Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Boo!
Happy Halloween! I wanted to give you a Very Scary Picture, even if it's an older one. Here are all the happy wingnut gentlemen witnessing the signing of a ban on certain types of abortions.
If that doesn't frighten you how about a ride on the ghost train? For something warmer and gentler, watch a video about teaching English to the seniors. If that's too warm and human for you, would you like to know why Air America can't get any advertisers?
Chocolate is still the answer to most of the smaller problems in this life, so make sure that you are well supplied this Halloween. Have fun and be careful.
But whatever you do, don't try to dye your dog's white fur orange with food coloring for Halloween. It doesn't work, unless you had in mind a drowned-rat look.
Your Dream Is My Nightmare
A recent post on Eschaton mentions how "civility" is suddenly back in vogue, now that Democrats are so close to grabbing some power. Civility was out of fashion for at least a decade. Rush Limbaugh and his clones reigned the airwaves uninterrupted by any civility. Remember political correctness? P.C.? Remember how viciously the wingnuts attacked it? Well, political correctness did have a strong flavor of civility, the idea that people should be called what they want to be called rather than what ever smearword others have invented for some group. Limbaugh decided that feminists were feminazis. I don't remember many articles on the need for Limbaugh to learn civility.
But times change, of course. Now the liberals and progressives are called traitors and terrorist-lovers and so on. But civility, well, that is a problem on the left side of the political spectrum. Because the left is ANGRY. And what is the right? Never angry, it seems. Only moral and virtuous.
We are scared of the wingnuts, "we" as in the mainstream media and most political commentators. That's why suddenly there is this call for civility. Too bad that the wingnuts see civility as a female virtue, a virtue of the subjugated. Civility equals obedience for them. When the press suddenly tells us that we need to regain the old virtue of civility, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
The reason I can write all this is that I actually am civil. It's my mother's doing, and I can't deprogram what she so excellently programmed a long time ago. Not that I haven't tried. But the civility she taught wasn't obedience. That would have been easier to get rid of as all children know. What she conveyed was the belief that all people have worth and value and that all people deserve some basic respect, even when they are mistaken or wrong in some ways. Now, I didn't get the whole lesson, but I got enough to find angry blogging quite hard on some days, and enough to make the current political games in this country tough to play.
But play them we must, and this is why: The wingnut dreams are our nightmares. Digby puts it well:
The Republicans and the Christian Right are leading America on a backward march into the Dark Ages --- and that is stepping on our dreams. As a culture, we have always been idealistic about progress and inspired by new discoveries to improve the lot of the human race. We're about invention and reinvention. It's one of our best qualities.
These people are telling us that those days are over. We have to depend upon brute force, superstition and ancient revelation. Science is dangerous. Art is frightening. Education must be strictly circumscribed so that children aren't exposed to ideas that might lead them astray.
It's a pinched, sour, ugly vision of America. For those who believe that their time on earth is all about waiting for The Bridegroom, perhaps that doesn't mean much. But for the rest of us, things like scientific breakthroughs or artistic achievement are inspirational, soaring emotional connections with our country and our fellow man. It makes us proud. The dark-ages conservatives want to take that away from us.
Anger and civility. Can they work together? We'll see, I guess.
The Newest Moral Contraceptive
Is an aspirin held firmly between your legs, gals. For the next stage of the abstinence-only era is upon us: The targeted market has been extended to all the twenty-somethings:
he federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.
Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.
The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.
"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."
Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.
The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.
But Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.
Wade Horn. The man who said what makes a family is a father. He is one of the Christianists, I bet, who have invaded the federal apparatus we used to call the government but which is now called the Religious Police Against Vice.
All this was clear from the beginning, by the way. The abstinence attack and the traditional marriage attack were not intended for just the teenagers and the poor respectively, but for all of us ultimately. Wingnuts have for decades practised an incremental approach to changing our whole lives into a Talibanish nightmare, with the hope that we are like the frog stuck in a saucepan which is then slowly heated to a boiling point. Frogs presumably get used to the rising temperature and never notice that they get boiled.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Playing Graph Games in Gender Wars
What has caused a reduction in the gender wage gap in the last two years? Among U.S. full-time workers women's wages are now a higher percentage of men's wages than ever before. Not reaching equality, mind you, and there certainly is no gender gap the other way round, but the gap has shrunk. The blog debate on this started with a post by Greg Mankiw in which he used this graph from the New York Times to show the behavior of the gender gap:
Graphs are fun to play with. Note the steepness of the curve which is intended to tell us how rapidly women's earnings are catching up with men's earnings. But if you look at the vertical axis more carefully, you will find that it has been stre-e-e-tched. Note where the vertical axis starts and where it ends.
