Bride Of Acheron

Disappointing Headline Of The Day

2010-05-04T14:06:00.002-05:00

According to today's NYTimes, British Voters May Hang Parliament. Ah, if only they really would....

Parrrrdon Moi

2009-09-19T18:54:00.002-05:00

Blatantly stolen from Blue Gal:

There be no better way t'celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day than to link to and visit the blogger who keeps her brave ship sailing the high blogosphere seas through storms of Bushwacker idiocy 365/24/7!

T'day be talk like a pirate day? Nay, not only that, bloggers of the high seas. T'day be Link to Cap'n Dyke Day! Or ye walk the plank.

Horse Puckey At The High Court

2009-06-08T11:25:00.001-05:00

The U.S. Supreme Court by a bare 5 to 4 majority has ruled that you can't steal, at least not from someone else who's rich, under some vague circumstances, if the crime is so gross you get caught at it. As usual (see Watergate, et al.), the attempted cover-up was worse than the original crime. It's all about coal mining in West Virginia, and no, it doesn't provide justice to the oppressed peasantry whose valleys were hauled away by Mr. Peabody's coal trains per the song. It's just a fight between two companies, but 'tis a famous victory. The AssPress doesn't want us linking to them (which causes me to celebrate the election success of the Pirate Party in Sweden), but here's the key paragraph:

The West Virginia case involved more than $3 million spent by the chief executive of Massey Energy Co. to help elect state Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin. At the same time, Massey was appealing a verdict, which now totals $82.7 million with interest, in a dispute with a local coal company. Benjamin refused to step aside from the case, despite repeated requests, and was part of a 3-2 decision to overturn the verdict.

Their actual decision doesn't get into who was right in the original dispute. It only says personally financing (with three million bucks in the rock-poor tiny state of West Virginia) a statewide judicial candidate hand-picked to rule your way in an appeal calls too much attention to the real masters of the courts and should not be allowed. That might expose the myth and cause revolt in addition to revulsion. Those are not the words they used, of course, but like most of their money decisions, if you grasp the hidden premise the syllogism is clear.

What was the orignial case really about? Enjoy this dissent from that West Virginia decision, in language so blunt that I've never read anything like it before in any state Supreme Court ruling:

The majority's opinion is morally and legally wrong.

The majority opinion is morally wrong because it steals more than $60 million dollars from a man who was the victim of a deliberate, illegal scheme to destroy his business. The majority opinion is legally wrong because it uses erroneous legal reasoning to justify an immoral result.

Make no mistake -- a West Virginia jury heard from all the witnesses for both sides, and decided that Mr. Don Blankenship directed an illegal scheme to break Mr. Hugh Caperton's business. No one says that the jury was wrongly instructed. No one says they didn't hear all the evidence. In fact, the majority opinion concedes, “the facts of this case demonstrate that Massey's conduct warranted the type of judgment rendered in this case.” Yes, that's right, the majority of the members of this Court says that the Boone County jury's verdict was fully justified! Therefore, in this aspect of the case, our Court's opinion is unanimous.

Let's not forget why the jury's verdict was justified: the jurors looked Mr. Blankenship in the eye and concluded that he was lying, and that Mr. Caperton was telling the truth.

The majority opinion says: “That doesn't matter” -- it all should have been handled in Virginia. To which argument, one must respond: “Horse puckey!”

The Virginia case was about a single narrow contract issue. There was nothing in the Virginia case about Mr. Blankenship's grand scheme to crush Mr. Caperton and his business. According to the jury's findings, that scheme was hatched in West Virginia and carried out in West Virginia. Mr. Caperton had every right to try his case in West Virginia -- and he did, and he won.

Now three members of this Court have ruled that even though it is a fact that Don Blankenship illegally took over $60 million dollars from Hugh Caperton -- he can get away with it scot-free. Talk about crime in the suites!

Mind you, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't say that this dissent was right, or that Blankenship was really a thief. If the West Virginia judges had reached the same decision, but all been free of the mark of such grossly obvious contributions from someone trying to buy their ruling, that would have been fine. If this goes back to West Virginia and untainted judges make the same unjust decision as the bought-and-paid-for ones did, SCOTUS won't even blink. Moral: be subtle and covert when you buy "justice" in America.

Jungian Slip 1459

2009-05-06T10:07:00.003-05:00

Skimming a quote from an article on Cioran at wood s lot, haste mistook an "e" as "ata", thus: "Masking ourselves in our dreams we database our desires...." Perhaps the brain recalling that obsessive list-making was considered a possible sign of schizophrenia, mayhap the most appropriate response to that article's subject. Or maybe just a garbled mental transmission from Professor Hehindeed, busily downloading himself.

Reading: The Night Of The Generals

2009-05-05T16:21:00.002-05:00

This 1962 novel by Hans Helmut Kirst was recommended to me as a good mystery. Not really, but it is a good read. I never saw the movie, but I can see it could be made into a good one. A German General in World War II brutally kills a prostitute; two years later he kills another in Paris; in the mid-1950s he kills another in Germany. We never really get to understand why he does this -- imagine what Dostoevsky could have done with that character. It winds up with a kind of "Hollywood cop-out" ending, after first a German, then a French policeman obsess with finding him and seeing him punished. Enjoyable tale, with a lot of scathing portraits of German military bureaucrats for fun along the way.

Reading: Escape From Hell

2009-05-05T16:06:00.002-05:00

This is Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's sequel to Inferno. I seldom read SF any more (I stuffed myself with it in my youth), and almost never touch fantasy, but having read the original I was curious what they would do with this. Color me unimpressed, but I am not the target market here.

Following Dante's example, they use this as a chance to imagine people they don't like suffering, which must be the most "fun" part of writing this sort of thing. [Imagine who you would show in your own version -- Cheney being waterboarded could be just the beginning.] Sadly, they use this authorial power here for cheap shots against their own pet peeves, such as opponents of DDT. If they can't win the political argument in public, okay, they'll just put straw men in hell. How Paulistic of them.

The story is even more jumbled psychologically and theologically than was their first book on this, but it reads quickly and easily. A passable time-killer, but it ain't no Mote.

Reading: Seventeen Years And 2,132 Books

2009-05-05T15:55:00.005-05:00

Way back in 1992 I started listing books I'd read in a blank-paper book. More recently I've also put the list in a computer database. As of today the total is 2,132. Some of those were graphic novels or collections of comics, some were art books, some were trivial humor or very light mysteries, some were sports, but there was also a lot of worthwhile stuff there. I'm going to start listing some of them here (and new ones as they are read and added to the list), with a comment or two if the spirit moves me.

If nothing else, it will help me remember what I've read: looking back I can already see several titles which I have no doubt that I did read, but frankly don't recall. The first four books listed were Michael Seidel's Streak: Joe Dimaggio And The Summer of '41, Susan Jacoby's Wild Justice: The Evolution Of Revenge, Robert K. Logan's The Alphabet Effect: The Impact Of The Phonetic Alphabet on The Developoment Of Western Civilization, and Colin Renfrew's Archaelogy And Language: The Puzzle Of Indo-European Origins.

Seventeen years ago I read all of these. If I picked them up again today (those were all library books - who can afford to buy this many titles nowadays?), I'm sure I'd nod in memory at the content. But now I just draw a blank. Maybe they just weren't all that memorable, because there are certainly many others I've read in these two decades that I recall very well, and would even without this list.

Follow The Money

2009-02-04T11:52:00.005-06:00

Never mind all the public outcry over rehabilitating reactionary holocaust deniers; none of that made the Pope reconsider. What finally did?

The statement was issued by the Vatican's Secretariat of State a day after German Chacellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there hadn't been adequate clarification from the Vatican.

It just so happens that one of if not the main sources of revenue for the Church has been money from the German government, from people checking off "Catholic" so that the state gives some of their taxes to Rome. There may be more Lutherans in the country, but there are still a lot of folks who haven't followed the example of Petra Kelly and formally repudiated their affiliation with the Catholic Church.

One can easily imagine a campaign to deny such tax money to any church which doesn't repudiate and condemn the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis, and excommunicate anyone who denies that happened. The government there already restricts freedom of speech to deny the crime: cutting off the cash would be only a tiny step more. And so the ex-Hitler Youth member caves. But this is not new: they yielded to the temptation to earthly power and wealth at least seventeen centuries ago.

Not The Missionary Position

2009-01-19T20:52:00.000-06:00

The Quaker Agitator asked us to post our own Alternative Invocation for the Obamanaugural instead of the words of the dishonest misogynistic homophobic hatemonger who'll be giving the "official" one. Instead I choose to defer to the words of the casus belli now being used to split sheep and goats among those with a minor quibble over Papal infallibility, openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. You can view a video and read the text of his remarks, made at the trivial consolation pulpit afforded him (albeit intentionally -- by the Obama campaign -- denied television coverage on HBO of his remarks only) at Sunday's Lincoln Memorial event at this site. Well said, within the context you evolved from, Bishop.

There Is A Way Out Of Hell

2008-12-29T23:55:00.002-06:00

"One may smile and smile, and be a villain."

If you are (like me) one of the many consuming yourself with anger, disgust, depression, and other such negativity about the impending elevation and sanctioning of one of the country's grinningest hate-mongers, then rejoice at a way to unite in something positive instead. The Quaker Agitator has started a special site to restore hope for us all.

As an act of protest against the appearance of Rick Warren at the inauguration, we ask our fellow progressive bloggers that on January 20, 2009, you post your own alternative invocation.

We ask that you post a message of compassion, empathy, tolerance, diversity, and true Christian (or other) love to America. Post a message that stands in opposition to the messages that Rick Warren and those of his particular political persuasion use to divide our country.

If you’re posting, let us know! Send an email or leave a comment, and we’ll add you to the list which will be on our blogroll.

Don't post it here; the site for signing onto this creative moral and psychic subversion is The Alternative Invocation.

Losing Her Wings

2008-08-29T21:53:00.005-05:00

One of the sad things about the bitter identity-politics battle in the Democratic Primaries for President this year was the way some people began to consider sexist rhetoric okay if it helped defeat the awful witch Hillary. The media pundit sexism was surprisingly open but not really unpredictable. The number of lefty bloggers, even women bloggers, who bought into this was horrifying.

Today Jane Smiley has gone way beyond even that bad line, since her Precious has now been threatened in her mind by the McCain choice of Palin. In What's He Going to Call Her in Public? she gives several instances of her rabidity:

Who's that again?

She has a four month old baby and she's hitting the campaign trail?

Is she breastfeeding? ...

A beauty queen?

Is she related to Katharine Harris? ...

Does she pay her nanny's social security?

If the red phone rings in the middle of the night and she's breastfeeding, will she answer it?

I think about all she missed is the claim that Palin would be unable to function for a few days each month when having that bothersome hormone stuff kick in. Come on Jane, there must be some better angels in you than this....

Respect In The Morning

2008-07-27T20:01:00.000-05:00

This comes from Politico:

Barack Obama's vice presidential search team has floated the name of a member of President Bush's first-term Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, as Obama's running mate.

The search committee, now led by Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder, raised Veneman's name — among others — in discussions with members of Congress, said two Democrats familiar with the conversations.

The mention of Veneman's name surprised Democratic lawmakers. The low-profile Republican was close to food and agriculture industries but clashed with farm-state Democrats and environmentalists during her tenure, which lasted from 2001 to 2004. ...

Choosing Veneman would be a way to "show that he can get things done without all the partisanship," said the Democrat familiar with the discussions. "Her appeal would be nonideological. It would be, 'I'm just here to get the work done.' She's not a hot-button conservative."

Other Republicans mentioned as potential Obama running mates include Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who accompanied him to Iraq, and retired Marine Gen. James Jones.

Non-ideological, perhaps, but not non-communicative. It would definitely send a message to Senator Obama's nominal party. But the DC denizens there believe those people are not listening:

The selection of a Republican could bolster Obama's unifying message, a Capitol Hill Democrat familiar with the discussion said.

"You select a strong independent woman who appeals to Republicans and independents, and so that's hard to beat," the Hill source said, explaining the logic of the possible choice. "Choosing someone like [Veneman] doesn't hurt you with the Democrats. It just doesn't hurt you. But it helps you with Independents and Republicans."

They said it all along during the primaries: his opponent's supporters would all blindly support him in the fall against the Republican. This would be a test of their faith, just to prove that he can get his own way no matter how he spits in their faces. But how enthusiastic would they be if it really boils down to a choice between two Republicans?

I'm afraid this might be what is called a "deal-breaker". I wondered how the Democrats would find a way to lose even in this overwhelmingly anti-Republican year.

Biting My Tongue

2008-07-08T12:56:00.002-05:00

Yes, I'm still here, just not posting lately on the web either here or at The American Street. We had a huge, chaotic spring in the Texas Democratic primaries and conventions, and there is a whole lot that I could and am tempted to say about all of that, but every time I start to post I hesitate -- wondering how this would help save the country from the Cheneyistas. Failure of nerve? Sensible silence? Reluctance to dip into anger and depression? I'm not sure. When I know, I'll be posting again. In the meantime, I am still reading others' sites, quite possibly your own. You can reach me until then at the Contact address listed on the sidebar.

