Never been a big Glenn Greenwald follower and frankly I think that everyone on the Left/Right/floating in the ozone needs to take a deep breath on this one. An enemy combatant had taken up arms against the US, and oh yeah, he had been born here. I personally would have loved to see him captured and tried in a military court and hung -- yeah, hung -- at Fort Leavenworth. A trial and a supermax would have been ok too. But, the guy represented a clear and present danger in the war zone -- he wasn't trying to surrender, he wasn't trying to calm things down. He was going from point A to point B in Yemen. If he'd been doing this in Alabama, using a Predator to take him out would have been wrong. He wasn't. He was doing it in fucking Yemen. Advocate war against the United States -- not like Jane Fonda but like Benedict Arnold, and it really doesn't matter what passports you're entitled to carry. You're a valid target.
LIfe sucks in war. It's a danagerous business. This guy was a totally legitimate target. He thought he as an Islamic Warrior waging jihad against the west in general and the United States in particular. Waste him. Huffington Post, Greenwald, Wonkette for Christ sake!Get over it. In fact, be happy the bastard is gone.
As a counter to the GOP’s inquisition of climate scientists, let us remember that in the last year or so, UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and he was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee last spring, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data showed real change. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling truth to power: the temperature increase was real, and the scientists who had demonstrated climate was changing were right.9
This is the essence of the scientific method at its best. There may be biases in our perceptions, and we may want to find data that fits our preconceptions about the world, but if science is done properly, we get a real answer, often one we did not expect. That’s the true test of when science is giving us a reality check: when it tells us something we do not want to hear, but is inescapable if one follows the scientific method and analyzes the data honestly.
Thomas Henry Huxley said it best over 150 years ago: “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”--Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology, Occidental College and Cal-Tech
This month's edition of E-Skeptic has a great article by Dr. Prothero about the interseces of faith, politics and science, and based on his discussion I'm kind of convinced that we have a fascinating problem -- when the three collide, bet against whichever has the greatest value and truth. In the article,Denialist Demagogues and the Threat to Science, Prothero makes the point repeatedly, that there are whores amongst us who will sell out as well as dupes and those unwilling to accept science and the scientific method. Rick Perry has famously commented that four semesters of biochemistry made a pilot out of him; thing is, even that "misunderestimates" his level of ignorance. It's not that the man is stupid -- he is willfully ignorant. This seems to be par for the course for the right this cycle, and probably should be on the minds of most of us. When confronted by facts, theories, hyposthesis, evidence that they do not disagree, they proclaim along with the choirs of angels and saints that it's a mystery and the Lord will provide. Since I know more than a few conservative atheists,for whom this seems disingenuous they proclaim a conspiracy which then, on examination, turns out to be a combination of right wing PR combined with whoreish behavior by a few and eye on the prize hypocrisy by others combined with a degree of malign, self-serving calculation.
Professor Prothero cites Paul Krugman on what the current reality is and where the stakes lie. It is worth considering..."But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect."
Now, I am a middle-aged white, anti-theist man without children who doesn't have severe upper respiratory symptoms. I don't expect to live long enough to really suffer from client change. The only dog I have in this fight is that nurtured by my being a member of society and having a sense of ethical responsibility to my neighbors and to those who will come after me. For people who know better to blur the lines on this issue, and so many others, proves that not all self-interest is enlightened and that greed and ignorance can trump science and good will...if we let it. Now, Jefferson felt that the need for a free press to ensure an informed electorate and thus gain a reasonable chance to get the best results from a democratically elected college was critical. The press today is not free -- it costs a lot of money and as a result, since the cost of production outweighs by far the profit from the sales of copies and on-line subscriptions, whether it's Gannett, McClatchey, Murdoch or the Schulzbergers have to be concerned about not pissing off their alien overlords, the people who buy the advertising. Since the press includes TV, radio and blogs it gets even more complicated. Rachel Maddow, for example, had a mutually respectful and and rational conversation with two of McCain's key staffers, Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace about a controversial topic -- the Palinator. However, the Maddow show is a rare exception. (Frankly, I'm amazed that people like Huntsman,Wallace and Schmidt are still Republicans. It's like people in Italy being tied to Soccer teams from birth...) People yell at each other, and only those able to outscream the other can be heard. You can decide who is actually speaking what they think based on some sort of objective reality as opposed to fantasy, greed or calculation by how quizzical and bemused their expression and the calmer their response, until they get frustrated and then either get funny or furious. Or both...If you can continue to not be overwhelmed by these bozos, you can be heard, but it can be hard. It seems to me at times that despite the best efforts of informed journalists, principled academics and commentators, and excellent thinkers who strive to be heard, our fate depends on the Till Eulenspeigel's amongst us.That's probably not the worst defender, but when satire is all that stands between the polity and the deranged, insane and barbaric things can get dicey quickly.