That will help in making a steeply rising curve. What also helps is to use smaller units on the horizontal (essentially arbitrary-width) time axis than on the vertical percentage axis. It's easy to imagine making the same graph look much less steep with different choices. And do you still remember that the vertical axis ends before we get to equal earnings for full-time earners?
Are these choices intentional, you may wonder? Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. But the important point to get is that the visual evidence from a graph is not necessarily a reliable reflection of the actual events.
Moving on from this graph to a different one. What caused the gender gap in wages to shrink? Sadly, the main reason is not one anybody would rejoice over: Men's wages have been recently falling at a higher rate than women's wages. Yes, Virginia, you can have equality at the bottom, too:
Here is the falling wages picture (left-click on it to make it bigger). Note that it includes an extrapolated segment into the future. Such segments are always dangerous to take seriously, and I caution you against doing so. Why? Because if we just extend any trendline which is not horizontal it will ultimately go out of the graph in one direction or the other, and usually the interpretation of that is nonsensical.
The graph uses a different vertical axis for the top curve (the wage gap) than for the other two earnings curves. The relevant axis for the top curve is on the right side, whereas the relevant axis for the two earnings curves is on the left side. That can be pretty confusing, too, as it's hard not to see the top curve somehow in relation to the other two.
Why would men's wages have fallen more rapidly? I think outsourcing is one important culprit here: the loss of fairly well-paying blue-collar jobs to other countries. The demise of the automobile towns and the mining towns and the steel-producing towns. Women are much more likely to be employed in the service industry and the jobs are slightly less outsourcable. Think of waitresses or hairdressers or dental hygienists.
Note also that these are full-time earners we are comparing here. Many more women work part-time in paid employment and part-time earnings are less per hour of work, not just in total numbers. If we included those earnings in the comparisons the gender gap would be a lot bigger.
As an aside, I hate the term "gender wars". Hate it with a red-hot hatred, because wanting fairness and equality between the sexes is poorly framed as a war-call, and because the very term "war" brings in connotations which are inappropriate for the proper understanding of the gender inequality in, say, much of Africa or Saudi Arabia, and because women, on the whole, don't see men as their enemies or regard feminism as a war. But some men do, as my earlier troll post shows.
On The Insurrection Act
Did you know that it's now much easier for the president to declare martial law in this country? Here's why:
In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.
Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."
The Unitard Executive is getting stronger and stronger.
I saw this story only referenced on the angry lefty blogs, so I went out to seek some opposing commentary as a good blogger must do, and I found a conservative blog which argued that this change is caused by the lefties blaming Bush for not acting effectively in the case of the Katrina disaster. Now he can be effective, it seems, or at least totally unopposed. Which is a very scary thought.
Isn't it fascinating how everything bad is the fault of the powerless liberals and progressives? Everything. Iraq war is lost because of us. Fascism makes mousesteps forwards because of us. Even all Bush's errors are because he tries to rule like one of us. The only solution is to put the liberals and progressives in power. Then we can blame the conservatives who are not in power.
Today's Troll Thought
From my comments:
This is totally wrong! We still have plenty of good jobs in this country. The problem is that women are taking too many of them. We just don't have enough decent jobs to go around and we probably never will. Gender relations are all about economics and most guys will always resent a highly successful women because she's obviously a women who he's not financially qualified to have a relationship with. This is why most female CEO's never marry and never have children. Better to give the job to a guy so he can support a wife and kids.
Either America voluntarily returns to Christianity and a 1950's lifestyle or else our society is sure to implode into either a wide-spread gangsta rap style anarchy or else it will be absorbed by a fundamentalist Muslim takeover.
Men will always dominate women. The $24K question is, which race of men would you ladies prefer to be dominated by?
One Hundred
The number of American military personnel killed in Iraq in October 2006, and the month is not yet over. The dying is not over, either, and not only for the Americans in Iraq but much more so for the Iraqis who get killed for just being either Sunnis or Shias. For being alive, really. So much death, the smell of death and religion.
No god can gloat over all this dying.
Onwards, Christian Soldiers
Garry Wills has written an article on the partly hidden Christianistization of the federal government. Sorry about the monster word, but it's necessary to distinguish these folk from the more common type of Christians. The Christianists are a fairly odd type of Christians as they seem to ignore most everything Jesus ever said. But they are the ones who find George Bush an almost-winged messenger from God, and they are the ones who have been given all the jobs where the federal government might affect the lives of women, for example. Yes, my dear sisters. We are the meat that is served to the wingnuts, because our rights are dispensable.
