the defeatists!

WTF is going on with these people? Talking Points…and bullshit!

 

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.

 

 

Rock and Roll, Time, Nationstates, and Blasphemy -- Can I get a Fatwah!

On this, what would have been John Lennon's 71st Birthday--Just for a second, let's take time out from our political quibbling and ask two critical questions --

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 KGB going 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 Ear before 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 STATE since 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.

 

"Why do they call this heartless place Our Lady of Charity..."

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

John Milton, “On His Blindness”

It’s been an odd summer at Defeatist Central. In the last few years, we’d have gone crazy with lots of stuff about how horrible the politicians, economy and so on have become. However, not unlike a lot of other bloggers, we’ve become strangely quiet. Is it because, as in the case of Mr. Fun, we are frustrated because once you go Pek you can’t go back and no Pony has arrived? Perhaps because of the arrival of Defeatist Babies while we mourn the departure of beloved Defeatist Pets? Is it perhaps because of more mundane concerns? Or, maybe greater concerns? Who knows what ennui and disinterest lurk in the hearts of men? Well, besides Yeats, of course….but I quote him often enough.

For me, it’s been an odd time. Mrs. AXE came home one day and announced that she wanted to retire from Federal Service because she was old and because she was working for complete assholes. Well, that was fine with me; I did some math and said, OK we’ll be fine. She then went through some totally unnecessary hassles over insurance coverage for some tests, submitted her paperwork, got the tests in early March and retired on the 31^st. That afternoon, we got the diagnosis – colon cancer with fairly large polyps that probably had breeched the walls of the colon. On April 20, they did the surgery. The surgeon said it went very well; on the following Tuesday, I got a call at 10PM saying they were taking her to emergency surgery because of complications; when I got there, she greeted me by crying “Goodbye…” Now, by nature I am not a nurturing type; my response was fairly unemotional and probably helped in this case – “Really? I don’t think so unless you know something I don’t.” The surgery went well – there had been an obstruction and the surgeon took out three feet of small intestine that was gangrenous. To allow everything to heal, he performed a temporary Ileostomy, that is, a procedure to route the small intestine to a sack outside the body. When she was healed, they would reattach the plumbing. In the meantime, she’d start with an oncologist and see if Chemo was the next step.

Except it didn’t work that way. The original hospital could not find a way to install an ostomy bag that would work; while she stayed there for three weeks, she spent a large part of that covered from the top of her abdomen to her groin covered in her own feces and stomach acid. The hospital staff was fatalistic and resigned; I was rapidly getting angrier – nuture, no. Defend, protect and raise hell, yeah…I can do that. Their solution was to send her home despite the leakage problem and figure that the home health care provider would be able to figure it out. I raised hell, the surgeon came by to see what the problem was and he reacted about as badly as I did. The next day, she was transferred to a new place, a “long term acute care” hospital. Exit surgeon, stage left, pursued by a bear.

Now, the surgeon was confused as to why the staff at the hospital was having so many problems. There are a variety of Ostomy suppliers producing supplies that work for some or most results of the surgery. However, each surgery is different, and each person is different. In the wife’s case, well, her Stoma (the intestine jutting through the skin) was a convex stoma, meaning it did not extend above the the skin. Silly me – I thought that for something this fraught with potential issues, Medical Science would have perfected a way to cap and channel the material flowing instead of basically trying to extend a sewer cutoff. Well, it’s not even close. It’s probably possible to fabricate a fairly good ostomy bag with some spackling compound and a good freezer bag.

Why do that? Why not get the right stuff – not surprisingly, the hospitals are under pressure to sign exclusive agreements for a lot of medical supplies and apparatus as well as drugs as a cost control measure. By dealing directly with the supplier, they can get the best price which makes the insurance company happy; however, it may not be what the patient needs. Tough shit…in this case, literally.

 What the hell is a long term acute care hospital? Regular acute care hospitals have an average stay of about 3 days for patients. If the patient stays there too long, regardless of medical necessity for care, the hospital will face complaints from the Insurance Companies. Are we starting to notice a theme here?

Now, the long term acute care hospital was about 75 miles away from the house. I got down there every other day, and for the most part they took excellent care of her. However, they are a for-profit hospital, and skimped on some things. It seemed that there was a constant battle between the wound care and physical therapy folks versus the ward staff. It was not uncommon for me to arrive and discover that she had been left sitting in a bed pan for a half hour or so, or that no one had come to give her the bed pan…I got quite good at helping install the bags, and actually helped resolve some of the issues with the types of bags they had. However, this hospital had the type of relationship with the insurers – in my wife’s case, Medicare and Tricare for life – that they could get what they needed, regardless of manufacturer.

Ultimately, they felt she no longer needed the level of care afforded by the acute care side of the health care system. I was told that they wanted to transfer her to a “skilled nursing facility” and had me check a few out in a “Renters Guide” sort of magazine. Too were closer but one did not have an RN on staff 24 hours a day and was primarily an old folks home. Because my wife needed IV fluids and feeding at this point, they couldn’ take her. However, there was a large facility near the original hospital. So, she was transferred there.

Now, the wound care team had given me a kit to take home of the sorts of bags, powders, adhesives and sprays that they had found worked with my wife. Remember, the use of ostomies is common, but they are all kind of custom. The staff at the new place ignored me and when what they were doing didn’t work, freaked out. One nurse was exceptional in her efforts and I’d do just about anything I could for her; the rest were absolute idiots. However, this was a doomed place – I refer to it as a “storage and disposal facility” or “ a human rendering factory.” I was there every day…I was rare. It was not a healthy environment for someone who was not dying.

Ultimately, all the good work that the second facility had done was undone by these people. The problem of course is that what they would refer to as a rash was really burns….because the food was coming from the small intestine to the stoma – the hunk of intestine pulled through the skin to drain into a bag—she was re-injuring the skin damaged by the same fluids at the first hospital. Now, they had an excuse, albeit a terrible one. These people, not so much. What they were doing had been proved not to work. But, they kept doing it anyway until finally, after a lot of her pain and her embarrassment, they accepted that they were unable to deal with this simple procedure. They decided to send her to see the original surgeon and see what he thought about it being time to reverse the procedure. Great…however, they ultimately decided that they just needed to send her to that hospital’s emergency room because they were totally incompetent to handle the situation. And so they tried, the day prior to when she was supposed to be taken to see the surgeon. You see, hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed by poor people who have no insurance and for whom a visit to their family doctor. That hospital was overwhelmed in the emergency room. So, they sent her to another private, non-profit hospital. They told me about it a couple of hours after she’d departed, which I thought was just special.

Anyway, I joined her about 4PM (1600 in real military time.) The chief surgeon came by, talked with us briefly, said that he wasn’t going to operate on her in the condition she was in  -- burned, dehydrated, weak but would admit her so that she could recover enough for the surgery to correct the original resection either by reconnecting the plumbing or revising the outlet, so to speak. She was taken to the surgical ward, and the wound care and ward team immediately took care of her. Since she was given an IV shot of morphine because of the intense pain, I left by 6 when she went to sleep. When I returned the next day about noon, she was awake, and the bags that they were using did not leak. At all – she never had a leak there. She recovered enough that the operation was performed on Friday. She took about a week in the hospital post op, and then was released to home care.

Since she’s returned to her home, her stuff, her cats she’s made great improvements. I’m amazed at how well she’s doing. I had a Facebook Entry the next evening that she had finally been released from incarceration…err, hospitalization, and was already being a pain in the ass. She now is able to get around quite well with the walker, and I forced her to make her own tuna sandwich for dinner. She is eating reasonably now and even made her own tuna sandwich the other day. All’s well that end’s well, right, AXE? No, fuck you.