It would be nice if it was just hard science. It's not. Economics, foreign policy, and so on -- doesn't matter. A rational person's response to this really can only be "Are you fucking insane or are you fucking kidding me!" Or both...doesn't matter. Budgets are not just about spending, they're about what we plan to do with our country, not our money. Or your money...what do you have to pay to be part of the country after we figure out what it needs to be is a totally different question. Either money for the rich or schools, culture, infrastructure, national defense, keeping promises -- you know, all those things that the Founders expected would happen as the union became more perfect. Instead, we have Rand Paul coming out in favor of letting pipelines explode; he's already come out in favor of lets methane do it's things and kill coal miners. Boehner and Kantor et al are starting to bear a striking resemblance to Ozimandias prior to the statuary phase of that Republican leaders's career. If I hear another right wing clown say that we need to reduce taxes and cut spending to reduce the deficit and not leave our children a mountain of debt, I think we take them on a tour of places where nobody bothered to do the right thing because it was politically expedient or violated their totalitarian faith -- in Marx, or Hitler, or Caesar. We can leave your children -- remember, I'm in this for the laughs -- a reasonable debt and a functioning commonwealth, or we can leave them...Zimbabwe.
Oddly, let's let Percy Bysshe Shelley have the last word.
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away".
Children now in third grade might graduate from high school without ever experiencing a totally Romney-free day. This is not something I’m happy pointing out. For one thing, I don’t want to believe I live in a country that would seriously consider bestowing the nation’s highest office on a man who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. ---Gail Collins, New York Times
Two pieces in the New York Times this morning kind of sum up something about the zeitgeist, using two people from totally opposite ends of the spectrum, Hank Williams and Mitt Romney. Williams has been dead for 58 years, and is still a factor in American life. That's made really obvious by a new project, Bob Dylan's collaboration with poets, seers, prophets and troubadors to bring a box of unfinished songs written by Hank to life. While it seems like Romney has been bothering us for 58 years or so, the gollum from Michigan-Massachusetts-Utah-New Hampshire really hasn't been on the national stage that long. His major accomplishments have been downsizing and eviscerating American communities and industries, losing badly to Teddy Kennedy and getting health care reform passed in Massachusetts because he's such a strict constructionist. Yea, team...
Collins recommends giving your Republican friends cookies as they come to the realization that Romney's probably the one. A Romney - Pawlenty ticket looms and I'm sure that from Kennebunkport to the OC, from the Chamber of Commerce to the John Birch Society, nothing but glee abounds. MITT MITT MITT MITT. I suspect a pint of Everclear might be more appropriate.
Speaking of which, Hank Williams is a far more interesting person and source of inspiration. I'd like to thnk that 50 years from now, Mitt Romney will be a footnote in history -- also "ran for President based on a sense of entitlement and weaselliness in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020. Died in 2022. Ran for President in 2026, 2030." But, fifty years from now, Hank Williams will still be haunting us. If you play guitar and sing American music, it's probable that at some point you've tried to do a Hank Williams song; if you listen to country, rock, blues, jazz, folk you've listened to Hank Williams songs. If you've been in love and had it go wrong, you've lived Hank Williams songs.