Here is an example from Wills's article:
One of George W. Bush's first acts as president—in fact, on his first day in office, signaling its importance to his evangelical supporters—was to restore a gag rule on aid to international organizations that counsel women on the subject of abortion.[29] Though abortion is legal in the US, the President was able by executive decree to proscribe its mere discussion in other countries if they are to receive money for their population problems. This was just the beginning of the imposition of moral limits on health measures abroad. Though the President was praised for devoting millions of dollars to preventing and treating AIDS in Africa, 30 percent of that money was earmarked for promoting sexual abstinence, and none of it was for condoms.[30] Religion trumped medical findings on what is effective.
Domestically, too, $170 million were lavished on promoting a policy of "abstinence-only" in the schools during the year 2005 alone. The Centers for Disease Control removed from its Web site the findings of a panel that abstinence-only programs do not work. A study of the abstinence programs being financed by the federal government showed how little medical knowledge mattered, as opposed to moral dictation. As Chris Mooney writes in The Republican War on Science:
In evaluating the curricula of these programs, the report found that the vast majority exaggerated the failure rates of condoms, spread false claims about abortion's health risks (including mental health problems) and perpetuated sexual stereotypes.... Perhaps most outrageously, one curriculum even claimed that sweat and tears could transfer the HIV virus. You might think that this would be a fringe claim even on the Right, but Senate majority leader Bill Frist, himself a physician, repeatedly refused to repudiate the notion of such transmission in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.[31]
The religious right had for years been spreading the unfounded claim that abortion causes breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute had correctly reported that no study has proved such a thing, but twenty-seven pro-life members of Congress pressured the NCI to remove that from its on-line fact sheet.
Another concern of the religious right was the morning-after abortion pill. Bush put one of the pill's known opponents, David Hager, on the board of the Food and Drug Administration that was to decide whether that pill could be sold without a prescription. Though Hager voted with the minority of three on the board against over-the-counter sales of the pill, as opposed to a majority of twenty-four, he raised such a clamor about the danger of teenaged girls using it, increasing the pressure from the religious right, that the FDA refused to implement the board's decision. Hager gave himself and God the credit for this, telling an audience at an evangelical college in Kentucky:
I argued it from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and he used it through this minority report [sic] to influence the decision. You don't have to wave your Bible to have an effect as a Christian in the public arena. We serve the greatest Scientist. We serve the Creator of all life.[32]
Remember what happened to David Hager later on? That's the sort of man who was deemed suitable to decide over women's health and well-being by the Christianists. But then a veterinarian was deemed suitable for the job, too.
All this makes me breathe fire. But in certain ways an anti-woman program was to be expected once wingnuts were in power. What I didn't really expect was the religious takeover of the Iraq occupation and its horrible consequences:
God's war needs God's warriors, and the White House was ready to supply them. Kay Coles James had been the White House personnel scout for domestic offices. The equivalent director of personnel for the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority (headed by Catholic convert Paul Bremer) was the White House liaison to the Pentagon, James O'Beirne, a conservative Catholic married to National Revieweditor Kate O'Beirne. Those recruited to serve in the CPA were asked if they had voted for Bush, and what their views were on Roe v. Wade and capital punishment.[39] O'Beirne trolled the conservative foundations, Republican congressional staffs, and evangelical schools for his loyalist appointees. Relatives of prominent Republicans were appointed, and staffers from offices like that of Senator Rick Santorum. Right moral attitude was more important than competence.[40]
That was proved when the first director of Iraqi health services, Dr. Frederick Burkle, was dismissed. Burkle, a distinguished physician, was a specialist in disaster relief, with experience in Kosovo, Somalia, and Kurdish Iraq. His replacement, James Haverman, had run a Christian adoption agency meant to discourage women from having abortions. Haverman placed an early emphasis on preventing Iraqis from smoking, while ruined hospitals went untended. This may suggest the policy on appointments that put Michael Brown in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the parallel is insufficiently harsh. Chris Matthews brought it up on his television show while interviewing the Washington Post reporter who had covered the CPA in Iraq, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who said, "There were a hundred Browns in Iraq."[41] But there were Bible study groups in the Green Zone.
Bible study groups in the Green Zone... Notice the odd echo here. Fundamentalist religion clashing against fundamentalist religion. God clashing against God.
What would Jesus say about that, I wonder?
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Old Trick or Treat Chant
Soul cakes, soul cakes,
Give to us our soul cakes,
An apple, a pear,
A plum or a cherry,
Anything to make us merry.
Soul cakes, soul, cakes.....
Soul cakes are put out on the evening of Samhein to feed the spirits who come to visit that night.