 You see, I’m not totally happy about this. When she was diagnosed, the cancer was quite large and probably had penetrated the wall of the colon. Colon cancer discovered during colonoscopy and taken out in biopsy, basically minor problem. Colon cancer discovered during colonoscopy and removed followed after recovery by chemo, not a minor problem but not terribly threatening. However, colon cancer that has penetrated the outer wall of the colon and spread or where chemo is delayed or refused by the patient, major problem. The original timeline was colon resection, return home in a week or less, follow-up in two weeks, referral to Oncologist, begin course of treatment. Now, we have had an extra 14 weeks plugged into the equation. But, she is now in a helluva lot less pain, she has some quality of life and dignity and has made her own decisions. Good for her.

Next, for those who’ve been following my writing for a few years, you may recall that at one time I was struggling existentially between a significant other and my spouse. I ultimately chose the easiest route because they were both crazy. Well, the gal I was so interested in and loved a few years ago and still do love, had a horrible bout of colon cancer in 2003. She was actually told that “we’re going to operate but you need to get your affairs in order…” Did I mention that she was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and a Navy Nurse? Her sister was also a nurse, only a return boater to Ireland; her parents were both immigrants in the 40s; her sister and her husband had decided that New York City was no place to raise kids and had returned to Eire, I believe outside of Cork but I could be wrong. My friend was a triathlete and a serious marathoner; her sister won awards as an athlete in her county as late as 2004. In early 2006, she died from colon cancer. My friend was able to be there when her sister passed; she had some fairly funny stories about the way the staff of the hospital handled the dying process. But, she also felt a great deal of guilt – you see, when the significant other got the word about her cancer, the only family member she informed was her sister, Kathleen, who caught a redeye from Shannon to the US and on to San Diego to be there for her kid sister when she went into the surgery. She knows that Kathleen couldn’t catch colon cancer from her; but, there is still an incredible feeling of guilt. I am stunned by the irony…

Another thing I’m keeping in mind is the problem of the economics of healthcare. Now, I spent 23 years in the Army, and am grateful every day for that experience. I am incredibly grateful for Tricare and in the case of my wife, Tricare for Life. I know that the total bill for this great time up until now will be well into six figures; in fact, it already is. My total financial liability at this point has been $58 that I probably could have gotten out of paying. Now, we earned this; we paid for the Medicare in her payroll Medicare taxes and the part B in cash prior to starting to take her Social Security benefit and now in deduction from her benefit. But, talk about value; and yet, we know that the current healthcare situation is abysmal in this country and we know that we’re faced with the possibility of it becoming worse. The GAO has released estimates that because of the Supreme Court’s decision that the states do not have to extend Medicare as required originally by the Affordable Health Care Act, at least 3 Million People who would have been covered under the Act will not be covered. Which means that if they become as sick as my wife, they will go bankrupt and they will die. And Republcian voters will cheer as they cheered Ron Paul…

Well, we all are going to die, but there should be some degree of human dignity in the situation. But, we don’t seem, as a nation, to get it. The people most at risk are working class Americans without adequate health care insurance. And, there is absolutely no reason for this. I find the fact that France, Canada, the UK and my beloved Ireland have far better health care systems by any objective standard than we do to be a national disgrace. I am ashamed when I try to explain it to people from other countries that are supposedly not as great as we are. No Patriotic American should be able to stand this shame. So, those who oppose continued reform are what…un-American?

Remember Death Panels? There are death panels under the current system – they’re the insurance companies who determine what they will cover and what they will not based solely on market decisions. They are the insurance companies that raise rates so that people are no longer able to buy insurance or must cut back and buy only for the breadwinner as opposed for their whole family. These may be decisions made by the Marketplace (rigged, corrupt and based on debased values, where it’s reasonable for Ann Romney’s horse to be worth more than the annual tuition for 20 college students at a mediocre college.) However, from a human perspective, these results condemn those decisions. No, these are the decisions forced by fate on Frank McCourt’s mother Angela, whether to care for her family or take food from their mouths so that she has enough to survive. Hey, it’s a market decision. Compromise is a satanic thing here, because you’re dealing not with a possible win/win but with definite lose/lose. This was not acceptable in Ireland in the 30s and 40s and shames that Catholic nation as much as the Magdalenes Sisters, the history of betrayal to the British empire, and the current economic crisis even today. IT CANNOT BE ACCEPTABLE TO ANY AMERICAN NOW. NO FUCKING WAY! USA!USA!USA!

And, yet it is. If Mitch McConnell gets an unfortunate pimple on his ass, he can go to Bethesda and the entire United States Navy is mobilized to handle his departure from the norm. Hey, a pimple on the ass of the worst American Senator since Joe McCarthy is a really bad thing. But, most people in this country, insured or not, unable to pursue that kind of treatment. If Mitt Romney wakes up with the sniffles and an odd growth on his dick, he can afford to endow his own wing of a hospital to handle sniffling dick growths. Why should a man who builds elevators in his house for his cars concern himself with the health care of some poor kid in Harlem? It’s God’s will…

It’s not that these men are inherently evil. (Well, I think they are, but let’s assume they’re not.) They lack imagination and empathy for those who they see as not quite up to their standards of wealth, power and connection. Somehow, they’re not quite up to God’s standard. The market does the will of God so if you’re not able to hedge your bets and profit from the misfortune of others, you deserve to be poor, wretched and sick.

You know, it’s one thing for Milton to accept his blindness as the will of God and see that as it is God’s will, it’s a good thing. It’s a totally different thing to see someone else’s horror, pain and suffering as the will of God. That’s not stoic acceptance of the Almighty’s will – Stoicism is about your relationship with the world, not that of others! And, if the idea is that by not paying taxes at a reasonable rate in an industrial democracy you can accrue unconscionable wealth, you are doing what God wants, you are deranged, or you worship neither Jesus, nor Yahweh, nor Buddha, nor Allah nor Vishnu but eternally damned CTHULHU or Satan.  Willard Romney and and Turtle McConnell and the Paulline Faillacy and John Boehner are tools of Evil and the Republican Party is the Party of the Rich, the Party of the Evil, the Party of the Ignorant and ultimately, the PARTY OF SATAN.

 Ok, that’s a little rich, even for me. But then, I profess that the arbitrary decisions of the universe about life, death and the baseball game speak to the underlying problem of God – there is no God, or God is an evil sonofabitch with a nasty sense of humor, or God is really a teenage girl with lots of behavioral and emotional problems that, since we’re not her parents, we should try to stay away from lest she do something awful to us. I feel guilty when I see a beggar and I don’t stop; in my idea of America, there are no beggars, no homeless, no hungry – this experience with my wife underlies for me the importance of the America as champion of a world dreamed of by Franklin Roosevelt and expressed so eloquently in his Four Freedoms.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called 'new order' of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, January 6 1941

 

 

 

 

 

We're all goin' done to Dixie...and Walmart

We are at a cultural moment when living in close proximity and having many close friends and a ceaseless embracing community are thought to be unalloyed goods. "Bowling alone" is our shorthand for personal despair and social disintegration. However, as I dare say you - like Jean-Paul Sartre - have noticed, people can be annoying. We need distance from, as much as we need association with, one another. Thoreau tried for both: he would walk from Walden Pond to Concord, hang out with his dear friends the Emersons and the Alcotts, and then retreat to his hovel to be fairly happily alone.

If on such occasions Thoreau was thinking in his reflective way that human beings are animals and that what we do is natural, then he did not consider his stroll into Concord a departure from nature but an exploration of a bit of it. And this is the way I feel about Walmart, which - big-box island in a blacktop sea - is a perfectly natural object, as much an environment as my woods.