Texas Is Going Crazy

2008-02-19T13:12:00.000-06:00

It's been twenty years since the late-date Texas primary voters have had a chance for a real say in the Democratic Party nomination contest, and the voters are stumbling about excitedly like chickens whose coop has been invaded by a weasel. Registration is up and neither those new folk nor hundreds of thousands of people registered for years understand our confusing dual system, involving some delegates chosen based on the primary, and some chosen based on caucus participation.

With Super Tuesday over, and two serious contenders still standing, it is chaos on the streets. Pros are coming in from other states, but many ad hoc groups of supporters are not waiting for orders, and are getting things going on their own. Often this leads to different and competing meetings and events. Schedules are literally changing by the hour. Anarchy rules!

True, my first two choices didn't even run this year, and of those who did, my first choice is already out of it here. While I ponder which imperfect (but still far better than McCain) next President to vote for, there is much work to be done setting up for those huge floods of newcomers at conventions, and helping show both factions how the process works. Dallas County alone has hired an extra 75 poll workers, and printed an extra 100,000 ballots just for the Democrats.

Mostly, both sides have been civil and positive here. I think it will still be that way at the precinct conventions on the evening of March 4. We won't see the kind of angry, bitter and even physical fighting Texas conventions had in the 1950's. That's because those days of railroads and lockouts and rump conventions happened when this was a one-party state with the segregationist reactionaries still fighting dirty to maintain their control. With the Civil Rights movement's victories and real voting rights, those antediluvian thugs defected to the Republicans. Yes, they do currently have every statewide elected official -- but at least they aren't messing in our primaries any more.

I have a feeling I'll be recovering all day March 5, but it'll be a really great feeling to have a voice for a change.

The Only Savior For Democrats?

2008-02-09T23:01:00.000-06:00

Right now Clinton and Obama are neck and neck, and the way upcoming primaries and caucuses lay out, there is a good chance that it will stay that way. At the Convention, it may boil down to whether or not the Florida and Michigan delegates (mostly for Clinton) are recognized.

If they are, she likely wins -- and the Obama people accuse her of stealing the convention, giving them an excuse to sit on their hands and giving Republicans ammunition to accuse her of being a corrupt manipulator. Great way to lose in November.

If Florida and Michigan are not counted, then Obama may win -- and the Clinton people accuse him of being anti-democratic and denying the will of the people , giving them an excuse to sit on their hands and giving Republicans ammunition to accuse him of being a corrupt manipulator. Once again, the Democrats are crippled or doomed in November.

Is there a way out of this dilemma, short of a Vice-Presidential deal before the Convention?

Yes. We can avoid this problem by turning to the only untainted candidate still in the race -- the forgotten Mike Gravel. What's more, he actually came in ahead of some of the already-withdrawn candidates (like Dodd) on Super Tuesday, bettering his usual dead last place. This means he's got momentum, or Gravementum, or Gravelitas, or something. The deadlock means turning to the man from Alaska.

In passing, we should note that this will not only avoid a bitter party split, but also best McCain's appeal to the most heavily-voting demographic, the youth-challenged geezers out there. Gravel (born six years earlier) is the only one who can pull a Reagan against McCain and talk about that Republican's youth and inexperience.

We Have Stopped Asking Children To Critique The Presidential Wardrobe

2008-01-23T11:31:00.001-06:00

Hale "Bonddad" Stewart, commenting on the world financiers' meltdown:

And then there is M3, which the government no longer publishes but which is available from the website shadowstats ....

Or as Mr. Cabell once wrote:

So the game is endless and ruthless: and there is merriment overhead, but it is very far away.

Jonah

2008-01-18T11:41:00.000-06:00

Fresh headlines:

# Bush calls for $145 billion economy plan AP - 18 minutes ago
# Stocks fall after Bush announces plan AP - 2 minutes ago

The conclusion is left as an exercise for the student.

Funniest Headline Of The Year So Far

2008-01-14T16:42:00.000-06:00

That would be Canute on the Bayou: Jindal pledges to end La. corruption.

An Alarm Bell Shattering The Night

2007-12-19T02:27:00.000-06:00

"Incredible how the top dog always announces with such an air of discovery that the underdog is childish, stupid, emotional, irresponsible, uninterested in serious matters, incapable of learning -- but for god's sake don't teach him anything! -- and both cowardly and ferocious. ... The oppressed is also treacherous, incapable of fighting fair, full of dark magics, prone to do nasty things like fighting back when attacked, and contented with his place in life unless stirred up by outside agitators. ... Once I learned the tune I stopped believing the words -- about anybody." --letter from James Tiptree, Jr. to Vonda N. McIntyre, 1973

I've just finished Julie Phillips' biography James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. It was painful to read, not because of the writing (which is quite good), but because of the agony and anger it unveils behind the ambiguity. This was a fascinating person, with a childhood I'm jealous of, but all along there is a growing sense of dread, because you know what the horrible ending is going to be. And no, it doesn't really explain that. Only a mind-reader could have. But the book does help explain the fiction Tiptree produced, which is what matters most to the rest of us.

There had been plenty of women before who had used male pen names, like "George Sand", "George Eliot", "Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell" (later revealed as the Brontë sisters), and the under-estimated "Henry Handel Richardson". There had even been some in the science-fiction world before, like Andre Norton (who legally changed her name) and Marion Zimmer Bradley (who used male pen names early on for non-SF). "Tiptree" was different not just because she kept her identity secret (until a possibly Freudian slip by this PhD. in psychology let fans figure it out), and maintained the persona of a male writer in her correspondence (including that with some other female SF writers), but because of the radical originality of what she wrote. Stories like the brilliant "The Women Men Don't See" sparked a silly debate in fandom over her real gender. Notorious sexist ranters adamantly insisted she must be male, while others doubted such feminist sympathy could come from a man. Both sides were being foolish, falling into the same kind of mental traps she struggled with for a lifetime.

The startling thing was that no one else in SF (and very few in English-language literary fiction) expressed such emotions on such subjects (yet!). Tales like the award-winning "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" were gigantic screams of rage at the failure of connections -- and love -- between beings, mostly male and female, but even between humans (or aliens) and nature, especially their own nature. All those gadgets and extraterrestrials were just a way to say something that hurt too much to express in straightforward prose, much like Rod Serling used SF to safely comment on current society, or in a older time Jesus told parables that only those with ears to hear could grasp. There was doom ahead in Tiptree's worlds, sometimes accepted but not, ever, even when intentional, welcomed. It was all symbolic, but to some of us felt more real than the duller, reserved pedestrian worlds that "serious" fiction writers outside SF could portray. Some like Monique Wittig found they had to turn to mythology like Virgile, non (translated as Across The Acheron) to talk about the pain.

In the end, the early story "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" was the message Tiptree left behind. For as the Koran says, "whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind". And she knew about killing, and its effect on the killer as well, from going on her mother's big game hunts in Africa, and from her own service in the Army in World War II and as a CIA analyst later.

I finished reading this book even though I kept wanting to stop, and I'm glad I did, though it gives no resolution or inspiration. It hurt so much because I have seen and felt the same frustrating sorrows she endured over the walls between us and the artificial folders others want to file us away in. This is how great art like hers can work, expressing the deepest essential feelings we have trouble comprehending, even with subjects and stories vastly different from our own. Emotionally it acts like that old hit about the singer "telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song". Just as I was so moved by Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale or Woody Allen's Annie Hall that I never want to read or watch them again because they cut way too close to home, I don't expect to ever re-read any of Tiptree's fictions. But they will haunt me for the rest of my life.

"There is a sort of fellow-feeling among characters in a tragedy: he who kills is as innocent as he who gets killed: it's all a matter of what part you are playing. Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn't any hope. You're trapped. The whole sky has fallen on you, and all you can do about it is to shout." --Jean Anouilh, Antigone

Abandoned Wombs

2007-12-13T21:53:00.000-06:00

This came from Pamela Druckerman in the New York Times:

I had a chance to think about the American health-care debate recently, while I was undergoing a procedure that’s mostly paid for by the French state: re-education. ... After a woman has a baby, perineal re-education shapes up her stretched-out birth canal. It also strengthens her pelvic floor for the next child, and helps keep her from leaking a little bit every time she sneezes. My doctor prescribed 10 sessions of it after my daughter was born. (American doctors typically suggest just doing some Kegel exercises, if anything.) ...

In France, making mothers good as new is a matter of national interest. The state health system pays 60 percent to 100 percent of the cost of re-education for all women after they give birth, and private insurance plans typically cover the rest. ...

I don’t doubt the rewards of re-education, but what about the costs of a system that would provide such a seeming luxury? Well, France spent $3,464 per person on health care in 2004, compared with $6,096 in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Yet Frenchmen live on average two years longer than American men do, and Frenchwomen live four years longer. The infant mortality rate in France is 43 percent lower than in the United States.

The French bureaucracy isn’t so bad either. Typically you pay the doctor in full, then you or he sends a one-page form to the state health system. The state wires its reimbursement right into your bank account. If there’s anything left on the bill, it sends that to your private insurer, which wires its own payment into your account.

Is anyone else shocked by that line about the infant mortality rate? Because we don't bother to take good care of new mothers here, they and their next children die sooner. Almost twice as many babies die in infancy here as in France. This isn't just a problem of government health care policy, as she indicates by how little attention American doctors pay to this one simple step following births. For all the politicians and preachers and pundits pontificating about the Nobility of Motherhood, this shows where their priorities really lie. "Thanks for adding another future worker and taxpayer, now go home (today!) and don't bother us."

We need a change in more than just health care finance, we need a basic revolution in our attitude to the ones who are literally carrying our futures for us. The current neglect of them is shameful in any society claiming to be civilized.

Cheshire Pol

2007-12-02T16:58:00.000-06:00

Re: Rove reveals Congressional Democrats forced Bush to invade Iraq too soon.

Ne jamais interrompre votre ennemi quand il fait une erreur.
---Napoleon Bonaparte

Not Quite The Solution I Expected

2007-10-29T23:39:00.000-05:00

(Found at Cap'n Dyke.)

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When The Roll Is Called Up In D.C.

2007-10-29T20:36:00.001-05:00

Continuing to vie for the Nobel Prize in chutzpah, the White House today announced the award of eight new Presidential Medals of Freedom. Among the winners is Harper Lee, author of that classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. I suspect that Miz (as we used to say down here) Lee is too genteel to tell George III what he can do with "his" medal. But Harper, sister, even if you're willing to ignore the war criminal's horrors out of respect for the office he has disgraced, are you really willing to stand on the same stage with fellow recipient Henry Hyde? Please say it ain't so, ma'am.

Is It Real Or Is It Satirex?

2007-10-27T11:32:00.000-05:00

Over at that Volokh place (no, I won't link to that), they were quoting a "former Clinton Adminsitration National Security Council staff member" defending rendition. This is not a good sign for the future, considering that his former boss's spouse is the likely next Democratic nominee. It did give rise to one of the most bizarre comments I've ever read, which helpfully was quoted in the comments at John and Belle's blog:

The one Canuk [sic] was siezed [very sic] when he had yet to enter the US (he was in the Customs area of JFK). I cannot believe that there are so many drooling mental defectives out there who believe that non-present [metaphysically sic], non-resident, non-citizens, of the US have any rights at all vis-a-vis US law. As a libertarian I oppose such extraterritoriality. US law should stop at the border.

I do think, of course, that rendition should not be done with taxpayer funding but rather with corporate funding or charitable contributions.

Yes, friends, when torture is outsourced and privatized, it will be cheaper and better and there will be more of it! That's the free market at work!

I think that someone totally missed the point of what private enterprise is supposed to be for. Let me paraphrase Eugene Debs: while there is a soul in this country who calls this accessorizing of evil "libertarian", I am not free, and won't ever be liberated by them.

Rescuing The Lone Rangers

2007-09-20T01:22:00.000-05:00

Will Bunch of Attytood beautifully calls foul on some silly claims from Pajamas Media (sic), that the controversy over bloody Blackwater's license in Iraq has even caused the CIA to shut down operations outside the Green Zone:

The bizarre logic here escapes me. The surge is working so well that our own CIA agents -- trained for months at "The Farm" in Virginia to learn how to kill a man with a ballpoint pen, and that sort of thing -- are now afraid to walk out the front door without a bevy of allegedly trigger-happy men toting machine guns and firing indiscriminantly?

My God, what was it like in Baghdad before the awesome power of the surge?

What I took away from Richard Miniter's rightist spinning was that if the Agency has really not been going out in the field without armed guards, then no wonder the intelligence they bring back is so bad. Pointing guns is not how you get the truth, and such overt activity only gets the people you talk to killed. One hopes the spooks have more sense in the real world.