Another version:
A soul, a soul, a soul cake.
Please good ma'm a soul cake.
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry.
Up with your kettles and down with your pans
Give us an answer and we'll be gone
Little Jack, Jack sat on his gate
Crying for butter to butter his cake
One for St. Peter, two for St. Paul,
Three for the man who made us all.
-----
In local French Canadian folklore around here it used to be important to get home before midnight on October 31. If you're still out making merry you'll run the risk of le feu follie burning you. There used to be stories about revelers who stayed out too late and were chased home to punish them for violating Tou' Sain' day. Some said they could show you where it burned their sabots just as they reached their door step.
Give to us our soul cakes,
An apple, a pear,
A plum or a cherry,
Anything to make us merry.
Soul cakes, soul, cakes.....
Soul cakes are put out on the evening of Samhein to feed the spirits who come to visit that night.
Another version:
A soul, a soul, a soul cake.
Please good ma'm a soul cake.
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry.
Up with your kettles and down with your pans
Give us an answer and we'll be gone
Little Jack, Jack sat on his gate
Crying for butter to butter his cake
One for St. Peter, two for St. Paul,
Three for the man who made us all.
-----
In local French Canadian folklore around here it used to be important to get home before midnight on October 31. If you're still out making merry you'll run the risk of le feu follie burning you. There used to be stories about revelers who stayed out too late and were chased home to punish them for violating Tou' Sain' day. Some said they could show you where it burned their sabots just as they reached their door step.
IDEALS v. PRACTICALITY
The fight we all lose
Posted by olvlzl
There is nothing idealistic about insisting on ideals that have no chance of becoming reality right now and refusing to compromise on those ideals. People are dying now for lack of practical relief that a Democratic Congress would provide, even a compromised Democratic Congress. There is no good in ignoring death, disease, hunger ignorance and pollution while holding out for something purer in some glorious, remote future. The theoretical ideal might never be achieved and even if it could be, the lives of those who could be saved are here now. They need saving today. To insist on your ideals or principles instead of a compromise that is better than the status quo is to wager on their lives. Their lives aren't ours to bet with.
If you want to put it in stark terms, how many days are you willing to go without food for your political ideals? Are you willing to die when the odds might indicate that your ideals stand little chance of being achieved? If you imagine that you are willing to die then how many of your children are you willing to sacrifice on the same long odds? For a person facing starvation it isn't just a matter of their own life. Children are even more vulnerable than adults in most cases. If the answer is that you aren't willing to see yours die but you are prepared to take a chance on other peoples' children then you have to believe that yours are more worthy of life than people who you are betting on now. For us it's a matter of imagination. They are looking at the skulls of their children showing through their skin.
The all or nothing fixation, the worst kind of this idealism, is a form of self-satisfied preening. It has been with us for as long as one leftist could attain personal status by being the most leftist in the room. It has helped lead us into the disaster we find ourselves in today. And it has produced nothing. Nothing. Rigid, uncompromising and insistent idealism is sterile and useless in the real world. It would be better to call it what it really is, vanity.
The period of most rapid progress in the sixties was full of compromises, some clean, a lot of it pretty grimy but progress was made. The progress seems to have moved some on the left into the kind of competitive arrogance that leads to folly. The folly in this case was pretending that our individual interest groups were in a stronger position than they were. Saying so didn't make it true. We started demanding the premature delivery of the presently unobtainable and our politicians couldn't deliver. We started attacking them for not being able to do the impossible. And doing that is just plain nuts. Working coalitions with the center and among competing parts of the left fell apart. In reality were we were only as strong as the coalition based on compromises of ideals.
We all know that the other path of folly was the Vietnam war. As Martin Luther King pointed out, with spending for the war Democrats stopped being able to deliver incremental progress both for the poor and for the middle class. It might not be an accident that was when the Party began to lose support in the general population. The result was Richard Nixon and the rise of the far right. He had to deal with the old coalition and since he was most interested in playing his demented version of the great game he let it have some of the last of the great reforms it has put into law. But he also began the Supreme Court appointments that would doom many of those.
Amidst it all the rigid idealists presented the Republicans with a very useful tool. Republicans and their media, fixing on the most extreme of the radical idealists, made the rest of us into a cartoon. And the show liberals were gratified and encouraged. Even Phil Donahue who was supposed to be a liberal turned the word into a synonym for "flake". Conservatives have used this cartoon to deflect attention while they were ending the middle class, stealing everything they could for their wealthy patrons. Tricked by the media, the general population has adopted the lie to their own disadvantage, as has been pointed out many times before.