So, this will be an interesting project with great players. I know I'm ordering it right away, and I recommend that you do too. Years ago, I had the stereo on in my office in Germany playing some Hank Williams, and a bunch of my young black soldiers came in and sat and listened. They were taken by it-- "I'm a rolling stone, all alone and lost; for a life of sin, I will pay the cost; when I walk by, all the people say, there goes a guy on the lost highway..." They thought I was listening to country blues, like Robert Johnson -- well, I was...
Steve Simmels over at Powerpop has nailed it again, and I feel compelled to acknowledge our alien overlords. David Alan Coe wrote the ultimate Country Song in "You never called me by my name" and everything since has paled...He said once that "Nobody says nothin' that Hank Williams didn't sing." Well, now we know that the soft rock equivalent of Hank Williams is...Journey.
Hardison: Oh, no. All this construction is goin’ on underground. Under, beneath the eyes. The eyes of the world, man. They don’t want you to see. Congress doesn’t know, governors don’t know, Red Cross, ACLU, National Geographic. Nobody knows, man. Nobody, man. They’re puttin’ terrorists in your backyard. Terrorists under your backyard. “Hey, little Billy, go outside. Dig in the sandbox. Ooh, klang. What’d ya find, little Billy? What’d ya find? It’s a terrorist. It’s a bunker full of terrorists, man.” Bunker, man.
Monica: What other sources do you have besides tin foil hat over here?
Hardison: Hey, hey, hey, man. Bein’ a tin foil hat, that’s better than bein’ a lap dog for the four corporations that control the global media, man.
Leverage--Three Days of the Hunter Job
I get emails. I get comments. At times that the Tin Hat Brigade of both left and right wing nuts and assorted loonies are out to amuse me. There's really no other way for an adult to respond to some of this stuff. There is no answer sufficient, no proof adequate. The best response, the most telling one I've seen that illustrates this paranoid function in America -- and anywhere else -- was a comment to the effect that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were forgeries by the Czarist Secret Police doesn't matter, because if the elders had written down their protocols, this would be what they'd say... So getting this email in one of my professional accounts was interesting, amusing and kinda, sorta sad. It sums up in some ways the very nature of our debate today -- between ideology, superstition, and ignorance fighting for the main tent in the three ring circus of the downfall of western Culture and the United States as we know it. (And, don't get me started on the right...heh, heh.)
Subject: WOE TO THE WORLD! Rothschild N.W.O Illuminati EXPOSED!!! > Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:44:44 -0500 > > N.W.O. EXPOSED! > > WOE TO THE ROTHSCHILDS! WOE TO THE FREEMASONS/ ILLUMINATI! WOE TO LUCIFER! > > PLEASE RESEARCH THE ILLUMINATI/FREEMASON BOHEMIAN GROVE CONNECTION! > > THE THIRD JEWISH TMEPLE TO BE BUILT SOON! > > http://www.squidoo.com/templejerusalem > > THE ANTI-CHRIST IS NEAR! REPENT AND KNOW ALL WILL BOW BEFORE THE LAMB OF GOD JESUS CHRIST. > > WATCH, LEARN, PRAY & PASS ON PLEASE! > > Rothschilds/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove Exposed!: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2E_HP97Rzc > > http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm > > http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/rothschild.htm > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icKIWW1EcuY > > Bible: > Revelatinos Chapter 11 > > The Two Witnesses > 1. I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. > > 2. But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. > > 3. And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” > > 4. They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”[a] 5 If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die > > 6. They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want. > > 7. Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them > > 8. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. > > 9. For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. > > 10. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. > > 11. But after the three and a half days the breath[b] of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. > > 12. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. > > 13. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. > > 14. The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.... > > Galatians 1:8 written in 50 A.D. > "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!" > > 33rd Degree Freemason Oath: > Albert Pike- > "That which we must say to the crowd is:* 'We worship a god, but it is the god one adores without superstition.' > * To you, Sovereign Grand Instructors General [a 33rd Degree Mason], we say this ... you may repeat it to the > Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th Degrees ... The Masonic religion should be, by all of the initiates of the high > degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine ... Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also > God ... the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophic religion is the belief in Lucifer, the > equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light, God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of > Darkness and Evil." [Lady Queenborough, Occult Theocracy, p. 220-221, quoting a letter from Albert Pike to the > 23 Supreme Councils of the World on July 14, 1889]... > > THE LAMB OF GOD JESUS CHRIST WINS THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON! > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2E_HP97Rzc
Reply: > Date: Mon 19 Sep 2011 0925-0926
Ok, well err...good luck with that. Whatever I can do to help you out with this one...