Bunch does make one point I have to object to, about some other contractors. He quotes the bathrobe bloggers again:

There are now more private contractors working in Iraq than U.S. soldiers serving there. Many are not U.S. citizens. Triple Canopy, another private firm, usually hires Peruvians to man the checkpoints inside the International Zone and Ugandans to guard distant airbases. The Peruvians, known as "incas" among Americans there, usually do not speak English or Arabic—a persistent source of complaint by Iraqi politicians who speak one or both languages.

Then Bunch gets all politically correct:

"Incas"?

It's one thing to hire foreigners at low wages to serve as car-bomb fodder, but do we have to insult them, too?

Speaking with an indigenous American heritage I am proud of, I would be proud to be called an Inca. But the best model of a response to that came over a century ago from the Prime Minister of England, Benjamin Disraeli, responding to a taunt over his own heritage:

Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.

Well, That Was Quick....

2007-08-31T08:24:00.001-05:00

I barely post that Quaker Dave has switched from the old Quaker Agitator site to a new one at Friendly Witness, when the word comes that he's revived the old one, on Wordpress. So his stuff is now at The Quaker Agitator.

For this week, anyway. Good luck with it, Dave.

Sidebar Update

2007-08-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

Not that anyone has missed me in my absence (only Blue Gal and Kevin seem ever to drop me emails), but I stuck my head up today like a groundhog -- maybe it's safe, now that Alberto is departing. I observe that I have been permalinked by a site new to me called Friendly Witness. It seems to be the new site of (my previously sidebar-linked) Quaker Agitator, which hasn't posted at the old place since February. (Wow, do I feel out of touch.) Quaker Dave, with his new and less aggressive title, is still finding good things, like this tale of medieval gay civil unions. Bravo for him.

Yes, I Take This Personally

2007-08-13T11:26:00.001-05:00

For a couple of years now I’ve been waiting for the Rovinator to be indicted, so that I could post my version of part of Handel's Messiah in celebration. They’ve just tossed him overboard now so that when justice does come down on his head, he can be pardoned quickly and easily — no longer being part of the misadministration — and I won’t have anything to cheer about for more than a few minutes. Yes, this is all about me. Oh, expletive deleted! Why does W not want me to have any fun?

The So-called Debate

2007-04-26T20:30:00.001-05:00

The format stank, not allowing enough time -- or interaction or follow-ups -- to really get into anything. The host was awful. Bryan kept spouting off Republican talking points as if they were truths, and no one did enough to call him on that BS. They better learn to do that before they face real Republicans.

With this mess, you couldn't really get a winner or a loser. Who hurt themself most? Biden. His temper tantrum against Kucinich and Gravel was the only time he really got passionate about anything, and it was to denounce those awful unrealistic believers that America should not make aggressive war. Of course not, that would tie his hands as President. The chance to play international war games with real troops and weapons is what makes him want the power -- and why he always reacts against any restriction on it. It's the same old national insecurity state with Joe, and the two peaceniks managed to provoke him into dropping his smiling mask and revealing his true colors. Bye, bye, Joe -- your quick mouth has done you in again.

Runner-up for damage to himself was Obama. Once again, it was the doves that did it. He tried to go back and do over an answer on responding to a big double terrorist attack. (Bryan somehow imagined we were magically able to prove the perpetrators within hours. Basically this was a revision of the kneecapping question to Mike Dukakis in 1988 about his wife being raped. Foolishly, no one challenged the absurdity of his premise.) Kucinich and Gravel likely provoked Obama's rewording by their points about attacking Iran, and Obama tried to pull a patronizing "experts agree" blanket over his war-hinting generalities -- and Kucinich showed him up on it.

Kucinich and Gravel helped themselves the most, but Kucinich started almost at zero, and Gravel probably in negative territory, so that won't mean much. Worse, they may split some of the votes they stirred up tonight. It is very good for the party that they are in this, because they may be the only way to keep the pressure on the front-runners, about Iraq, Iran, and impeachment. Both of them are way ahead of the other politicians, and a lot closer to where the bulk of Democratic voters are right now. Not that the establishment or the media will let that do them any good for themselves.

Among the contenders with noticeable support going in, probably Richardson did himself the most good. Clinton, Edwards, and Dodd didn't make bad stumbles or big splashes, so didn't do anything directly tonight. Their supporters will cheer, but it was holding just their own. Small chunks of undecided voters may now move to each of them (most to Richardson, Clinton and Edwards -- Dodd started too far back to get anywhere), but there was no super moment for any of them.

Just In Time For Armageddon

2007-03-31T09:55:00.000-05:00

The impending attack on Iran (as pointless in the long run, and self-destructive in the short, as any of the many invasions attempted by the Roman and Byzantine empires) is being driven by delusional fanatics, who think their imaginary friend wants them to start the last world war. As one small act of defiance, some bloggers are going to post about the nonsense that leads to such idiocy:

Blue Gal has the details at The blog against theocracy blogswarm.

Stuff Your Pedestal

2007-03-06T11:35:00.000-06:00

Of all people, Republican Senator ~~Brownnose~~ (oops, sorry!) Brownback of Kansas, a Presidential candidate, is backing a bill "apologizing to America's native peoples". There are more details here: (I linked to the Raw Story report, because the original had too many vicious racist comments appended.)

"Brownback's resolution opens with declarations that American Indians 'have for millennia honored, protected and stewarded this land we cherish' and that, with the coming of European settlers and the creation of the United States in the late 1700s, 'Indian tribes provided great assistance to the fledgling republic as it strengthened and grew,'"....

Historical nonsense, proposed for the same reason (and with the same honesty and usefulness) as the cliched political praise of motherhood and apple pie. It paints a nice picture of how wonderful all those noble savages were -- now that they're effectively declawed and no threat. It perpetuates the usual collectivist myths that all those Injuns were alike. The only difference from the same myth promoted by the supporters of Custer and his ilk is that now they're all alike in being good. This isn't new, as some may recall from those TV ads decades ago opposing pollution by showing a crying Indian.

Those people who made it here before Cortez and John Smith, and their many descendants that weren't killed by the newcomers' diseases or guns, were not terrestrial angels of the ecosphere. They were not a homogeneous collective mass of any kind. They were individual human beings, good and bad and uncertain just like "real" people with pinker skins. Some made a tiny imprint on the earth, and sometimes that was intentional, but some burned down forests and slaughtered animals as readily as they were able, and failed to make such huge piles of buffalo bones as the expanding Americans later did, only because they didn't have the weaponry. Do not confuse lack of power with virtue.

To paint "the Indians" as the cherishers of the continent is to deny once again, if less murderously, the individuality, and ultimately the very humanity itself, of all of them. This would be only stupid nonsense from writers or movie producers, but it is dangerous when it comes from politicians. Now that they're clapped themselves on the back, they can (and do) go on enabling the continued looting and exploitation of the comparatively few ragged remnants of the germicide and willful slaughter, by de facto federal and state policy in too many areas to list. Of course we don't see the compassionate, enlightened Brownback (or his several colleagues on this, in both parties) moving mountains to eliminate the barriers to Indian advancement today. They've done all they need to do by supporting an apology to all those great environmentalists who used to live here.

There are potentially more hopeful signs from some campaigns. Lilith at A Rational Animal quotes from an interview with Bill Richardson:

If I’m elected president, I would propose to make the cabinet secretary of Indian Affairs the Secretary of Indian Affairs; I would make it cabinet level. I would try, because I believe within the Department of the Interior it does not get the attention it deserves.

Even more usefully, he went on:

First, I would fully fund the Indian Healthcare Act. There would be a stronger budget in my administration on Indian health care. When it comes to education and when it comes to childhood obesity, the highest suicide rate is among Indian kids. I would try to set up on the reservations, as I have here in New Mexico, school-based health clinics: health clinics in schools that are able to work with kids, counsel them and give them early intervention.

Lilith says "I feel like dancing right now." We can only hope she's right about his intentions; how much traction he could get for this idea in Congress is a different question. But at least we wouldn't have to listen to the benevolent smotherers like Brownback who want to figuratively stuff us and shut us away in a glass display case at the Smithsonian.

We Only Kill Our Own

2007-03-06T09:40:00.000-06:00

Eric Boehlert has a long fact-filled dissection of a growing urban myth, much like the one that Gore supposedly claimed to have invented the internet, at Media Matters:

The press insists Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq could doom her 2008 campaign. But a new, largely ignored, poll indicates Democrats don't much care about her vote. In fact, most Democrats don't even think the vote was a mistake. Reporters and pundits though, remain committed to the story.

And not only reporters and pundits, but bloggers. These continuing demands for abject kowtowing are an offensive double-standard I've written about before. Boehlert deals in facts, comparing claims to actual events. Read it all.

There are plenty of valid reasons someone might prefer another candidate to Hillary. This double-standard B.S. is not one of them. I'd rather see her, Edwards, Obama, et al., denounced over their enabling of Iran attacks, than over this demand that she metaphorically stand in the snow in a hair shirt outside Canossa like Henry IV.

The Pope was wrong to demand that; the cut-off-your-own-nose leftists squawking at her to crucify herself over this now are just as wrong. (I believe this even though I would have voted the other way at the time.) Fortunately, this poll indicates the real Democratic primary voters have more sense.

Jobbing Her Again

2007-02-14T14:21:00.000-06:00

One of the most hilarious comments on the resignation of Amanda from the Edwards campaign is that of inordinately self-inflated pimple Matthew Yglesias, who seems to be quite serious when he writes:

Indeed, that's why think I wouldn't take a job even with a candidate I was super-enthusiastic about -- I like to speak (and blog) my mind in a way that's not conducive to being on the staff of a presidential campaign.

Similarly, I would like to announce in advance that I would not welcome anyone's nominating me for the Nobel Prize for Literature, only because that would cause heightened expectations of the seriousness of my work, therefore disappointing readers when I penned my next silly political parody.

Contrary to Matthew's protesting-too-much, the brain-deadening task of wading through the pompous pablum he produces would be so intimidating, to even the Concentration Camp Lady, that he would be almost an ideal campaign blogger, safe from retroactive scrutiny. In the unlikely event he ever took a solid stand that wasn't generally held by the masses in criticizing anyone, it would probably be either meaninglessly personal or an attack on the left. For example, in that same piece about Amanda, he adds:

How is it that the Edwards campaign didn't manage to say in advance that people were going to have to stop blogging if they want to work on the campaign? Similarly, based on their own reaction to the controversy it appears that nobody at the campaign decided to vet Marcotte before they hired her?

The "grammar" of that second sentence is either one more example of how overrated are Harvard degrees, or an example of how to display "uptalk". More to the point, it accepts the premise of Donohue and other critics, which was also accepted by Edwards in his "no, they're not fired; go and sin no more" statement. What you write -- or say, or do -- before or outside of the campaign is okay to criticize the campaign for. Hogwash.

Once more, the more-or-less-not-as-far-unleft will be held to a standard of total blamelessness and inhuman perfection in their lives, by foul-mouthed dishonest bigoted scumbags like many well-known examples leading the charge against Amanda and Melissa. Matthew, along with Edwards himself, and a host of other Democrats, are unilaterally disarming themselves before this. By their comments (Matthew's here, and Edwards in his previous statement) they are even doing the work of the rightwingnuts for them, by criticizing things that should be out of bounds to begin with. If Cheney can say questions about his grandchild are out of line (and he was right about that one), then why can't we do likewise?

As for the final spark causing Amanda leaving, Matthew offers the suggestion, first noticed perhaps at Blue Mass Group, that it was her writing a review, after she went to work for the campaign, of a movie called Children of Men. Since I love works of deep moral conflict, her review makes me think I'll enjoy this. Unfortunately, she included some gasoline for the cross already burning on her lawn:

The title loudly proclaims the movie to be about the Children of Men (very patriarchal sounding), but the one child in the movie is born to a woman who is dismissive of the idea that the identity of the father is even relevant. And it makes sense, actually, that if there hadn’t been a baby born on earth for an entire generation, the paramount importance of paternity would fade away and the obvious fact that maternity is more time-consuming and immediate would become undeniable. The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels. But this movie offers an alternative interpretation of the virgin birth—one where “virginity” is irrelevant and one where a woman’s stake in motherhood is fully respected for the sacrifice and hard work that it is.

It was that sentence in boldface above that caused cafeteria Catholic Donohue to have another verbal seizure (no link, it's at the site of his "group"):

Anyone who actually believes that the birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary is ‘generally interpreted’ as being a sexist exercise obviously lives in an anti-Christian ghetto. The 85 percent of Americans who are Christian do not believe this, and most of the other 15 percent do not either.

I'm sure he's right, in the same sense that most people don't think about earth life as possibly planted by microbes on rocks knocked off of Mars by meteor impacts there. It has never occured to them to even wonder about the possibility. In both cases, their lack of thought devoted to the issue is irrelevant to its truth or falsity.

