.
Julia, the official Defeatist Baby...
And now, Bob the Squirrel, the official Defeatist Squirrel.
Of course, Melissa remains the offical Defeatist Troll...
Recently, the Army announced that SSG Sal Giunta, the only living Medal of Honor Winner from the wars of the 21st Century has chosen to leave the service at the end of his tour. The service will miss him. His comments at the end of the piece are so honest and so humble and so angry that I am stunned that this kid is able to show such moral courage, intellectual clarity and situational awareness. This is what we have wasted time and again in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sal Giunta's final brush stroke should energize us all to demand that we get the hell out of the entire Southwest Asian debacle. Whatever he does next, I'm sure he'll be successful at it...courage, self-depreciating humor and rigorous integrity. Hooah.
I never got Ronald Reagan. He presided over the end of the American Social Contract, the lionization of Ayn Randian thought even though he didn't think much about that kind of stuff, the trivialization of political discourse, and the rise of the new right. Much of what's wrong with the US can be traced back to those 8 years of whimsy. He was optimistic, said optimistic things, and didn't get in the way of much. Revitalization of the US military -- didn't prevent it. Destruction of labor unions -- supported it. Demonization of unemployed and poor people -- told stupid stories. He did handle his attempted assasination with grace, he could deliver a good speech, and he had a dignified exit into the fog of Alzheimers. On balance, not so great as Eisenhower or Nixon or Clinton.
Yet, tomorrow will be celebrated as a day equal to the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington. Some of his advocates will demand, again, that we name something after him, anything. Personally, I hope that when a cure or prophylactic for Alzheimers and Dementia is found, probably from stem cells, that it will be named to honor Nancy Reagan. No more airports. No more bridges. In fact, fewer of both. I'd support replacing Lincoln on the penny, because while ubiquitous, the penny is basically useless.Lincoln has the five dollar bill -- let Ronnie have the penny.
When it comes your time to go, ain't no good way to go about it Ain't no use in thinking bout it You'll just drive yourself insane There comes a time for everything And the time has come for you to shut your mouth and get your ass on the plane
What should I say? Well, I got nothing. Maureen "Dulcinea" Dowd says Cleopatra would be rooting for the people in the streets, which shows that hot flashes make one silly since Cleopatra would have had a lot more in common with Moubarak than the people in the streets, and she was a goddamn autocrat plopped on the throne by a Superpower. Paralells, anyone?
The American Press is unhappy that Anderson Cooper has been beaten up -- well, OK, about that? Although he seems to have it in perspective, we should reflect. Journalists take risks, unfortunately, and the thugs supporting the current regieme are out to spread fear and terror. Tossing molotov cocktails into the Museuem of Antiquities is pretty goddamn serious; beating up journalists, even from CNN, is actually pretty much par for the course. Cooper says he's staying away from Tahrir Square because it's not safe. More interestingly to me, he says the Army stood there and watched the thugs whale on him and his crew. Oh, and he says he's never been punched in the head before...really?
Well, from Crusader AXE's point of view, we've been down this road before. Hasn't ever really worked out all that well for US Realpolitik. Or, US ethical approaches to state craft. It's really pretty simple -- if you hang around long enough for a popular revolution against you, expect bad things to happen to you. And, of course, to your allies. Since we're his most important ally, we can expect bad things, unless we get out in front on this. Which will probably require a pole vaulting metaphor at this point, since we're behind the power curve.
Now, if I were President, I'd probably just tell the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to send Air Force 2 to Eygpt and then have this number by the Drive By Truckers translated into Arabic as important American poetry about the inevitable...but, that's just me. And, having secured landing rights for him in advance in Ryadah or Rio or Finland or someplace, resolve the whole thing by a coup de main. I'd then get as much food into the country as is reasonable in the next 72 hours. Of course, I'm not president, and I guess this probably explains why I never could be. However, any opportunity to tie the Drive By Truckers to political upheaval is ok with me. In the immortal words of Mike Cooley, shut your mouth Hosni, and get your ass on the plane...
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