Now, I remain unconvinced that Israel had anything to do with 9/11. I'm willing to be convinced; I'd like to see the actual surveillance tapes from the Pentagon, for example. The failure of the government to release everything they can is just stupid. Into that vacuum oddities arise. However, that aside, there is an important difference between not being convinced that the world is about to end in some Jewish-Freemason-Illuminati-Bohemian Grove rhapsody and being able to look at evidence that should make you wonder. Thomas Friedman is not one of my favorite thinkers. In general, he falls into the category of establishment-moderate twits who has to keep his credentials polished. Maureen Dowd mentioned once on The Daily Show that someone had said that the issue for the Times Op-Ed was going to be the contest between Friedman and Safire for the soul of Maureen Dowd. Well, I think her soul has stayed pretty much her own, Safire is gone but occasionally Friedman gets something very right. It's simple -- Israel is not primarily our friend -- in fact, there is some question in my mind as to whether or not Israel is its own friend. In his Sunday column,Friedman writes:
The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation....O.K., Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have a strategy?...Israel can fight with everyone or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation...Unfortunately, Israel today does not have a leader or a cabinet for such subtle diplomacy. One can only hope that the Israeli people will recognize this before this government plunges Israel into deeper global isolation and drags America along with it.
Which leads me to another thought...Bibi Netanyahu bears a striking resemblance to the John Boehner and Mitch McConnell in his ability to get the United States down rabbit holes and dark allies we really shouldn't be going down. While it's great to see Obama acting a bit like Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, going out to call down the psycho bullies intent on ruining the polity and civil society we kinda, sorta have in this country most of the time, one realizes that there is no John Wayne character off in the alley, waiting for the guns to go off to cover his rifle shot taking out the evil and enshrining the good. Far from it...Obama is in this one alone. Not unlike the Stewart character, Obama has truth, justice, law, common sense, economics and the laws of mathematics behind him; the Lee Marvin stand-ins -Johnny-Mitch-Eric-BoehnerMcConnellCantor III have a majority in the house, the cloture rule in the Senate, and a gleeful allegiance to chaos and disorder to maintain their self-interest.
Lonesome Rhodes: This whole country's just like my flock of sheep! Marcia Jeffries: Sheep? Lonesome Rhodes: Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be 'Fighters for Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do. Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you just wait and see. I'm gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be the power behind me!
A Face in the Crowd
To a large extent, this sort of statesmanship goes a long way toward explaining the Tea Party -- America's Likud -- and the capture of the Republican Congressional Delegation by it. Now, most of the people in the caucus are not certifiable wing nuts. Hell, most of them are mid-level functionaries in the Military-Industrial-Financial Complex. The theory was that with Boehner as Speaker, the Rs would make a lot of noise but not do anything to hurt the country or at least it's economic interests. Well, hah ha, hah ha, hah ha. Fooled us. Then, there's the slate of candidates vying for the nomination. Dear God -- in order to stay in the race and yet appear sane -- remain electable -- the adults in the room, Huntsman and Romney, have had to stake out positions so far to the right of the flat earth that they've embraced that they're hanging on by their fingertips. Huntsman has at least taken the principled and courageous position of endorsing science...now, as a child of the 60s, I remember when the Left was anti-technocracy, science and math. One of the criteria to be a long-haired hippy commie freak was to not be good at math or, if you were, to be mildly ashamed of it. The Science and Math and Computer types were kind of oblivious to politics, but if they did deign to look at it, they were interested in the Republicans as the party most likely to endorse research into Science, Math and Computers. Well, isn't today a turn around...