Most Americans probably unthinkingly parrot many other things they had drilled into them in school, like how the United States is the exception to history, making few mistakes and rectifying them when pointed out, and in short, that this is the absolutely bestest nation there absolutely ever was. This proposition, not being subject to falsification, is held to all the more tightly by many people who therefore think of themselves as patriots, and regard anyone who criticizes our government or its role in history as evil traitors. Donohue is merely spinning out the denominational version of this widespread technique of promoting your own collective faux self-esteem by condemnation of any iconoclasts out there in touch with a different interpretation of the truth. See the experience of the Dixie Chicks for another example.

By not standing up to deny the very premises from which the attack is made, we implicitly accept them for the purpose of public discourse. Once that concession is made, the game is all but over. Only distracting personal scandals (Delay on money, Foley on sex, or whatever) will make it possible for us to win. The unknowing audience, unfamiliar with logic or research, hears one side being certain and pointing to why (usually a sacred text). They hear the other side saying "we don't think we really did anything as bad as they say, at least not intentionally, but we're not saying what they accuse us of wouldn't be an awful thing, if we had done it, and we sure aren't challenging any sacred cows, which we really are fond of". Frightened by a campaign of terrorizing through the media, they lean to the side which seems sure about what it is doing.

Matthew, and Edwards, are not the first ones to cluelessly toss women or men over the side of the U.S.S. Poltical Driftboat. They still don't get the lesson that such tactics never win unless by accident. Compromise with the forces of repression, even by implicit acceptance of their rhetoric, is like compromise with poison. Nothing good will come of this.

-----------------------

Oh, and by the way, taking an idea originally from an old blacklistee (Howard Fast, whose best work was really not this novel and movie, but The American), and following the lead of driftglass and Blue Gal, there is this, which you might consider emulating if you have a site of your own:

I'm Spartacus.

Platonic Archetypes

2007-02-14T09:50:00.000-06:00

On this day in 1984 at the Olympics, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean proved that artistic perfection is possible.

Make them change the rules just to hamper you.

Another Angel Spreads Her Wings

2007-02-13T22:51:00.000-06:00

Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, the other blogger who had been hired by the John Edwards campaign, has now also resigned. Her post is at her old site, where presumably she will be returning to writing again. If it's swamped the way Amanda's was last night, then Chris Bowers has posted the whole thing at MyDD, along with a very understandable expression of frustration over this incident:

Clearly, the right is able to attack us with impunity. Japanesse internment justifying Michelle Malkin goes on the air to bash Marcotte and McEwan, while the people who read Malkin's blog send death and rape threats to them. And even the media reports on the matter make the Michelle Malkin's of the world look like the sane hero in this situation, while Marcotte and McEwan are evil. And then a bunch of Democrats, including a few commenters at MyDD, will give Malkin, O'Reilly and Donohue cover for this by saying that Marcotte and McEwan were out of line. Rinse and repeat.

You know what? I don't want Hillary Clinton to apologize for her war vote anymore, because I am sick of Democrats apologizing.

I strongly support that attitude. I doubt that any campaign consultants do. Unfortunately, Melissa herself doesn't seem to agree, since she writes:

I understand that there will be progressive bloggers who feel I am making the wrong decision, and I offer my sincerest apologies to them. One of the hardest parts of this decision was feeling as though I'm letting down my peers, who have been so supportive.

She has my sympathy and best wishes, but I don't need her apology. You do what you can, and if it isn't cost-effective, stop. No problem, Melissa. Make us proud on your uncensored site.

Listen, non-reactionary and un-moderate webworld (no, I coined that one just now!), sometimes, don't you just hunger for some moral certainty on our side? A candidate who will take the Patrick Henry approach and stand up proudly to say what we believe in is the truth, and if you are offended by reality, then you'll suffer the consequences you will bring on yourself, but I'm damned if you'll make me pretend to pay homage to your delusions!

It ain't Johnny, but he's very far from the worst this year. It ain't anyone I've heard yet. But I'm listening and willing to be convinced. And I'm willing to vote for a temporizing inoffensive triangulator if that's the best we can finally offer against the legions of Hell the Republicans will throw against us. I just think we have a better chance of winning if we throw back our head and say "make the most of it".

Let me know if you see any encouraging signs of such spine developing. Good luck, Melissa, now that you too are free to say whatever you want. Take a shot of nerve tonic and let it rip.

Amanda Finds Freedom...

2007-02-12T23:26:00.000-06:00

...in the sense of the old song about "nothing left to lose". The now blogfamous Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, hired by the John Edwards campaign, denounced as anti-Catholic by a viper's nest of rabid reactionaries venting faux outrage over her *gasp* rudeness and profanity, left hanging for over a day after an Edwards staffer said they were considering her position, then denounced for her language by Edwards himself when he said she could stay on, has now given up fighting on that front. Her announcement is on Pandagon. If it's still too busy when you read this, here are some highlights:

I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track). Bill Donohue—anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics—has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.

In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to “silence” me, as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.

Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.

There is good news. The main good news is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on. The other good news is that the blogosphere has risen as one and protested, loudly, the influence a handful of well-financed right wing shills have on the public discourse.

She goes on to denounce Donohue some more, and quote others campaigning to point out his hypocrisy, like "Frances Kissling, the president of an organization I adore called Catholics for a Free Choice." Go read it all when the link isn't overwhelmed by everyone trying to read it (or spam it -- the righties are spilling champagne in the streets all over the web, including usual suspects like Our Lady Of The Internment Camps, and using headings like "Potty mouth fembigot down").

So much for the facts; now the gossip and innuendo behind the headlines.

On the left (and I suspect this will happen on the middle as well) some commenters are now disbelieving that Amanda volunteered to do this, and voiceing suspicions that this is Edwards' own doing. I don't believe that, because this is the worst way to do that. He would have gotten some points -- even if he offended many bloggers -- by just letting her go at the start of this, but by berating her former words and not striking back at Donohue and other faux-loyal Catholics and then shoving her out the back door a few days later he would just make every possible person angry at him. One could say Amanda has let him down, by not deciding to do this herself at the first break of all the brouhaha, and saying "okay I'll go on and just not be profane anymore on the campaign blog", then backing out anyway.

Nevertheless, I can feel the agony she must have been going through, fighting with herself in her own mind what was the best way to help the candidate she believes is the best to restore sanity to the White House in 2008. And I can feel from here (hopefully much closer soon, if she moves back to Austin from North Carolina) the relief as the weight of responsibility lifts from her shoulders. I imagine Donohue and company ain't seen nothing yet, on the profane denunciation of their pious theocracy. Serves them right.

But this whole thing will not be good for Edwards. He made the right decision about not kicking her out over this nonsense, but did it in a late and tin-eared fashion. And now the sub-surface worms will feel victorious and empowered, and they will not only go after Melissa (the other Edwards attackee of theirs) but after every other campaign. Indeed, they have already begun, as The Carpetbagger Report notes here:

The national Catholic-based advocacy group Fidelis sent letters to Democratic presidential candidates Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama calling on them to publicly condemn the anti-Catholic and anti-Christian blog posts of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, who serve as the official bloggers for the John Edwards for President Committee.

The struggle must go on. As Len Deighton said, "Eternal paranoia is the price of liberty. Vigilance is not enough."

But there is a darker side. Also on Pandagon now, two posts later (and still too busy to access as I post this) is another post by Auguste, called "Don Qui-who?", which in Br'er Rabbit and briar patch style sarcasm, links to a pdf of the IRS Information Referral form, saying

One thing I would certainly NOT expect is that anyone would go here[PDF], using the above as a template (or not), and stick that fucker in the mail. I certainly would be shocked if anyone were to alert all their friends and loved ones to behave similarly.

They also provide a sample of a filled-out form which complains about the tax-exempt status of Donohue's organization, since it engaged in improper political activity. Those who believe that analysis (it is not obviously wrong, given the existence of the current tax code), can go there and decide for themselves whether this is a jest or a heavily-deniable suggestion.

I will hope for the humor interpretation, since calling out bloggers and protesters and boycotters is still, however vicious and hypocritical, genuinely free speech. Attempting to use the state's power to retaliate against someone who does that sort of ugly campaign by getting them in trouble with the taxmen is something else indeed. I'm sure many will disagree with me; feel free. Like Amanda, I can say what I want, and like the character my blog was named for, "Je peux dire «non» encore à tout ce que je n'aime pas et je suis seul juge." Live long and prosper.

Triple Standard

2007-02-10T10:49:00.000-06:00

On this day in 1992 a jury convicted Desiree Washington's assailant of one count of rape and two counts of deviate sexual conduct. This was upheld despite several appeals.

She was widely denounced as a liar, and had to undergo treatment for a sexually transmitted disease she contracted from him.

The president of her own denomination was indicted on a federal count of perjury for telling a grand jury he did not offer Washington $1 million to drop her charges, but a judge later dismissed this charge. Still later he was found guilty by a court of concocting evidence to justify a lawsuit against his own successor's election.

The man who assaulted her served only three years for crimes with a maximum penalty of sixty years, and was allowed to return to his former profession and earn tens of millions of dollars despite ongoing instances of violent assaults.

Just because a jury believes you, don't assume justice will be done.

(That statue of Justice as a prostitute with thigh boots and dollars stuffed in her garter was done in London in 2004 by guerrilla artist Banksy.)

Finally!!!

2007-02-08T12:50:00.000-06:00

There now, that wasn't so tough, was it, John?

John Edwards
2/08/2007 at 11:36 AM EST

The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word. We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

It was far too long, but at least he did ultimately do the right thing. It looks like it will be up to the rest of us to keep pointing out the bigotry and hypocrisy of the people who called for firing those bloggers. But he did stand up for them at last. Praise where it's due.

Crickets Continue In Chapel Hill

2007-02-08T11:40:00.000-06:00

There has been nothing more to add yet to Letter from Here's comments from yesterday at "When attacked by swiftbloggers, you need to do the right thing. Fast. And you need to know what it is."

The longer there's no word from the Edwards camp, it's hard to avoid the cynical speculation that his people have been trying to broker a phony agreement whereby Edwards supports Amanda and Melissa's free speech rights 100%, while they say they're resigning to spare the campaign the "distraction." In any event, the longer this thing drags on, the more the outcome becomes a foregone conclusion. Not good.

Edwards is rapidly sinking deeper and deeper into a quagmire where there's no good alternative -- and where "do the right thing" becomes an oxymoron. Sound familiar?

I voted for Edwards in the 2004 Primary. If he still wins the nomination despite this display of weakness under rabid reactionary attack, I would still be willing to vote for him in November. Unfortunately, the righties would be able to play this up as waffling and flip-flopping and knuckling under to bullies. "If he caved in to mere conservative bloggers, what would he give up to Osama?"

The only way I can see him pulling out of this nosedive now is if he emerges at a news conference saying the two bloggers are staying on, because he doesn't take orders from hypocritical bigots, but that they had wanted to quit and he's been quiet so long because he's been convincing them not to leave, since that would be fanning the flames for those hatemongers.

(I hope this post winds up looking silly because it turns out he's already doing something like that as I speak.)

Let Us Reason Together

2007-02-07T23:18:00.001-06:00

In all of the angry accusations bouncing around the web over the Edwards-bloggers brouhaha, the most level-headed, moving, and hilarious piece I've seen yet is by the Anti-Essentialist Conundrum at All right, John. We need to talk.

Dr. Kevorkian, Please Report To North Carolina

2007-02-07T15:12:00.001-06:00

Salon has an iffy claim up that the John Edwards campaign has just fired their new bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister. Caution must be taken, since

Speculation from sources that the two bloggers might be rehired was bolstered by Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, who said in an e-mail that she would "caution [Salon] against reporting that they have been fired. We will have something to say later."

All of this comes after today's New York Times piled on spreading the rightist swiftboat of the week, condemning the Edwards campaign because these two bloggers had written things on their own blogs which were profane (guilty as charged -- but any leading righty site has as bad or worse), unfair to the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape (yes, Amanda did write as if they were guilty, just as most of the media did about O.J. -- but that is hardly a usual concern of the righties, going back at least as far as Nixon denouncing Charles Manson as guilty), and, worst of all and the prime spark, anti-Catholic (this came from Bill Donohue, a proven hypocritical bigoted reactionary demagogue who himself openly disagrees with his church on many things such as the death penalty, but who hypocritically condemns any disagreement with the church from a liberal point of view as anti-Catholic hatred).

The campaign denouncing this has been all over the righty sites (no links -- all the usual suspects were involved). If Edwards is caving in to their demands now, he doesn't have the spine to stand up to them in the campaign or in the White House. This foolish spokesperson, saying earlier that they were considering those bloggers' position, and now "cautioning" instead of just saying yes or no, thus leaving them dangling in the wind, is incompetent and should be fired instead. If the Edwards campaign is going to fight back, it will need a clear voice of moral certainty to say so. Palmieri isn't that person.