Walmart is no Concord. And if Greg will pardon my saying so, he is no Emerson or Alcott, though possibly he is a better golfer than either. Then again, he is also not my dear friend... 

Crispin Sartwell  is  a friend of mine. We are supposedly both charter members of the Defeatists as well as my being an occasional commentator on his blog, Cheese it, the Cops. Crispy is a philosophy professor for Dickinson College, a former rock and roll critic, a retired environmental terrorist and a fairly interesting guy for a lot of reasons, including his part time job as a blackjack and three card monte dealer in an alley in back of Trump's in Atlantic City. He has kids, college looming and teaches philosophy at a private college. Cut the man some slack OK!

This is an interesting piece for a lot of reasons. Although some of the Defeatist-Malcontent collective and carp fishing gang professed confusion at what he was saying, I think he was being kind of cynically lyrical. Crispin appears to be going through a phase...I kind of like the idea of Walmart as our Walden, since except for pithy phrases here and there, I despise Walden...The Transcendentalists were smug, self-satisfied bourgeois Babbits who inflicted themselves on us ever since. Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau are not and never were Tinker, Evers and Chance. Or, Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg. The insufferable rightness of the Yankee ascendency irritates me -- concepts do have dates, citing another philosophical friend of mine, Mary Hunt.

 

However, it says a lot about the leveling experience of our current distribution of wealth. The wealthy are really wealthy and the middle-working-under classes are going shopping for Guatemalian Strawberries and Pride of Gwangzhou Blu-Ray players.

I picture Thoreau in a Lime Green UnderArmour  T-shirt with khaki shorts and Birkenstocks with anklets...with some bacon flavored tofu and Miller beer as well as the blu-ray and socks...they'd probably be white, with colored strips at the top of the ankle. He's also got a 20 pack of toilet paper, some duct tape and a couple of HelloKitty training bras...he nicked himself shaving, and uses too much Aqua Velva. He whitens his teeth, and sells real estate. He has a Blackberry. He goes by "HD" or "Davie" and takes antidepressants.

 

Alejandro is the guy with the sunglasses...in a radio studio in Seattle. Chuck, in this case, looks kinda like Thoreau...or, Crispin. 

 

Alienation is a helluva drug

Last night I dreamt of you, Abbie Hoffman peddling your books, I gave five bucks to you, the other kids just gave you dirty looks.

 I said "I'm sorry it didn't work out quite the way you planned."

You said, "That's silly boy, the revolution is at
hand."

And if you got a ten spot brother, I got a dime,
These are desperate,
desperate times.

Last night I dreamt of you, Pepe Lopez strung out on a stage, It don't even look like you, smiling like sawed-off twenty gauge.
I still remember the
Telecaster down around your knees,
It's late November and I think I smell tequila on the
breeze.

And if you got the Cuervo honey, I got the lime,
These are desperate,
desperate times.
And if you got the shotgun honey, I got the crime,
These are
desperate, desperate times.--Rhett Miller

Crusader AXE has been too busy dealing with family issues to write or think or do anything really coherent of late. Mrs. AXE retired from Federal Service after 35 years of helping to make the state function, if not optimally, at least better than if she were not there. The afternoon of her last day, she got the diagnosis of colon cancer...so, by mid-month she was in the hospital for surgery, and there she remains. Friday will be three weeks...the words rehab facility were spoken last night. I am not exactly happy about this -- I have no complaints about the quality of her care for the most part, or the professionalism or kindness of the staff. I have concerns about the quantity of the staff...I think this is a problem nationwide, but probably more acute in Southern California because there are so goddamn many people... 

Things haven't gone well. They appear to be unable to actually get the bag to seal to Joyce's skin, which results in her constantly leaking. She remains in the hospital; her surgeon was there last evening and found himself helping try to get the illeostomy bag to work. They had had five iterations earlier, all failing. Which results in linking shit all over everything. On Tuesday,  I had had a brain fart when I left the Crossroads of Opportunity to go to the hostpital after getting home at 1130 Monday night  and had to stop in Target and buy her clothes to come home with. Well, that didn't work as planned...Had gotten her a stuffed animal for a comfort thing, and that got to come home tonight along with the socks she'd been wearing, all of it shit stained. Surgeon is confused since this is a "good stoma" since the hunk of intestine that's leaking into the bag is what he can do with what's available to him. For some reason, they can't seem to get the base of the bag to seal correctly with her skin, and as a result it leaks out the sides. Now, the surgeon does not want her coming home until they get this to the point where she has some faith in it, and the topic of nursing homes came up. I noticed that they do not seem to have a standard procedure, and are experimenting. They have 1 (ONE) colostomy nurse on staff and one brand of stuff with not all the possibilities covered. Anyway, the surgeon had them get some surgical adhesive from the emergency room -- if they can get that to work, and keep the base fully closed on the body, she'll be able to come home. If not, the word nursing home was used tonight. She would prefer that to having her small intestine leak all over her home, but she'd prefer to have the bag work and be able to come home. To finish healing, so she can go back in and have the ostomy reversed and go back to a normal set of solid waste disposal equipment.

I thought that I'm pretty much ok with this. After all, I'm a tough guy, it's not fun or easy, but I'm just lending moral support and helping her when I happen to be there. And, washing the stuffed big eyed Zebra she's got for company. I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that it's a lot harder on me than I thought. Just beat all the time. I go in there, help her get out of bed to use the commode and such stuff, and feel if not helpless at best incompetent. 

Did I mention that getting her to eat is hard? Today she had a hard boiled egg, a piece of toast, and two bottles of Boost Clinical Strength. Well, since whatever she eats is leaking out of her side all over her within an hour or two, she's probably not all that interested...So, at some point this will get resolved but I'm not feeling comfortable with how it's going. She's still in a lot of pain although a lot of it is from the irritation on her skin. They were using something as a binding agent that was largely alcohol. Great...the woman has inflamed skin caused by chemical burns and part of their solution is rubbing it with alcohol. Surgeon is getting incensed...wonder why? Shit. 

Medicine could stand to have some statistical process control and analysis. Got a call from a rep at one of three companies that manufacture and distribute colostomy supplies. There are drying agents, it turns out, that do not involve alcohol. If you have what are basically chemical burns over an area and they need to dry the skin to apply something, using an alcohol drying agent is a pretty bad idea. Unless you're trying to wring out a confession....the gal apologized for the hospital, saying that "a lot of times the product works first time but a lot of times it's a process of trial and error." Sure, let's look at new, non asbestos options for brake pads. Let's start with cheese....nothing is a better stopper than curdled milk products!" 

I've always been a fan of Tiberius Caesar, pre-Capri. I know that my friends IOZ and Captain Capitualtion probably prefer him at Capri, IOZ becuse of lifestyle appeal and Crispin because he just said screw government...but pre-Capri, he was kind of a Julian John Adams.  Grumpy old bastard following Augustus who just quietly went about making the state work. Would be welcome today -- I think that is where dictators come from, the inability of representative systems to work adequately. Or at all, over time. 

 

I don't care about gay marriage.  I'm not that concerned about using predator drones, Gitmo as we sweep up the ashes of the Bush administration, and so on.  I want the state to work. Jobs,food, schools, infrastructure...I want to turn the ignition on my car and not have the fucking thing blow up because there's no requirement to make a car that won't blow up when the car is started. I want to eat a cheeseburger assured that it's not made of horse or rancid meet. I want the ideal society of 1950s Eisenhower Republican America only with racial and gender equality. The curiously fucked up world that I was alienated by/against doesn't look bad at all as a baseline. 