I have to wonder how Newt Gingrich, freaking Phd, can walk into the faculty club of any respectable college campus without blushing or hiding behind a raincoat based on his performance in the Iowa debate alone. Romney is an android whore, and so his anti-science positions are kind of in keeping with the rest of his character. His greatest accomplishment in Massachusetts -- health care reform -- is something he runs from, while he babbles about job creation when the historical record is pretty clear -- as a capitalist, he created jobs in the Third World at the expense of American workers; in Massachusetts, he didn't have a respectable competitive record on job creation. So, the logical thing is to run away from your strengths. Rick-a-Dick Perry went to the pre-eminent Technology School in Texas, and admits that four semesters of Organic Chemistry made a pilot out of him. Well, it made pilots, teachers, lawyers and a variety of other things out of other people -- there's no shame in bumping into the wall between Med or Vet School that is Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. But, he appears to have gotten a D in meat...compared to Bush's Gentleman's Cs, this is kind of scary. More to the point, he's packed the State Board of Education with right-wing, anti-science, anti-research and anti-history lunatics who would embarrass the PTA in Incest Springs Arkansas. Texas depends on technology, engineering and geology to a tremendous extent -- how do you develop new and safer approaches to drilling for oil by ignoring science in Geology?
As for Bachmann-Palin overdrive, wow. WOW. While I'm going to pass on Mikki the Monkey right now, they're both worth considering. Batshit crazy, of course, if the bat is a fox. Occasionally, they both get off some good lines -- I'd like to think that Palin's line about polls being for strippers as a witty use of satire and homonym to take a pun and bitch slap it out of the park. (How's that for mixing up the old metaphor salad?) However, I'm pretty sure she doesn't get the subtlety there, and didn't intend it. When Keith Olbermann jokes about "Lonesome Rhodes Beck" referencing the dark study of celebrity "A Face in the Crowd," he really is talking more about Palin. We forget at our peril that she really wanted to be an entertainer, a sportscaster. Had the WNBA been around in her Sarah Barracuda days, she's have been trying to get on the court to be her generation's version of Sue Bird, without the talent, but with all the crazed desire possible. I hope she gets into this -- the media will eat her up, and she'll totally screw up whatever the R's look like, act like and try to think like. Like Journey or Paul Revere and the Raiders, she'll keep doing her revival tours on the rubber chicken circuit so long as she can. A number of years ago, I was in my least favorite city -- Las Vegas -- and in the hotel hosting the conference I was being bored at, Englebert Humperdink was appearing. I thought he was dead...but, this wasn't the Hard Rock or Bellagio, and I guess the slot machine crowd there was demographically correct. In a few years, Palin will be doing shows in Branson and Knotts Berry Farm. She might get a gig at Dollywood, except that Dolly is a pretty smart woman, and recognizes fraud and stupidity far away. Sarah can't see it when it's in the mirror.
Now, the hatchet job that my fellow alum Joe McGinnis did on Palin requires comment. The revelations in the book appear to be pretty trite -- Palin was the Alaska version of a scene-whore and the Wassilla version of a Yuppie. She has a lot of kids, a long-suffering spouse, and a trail of silly, trite and nutty behavior that isn't worth anyone's attention. In a better time for the Republican party, she'd be a fringe candidate at worst; I suspect the adulation she found on the campaign trail with McCain made her crazy for attention, for the perks, for the love and adoration that she seems to seek. Let's remember, she wanted to be a sportscaster, and failed at it. She's found a way of getting the attention, and the money and will do whatever it takes to do that. Ride into the Republican convention on a White Snow Machine so she can save the day, again? Sure, why not... Now, McGinnis has an interesting career, chronicling cheats, liars, criminals and so on beginning with Nixon and Roger Ailes in 1999's The Selling of the President. 1968. He could have done an interesting take on the Palin phenomenon, building on President by comparing how the media and political operatives had morphed into something as powerful while incompetent as to propel Palin onto the national stage. Instead, he made the story about himself and the venal silliness of the Palin family. I think he missed the point. Frankly, the only one in that saga who seems to come off well is Todd -- he seems to defend his family and be pretty much a regular guy thrust into something he didn't want. McGinnis wrote a book 30 some years ago about spending a year wandering around in Alaska called Going to Extremes. I think he should have remembered that book and the people there...and possibly, re-read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail...he'd have done a better and more interesting job. Now, he's the Kitty Kelly of Holy Cross alumni, and comes off not as chronicler but scold. The Palin tale deserves a Mencken with a bit of Budd Schulberg ( after all, Schulberg wrote A Face in the Crowd) and McGinnis, for better or worse, produced a piece worthy of Penthouse, only without the vanity shots.