The jury is still out. Edwards: flip-flopper, incompetent manager, or strong champion of free speech against bigotry? The web awaits.

UPDATE: Zuzu at Feminste has more, including videos of the bigoted Donohue, at This Is Really Getting Out Of Hand:

John Edwards, if you are at all serious about getting the votes of liberals, of women, of people who care passionately about the issues you talk about, then you can not cave to the likes of Bill Donohue.

Because there will be no end to the demands for capitulation. They won’t rest on their laurels after having taken out two relatively small fry. No, their demands will only increase, and there is no appeasing them.

And in the end, they’re not going to vote for you anyway. And the people who agree with them aren’t going to vote for you anyway.

The people you’ll lose, if you cave, are the people who hunger for someone who will stand the hell up to these kinds of loudmouthed, anti-Constitutional hacks who stand for nothing but their own selves.

UPDATE 2: This kind of wobbliness has even outraged good Dems in Texas, a state that has shown a lot of support for Edwards. Charles Kuffner, dean of Texas bloggers at Off the Kuff, writes in If you want me to vote for you, here's what you've got to do:

If you want my vote, the bare minimum that I expect of you is that when a two-bit thug like Bill Donahue threatens you, you fight back instead of handing over your lunch money like a little weak-kneed fraidy cat. Anybody who tries to appease the likes of William Donahue instead of standing up for himself or herself is not going to be able to survive the general election, so I'll be looking for someone else to represent the Democratic ticket. You would think that John Kerry's running mate would understand that.

Where Have I Been?

2007-02-06T15:10:00.000-06:00

Those who may have missed my usual snarks, rants, or risible parodies, not to mention occasional pointers to discoveries elsewhere, can find me posting daily another of my Today's Birthdays or Today in History, over at the American Street. Longer items (like the crossposted one below) are more rare, due to lack of time. But I've not gone away, just busy, and there will be more to come as the inspiration strikes.

Come Back, Shams

2007-02-06T15:06:00.000-06:00

The United States completely withdrew its final remaining few military forces from the former nation of Iraq in May of 2007. This followed the passage of the Persian Gulf Stability Act of that year, which cut off all funding for the war. Passed by only a bare majority in both houses of Congress, it was quickly signed into law by President Pelosi. That was only made possible by the impeachment and removal from office of both President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard Cheney. While Cheney was removed for abusing his authority to enhance his stock options with his former company, Halliburton, the incident which sparked the removal of Bush involved, like Nixon before him, obstruction of justice. This remains controversial because it seemed to conflict with an explicitly designated Constitutional power of the President.

In February of 2007, U.S. Brigader General Joshua Coventry spoke to a large assembly of female students in Baghdad. This was a politically-chosen audience. It was intended to show both that the new surge of troops had so pacified the city that normal education was possible, and to show U.S. commitment to equal opportunities for women, beginning at the school level. Only a promise of massive military protection sufficed to produce a group of several hundred girl students for him to speak to.

The talk began poorly, when the General said, through his translator, that he was sent there personally by President Bush to help them. The result was an explosion of laughter from the teenagers. The General went on assuring the girls that Bush really did care about them, and the laughter began getting out of hand. The angry officer then began shouting at them to shut up, because when they laughed at our President they were laughing at the United States of America, which, since we were a Christian nation, meant they were laughing at the Lord Jesus Himself. This had no effect, except catcalls of the Arabic equivalent of "right on!" Finally he had a guard fire a gun at the roof, which quieted them down, at a serious cost to his reputation for level-headedness.

At this point one of the now-quieted girls began humming an Arabic tune. This was rapidly picked up by all of the others, until almost the entire room of students was loudly humming, and then they began singing the lyrics out loud. Asked what they were singing, the translator advised the General that it was a song called "Ahlan! Ezayek?", which meant "Hi! How are you?" That is what caused the General to completely lose control of himself, since he had already seen the popular YouTube of the music video of that song as shown widely on Arab television. He had also read about how the Kuwaiti singer, named Shams, was mocking and satirizing Bush. The popular video even showed her hitting U.S. troops over the head with a shoe. Worst of all, it ended with her walking off into the sunset, wearing a wedding dress and holding hands with Handala, the well-known Arabic cartoon symbol of the displaced Palestinians, thus implying unified Arab support against both the Americans and the Israelis.

That was just too much for the fundamentalist Christian General, who was publicly awaiting the upcoming Rapture. In a rage he ordered the guards to shoot down the singing students. Unfortunately, he forgot that the assembly was being broadcast live on local Arabic television, which showed plenty of blood spewing from bodies jerking about as new bullets crashed into them. The massacre led to an unprecedented unity among Shias and Sunnis, who both took to the streets rioting and attacking Americans, finally leading to orders to evacuate even the Green Zone itself.

The General did make it back to base, and then fled the country along with tens of thousands of troops whose supply lines were no longer considered secure. The world universally denounced the General's actions. The outrage reached thermonuclear proportions when President Bush promptly pardoned the General of any charges, leaving him free to retire and retreat from the public eye. The backlash from that pardon was what produced sufficient votes for the House to vote to impeach Bush for obstruction of justice, and for a narrow two-thirds margin of the Senate (including several Republicans) to convict and remove him. Charges were promptly filed against Cheney for corruption, and by May, dragging it out as long as possible, he too had been tossed aside. (Needless to say, Congress never even took up Cheney's attempted appointment of John Ashcroft as Vice-President.)

Ex-President Bush went into hiding at his family's new estate in Paraguay. Ex-President Cheney foolishly went on a hunting trip in Canada, where a clever local police officer arrested him on charges of war crimes. After a long legal battle over extradition, Cheney was finally shipped off to the Hague and tried by the International Criminal Court, denying their jurisdiction all the way. Untimately his final heart attack ended the trial before a verdict was reached. Shams the singer went on to become even more wildly popular, heralded as the woman who helped bring down the Last Crusader (as the Arab media began referring to Bush), and ultimately sharing the Nobel Peace Prize that year with environmental crusader Al Gore.

The Best Revenge

2007-01-03T17:06:00.000-06:00

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, will use a Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson during his ceremonial swearing-in Thursday.

The chief of the Library of Congress' rare book and special collections division, Mark Dimunation, will walk the Quran across the street to the Capitol and then walk it back after the ceremony.

Best comment on this irony yet, at Unfogged:

I, for one, welcome our new jihadist Founding Fathers.

Premature Occupation

2006-12-29T17:03:00.000-06:00

Rivrbend is back:

My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn't look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?

The Heart Of Xmas

2006-12-15T19:33:00.000-06:00

Zuzu at Feministe spotted driftglass getting hilariously all Apocalypse Now on the War on Holy Days at Begun, this Clown War has:

There's a Jolly Old Elf up there who's gone insane.

I'm supposed to kill him.

Dead Blogger Posting

2006-12-15T19:01:00.000-06:00

Chris Clarke whistles in the dark:

Besides, the judge has it in for me. Remember Judge Webster Thayer, who asked, after sentencing Sacco and Vanzetti to death, "Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards the other day?" Well, this is exactly like that. Except that I didn't get any payroll money. And Sacco and Vanzetti had a happy ending, right? I think. Anyway, I love their ice cream.

Much, Much Slower Than Empires

2006-12-13T22:23:00.000-06:00

Tim grouses:

I guess Tony has a point. Similarly the Titanic isn't un-rotting, rising from the ocean floor, reassembling itself and backing away from the iceberg anywhere near fast enough. If only the dumb ship would would hurry up.

Dissecting Table, Sewing Machine, Umbrella

2006-12-13T22:16:00.000-06:00

Gary makes a connection.

Try To Get This Out Of Your Mind

2006-12-13T22:05:00.000-06:00

Altmouse recasts:

I guess it's true -- the only cool rebels left are me, Glenn Reynolds, and David Broder. They should remake Easy Rider and we should be the stars! That would be a hoot. Vroom vroom! Motorcycles!

Charging Exit Fees From Plato's Cave

2006-12-13T21:56:00.000-06:00

Roy feels their pain:

We treat them like shopkeepers, though they have the souls of poets! Perhaps they should try wearing berets and playing acoustic guitar.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

2006-12-12T16:00:00.000-06:00

Mr. Riley explains:

On a positive note, though, we are winning the War of Excuses. Big, big lead on that one.

Isaiah 1:18

2006-12-12T10:19:00.000-06:00

What we should be seeing more of in the Middle East: instead of killing each other, they should do more projects like this one:

Officials from Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority met along the shores of the Dead Sea to settle details of a study to save the shrinking body of water, agreeing to proceed with plans to draw water from the Red Sea.

The Mote In Kos's Eye

2006-12-10T22:12:00.000-06:00

Best response to the attacks on Saturday's voters and non-voters from mere earthlings elsewhere, spotted months ahead of time by Ashley Morris:

Nineteenth century writer Lafcadio Hearn wrote a letter to a friend in Cincinnati about two years after he arrived in New Orleans in 1877, during a grim period in which thousands died from yellow fever. He summed up his situation this way:

"Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."

War Comic

2006-12-10T20:39:00.000-06:00

Just saw this one. Fact-esque has spotted "the definitive post on the Iraq Study Group" over at Rox Populi, who gives us a YouTube clip of Iraq Study Group - The Movie.

The Antediluvian Candidate

2006-12-07T09:11:00.000-06:00

The Poor Man has heard our silence, and so announces for the Connecticut for Lieberman Party nomination for President in this video.

Glowing In The Darkness

2006-11-30T19:19:00.000-06:00

Blue Gal finds a bizarre new official license plate:

Can I get one that says "My family gave two lives in Vietnam. Do we have to do it again in the Gulf?"

Note To Nancy

2006-11-29T19:17:00.000-06:00

The next time the unindicted war criminal tries to patronize you, take a lesson in how to respond from Jim Webb.

You Know, For The Kids....

2006-11-28T23:09:00.000-06:00

Just for a science experiment, I'm posting this link, as found at Peripetia. Comes of it what never know may we.

We Weren't Using It Anyway....

2006-11-28T14:48:00.000-06:00

The zombie Newt is back from the grave, attempting a Sister Souljah moment by telling a freedom of speech dinner:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich....

My response was, if we really will be forced to reexamine someone's freedom of speech, can we please start with his?

But John at Americablog made an even better point:

We already lost a city, Newt. It's called New Orleans. And it was your party, the Republicans, who lost it.

Missed Opportunities

2006-11-28T13:46:00.000-06:00

Nancy Pelosi, as most party leaders in Congress do, is timidly tiptoeing her way along.

I was disgusted when she said impeachment was off the table, thus going to a gunfight with no weapon at all. (Some are trying to put it back on the menu.)

I was revolted when she went to the White House "for George Bush posing as a bipartisan" (to revise the phrase of the 9th Marquess of Queensberry). She should have responded to that invitation by pointing out that this man has accused her party of treason, and he has not withdrawn, apologized for, or even promised not to repeat this grossly un-American charge. When he publicly does that, then he knows where to find her. To meet with him without his repudiation of his conduct would be to sanction it -- which is just what her meeting with him did, even before his patronizing decorating remarks.

Now I'm sickened that she is delaying a vital decision and letting the war party takes shots at her. The right wingnuts are denouncing her for even considering putting in someone else as Chair of the House Intelligence [sic] Committee instead of Jane Harman. That Bush puppet is either an incompetent fool or a willing warmonger. Bite the bullet and get rid of her. No, not for Hastings (who actually was not guilty of crimes that merited impeachment any more than Clinton was, but he's irrevocably been tarnished by the accusaions anyway; fortunately, word is today he is withdrawing from consideration) but for somebody else, like Rush Holt.

Nancy, you are not in the divine Sarah's class. Stop auditioning for Hamlet and charge ahead full speed.

Our Lone Star Loon

2006-11-27T13:12:00.000-06:00

On Late Edition:

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R), TEXAS: ...I think we're talking about 20 to 50,000 additional troops to embed them with the Iraqis, so that when we clear areas, we can actually secure them.

Then we need to disarm the militias. We need to arrest al-Sadr and make sure the government has a monopoly on the use of legal force.

Of course, they already do have a monopoly on the use of legal force, which proves that is worth nothing in the middle of a full-scale civil war. As for trying to arrest al-Sadr, he is surrounded by lots of armed fanatics who will die to protect him. There would be lots of American casualties and even more Iraqis, probably including al-Sadr himself. Killed, wounded, or just captured, he becomes a martyr and tens of thousands of his supporters take to the streets with guns and mortars and bombs. The U.S. forces would have no choice but to slaughter thousands of them in self-defense as they retreat to no-longer secure bases, and then we'll see pictures of the last stragglers trying to grab onto the landing gear of the helicopters leaving the embassy roofs as we abandon the country.