Reading a book on my KIndle while visiting Mrs. AXE  called The Angry Buddhist. Involves California celebrity politics, dog murder, and various forms of madness. Poor protagonist is trying to use the Dharma to keep from ripping the head off a lot of people. It ultimately seems to have the theme that, well, make a list, motherfucker. And keep making it -- you'll never run out of vacuous, vicious and verminous assholes needing to have their heads ripped off. 

 One of my brothers sent out this note about Genesse Cream Ale going back to retro packaging. Upstate NY had some pretty good local beers. Utica Club, Genesse...Utica Club had talking Beer Steins in commercials when I was a kid -- Shultz and Dooley; Genny talked about the sparkling waters of Hemlock late. Far better than 'Gansett or, for that matter, Coors or Strohs. Of course, there had been the Haverly-Congress line, that I still recall a joke of my dad's after they closed down. He said that it happened because they sent a sample in to be tested in the State Lab regulating such stuff, and got an emergency call saying, "Shoot the horse, it's got diabetes..."Still remember the song for the singing beer mugs -- "Brew me no brew with artificial bubbles, those carbonated beers of today/Cause Utica Club'll still take the trouble to AGE BEER THE NATURAL WAY! Utica Club, UC!!"

 

Allen West climbs the shit pile of historical disgrace and crows about it

 

One of the benefits of the profound ignorance of a large swaithe of the American people lies in their inability to recognize irony. So, when a first term member of congress who is probably looking at being a one term member of Congress pulls something out not from the Karl Rove playbook but the Joe McCarthy playbook, people will miss it. Our political discourse has skipped self-satire and gone straight to slapstick. As Gibbs rule number 7 puts it, "when you lie, be specific."  Allan West, Congressman from Mesron and Florida, is now trying to win a redistricted, largely Democratic district by railing against the Democratic Progressive Caucus as "Communists' announcing that he's "heard that 80 member of congress are communists." You see, the American Communist party, the old Gus Hall powerhouse, has said that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is reasonably close to endorsing their goals. (In the spirit of full disclosure, this website endorsed Gus Hall for President in 2008. Mr Hall died in 2000)I'm not sure what those could be, since the Communist Party of the USA was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics which...no longer exists. Well, the language is degraded by more than West's blathering, but come on. Read something written by somebody not John Birch or J. Edgar Hoover that explains what Communism is as opposed to what you think it is...a vague threat to take your guns, your government health care, your government pension and your government roads, schools, infrastructure and pollute your precious body fluids while letting your children run wild having abortions and contraception and stuff. Dude, Democrats are to Communists in much the way that the Republicans are to the Freemen of Montana.

West also babbled that Barrack Obama is afraid to debate him. Really?  Loudmouthed first termer thinks that the President of the United States should get on a stage in South Florida and debate him?  Seriously, if the President has a few spare minutes to waste on West, he should devote it to shooting some hoops with his secret service detail or giving Bo a bath with the girls. Total lunacy... Seriously, the man is a deranged, meglomaniacal dweeb and needs to be kept in government cusody to protect himself and his loved ones from his next over the top appearance or action. 

Now, as I listened to the video (let's hold the musing on that trope for another time), I got the sense that a good number of Mr. West's constituents were laughing at him. It's possible that this is gem came out not so much as a Michelle Bachmann unsolicited bit of insanity as a response to poking the bear. West is not exactly known for reasoned discourse, a sense of balance or proportion and measured response to provocation. 

Now, the guy could have been court martialed for war crimes instead of being given a slap on the wrist and allowed to retire -- should have been court martialled for war crimes, since he fired a pistol at a prisoner of war in order to make him provide information -- and has disgraced the nation ever since. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in Army; he was in a command position in combat; and he ended up relieved of command and given the opportunity to retire -- which he took. I think West is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of an incredible magnitude and should be treated with respect for his service, compassion for his condition while being protected from himself and his demons. Well, Gulf I gave us Timothy McVie; Gulf 2 is giving us Allan West, Republican congressman from Florida. 

This is where the Republican leadership needs to step up, get West under control or expect a far rougher response than the sort given so far. This is pretty funny, actually. "Chellie is a Democrat, a farmer and a Lutheran but no, she is not a Communist," said Willy Ritch, spokesman for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), also a vice chair of the caucus." 

(Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, and as a one-time student of Luther and the Protestant Reformation, I should point out that Luther had some commie-pinko-tendencies prior to the Peasants Revolt. The whole concept of grace in the Pauline-Augustinian-Luther tradition has  a pretty strong egalitarian twist to it. But in general, in Wisconsin, yeah equating Lutheran Deomocrats to Communists is like equating Allen West to Allen A' Dale, which I guess would make Boehner Robin Hood and Cantor Little John.)

As that great American political commentator Bugs Bunny would put it, "What a maroon!"

Civilized costs more than nasty, brutish and short...

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
Thomas Hobbes 

To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life.
Thomas More

 

Can you say AN/PDR-27R?  ALPHA-NOVEMBER-PAPA-DELTA-ROMEO-TWO-SEVEN-ROMEO.

Those veterans among us have no problem with that, since it’s basic military phonetic alphabet and is the name of a pretty common piece of stuff that most were exposed to at one time or another. It’s the Geiger Counter used by the military in its various configurations over the years.  For a part of my career as a grunt, I had to use these things as a Chemical Operations type – NO LIGHT TOO BRIGHT/NO BLAST TOO FAST/SO UP YOUR ASS/WITH BUGS AND GAS! (Being the unofficial motto of the Army’s Chemical Corps.) Training people to use these things was part of the gig, and they’re frighteningly easy to use wrong; they’re reasonably delicate and fairly easy to contaminate or peg. Walk up to a hot source and check it with the meter on one of the lower scales, and bad things could happen. Open the shield to check for beta radiation, and pass it to close to a blade of grass, and you risked puncturing the shield. IF the numbers get high, you get out if you can.

While there are lots of emitters – particles that have become radioactive or are by their nature radioactive such as uranium – the primary ones monitored for in the field are GAMMA radiation, which is the most immediately deadly, Beta radiation which can be very hot but has a real limited range of its emissions, and then Alpha Radiation which is most dangerous if it gets inside the body. Think of barriers – lead is a great barrier for gamma; beta can be blocked by clothing and dust masks and goggles. Alpha is pretty insidious – the meters to detect its presence are specialized and primarily available to emergency reaction teams who would respond to a nuclear accident or a dirty bomb. IF it gets into the water table of the food chain, it can be a problem. If you inhale it or it gets into a cut, it can be a problem. Not quickly, but down the road a piece.

OK, welcome to the modern world. We have to deal with dirty water, dirty air, global climate change, extreme weather, decreasing availability of cheap energy, overcrowding, pandemics, potential famine, potential shortage of potable water…everything except the viral crop of right wing, isolationist, brain dead bigots that currently infect the US and indeed the entire civilized world. Thomas Hobbes and Thomas More weren’t exactly contemporaries, but I’ve come to believe of late that the Tea Party and their ilk, the Grover Norquist-Herman Cain-Joe Walsh axis of that world, mistook the two. They read Leviathan, and then they read Utopia and then got confused as to which one was supposed to reflect the good idea and which the bad. (This is kind of like confusing The Joy of Sex with The Joy of Cooking, but more dangerous to civil society.)Hobbes believed that in the absence of a strong central power, “Life is nasty, brutish, and short,” and advocated a very strong central government as essential to a civilized society. More described an ideal society – Utopia – where the absence of distractor and distinctions allowed for a classless and a rather bland society. But, he pointed out in the book itself that it was an intellectual exercise and in real life, he advocated a very strong central government. When that central government decided to execute him, his final speech was brief and to the point, saying in large part “I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”

There is a rhetorical tool called reduction ad absurdum that doesn’t work with these people. We’ve seen it several times this year in debates; the famous “Let him die!” crowd cheer in the Republican debate in response to Ron Paul’s brief hesitation in his response to Wolf Blitzer is the most distinct. I’ve had it happen in discussion with students who hold these beliefs; I first felt the change in argument when I said to one of the folks who was paying my salary by attending class on a mix of GI Bill and Pell Grants and Federally Guaranteed Loans that “Look, the government needs to be able to help people. No one wants to see beggars and kids starving…” The guy responded, “Who cares? That’s their problem.”