Normally, I hate moral victories. But this is a weird day and a weird week and a weird time. I'm still struggling to make enough sense out of what I think about current affairs let alone recent history to write intelligibly. But, Ireland, ranked 6 in the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, beat the US today 22-10. However, the Green are probably wondering a little bit... they got lucky to do as well as they did, as the USA defense was stunningly good. Conditions were good Rugby conditions -- cold, muddy, miserable, like US Football games in November. Stadium holds 20000, and was packed with locals, Irish Supporters, and USA supporters. More Irish than Yanks -- Rugby is an Irish passion, and something mainly understood as a shirt style here in the USA. But, there's lots of affection between the two countries, and between New Zealand so it was a friendly game. It began with a moment of silence for those members of the Rugby community lost on 9/11. That, in itself, was interesting. This was a four province Irish Team, with players from Ulster as well as the South, so they had a Team anthem. But, when they played the Star Spangled Banner, it seemed like the entire stadium was singing.
The game itself was great. The Irish team is definitely better -- far, far more experienced. I think athletically our players match up well, but they just don't have the experience. Again, in Rugby countries, they start playing Rugby year round at the same age we start in at T-Ball. The host country, New Zealand, is ranked number 1, the current champion, and I think they start listening to Rugby songs in the womb.
So, Ireland had the wheels come off a few times. That was caused by an aggressive and committed USA defense. Rugby can be a brutal game -- you ideally need something like a mix of Tight Ends, Scat Backs, and Nose Tackles, but everybody needs to do everything. It also helps to have somebody like Shaquille O'Neil playing in the line-ins and scrums. The Irish had this blond giant who was, of course, the team captain and was able to get well above where the Rim was on throw ins. They also do better at the scrum, where ideally they dribble the ball along like soccer players within a pile that resembles in some way the Flying V because, well, it is --- big guys in depth yoked together by their arms around each others shoulder pushing their way onward until the mess either comes apart or crosses the goal line.
The US got one penalty kick as did the Irish. Neither side was good at the kicking game. Ireland got three tries, but in the last minute, while they were trying to run up the score, a flicker pass was intercepted by a US player who ran it back for a score and then got the point. Could have been worse...
During the Irish Resistance, the Gaelic phrase Tiocfaidh ár lá became a motto for Militant Republicans and Nationalists. It means "our day will come," and refers to the concept of an overall United Ireland. Or, it's a way of reminding those on top that history does sort of run in cycles...During the Civil War, the Union's Irish Brigade was almost continuously cited for valor, with the war cry "Faugh-a-Ballagh!" or "Clear the Way!" And, the official flag of the Irish Brigade carried the motto of the Fenian Brotherhood's fighters, Riam nar druid ó sbarin lann or We will never fly from the clashing of blades.
Now as I look for some sense in the past and the present, for better or worse, I see some paralells -- American Rugby is going to get better. It's mainly a club and college game now but it will eventually catch on, particularly for people who are looking for more contact than soccer, more scoring and lesss faking but like the cleaner game with the need for less protective gear. When it does, it should do well. So, clear the way, our day will come in this sport...which is probably the closest to the original football anyway. And, because of the date, it's worth reminding the world that we may be dense poltically at time, but we don't as a natural move avoid combat. And, we can be pretty vicious when provoked...
Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect. --Paul Krugman
More than anything else in the current cultural malaise and existential doldrums, this convinces me that we are all fucking doomed!
Pop culture aside, I'm having a problem with writers block -- too much stuff to comment on, and just not enough time or energy to do so. CIA and MI5 sent people to black sites in Libya? Why not -- if you decide to operate in a complete moral vacuum, why not do the worst things possible in the name of...what, exactly? Freedom? Big oil? The Mets? Sarah Palin announcing that polls are for strippers and starting to hint that what the world needs is someone to refudiate the big oil companies while eliminating corporate income taxes? Why not...SAS and Foreign Legion operators wandering the streets of Tripoli, popping up on the Al Jezera website and then popping off? Why not ? What the hell? So, the Arab network is actually in the pay of the Windsors and the Reptillians? Where the hell is Lyndon LaRouche when you need him?
White House can't get its schedule straight, asks for a joint session and then agrees to reschedule...so however many people are currently running for the GOP nomination can get together and sprout platitudes, say really crazy shit, and complain about each other. Jesus and Tax Cuts will really work things out... Romney will release his job plan which is going to be exactly like Huntsman's and exactly like Boehner's and totally unrelated to the problem and is very much like Ron Paul's except Romney doesn't demand the execution of Bill Bernanke and like Sarah Palin's except for the lack of fish and exactly like Bachmann's only without the references to Jerusalem and rapture...and I'm supposed to comment on this shit rationally? Jon Huntsman is doing so, and he's rapidly getting to be like the Alan Rickman robot in The Hitchhiker's Guide only less likeable. And, less right...
As for Rick Perry, smite him Tiffany, smite him! The guy was barely a C student majoring in Cows-Pigs-Chickens-Manure at what was at the time a relatively low-rate school and got a D in Economics taught by that great Liberal Thinker, Phil Graham...he differentiates himself from W by proudly claiming to be dumber than Bush...and there is nothing about the guy that is attractive to anyone except those whose ass he kisses. Secede from the US? Why not? Use Predator Drones on the Border? Sure...that'll fly until the big agricultural interests note that what's happening in Georgia and Alabama where there's nobody to pick the goddamn cotton and corn -- in so far as there is any after the fires and drought and various pestilences Texas is suffering from -- but it sounds good on the stump, up in Iowa.
So, in Iraq there are daily bombings and crap, but no one notices because we're not getting bombed or crapped on too much and Geraldo and Richard Engle are otherwise occupied. In Afghanistan, we're watching it all turn to shit because we tried to do entirely too much that we were neither capable nor resourced nor interested in doing. And, Dick Cheney is wishing Hillary Clinton was President. Well, so do I. She probably would have had the intestinal fortitude to go after Cheney and Bush for war crimes...and, she represents what's left of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party to a large extent. Obama? What the hell is that all about? When he figures it out, call me...I am curious. Hamlet was a lousy general; he may have been the smartest dude in Elsinore, but how exactly did that go for him?
Tom Morello was on Keith Olbermann's new gig last week, and told how he was inspired by visiting Madison during the protests...he showed up and the next day found himself playing a borrowed guitar and harmonica and performing for 100000 people in the streets of the state capital. One other thing that struck him was the convergence. He said that he's played hundreds of rallies and protests, but in this case there were anarchists standing next to cops and they were both applauding and jumping around and having a good time.
I'd kinda like to have a good time again. Seriously, where is Lyndon LaRouche when you need him? Not that he'd be much help, but what the hell, can't quantify crazy...
imagine, if you will, a street in your neighborhood, your daughter, or cousin, or niece, and an occupying foreign Army. . .and if you think Americans are horrible in foreign conquest, and blood spillage abroad, can you imagine what they'd be like as insurgents. . .and imagine the beasts it would take to "occupy" these lands. . .sigh.
The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in arm the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained. They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one's kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one's thoughts, of one's sensations--to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.
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