Let me tell you this as a Texan and one of your constituents: Senator Cornyn, you are stark, raving mad. This idea is beyond delusional, it is criminally insane. In a just world, the International Criminal Court would sentence you to personally dig graves for all the Americans and Iraqis your bloodthirsty proposal would destroy. With a short shovel. In the Iraqi sun. Shown live on Al-Jazeera television.

Rotting Fish In A Barrel

2006-11-27T12:36:00.000-06:00

Roy ponders penguins:

When someone as proud of his verbal skills as Lileks starts spitting rank foam like this, a charitable interpretation is possible. In this case, I think he is trying to protect art from himself.

What's Hecuba To Me?

2006-11-13T20:02:00.000-06:00

Booman praises with faint damns:

If I have to choose, I will choose Murtha. But I am under no illusions about John Murtha. Just because he has credibility on issues of the military doesn't make him good on other issues. I give him the nod because Pelosi wants him, because he projects a strong image, and because he wants out of Iraq now and Hoyer doesn't.

And what has Pelosi done for us lately, other than preemptively unload the only weapon she has against Our Lame Tyrant, namely impeachment? What in that merits removing the thorn in her side, for a backroom thug whose record could stand reelection campaigns in reddest Texas? Might we not be better off entrenching endless struggling between the "leaders", so that Bush will have to work harder to make any deals to sell us out?

Can You Say "Envy"?

2006-11-13T18:51:00.000-06:00

A giant wooden sculpture of a penis on display at Taipei's international airport has stirred up controversy....

Some foreign crew members and flight attendants refer to the sculpture as "The Thing" and have posted the photo of it on their websites, saying it is an offence to female visitors and flight attendants.

Notice that it is not women complaining about this. Can't stand the comparison, huh, guys?

Guten Tag der Erfinder

2006-11-09T20:03:00.000-06:00

In German-speaking countries, this is "Inventor's Day", celebrated because it is the birthday of Austrian Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler (shown at left at age 9). Her main invention was the frequency-hopped spread spectrum, patented in 1942. This perfect example of Pat Schroeder's line "I have a brain and a uterus and I use both" became somewhat better known as a film star.

Don't Let The Door Hit You....

2006-11-09T18:45:00.000-06:00

Blue Gal links to some delightful post-election greeting cards. My favorite says "You've suffered a humiliating, demoralizing, agonizing defeat." On the inside it adds "Let's do this again in 2008."

Another Awakening

2006-11-09T18:14:00.000-06:00

Amanda at Pandagon has a theory:

Republicans tried to ride a tidal wave of misogyny to power, particularly with regards to reminding Americans at every turn that a woman would be Speaker of the House if the Democrats won. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think this strategy backfired. A lot of generally conservative women were on the fence this election, and I know from experience that a lot of women who are conservative but not wingnuts tend to be more femininst than you'd think. Certainly feminist enough to hear Fox News reporters saying, in essence, "Scary scary a skirt with power" and think, "Well, good, I want a woman to have that job."

How About Here?

2006-11-09T17:29:00.000-06:00

Yes, Dallas County went Democratic, with a flood. We won every single county-wide race we ran in here, and even a few of the statewide candidates carried this county. (Chris Bell even got a plurality here, though not a majority.) Kirk McPike, who was a big factor in the win by running the volunteer GOTV program from the north Dallas office, expresses jubilation at Burnt Orange Report. Hopefully he will post some of his detailed number crunching soon. In the meantime, there is a quick summary and links to detailed results (reprinted from the DCDP's email Roundup) over at StoutDemBlog. And Daily Kos links to a Houston Chronicle story about it.

There is a lot more to say about the ins and outs of this massive victory, but I'm still recovering -- and keeping my fingers crossed that none of the narrowly defeated Republicans demand a recount, even though I think the figures will hold up. As one blogger noted (sorry, but I misplaced the link), the Republicans set up these paperless machines (which we used here only for early voting) in the belief that they would be the presumed winners, since they knew no trail means no way to change the votes. Ooops!! Now they're on the short end of that scheme. It reverses the old poem applied to the Democrats after the 1876 Presidential election commission debacle:

"They digged a pit,
They digged it deep,
They digged it for their brothers;
But it so fell out that they fell in
The pit that was digged for t'others."

And it serves them all right. Good riddance to the Republicans.

Passages....

2006-11-09T17:21:00.000-06:00

You go get involved in campaigns and let posting slide, and what happens? People start changing their URLs. Jude Nagurney Camwell of Iddybud, one of the very first to cite anything from this blog when it began, has decided that her blog took too long to load, so has moved to a new site at Iddybud Journal, a "daily blog of progressive politics, faith, photography, and my life in Upstate New York".

Considering the election results, the forgotten part of the state should be feeling upbeat now. As for the Democratic contenders that didn't quite make it this time, recall the words of Heinlein back in 1950: "In the year 2050, there will still be outhouses in upstate New York." And, apparently, still a few members of Congress who belong in them -- but not as many as there were on Monday. Congratulations.

And another one moves on: Matt Glazer is shuting down JAB to do more posting at Burnt Orange Report and at the blog of DriveDemocracy. Good luck to him on his new gigs.

Welcome Back...

2006-10-30T09:11:00.000-06:00

...to the sidebar to Alan, just moved to 39 And Holding, who commented on my transitions post the other day that he is still rebuilding the permalinks at his new site and has restored my link. Thank you! Now it's back to work helping local Democrats get ready for Armageddon next Tuesday. Have you volunteered or contributed in your area to help bind the beast of the pit (a.k.a. the Bu'ushistas?)

Le mot sans merci

2006-10-28T22:23:00.000-05:00

Wolcott pinions:

Pajamas Media is a vanity plate for the upwardly servile....

While I've Been Busy Helping Candidates...

2006-10-27T15:56:00.000-05:00

...instead of blogging each day, several changes happened to the folk on my sidebar. Mad Kane, our Poetess Laureate of the Blogalaxy (no, skippy didn't coin that term), has gotten tired of hand-coding and moved to a new site. For unknown reasons, so has The Quaker Agitator. Way back last summer, the parody ARAVOSISblog stopped, but I never got around to dropping it before now.

More mysteriously, there has been no post since August 24 at Roryshock, so I guess it's gone, too. Finally, Swede and Czech is deleting his old blog on November 1st, and is now posting at his new site 39 And Holding; this one seems to have gone all into personal self-examination mode, and no longer links to me in the sidebar, which under my link policy of APRÈS VOUS, means I suppose I'll have to delist him -- but good luck with your journey, Alan.

Believe me, I look forward to this election being over, so that I can get back to the ought-to-be real world on the web, and in the library, and all the other places I have no time for now. The way things look now, though, it may take several days to recover from the wild victory party on election night. Unless I'm caught up in Recount Madness, I'll be around more often sometime after November 7th.

Mesoamerican Tradition

2006-10-27T12:34:00.000-05:00

Five centuries ago, before the Spanish Inquisition unexpectedly arrived and displaced them, central American rulers built huge pyramids on which to practice human sacrifices to appease angry deities. Now Ortega passes statutes to practice human sacrifices to appease angry theocrats. What's the Spanish for "Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose"?

Nicaraguan MPs passed a tough law today that bans abortions for rape victims and women who risk dying in childbirth. The tactical vote came just days ahead of the Central American republic's presidential election.

The law was approved with the support of reluctant left-wing legislators who backed it to help their party's leader, Daniel Ortega, a former Cold War foe of the United States, sweep back to power in the November 5 election.

Nicaragua's powerful Roman Catholic church and the ruling Liberal Party had promoted the law and Mr Ortega's Sandinista party supported it to avoid alienating church leaders and religious voters in the last days of a tight campaign. ...

When Mr Ortega was in power, his government reinforced a law giving women the right to terminate pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, or if three doctors stated a woman's life was at risk. ...

Hundreds of people had protested outside the National Assembly in the capital Managua yesterday, saying the law would be a death sentence for the some 400 women who suffer ectopic pregnancies in Nicaragua each year.

"They are forcing women and girls to die. They are not pro-life, they are pro-death," said protester Xiomara Luna.

(Spotted by Avedon Carol.)

Kali's Coming With Your Karma...

2006-10-27T11:18:00.000-05:00

...and is she ever pissed. Dr. Karen Kwiatkowski (Lt. Col. USAF ret.) puts herself in prime contention to be our next Commander-in-Chief:

Imagine, dear reader, if you will, one of the first applications of this antiterrorist legislation, sans habeas corpus, flaunting all executive power, all the time. Young Mr. Bush is soon for the ranch, mumbling strangely to himself and his rare visitor about how he coulda been somebody (other than Nixon on crack). But it is the next Tyrant of the United States who will delight today’s contrarians.

Imagine – briefly – if you will, the pasty-faced, well-fed, overbearing Richard Perle, or the political canine David Frum. Imagine, if you will, our amusing curmudgeon of a Defense Secretary and his pal Dick Cheney.

Each of these has lauded, associated, and given moral, if not material support, to the Iranian terrorist group known as MeK.

According to past legislation, presidential signing statements and the MCA "Death to Habeas Corpus" Act of 2006, these lucky pundits, secretaries of defense, and vice presidents may be held incommunicado, without access to a lawyer, without being told of the "evidence" against them, without access to a court of law or an independent judge. Wait ... I left something out. Held indefinitely. Perhaps secretly. Might they be bound and gagged, sexually humiliated, frightened by dogs or sub-standard enlistees and overzealous and poorly trained officers, or the odd contractor? Why not?

How NOT To Defend Yourself

2006-10-27T10:31:00.000-05:00

According to the WaPo:

Rep. Ron Kind pays for sex!

Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face. It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. ...

Kind joked in an interview that he has been paying for sex ever since he said "I do."

Did you sleep through the seventies, Ron? Was the whole feminist revolution just wasted on you?

Cheaper Than Fences

2006-10-09T08:56:00.000-05:00

Looks like they've come up with an inexpensive new anti-immigrant program:

Mexican fishermen captured a 7.5-foot crocodile in the Rio Grande, the river that divides part of Mexico and the United States, authorities reported on Sunday. ... The reptile was caught on a fisherman's line on Saturday in a sparsely populated stretch of the river on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. It was turned over to a local animal shelter.

The crocodile weighed about 130 pounds and appeared to be young and in good condition....

Is this Rove's October surprise? Have the media find the legs of an illegal border-crosser in a croc's mouth? That would probably get hosannas from Malkin and her xenophobes.

Kicking Them When They're Down, Or Something....

2006-10-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Over at the American Street, the estimable anonyMoses has printed an excerpt from the GOP Family Values Hymnal, which begins:

Cock of Pages, cleft for me,
Let me hide my sa-la-mi

Rsad it all here. And for the many who never click through, I preserve here for posterity my own comments appended thereto:

No, no, let’s use a hymn that gets right to the point:

Foley loved the little pages
All the hunky pages he has known
Gay or Bi — they’re both all right
They can come and spend the night
He can hardly wait till they are grown

George Dreams Of Changing History

2006-09-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

Signing statement, given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign, and the year of our Lord 1215.

John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting.

We have today signed into law the Articles of the Barons granting to all free men of our Kingdom, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out therein, except insofar as those may be rendered inoperative in accordance with the exceptions noted hereinafter.

Taxation
Section 12 of the Articles says that "No 'scutage' or 'aid' may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent, unless it is for the ransom of our person, to make our eldest son a knight, and (once) to marry our eldest daughter." Inasmuch as our esteemed consort Isabella of Angoulême is our junior by a full score of years and may therefore bear more than our present four offspring, should our eldest surviving daughter at the time of her marriage be one of a pair of hypothetical future twins, we shall construe the parenthetical "once" to apply equally to each and therefore to entitle each to a separate and equal marriage, and permit us to compel "aid" for both.

Confiscation
In following Sections 30 and 31, which state that "No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or carts for transport from any free man, without his consent", and "Neither we nor any royal official will take wood for our castle, or for any other purpose, without the consent of the owner", we shall implement these provisions in a manner consistent with our constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch, requiring that decisions on provisioning of transportation and refueling of law enforcement officers in the execution of the laws are a part of the executive power vested in us, and accordingly, we shall construe these articles as advisory rather than mandatory.

Secret Evidence
Section 38's proposal that "In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it", to the extent that the charges made relate to access to classified national security information, we shall construe this provision in a manner consistent with our exclusive constitutional authority, as head of the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief, to classify and control access to national security information.

Trial By Jury
In regard to Section 39's suggestion that "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land", we shall construe the provision in a manner which is consistent with our nation's traditional constitutional commitment to us of responsibility for conducting and protecting the security of our beloved homeland against all foes, foreign and domestic, and shall consider these provisions only advisory in cases of those determined to be enemy combatants or supporters thereof or apologists therefor, especially rumor-mongering free-lance town criers or wandering scribes.

Four Reactions To Our New Overlords

2006-09-29T13:01:00.000-05:00

I've run this cartoon before, but yesterday's repeal of the American Revolution calls for it again. The Congressional sycophancy provoked -- well, mostly apathy out there, because "it's not me they'll be using those powers against". The best, and most frightening, thing I've ever read about that inertia was Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free, about how the ordinary Germans accepted Nazi rule.