How do you argue with that sort of stuff? More, I think, encountered the same thing, as did Hobbes. More’s comment is more immediately apropos, since this was a student in a graduate business economics class –“One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.” I’d like to think that I had the same thought and possibly did at the time, but it was probably punctuated with obscenities, curses and commands to get his ass off his head and back where it belonged. I kept quiet – you don’t get to curse students until you have tenure. But, I think Hobbes again adds clarity to the argument, about the role and responsibility of government. “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”

OK, Brother AXE, how exactly do you get from Geiger counters to the Tea Party to Hobbes and More and beyond. Well, it’s relatively easy…all it takes is following More, being transformatively exposed to an engaged human life…

The discovery came in the midst of the largest federal effort to date to clean up uranium mines on the vast Indian reservation. A hearing in 2007 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led to a multiagency effort to assess and clean up hundreds of structures on the reservation through a five-year plan that ends this year….Yet while some mines have been “surgically scraped” of contamination and are impressive showpieces for the E.P.A., others, like the Cameron site, are still contaminated. Officials at the E.P.A. and the Department of Energy attribute the delay to the complexity of prioritizing mine sites. Some say it is also about politics and money… “The government can’t afford it; that’s a big reason why it hasn’t stepped in and done more,” said Bob Darr, a spokesman for the Department of Energy. “The contamination problem is vast.” Leslie MacMillan, NY Times, April 1, 2012.

The article describes another moment in the timeline of exploitation and destruction of Native American culture and people by corporate and government greed and indifference. In this case, during the great uranium boom of the 1956-period, the government not only allowed but encouraged various people ranging from major mining interests to irresponsible nutjobs – not that the two are mutually exclusive – to seek deposits of uranium on reservation land in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. When the boom died, the various mining interests left – and since then, it became obvious that they left a lot of junk behind poisoning the land. Hey, the Navajos have a lot of space, who cares? Well, that sort of lasiez-faire nonsense fails to consider the Navajo cultural and religious ties to the land. I am not an expert on Navajo religious beliefs, but their origin myth has a very strong tie not only to nature but to the very ground itself and what is beneath it. The Old Man of the story is as close to a god figure as we get here:

The Coyote of the east came where the people were and asked Old Man where he came from. Old Man told him from three worlds down below and also told Coyote how he came up, also saying “If you (Coyote) are a clever man, I will teach you all we know about our religion, etc.” So he taught him everything. 

Well, one thing Old Man did not teach Coyote was how politics work. In most cultures, including the western culture we supposedly represent, when you make a promise you fulfill it. The relationship between the US and the Navajo isn’t simple – no relationship between sovereign states where one is in fact subservient to the other can be simple. But, the role of the US in this equation is to protect the Navajo and to act as stewards so that they can maintain their way of life. Obviously, the great Uranium rush resulted in a lot of undocumented craziness in isolated backlands. Problem is, many of the reservations people live out in those backlands and are pastoral in existence…sheepherders. Sheep need to roam, and one might wonder if the reservation is huge enough to support a relatively large population in the high desert of the American Southwest. When you poison hunks of the land, it’s difficult to maintain and use. When you don’t tell people the hazards you are exposing them to, you risk exposing them to patterns of illness and sickness that they may not recognize or have the resources to care for.

The EPA has done a lot more than would be done without it, but these areas are environmental disasters. The Navajo don’t have the resources or the money or the expertise to handle 6-7-9=800 documented and undocumented hazmat sites. No one does, except the US. If you can identify the company that poisoned and failed to remediate the site and the company is still in business, you can take them to court if you’re either the Navajo or the US government and force them to remediate it. However, a lot of these diggings are anonymous or were dug by individuals 50 years ago and are no longer in business. I suspect it’s obvious – the US has a responsibility to fix this; someone needs to get incensed and question whether or not the senior member of the partnership of sovereigns in this case is fulfilling its responsibilities.

Of course, the Navajo people are American citizens. If the government of the United States allows and encourages Bob’s Radioactive Mining and Waste Creation service to dig up and contaminate my back yard, I have a valid claim for the US government to honor. If I get sick, I have a valid claim against Bob’s – who either goes bankrupt or has died – and against the US government.

So, the problem is money. Let’s turn briefly to another money issue.

 When the Army was made up of draftees and folks who “volunteered” to avoid being drafted, drawing down after a war wasn’t a problem. You pointed at the door and said who wants to go home first. However, after Vietnam, a lot of enlisted guys who become commissioned officers found themselves being told that they weren’t needed as officers; they could, however, stay on as NCOs. And, as a benefit, they could continue to serve in the active, individual reserve so that when they retired they could do so at whatever reserve officer rank they achieved. I know a lot of guys who were Staff Sergeants and Sergeant First Class and even a few Sergeant Majors and such who retired as…Lieutenant Colonels. In one case, the only person who could rate a SFC in my section was the Brigade Commander, because he was senior to everyone else. Weird. Most of these guys were great soldiers, but there was always some fear and resentment, no so much on their parts but on the part of the guys who were now
giving them orders.

Minor problem. Solved by 1981 or so; but the problem is greater when you have a volunteer force that you’ve used in the longest war in the Nation’s history and the Iraq war. These folks have been told they are heroes, that the nation is forever indebted to them. They are also literate and engaged human beings – they realize that they are facing a period of arbitrary eliminations and downsizings. They also are learning that the quality of life for those who remain on active duty will decrease significantly. This makes them unhappy.

As it should. It always has…you want to see a portrait of a lost soldier, check out Rome on DVD or Blue Ray and see what happens to soldiers who suddenly and without reasonable transition find themselves tossed into society. Read about what went on with the various paramilitary groups in Germany after World War I. One reason our friend Winston Churchill was able to find a small army and call it a police force, deploying it to Ireland to handle the Irish Revolution was because they had tons of veterans who had no way to make it as civilians after four years in the trenches and the Army was drawing down because of peace. So, the Black and Tans entered Irish history – it may seem a benign mixed drink of lager and stout here, but it Ireland it’s something else entirely.

 Now, I served through one peace dividend, the post Soviet Union-post Gulf I drawdown. Operations Temp became absolutely insane for units, particularly in the support base, Intelligence, Logistics and Maintenance for the Army. As a First Sergeant in a Corps Support Brigade in Germany, I was deploying people to Africa, Greece, the Balkans and Belarus on a monthly basis. It was slightly crazy. The OPTEMPO increased when Bosnia and Kosovo came into the picture; when I returned to Fort Lewis, I got another Company as First Sergeant, and went through the same stuff, deploying people to every place from Port Au Prince to Princeton. We were as an Army and as a military far busier during this period than we’d been during the Cold War.

However, since 9/11 the military has been on continuous insanity as an OPTEMPO. What I see in my
various wanderings is a force that is largely stressed by insecurity and craziness imposed by a chain of command and then further stressed when they hear that 70000 soldiers will go home this coming year, that standards for weight, PT, body art and so on are going to ratcheted up and that any screw-up will result in getting the boot. Posts are becoming overcrowded which will negatively impact both mission and quality of life. Benefits are being cut. The services are showing their loyalty to the nation and will continue to do so; but, they’d like something in return. Fulfillment of what is seen as promised –Old Veterans can smile cynically but it’s not because we don’t agree with them. It’s because we know. We’ve known since Socrates mustered out in Athens; Kipling said it for all of us --

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll…

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

Now, as a special disabled veteran and a retiree, I have a doctor at the local Army installation, in this case, the clinic at Fort Irwin. Now, Irwin in some ways reminds me of Fort Apache…the Army has done a tremendous amount to make it more livable, but the fact remains that you’re forty miles not from civilization but from the interstate. I make the drive when I need to see my doctor or when I need to pick up a prescription. When I was in to see my Doctor recently, she informed me that she was leaving because her husband was retiring from active duty in June and she had no idea what staff they’d have after she left but was sure they’d find some good ones. She also handed me a prescription for one of my medications, written for a civilian drug store, telling me that the Pharmacy wasn’t going to stock it or many other drugs that had been a normal item in their formulary. I was curious as to this, thinking that the drugs were things that were normally used by retirees and frankly, that made sense. I have had a number of conversations with the soldiers working in the pharmacy over the past couple of years as well as several with the senior officer in the Pharmacy, a Captain. I had to pick up something else, and got a chance to talk to a young sergeant with a close combat badge and a 10^th Mountain combat patch. She’s in her early 20s and would like to make this a career but said, “they’re throwing soldiers out and they’re cutting back support to the rest of us. What the hell, First Sergeant?” The Captain was very direct with me; when I said I’d leave her name out of this piece she said,  “I don’t care!! I’m getting ready to PCS and the command loves me because I always come in on budget. They know what I think, but it doesn’t matter. If I make the budget they’re happy with me.”

It takes a lot to bitch slap me with a piece of reality, but I’d never heard about the number one thing on an OER for a company grade officer being “come in at or according to plan.” That’s a civilian bean counter approach. But she told me that the particular thing I’m now getting through RiteAid  -- Androgel, I am seriously old although not as old as Gordon or Trowbridge, hehhehehe – is used by a lot of younger soldiers. The reason for the reduction in formulary –drugs carried in the pharmacy – is simple; her budget has been cut by 40% with minimal warning. Of course, the patient load is increasing.

I find this somewhat disturbing on several fronts. If it’s only retired old farts who need something, of course, send up to the pharmacy in town. The co-pay is unpleasant but I can live with it. But, a soldier on active duty, a spouse, a child who’s treatment is delayed while finding a way to Walmart (50 miles away) or waiting for a delivery through ExpressScripts is unconscionable. More than that, the feeling becomes more that they – the Army, the Nation, the People, the Congress, the Government – don’t care.

 So, when the House Armed Services Committee grill the Joint Chiefs wanting to know why the Army and the Marines aren’t looking for new tanks and a new generation of tanks in what is supposedly a time of austerity, you have to wonder. The Army says no thanks, we got lots of tanks and nobody to really fight with…with tanks. The Abrams and Bradley and to a lesser extent the Stryker are excellent platforms and weapon systems and WE HAVE ALL WE NEED. Then, the Budget Committee led by Paul Ryan who looks like a cross between a weasel, snake and Eddie Munster to me from some weird progressive sci-fi novel, ignore the Joint Chiefs and say in effect, “They’re lying to us!” as they flood more money into the defense budget, you have to wonder. I personally wouldn’t tell General’s Dempsey, Odierno, and Amos that they were lying to me unless we were playing poker. But Ryan felt comfortable with this gem. General Dempsey’s response would scare me if I was simpering chicken hawk like Ryan and his gang…

"We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice," Ryan had said, according to Politico. "We don't think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget."

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took issue with those comments.

"There’s a difference between having someone say they don't believe what you said versus ... calling us, collectively, liars," the general told reporters on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. "My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget."

Lest someone say something along the lines of “you can’t have it both ways, Brother AXE!” I have to explain something – they’re not interested in improving quality of life for soldiers on the Hill; they’re interested in keeping the Defense Contractors happy. My own representative is Chairman Buck McKeon who is pretty much on the dole from Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. The only reason they would be interested in maintaining the formulary in the Army Medical System is if Merck and Pfizer weighed in. Total BS – these are the guys who want more tanks, more systems that don’t require soldiers but cost a lot of money, more defense contractors doing things soldiers can and should do. Rachel Maddow made the comment on the Jon Stewart show that she didn’t think the Army needed people from KBR peeling potatoes; we could probably figure out some way to have soldiers do that. We don’t people from Cubic managing airspace or logistics. A lot of these people are great folks – lots of former military and retirees. But, they’re doing work that should be done by soldiers.

The number of broken promises and bad judgments made over the last 30 years is incredible. Each bad judgment ends up causing more broken promises. However, the majority of the problems I see – crumbling infrastructure, lousy schools, increased long-term unemployment, mounting debt, lagging modernization, lack of a coherent energy plan and so on and on and on  as well as what has happened to Native Americans, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsman, Civil Servants, Labor Unions, and on and on comes from the idea that we don’t have the wherewithal to pay for what we need to do. That is bullshit. We may all be Travon Martin to some extent; we are also all General Dempsey being insulted and talked down to by Ryan who now claims that he misspoke. Yeah, he’s sorry if General Dempsey didn’t understand what he was saying…if General Dempsey was offended, he’s sorry that General Dempsey was offended.

"General Dempsey and I spoke after that, and I wanted to give that to him, which was that's not what I was attempting to say," Ryan said on CNN. "What I was attempting to say is that President Obama put out his budget number for the Pentagon first ... and then they began the strategy review to conform the budget to meet that number. We think it should have been the other way around."

We are all the early 20s spouse who’s told that while her husband is deployed to Afghanistan and she’s just taken her child to the emergency room at Fort Irwin for some condition that she’s going to have to drive in to beautiful to get the medication the kid needs; we’re all the poor pharmacy specialist who has to deliver this news to a scared and lonely woman. We’re all the school teacher who has to buy supplies for her room while trying to pay student loans and for a Master’s degree that she’s required to have but is also required to pay for. We’re all the Navajo farmer who just discovered that his sheep have been munching contaminated grass and have to be put down…

What we’re all not is Paul Ryan. What we’re all not is Buck McKeon. What we’re all not is Mitt Romney – we’re closer to Shamus on the trip to Canada. We’re not the Koch brothers. We’re not worrying about how many millions of dollars we can make in bonuses; we’re not wondering about how much money we need to put into the Cayman Islands this year. We’re not GE, with a 1000 people in their tax department figuring out how little tax they can pay; we’re not the head of Goldman Sachs mortified that the word has gotten out that we’ve financed a  human trafficking website…

There are things that we can do to solve our problems. First of all, we have to acknowledge that taxes are too low and the lowness is progressive. I have no problem with current tax rates so long as at the top end, they are flat above some limit. No deductions. Sorry. So if you’re Mitt Romney, you can claim standard deductions on some portion of your income – say the first million – but the $277M after that should be taxed at the full 35%. Capital Gains up to some limit can continue to be taxed at the current rate – say, up to $2M but above that, it should be taxed at the normal income tax rate. Have somebody rational calculate the shortfall and come up with strategies to overcome it. The SHORTFALL IS NOT SOME NUMBER THAT PAUL RYAN COMES UP WITH. IT NEEDS TO BE BASED ON WHAT WE ACTUALLY NEED TO DO SO THAT THE SOVERIEGN ENTITY CAN FULFILL ITS FUNCTION ACCORDING TO HOBBES.       

In Romney’s case, under my plan, assuming he’s able to deduct everything up 1 Million and all but a half million total  is capital gains, he’d still have well over $180 mil in income this year. I think they could get by, just fun. Failing to do something like this, and letting the Randian nutcases and economic libertarians/Austrian School reactionaries and malefactors of great wealth continue to get away with things will result in another Hobbesian diagnosed problem …

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Well, what needs to happen to get there? That’s the next piece. I’ll have it posted in a few days. 