On the web, of course, we're polarized into praise for our Leader -- from the far wrong wing nuts -- and, from everyone else, anger, despair, fear, and a few glimmers of dutiful belief that it just has to get better if we keep on trying. Amygdala takes the literal Thomas Jefferson approach (unaware that Tom has already been rounded up and sent to Gitmo, secretly, of course) at Come Arrest Me:

Overthrow this government. By force.

Detain me.

All of you need to stand up and say this. Now.

Because it's going to be later, if not sooner.

I call for the overthrow of the government of the United States of America. By force.

Until this bill is overturned.

I don't want to wait until I pass a border.

I call for the overthrow now.

I resist.

Unclaimed Territory says we have done some good in opposing this at Beltway Democrats are seriously flawed, but the election is still critically important:

And I think there is one other point that needs to be recognized about yesterday's vote: In 2002, virtually all of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls in Congress (Kerry, Edwards, Gephardt, Graham) voted for the Iraq war resolution, because they thought they had to be accommodationist in order to have a chance to win.

But this time, all of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls in Congress (Biden, Clinton, Feingold, Kerry) voted against this bill, because now they know that they can't be accommodationist if they want to win the nomination. Call that the Joe Lieberman Lesson. That is genuine progress, no matter how you slice it. Is it glorious, tearing-down-the-gate-with-fists-in-the-air Immediate Revolution? No. But it's undeniable incremental progress nonetheless.

The Poor Man agrees we have to keep working to defeat Republicans at The morning after:

The bottom line is the votes weren’t there. The day was lost.

Basic mathematics explains why. Only 2-3% of the representatives of the majority party voted against it, as opposed to 75-85% of the minority. It would have been nice if, under circumstances carefully contrived by the majority party to be as politically difficult as possible, 100% of the minority went down to defeat. It would have been nice if any of the 15 trojan horse amendments introduced by the Democrats had suceeded. And a pony, if you please. But that didn’t happen, and so we have to settle for defeat, and a Democratic rate of opposition only 30 times as high as the Republican.

From our history: the Fugitive Slave Act, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the internment of Japanese-Americans. Now the McCain Torture Bill - and this, too, shall pass. Now, whether it will pass into a shameful memory, or be overshadowed by still greater outrages on every alternate September, remains to be seen. What will most determine this is what party controls the aparatus of government - the party of 97-98% authoritarianism, or the party of 15-25%. Because if the Republicans are in control in 2008, and want to further degrade the country in order to hold on to the Congress and the White House, they will be proposing something which is as unthinkable today as the normalization of Abu Ghraib was two years ago - and the same merciless math assures us that this, too, shall pass. So, if this possibility concerns you, of fucking course it matters who wins in November. Look at the numbers. It matters more than anything.

The Mahablog agrees as well, but also has advice for those who are just too fed up or fearful to try at Choices:

I see a Dem takeover of Congress this November as a stopgap measure. Even if Dems take both houses of Congress we face enormous challenges to pull the nation back from the brink and restore our pathological political culture to something approaching health. But if the Republicans keep control of both houses of Congress, the task of saving our nation may become impossible.

Time is short. We cannot afford to sit on our hands and wait for the Messiah Candidate to come and save us. We've got to work with the tools we have. Once we've pulled back from the brink of disaster we can take steps to get better tools. ...

If you still aren't persuaded then — Canada is north.

Foolishly or not, I'm very involved in helping Democratic candidates beat the Repugnants this fall (and I'm also voting for a few Libertarians in races where no Democrat challenged the Pluripotent Presidential Party). If worse does come to worst, and Jefferson's "right to alter or abolish" is all we have left, I probably won't flee (and if I did, Mexico is much closer). Texans have revolted against tyranny more than once in the past. The question is how many of the residents of the state today would still be willing rebels, or how many would rather just reach for the remote.

The Fight Goes On

2006-09-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

The Great Grey Liar, blissfully ignoring its own role as cheerleader for the War To End All Domestic Opposition, finally denounced the pending nullification of the Constitution and almost a millenium of common law, much too late to affect what they reported as news:

The Senate today rejected an amendment to a bill creating a new system for interrogating and trying terror suspects that would have guaranteed such suspects access to the courts to challenge their imprisonment. The vote was 51 to 48 against the amendment... The bill's ultimate passage was assured on Wednesday when Democrats agreed to forgo a filibuster in return for consideration of the amendment. ...White House spokesman Tony Snow said today that President Bush will emphasize Democratic opposition to the bill in campaign appearances.

So the caving in to not appear "obstructionist" didn't do a bit of good, did it? They are still going to damn us all as traitors anyway.

Before the session began this morning, President Bush traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican Senators and urge passage of the bill. "The American people need to know that we're working together to win this war on terror," he said. "Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people from further attack. And we cannot be able to tell the American people we're doing our full job unless we have the tools to do so."

To which the best comment was made by Tacitus in his Ab excessu divi Augusti almost two thousand years ago, about a speech by the Emperor Tiberius:

haec atque talia, quamquam cum adsensu audita ab iis quibus omnia principum, honesta atque inhonesta, laudare mos est, plures per silentium aut occultum murmur excepere

...or, as it is translated (a bit loosely) by Michael Grant

This sort of argument was applauded by those who habitually applaud emperors, right or wrong. But the majority received it in silence or with suppressed mutters.

It is entirely proper that the Senate is surrendering our freedom today, because this is the anniversary of the Continental Congress signing its own death warrant in 1787, by sending the illegally proposed new Constitution to the states for ratification. The fact that the Philadelphia convention and the Congress itself had no authority to do this didn't stop them, just like that now-ratified document's clear prohibitions of things today's legislation authorizes didn't stop their successors from the same abdication today.

But despair not. Athenae at First Draft still raises a light in the darkness that everyone needs to read all of. Here's part:

This is about what kind of country we are.

And we are better than this.

We are better than murderers. We are better than torturers. We are better than those who would tell us the only way to beat the terrorists is to inflict far greater terror. We are better than those who would tell us the only way for us to live now is to live in fear. We are better than those who say, "Build yourself a tower, build yourself a wall, dig yourself a moat." ...

We, as a country, are better than this. And if the weakness and fear of a cowed Republican Congress allows them to lose faith in the conviction of America to preserve its ideals while overcoming any foe, that is the fault of the cowed Republican Congress, because I saw Democrats all over the place standing up this week. Russ Feingold, Tim Ryan, Louise Slaughter, Dick Durbin who got beat on so bad over this once before, even Barack got off his snobby ass and joined the fight. Kerry. Dean. They all got up and said no, this is wrong. ...

It doesn't work, it doesn't help, it makes us evil and it makes us small. It reduces a great nation to the level of some tin-hat dictatorship and we, cats and kittens, are better than this.

And that conviction, that this is not the policy of a great nation but the demented expression of the fear of a nation's corrupt leadership, that this is not the course America will chart for years to come, that this is not what my fellow Americans want, will not waver should the unprincipled, undisciplined, unscrupulous Republican Congress pass this moral abortion of a bill....

I'm not going to join the crowd of about seven people saying they'll just quit politics, quit the Democrats, quit the world, whatever, man, if this goes down the way I think it's going to go down. And I don't think any of you will either.

We are better than this.

And I know that because I know all of you. I know my family, my friends. I know my neighbors and the writers for my local papers and I know my senators and congressmen. I know people who get up every day and fight like hell against incredible odds to do what is right, be that making somebody a lunch to take to school or writing legislation. I know Americans, and we are better than this.

We are better than this. Look at the past three years. Look what we've done, bloggers and activists and writers and singers and rank and file Democrats who are making a 50-state strategy practical and real, so that Republican districts are fighting grounds where they should be quiet pastures of acquiescence and fear. We've made it a fight, don't you know what that means? It's impossible to explain to somebody who hasn't seen it, I think, the incredible sight that turning back the inevitable is.

Hate Is Long

2006-09-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

This is the birthday of Livia Drusilla, later called called Julia Augusta, who was the Barbara Bush of her time.

Dream of your children ruling an empire.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

2006-09-28T09:54:00.000-05:00

That is the motto of the very misnamed "Commonwealth of Virginia", famously used as an exit line by some thespian advocate of regime change (later treated as an enemy combatant ahead of his time). Now horror novelist Stephen King has gone to the Old Dominion to give us a new quote for our own time:

Being a poor Republican is like being on death row and greasing the electric chair as a hobby.

He was speaking at a fundraiser for Jim Webb for U.S. Senate. Another notable there was lawyer-novelist John Grisham, who added this:

On the one side ... those who wear cowboy boots ... pretend to be tough. They're not real cowboys. ... To prove they're 'tough' they say things like 'bring it on,' 'mission accomplished,' and 'welcome to the real Virginia.'

(Spotted by the Mystery of the Haunted Vampire.)

Meanwhile the Repugnant incumbent just can't crawl away from his adopted history:

State leaders of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have scheduled a news conference today to criticize Allen's recent remarks that the Confederate flag could be seen as a symbol of hate.

"George Allen was a good friend of ours, and we don't appreciate him turning on us to get out of political trouble," said Frank Earnest of Virginia Beach, commander of the Virginia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "He's degraded us, the flag and our heritage."

If I was a member of the General Assembly at Richmond, I would introduce a bill to ban disrespect for the confederate flag, specifically including referring to it as a symbol of hate. To paraphrase the old story about Lyndon Johnson's comments on spreading a tale that your opponent enjoys carnal knowledge of swine, I don't want them to pass it -- I just want to laugh my rear off watching them debate it.

Beware Of The Buddhists

2006-09-27T14:34:00.000-05:00

The Mahablog helpfully explains:

The German Opera of Berlin (Deutsche Oper Berlin) has pulled a production of Mozart's Idomeneo from its fall schedule on the advice of police. The production had included a scene featuring the severed heads of Mohammed, Jesus, and the Buddha, and the police worried that Muslims might get violent about it.

If you are familiar with Idomeneo you might wonder how Mohammed, Jesus, and the Buddha wandered into it, since those illustrious figures are not in the libretto.

As Insty would inject, "Indeed". The rightwingnuts, such as their leading slattern (at least according to Dictionary.com) have shown their real priorities here by denouncing the opera company for cancelling this gratuitous offense against Islam, even though it should be just as offense to Christians. For that matter, Mozart probably would sound a discordant note about this abuse of his work. Fortunately, this incident has not been a total loss, because it seems to have inspired the Mahablog to contemplate a possible future opera which I would love to see:

If anyone ever writes an opera about the Bush Administration (hey, there’s one about Nixon!), I foresee a scene in which a pile of shit is hauled into the White House (Josh Bolten: Osservi, un altro mucchio di defecazione!). Then Karl Rove appears with a shovel, promising to find the pony (Non si preoccupi! Posso trovare il piccolo cavallo!).

(By the way, I saw Nixon In China, which premiered right here in Texas. There was no pony in that one either. This new one could be more amusing, probably performed first outdoors at the summer music festival in Point Barrow or Thule after the residents of the temporarily more temperate latitudes kill each other off over vanishing food supplies when the warming Siberian methane traps let loose -- but I digress.)

We Wound You Up, You're A Loyal Fan

2006-09-25T20:00:00.000-05:00

A conservative idea du jour -- that our declining wages don't matter because we have iPods and Starbucks -- is, unbelievably, made even stupider by the folks at Asymmetrical Information. ... Do these people really think that, if we want our wages to go up -- as Americans used to be able to expect -- it also means that we want to go backward in time and disdain modern conveniences? Apparently ... Grumpy liberals want you to live like 70s cavemen! --Roy Edroso, "Economics Made Easy"

[To the tune of Joni Mitchell's "You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio".]

When you're marching round the globe
With a bomber above you
Don't let technophobes
Hassle or shove you

Oh soldier you can tune in
To the internet
We'll censor the wingnuts
So you will not need to fret
We can show you ribbons
On cars for you
And flags on lapels
In praise of you

We'll show you the speeches
Of Leader dear
And applause from desk jockies
Way back here
You know the tree huggers hate you
They'd take all your toys
From their caves they berate you
For your technical joys

They've been giving you trouble
For your clothes
But we rose
Up out of the rubble
Because our Leader knows

But if they tempt you to ponder
Just how the new invasion helps us
Then don't listen, good fighter
No need for thinking
Turn off your brain
Remember your gadgets
And go on line again

Shun their books and mags
And their newspaper lies
And the barefeet they trample on flags
While trying to ban guns and hunters
'Cause they still kill noble stags

When you're surfacing to fire
All the MIRVs you brought with you
Remember the choir
Of pundits love you

If you're pinned down in the sand
With your laptop beside you
You'll be safe surfing you-tube
Who'd dare deride you?
Fighting I.E.D.s there lets
Us fight liberals here
As your base exchange gets
New stuff you can hear

Dubyuh Bush's U.N.O. Democracy Speech

2006-09-19T11:39:00.000-05:00

[To the tune of Neil Diamond's "Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show".]

Call Turtle Bay, and say he's on his way
See his guards for today are in place
Clear Forty-sixth, around First Avenue
Keep the media crew from his face
The Assembly Hall with its slanted roof
Will hear any claim, even with no proof

It's Bush, Dubyuh Bush,
Gee Dubyuh Bush's U.N.O. Democracy Speech ["Leader! Leader!"]
Take one drink per lie, and you will get sky high
So let's watch him preach, how Iran's in breach, 'fore they impeach

The world's cameras watch, and the reporters crowd
More than fire codes allowed on the rails
Bored diplomats have brought all of their staff
So they'll get a good laugh from his tales
Starting off the bat, with misleading stats
Then to follow that, altered pics from sats

It's Bush, Dubyuh Bush,
Gee Dubyuh Bush's U.N.O. Democracy Speech
Take one drink per lie, and you will get sky high
So let's watch him preach, how Iran's in breach, 'fore they impeach

Lovers ["Leader!"], freedom lovers ["Decider!"]
Now God's given me tools of fire ["Leader! Decider!"]
And when an axis is vile
I've got to bust up their bunkers for them ["Decider!"]
'Cause that's what nukes are for ["Leader! Decider!"]
And when you doubt my style
I've got to bust you for being with them ["Decider!"]
Condemn you as the axis choir
'Cause that's what power's for ["Leader! Decider!"]

Let me have my way, join the winning side
And you'll live today, as the world I stride
["Leader! Leader! Leader! Leader! Leader! Leader! Leader! Leader!"]

It's Bush, Dubyuh Bush,
Gee Dubyuh Bush's U.N.O. Democracy Speech
Take one drink per lie, and you will get sky high
So let's watch him preach, how Iran's in breach, 'fore they impeach

He's Back....

2006-09-18T20:24:00.000-05:00

Since August 5, I have been worrying about the lack of posts from Arthur Silber, the ailing blogger of Once Upon a Time... He's been the first place to look for consistent absolutist denunciations of the philosophical immorality and danger of the far right wing cult engulfing us today. Just today, he has emerged, promising to post more soon. This calls for a celebration. In the meantime, check out this archive page for several items he penned on the subject of Torture.

"The impolite phrase, is 'impeachable offense.'"

2006-09-12T10:54:00.000-05:00

Keith Olbermann is standing up proudly like all of the media should be over Bush's exploitation of 911. Crooks and Liars has the video posted of an absolute must-watch reaming of Bush and his gang. Right now it's so busy that the waiting time is interminable to load the video, but it's worth trying again -- and in the meantime, they also have the transcript, which is almost as powerful itself. Go see and read. The (inexcusably long) link is right here.

Surreal As You Wanna Be

2006-09-10T19:51:00.000-05:00

This is the birthday of Elsa Schiaparelli.

I see you've got yourself a brand-new Daliesque high-heel hat.

Being Too Busy To Blog

2006-09-10T12:01:00.000-05:00

The huge decline in the number of recent postings will no doubt continue through November 8th. There happens to be a very important election coming up, and I'm happily too involved with campaigning until then to do much blogging or even much surfing of the web. But I do grab a few moments away. For instance, last week I did a parody to discourage resignation and burnout by the team leader at American Street. You may enjoy Kevin H. — Blogging Star.

When Katrina Comes

2006-08-29T14:37:00.000-05:00

(To the tune of Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks".)

If they keep on drillin', marshland's goin' to sink
If the Corps keeps paddin', audit's goin' to stink
If the storms reach Five, no water's fit to drink

Global warmin' made the waves grow so high
Vultures swarmin' made all the Ninth Ward cry
They let homes soak until they could never all get dry

Your mouth moans your heart groans
When they say they don't want you back home
No one will hire an exile
From the city they lost
You're stopped at the turnstyle
Lest you remind them of the high cost

Votin' is useless, suin' just wastes you more time
The pols are truthless, judges are partners in crime
When hurricane says, poor folk, your home is mine

Ten long months tried livin' in Texas and moped
All this year we acted like damn fools and hoped
Pictures show our section's still left police roped

Turning, turning back to NOLA.... Driftin' to New Orleans... There ain't no point to take you...
Going back... going back now... going back

Been Near Year Since Katrina

2006-08-29T08:44:00.000-05:00

(To the tune of ZZ Top's "Jesus Just Left Chicago".)

The man took off from Crawford, to fly over New Orleans
From scripts he did read off word, 'bout those underwater scenes
Oh, woe
Photo-opping all the press on board, so they'd show he's not mean

Made a stop in Mississippi, on the porch of Strom's fan's home
Agreed it was such a pity, that the poor folk had to roam
So, go
Away from their own city ('cept those trapped inside the Dome)

His guards will not let you near him, and they'll keep you in a Zone
Keeping free speech all neat and trim, until Air Force One has flown
Stow, yo
No one will, on a whim, have any chance to tell him facts unknown

The Little Tanker That Could Play

2006-08-24T15:47:00.000-05:00

With a grim expression that warned "Don't mess with me -- I'm the decider", the man in the flightsuit stomped up the gangplank of the docked oil tanker. Entering the bridge, he slammed his helmet down on a counter and turned toward the ship's central control panel. "I'm Walker, Texas pilot" he said. "Do you believe in democracy, or am I just wasting my time with another idiotarian boatbrain?"

Deep inside the metal shell he faced, floating in nutrient fluids and wired up to the ship's massive computers, the human brain at the core of the vessel considered the question from this pushy person. She also noticed the interesting bulging of his manly form. A lifetime in an artificial womb without romance suddenly overwhelmed her mind and she was entranced. In fact, in months to come she would begin to secretly fantasize about him as her husband. "Of course," she replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Thank Jesus," he said with relief. "I thought there were nothing but crass materialists docked in this port. None of those fancy almighty ships of state was interested in carrying my cargo. The H. A. Kissinjure hissed "Thiss iss dissruptiff." The J. A. Breaker, even though it's a fellow Texan, opined that "It wouldn't be prudent. Bad for bidness." Even the C. L. Prowl, a former battleship, rejected it as "a bridgehead too far". But all that won't stop me. I know I'm on a mission from God to free mankind. And if it takes force to do it to people for their own good, then so be it."

Wonderful, she thought, falling deeper in love, he's an idealist, too. "As it happens," she said, "I'm a big fan of Leo Strauss myself. How can I help you eradicate evil?"

"I want to bring democracy to the suffering victims of the bloody tyrant that rules Iraq. To do that, I need to take them a shipload of brand new Diebold voting machines, so that they can hold free elections without worrying about extremists winning. Are you with me or against me?" he asked.

This was the chance she had dreamed of. From the very first, when she was one of the very rare female brains installed in a ship, she had suffered discrimination from the old fashioned sexist vessels who thought women's brains were just bad luck. They'd say to the shipping companies "Look at the M. K. Allblight. What a mess she made! If you're going to put another girl in a boat, don't make it a big complex cargo ship. Give her one of those simple tin-can oil tankers." And so they had. Even then, the grumblings from the other tankers finally convinced the executives to change her name from her own musical feminine one to the neutral and boring Altered V'ger. Now the big boats were too stuck in their own mental mud to rewrite reality. She jumped at the chance to show them all. "Count me in!"

The Texas Pilot warned that there was lots of angry opposition to his project. So many columnists and pundits and mediamongers and peacebloggers would be attacking him loudly that he would have to cut himself off from their carping. "It'll be worse than Odysseus sailing past the Sirens. I'll put on my eyeshades, and put in my earplugs, so that the noisy nay-sayers won't bother me. You will have to steer yourself while holding up under the verbal assaults of surrenderists. Can you handle that?"

"Don't worry," she told him. "I have a perfect way to ignore any external distractions. Over the years, I have taken up a hobby: operating the player piano in my main galley. By performing a sufficiently demanding piece, I will have to concentrate so intensely the shouts will not bother me at all. For this I'll play the toughest work of all, the notoriously difficult Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor. In honor of the occasion, I'll refer to it as the Iraq Three."

Walker's prediction came true. The ranting against his mission as a fool's errand began even as the voting machines were loading. He ignored the critics, unable to see or hear. To drive them out of her own mind, the Altered V'ger finally had to start playing the first movement of the Concerto (tempo: Aggressivamente):

Once at sea, she kept up her own volume as the negative raving continued by the pessimistic broadcast media. Throughout the journey, she continued to recite the same mantra that the Texas pilot had given her: "I'll free Iraq ... I'll free Iraq ... I'll free Iraq...."

Only when she sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, dangerously close to the Iranioids, did she ease up on her piano for the second movement (tempo: Disonesto). At last, shoving aside the protesting landing craft from greenpeaceniks clogging the Iraqi port, she blew her whistles in joy. She chanted to herself: "I've freed Iraq ... I've freed Iraq ... I've freed Iraq ...."

Then she was hailed by a friendly ship from Britain: "You've finally come with those voting devices? Good show, old girl! But I'm rather afraid you're a bit late. The whole place has gone up in a sectarian bloodbath. Let the wogs fry in their own sand, I say. We're off for home again, and you might want to do the same. Cheerio!"

Well, that put a damper on her spirits. Walker, awakened and informed, refused to let this difficult journey go to waste: "Barnacle bottom, if you're still with me, then let's head east. There's another place we need to liberate just across the Gulf. This time let's not hesitate or hold back." And so they sailed toward the sunrise, ignoring the "I told you so's" and prophets of doom, as she loudly launched into the third movement (tempo: Esplosivo nucleare), and began repeating her new mantra: "I'll free Iran ... I'll free Iran ... I'll free Iran...."

(With thanks to Homer, and to Sergei, and above all to Anne.)

Stowaways

2006-08-23T21:37:00.000-05:00

Geoffrey Chaucer tells the tale:

And Sir Sean cam doun and toold Sir Neville and Sir Neville was passinge wroth and seyde, 'That ys ynogh. I haue hadde it wyth thes cursed by Seynt George snakes on this cursed by Seynt George shippe!'

(Spotted by Sainte Julia.)

Funniest Thing I've Read This Week

2006-08-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

alicublog devastates the deserving at REYNOLDS' UNIVERSAL ROBOTS.

Bow To The Mistress

2006-08-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

I confess that I hadn't done any political parodies of songs and poems for years until I was reinspired by the excursions of Mad Kane. While mine may be more acid (no doubt because she is a nicer person), hers usually scan more precisely (likely because she is a former musician with the Dallas Symphony).

I am disappointed when she spends her great talent on little targets like limericks and haiku, because I like her longer work best. Well, this time she took on one of the greats, "Danny Boy".

Does it bother me to point to this now that Lieberman has lost the primary? Do I mind kicking him when he's down? Nah. Go enjoy "The Ballad of Joementum Joe Lieberman".

Unsolicited Advice

2006-08-08T15:42:00.000-05:00

Since all the Republican pundits have been so generous warning Democrats what a big mistake we are making rejecting Joe Lieberman for someone else who won't kiss up to Bush, I feel it only proper to return the favor.

It looks like Tom Delay, sputtering of his unrequited love for Scalia, really will go ahead and drop out of the race for Congress even if that now means the Republicans won't be able to replace him on the ballot. They plan instead a write-in campaign against Nick Lampson.

The problem with write-in races is usually name identification. Strom Thurmond won one half a century ago, but he had already been Governor and run for President. You need to begin with someone whose name is totally familiar to the public. If it's someone who has run for office before, so much the better.

Now is the time for all you Republicans to unite behind Gene Kelly.

You're welcome. Happy to help.

From The Duodenum Of The Beast

2006-08-08T15:18:00.000-05:00

While we wait for reports from the Connecticut primary, we can get an inside view from Lieberman HQ. Jesus's General has sneaked into the underground bunker in disguise. Laugh your head off at Live blogging for Lieberman or how Bill Kristol saved my life.

Worth A Million Words

2006-08-08T09:21:00.000-05:00

John Dickerson at Slate discusses, and gives links to five exammples, of How Web videos dismantled Joe Lieberman:

Regardless of who wins the election Tuesday, Lamont's forces have proved one lesson of campaigns in the digital age: Content is king. Throughout the contest, the challenger's supporters produced and circulated a steady stream of videos that were witty, powerful, and in a way became the fulcrum of the campaign. ...

You're Always on, Senator. All candidates know what it's like to dodge the nutty voter in the parking lot after a speech. Now that voter has a camera. ... Every candidate from now on has to worry that their words to the fellow with the stringy hair at the Waffle House will be seen around the world.

Behind The Scenes

2006-08-08T09:04:00.000-05:00

In lieu of a regular Tuesday post at The American Street, I have frankly exploited the tenuous legal position of an Australo-American actor, twisting his arm to uncover deep dark designs. Ponder the results at "Peeling An Onion: A Guest Post By M. Gibson".