 

No terrible beauty, just falling apart...

 

When did Florida become Ulster or Pretoria 20 years ago?

When I say the name Trayvon Martin, does it mean anything to you?" Melissa Harris-Perry asked her MSNBC audience on Saturday. "If it doesn't, it should."

Harris-Perry then took some time to explain who Trayvon Martin is: a 17-year-old, unarmed black teenager who was allegedly shot and killed by a man in Florida in late February, after the man saw him walking down a street and thought he looked suspicious. The case has attracted substantial attention, in part because the man, George Zimmerman, has admitted to shooting Martin but has not been arrested or charged with any crime. 

I enjoy listening to Melissa’s work and discussions with her guests. I’m not sure why she was denied promotion to full professor at Princeton – They have a quota on attractive women, Black, Liberal Political Scientists who get opinion gigs on MSNBC and PBS? They still have investments in slavery? Paul Krugman scares them – but their loss is Tulane’s, the nation’s, and MSNBC’s gain. I was steaming over the Trayvon Martin situation anyway, and her commentary pushed a lot of buttons.

 Usually at this time of year, I’m writing something about the Irish, or Ireland or Catholicism.  I’ve been following An Problacht, (The Republic) and watching Rugby on both BBC and The Rugby Channel. Caught a brief bit of  Young Cassidy  last night on the way out to a very non-Gaelic supper that did include roast beef and cabbage. I wore a dark green  t-shirt, a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. I looked something like Rod Taylor in the damn movie. I saw some wild pictures of Shane McGowan looking like a punch-drunk old man and heard a bit of the Rocky Road to Dublin.  I’ve got a copy of  Fox Crow  on  my kindle that seems to be  set in a cross between the Land of the 7 Kingdoms and Donegal. I’ve been getting primed, but what the hell, what for?

 

If you’re not sure of the story, or  missed it with the important stuff about Seamus the Irish Setter, transvaginal probes and March Madness, Trayvon Martin was a black  kid with his dad visiting a relative in a nice, gated community in Florida. He was wandering around the neighborhood, and some neighborhood busy body named George Zimmerman decided that there was something wrong when a Black Teenager is walking around his neighborhood. He followed the kid, confronted him, hilarity ensued and this fine representative of white middle class values– Mr. Zimmermanis 28 years old and the “Neighborhood Watch – drew down  on the kid and shot him. Zimmerman supposedly was “in fear of his life” which makes it ok in Florida to kill somebody. Irony does abound amidst tragedy.

 Now, the kid was going to the 7-11. He was after a can of soda and a bag of skittles. Anyone is normally allowed the right of self-defense; the idea is appropriate self-defense, balance. Somebody cuts in front of you in a line at Walmart, you probably don’t get to use the excuse that you capped the motherfucker because he was an immediate threat. Zimmerman had been told by the police that they had dispatched a car, and to not pursue him. Zimmerman in fact ignored the order from the police, provoked the kid and killed him. Thuggish behavior of a white wannabe against a black teenager…maybe his pants were too low? He was wearing “gang colors”?

 

In 1842 a mob of clowns in Boston – Brookline, actually – burned an Ursuline Convent because there were Catholics there. Teaching Catholic stuff…the response of the Bishop of Boston was to call his fellows, the Jesuits, and have them start a high-school and college in Worcester, a joint called College of the Holy Cross. I was kind of surprised to read a piece  on Huff Po that managed to list the top ten Irish schools and skipped us; we were diverse, of course. We had 27 black students, Irish Jocks, Italian Jocks, Polish Jocks, some Hispanics, two Greek kids and three Jews.

The Great Draft Riots of New York City made famous in The Gangs of New York were provoked by the idea that Irish immigrants were treated terribly and now were being drafted to free  slaves while the Micks were being treated at least as badly by the Nativists. This has continued – I was told in a bit of openness by a professor that the reason I didn’t get into a prestigious graduate school was because the chairman had said that he already had enough Irish-Catholics. That was 40 or so years ago, and probably is not so obvious now, but it’s still there. 

The Italians, the Poles, the Blacks, the Jews and the Hispanics are all facing the same thing. As generations become accepted, they then become more and more like the intolerant bastards that stood in their way. Hell, while I suspect Zimmerman might be Jewish given the name and ethnicity attached, he’s probably big in the local Tea Party and may even be getting toasted at the local VFW for showing that kid… 

I am Kilrain of the 20th Maine and I damn all gentlemen
Whose only worth is their father's name and the sweat of a workin' man
Well we come from the farms and the city streets and a hundred foreign lands
And we spilled our blood in the battle's heat
Now we're all Americans

I am Kilrain of the 20th Maine and did I tell you friend I'm a fightin' man
And I'll not be back this way again, cause we're all goin' down to Dixieland

 

WHEN THE FUCK DID IT BECOME ALL RIGHT TO KILL CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY LOOK DIFFERENT? THEY”RE KIDS!! If A GAGGLE OF EMOS OR GOTHS HAD BEEN WANDERING DOWN THE STREET, WOULD HE HAVE FOLLOWED THEM?

 Now, in Ulster, there was a tradition of the Protestants controlling the cops and having an auxillary, the B-Specials who were empowered to go into the Irish neighborhoods and “keep the Paddies in line.” Yeah – that worked fine until 1968 –then things changed in a mass explosion of violence, hatred, blood and atrocity, in the name of keeping the strangers down because they were dangerous.

 

For 150 years in South Africa, it was possible for a white settler to shoot a kaffir (black) or mixed race person. South Africa’s treatment of the Indians resulted in a fellow named Mohandmas Ghandi becoming radicalized.

  

There is no excuse for this idiot. There’s a prima facie case to indicate that there is at least a problem with civil rights abuses – no equal protection under the law.  Any cop worth his badge should have run him in for any number of things up to and including murder. Certainly hard to prove equivalency of force to threat – however, if Zimmerman found himself driving through a Black neighborhood, would they be entitled to shoot him because he was suspicious? 

This is what the bastards have wrought. We are back in Emmett Till territory. We’re back to the burning of convents/mosques and we’re less civilized and tolerant than Ulster or South Africa.

 

If Florida doesn’t act decisively to prevent this sort of crap, then in the dock of God’s justice, Zimmerman should be joined by Wayne LePierre and the Board of the NRA, Rick Scott, and the Tea Party. When Anne Coulter advocates less craziness, you know you have a problem.

Well, when political leaders with a rock solid 30% of the country behind them and the rest of us staring in disbelief, well, strange and sad things happen. No terrible beauty born, just the center not holding…by the way, if Barrack Obama  is a Muslim, going to the Dublin City Pub, hoisting a Guinness and singing Danny Boy would probably be considered apostasy. Drinking alcohol is a violation of Sharia of course, and Islam requires adherence to the rules in a way that would make my Nun-programmers in the 50s and 60s think about the advantages of liberty and freedom.

That said, we need to open our hearts and minds to some of the stuff in the Bible that doesn’t lend itself to believing God is blessing your righteous cause so go smite the sinners, the heathen, the others.

And, Trayvon Martin joins a long line of young  people gone for no reason except ignorance, hate and stupidity by ingrate-inbred-liars and thieves. A line that includes Kevin Berry, Steve Biko, Emmett Till and Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

Say wha? This is Gotham City on Meth...

One of the things that binds loose collectives of malcontented malevolent dissidents, anarchists and soldiers, political thinkers and intellectual dilettantes that make up my small circle of freinds is our general aversion to the impact of the totalitarian mind on life, language and discourse. Particularly when afraid -- when they're afraid, they come unglued with weird explanations of events...Orwell could have had fun with that realization because it is when under pressure from the unknown that the basic spiritual bankruptcy and ontological void that is the totalitarian way becomes most obvious. Case in point, China.China has the potential to explode at any time. It's fairly obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of Marxist thought that the victory of the Communist Party in 1948 preceded the rise of the industrial proletariat. Pretty much the way that Communism has spread everywhere, by the way, except for the countries in eastern Europe that were conquered by the Soviet Union. So, given the fact the Party still rules the country as a vicious oligarchy, it should not be surprising that the government is terrified of anything that might blow it all up. Tibet, Western China, displaced living lives of misery in Guangzhou and Shanghai...labor unrest, the incredible imbalance between rich and middle class and middle class and poor...disease, famine, water impossible to drink, etc. etc. The place is an economic dynamo sputtering away on top of a volcano. 

Which presents a fair amount of hilarity masquerading as WTF? Not unlike Rush Limbaugh confusing contraception with the adult film industry and Israeli fellow-travellers eagerly sounding the drums for a war with Iran because our last religio-WMD-"Make the world safe"-enterprises have gone so well, the Chinese government is definitely after the root cause of problems at all levels. Jezebel picked up a story from The People's Daily that really makes it obvious that fantastic explanations for things is not just a Republican plutocratic art but one shared by totalitarians univerally. 

Ok, girl one loses a "remote control" to a rolling door for her home. Girl one is obviously fairly rich for China since this looks like a really bad translation of "Garage Door Opener..." although I suppose it could have been a rolling steel shutter door to a patio or perhaps a French Door with a remote to the patio but, WHAT THE HELL?  The silly damn Khardasians don't have remote controlled French doors; Trump doesn't have remote controlled French doors. That makes no sense...even in China, which at some levels, times and places is really like Batman's Gotham City, on meth...So, the kid lost a garage door opener. She decides to kill herself, so she hides in a closet -- another sign that we're dealing with some level of wealth here, there's actually a closet that is not so much in use that hiding in it is possible -- until her little friend comes over. She says she's going to commit suicide, the little friend says, OK, me too and Girl 1 writes down a note saying that she's killing herself over the garage door opener and Girl 2 is doing it because, well, they're friends and it's Tuesday and there's nothing on TV and...they are planning on visiting the Qing dynansty to make a movie of the emperor -- any emperor -- and then going to outer space. Girl 1 tells her sister to "Take Care of the Parents" because it's all about the parents, and they jump in a pool and drown. 

Sister? The Chinese still have their one child rule. Only the very well to do and party elites get to have multiple children. WHAT THE HELL? This passes no reality test...but, the inspiration for the suicide is ...TV shows about people travelling in time and marrying royalty. 

Yeah, and comic books caused juvenile delinquency and rock and roll and teenage pregnancy and communism. Ask your great, great senile grandmother!

Imagine the dialogue in the TV movie...if you've ever listened to the dialogue in a Chinese TV show, as I did by reading subtitles while there -- you'll recognize it. 

Chechette: I lost the garage door remote and have brought dishonor on myself and my family. I must kill myself! 

Chongette: I am your best friend. I will also kill myself. 

Cheechette:Well, if we kill ourselves, we can go back in time and make a movie of the emperor in the Qing dynasty!

Chongette:Oh, good. Then we can travel in space.

 

Cheechette: My parents will be so proud...let's go drown ourselves in the pool!

Both: All hail the Glorious People's Liberation Army and Chairman Mao!"

Yeah. Now, they could have blamed this on Falung Gong because everybody knows that weird calestenics and such make you crazy. They could have blamed this on the influences of capitalism. They could have blamed it on a lot of things. Hell, blame it on Guy Clark ...Time travel on the Chinese equivalent to The Gilmore Girls? Jezebel has an excellent point, by the way.  

This sounds like a cautionary tale about parenting — if your kid thinks killing herself is a good response to losing the remote control, you might not be sending the right message about the value of everyday objects. But Sun Yunxiao, deputy director of China Youth and Children Research Center, has a different moral in mind:

Schoolchildren are rich in curiosity but poor in judgment, so this kind of tragedy happens in every era. I have heard of children jumping from high buildings after watching an actor flying in a magic show. This kind of imitative behavior is in the nature of young children, but it's very dangerous. So we should give some sort of warning for children on TV programs.

I'm actually not sure that killing yourself so you can travel back in time and film an emperor (where do you get the camera?) is a tragedy that "happens in every era."...

Being not so sure about the impact of TV on suicides -- childish deaths from imitating superheroes, pro- wrestlers and such in the west aside -- and being slightly alert to conspiracies and coverups, I gotta say, this looks more like a cover-up of something else. There are lots of possibilities -- a spree of mass murder of children with or without child rape, a problem with some powerful "Big Bucks" in the local or regional Party-Wealthy Complex, drug-crazed People's Liberation Army veterans of the unpleasantness in Western China which dwarfs what we are seeing in Afghanistan or saw in Iraq -- but TV is a convenient scapegoat. Always has been and always will be...Dr. Who, in Mandarin drag, seducing the young with opium and time travel. 

My money is probably on some sort of Child 44 coverup  but who the hell knows about these things? Totalitarian countries are weirder than weird and China's internal dissension, cultural dissonance, and Commie-Confucian-Oligarchic messiness kind of makes it all seem possible, and that's funny in a weird way...and sad. 

Another possibility is that this is just some Politboro thug having a shit fit at time travel TV. Again, the oddities of totalitarianism...

 

 

If A means B, in a parallel universe, does Z mean petunia?

 

F. Scott Fitgerald is one of those tragic American authors whom I personally want to beat up, take their lunch money, and duct tape to a telephone poll. Preferably in Alberta, in January. But, that doesn't mean he did write well or have some interesting insights. One of his more interesting quotes is "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

Reason this occurs to me this morning is that I have had two competing earwigs going on simultaneously for the last day or so. One's a classic rock macho song, one is an alt-indie feminine thing. Both are pretty good songs, but neither belongs in my head, bumping up against each other like ships tied to a wharf. In Juarez. In the Wintertime...

The first is this classic rock piece from a movie I've never seen and that has all that 80s rock stuff going on -- lots of midi, boring beat, and what sounds like bells in the chorus...

Ok, not as horrible as it could have been. But, it's not really my sort of thing, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from to invade my consciousness. It's not a guitar song really; while I find the eyes the most interesting and the most attractive physical aspect of a lot of women, I can't say that this one is top five in my list of "eyes" song. While it could be worse, and just thinking about these might trigger something resulting in my flipping out worse, it beats the hell out of "Eye of the Tiger" for example. Still, if I have to wander around in eye-music, I prefer this one:    

Or this one from a different genre, but still pretty great... 

So, that is one that makes no real sense. And then there's the other one that has no reason to be there...Tegan and Sara. I like Tegan and Sara. I like Canadian music, I have a lot of lesbian friends, I find these sisters from the great white north incredibly talented and doing interesting music. Hell, I like a lot of lesbian musicians, from Dusty Springfield through KD Lang and Melissa Etheridge.  But, this isn't my favorite T&S number and I know at least where it came from -- I was driving back from a haircut, on a frontage road along I-15 outside Victorville when Mighty Manfred queued it up on The Underground Garage. But, he played a lot of stuff, and how this one anchored itself in my head irritates me no end.      

Now, the first Tegan and Sara number I heard still seems to be my favorite. And, there's nothing that really strikes me about Hell as a trigger. So, I'm confused...if two very different and conflicting musical ideas are clashing around in your head, what does that mean?   

O