I will confess that I was taken in by idealist fundamentalism for a lot of that time. We were standing for the soundest of principles. To compromise our ideals was to betray them. Eventually, somehow, even as we faced repeated defeat, it would make us stronger to remain intransigent. Some of those hucksters have a mighty good act. But in the end it's producing results that is really idealistic.
The impatient left has been waiting for that glorious, instantaneous millennium to dawn for way too many lifetimes. The bodies of those who could have been helped by moderate assistance during that period is a pile too big to tell. Don't bother waiting any longer, it's never going to get here that way. We've never been farther from it in our lifetimes. The futile insistence on having it all now is a block to reaching those ideals. If some progress is made, incrementally edging closer to the final goal, the ideal stands a chance. If people who aren't on the left start seeing modest success instead of our present complete failure they might just think we're on to something. Especially if some of that success improves their lives. We might start building a larger coalition instead of seeing it shrinking all the time. The perfect really is the enemy of the good and it's also its own worst enemy.
Posted by olvlzl
There is nothing idealistic about insisting on ideals that have no chance of becoming reality right now and refusing to compromise on those ideals. People are dying now for lack of practical relief that a Democratic Congress would provide, even a compromised Democratic Congress. There is no good in ignoring death, disease, hunger ignorance and pollution while holding out for something purer in some glorious, remote future. The theoretical ideal might never be achieved and even if it could be, the lives of those who could be saved are here now. They need saving today. To insist on your ideals or principles instead of a compromise that is better than the status quo is to wager on their lives. Their lives aren't ours to bet with.
If you want to put it in stark terms, how many days are you willing to go without food for your political ideals? Are you willing to die when the odds might indicate that your ideals stand little chance of being achieved? If you imagine that you are willing to die then how many of your children are you willing to sacrifice on the same long odds? For a person facing starvation it isn't just a matter of their own life. Children are even more vulnerable than adults in most cases. If the answer is that you aren't willing to see yours die but you are prepared to take a chance on other peoples' children then you have to believe that yours are more worthy of life than people who you are betting on now. For us it's a matter of imagination. They are looking at the skulls of their children showing through their skin.
The all or nothing fixation, the worst kind of this idealism, is a form of self-satisfied preening. It has been with us for as long as one leftist could attain personal status by being the most leftist in the room. It has helped lead us into the disaster we find ourselves in today. And it has produced nothing. Nothing. Rigid, uncompromising and insistent idealism is sterile and useless in the real world. It would be better to call it what it really is, vanity.
The period of most rapid progress in the sixties was full of compromises, some clean, a lot of it pretty grimy but progress was made. The progress seems to have moved some on the left into the kind of competitive arrogance that leads to folly. The folly in this case was pretending that our individual interest groups were in a stronger position than they were. Saying so didn't make it true. We started demanding the premature delivery of the presently unobtainable and our politicians couldn't deliver. We started attacking them for not being able to do the impossible. And doing that is just plain nuts. Working coalitions with the center and among competing parts of the left fell apart. In reality were we were only as strong as the coalition based on compromises of ideals.
We all know that the other path of folly was the Vietnam war. As Martin Luther King pointed out, with spending for the war Democrats stopped being able to deliver incremental progress both for the poor and for the middle class. It might not be an accident that was when the Party began to lose support in the general population. The result was Richard Nixon and the rise of the far right. He had to deal with the old coalition and since he was most interested in playing his demented version of the great game he let it have some of the last of the great reforms it has put into law. But he also began the Supreme Court appointments that would doom many of those.
Amidst it all the rigid idealists presented the Republicans with a very useful tool. Republicans and their media, fixing on the most extreme of the radical idealists, made the rest of us into a cartoon. And the show liberals were gratified and encouraged. Even Phil Donahue who was supposed to be a liberal turned the word into a synonym for "flake". Conservatives have used this cartoon to deflect attention while they were ending the middle class, stealing everything they could for their wealthy patrons. Tricked by the media, the general population has adopted the lie to their own disadvantage, as has been pointed out many times before.
I will confess that I was taken in by idealist fundamentalism for a lot of that time. We were standing for the soundest of principles. To compromise our ideals was to betray them. Eventually, somehow, even as we faced repeated defeat, it would make us stronger to remain intransigent. Some of those hucksters have a mighty good act. But in the end it's producing results that is really idealistic.
The impatient left has been waiting for that glorious, instantaneous millennium to dawn for way too many lifetimes. The bodies of those who could have been helped by moderate assistance during that period is a pile too big to tell. Don't bother waiting any longer, it's never going to get here that way. We've never been farther from it in our lifetimes. The futile insistence on having it all now is a block to reaching those ideals. If some progress is made, incrementally edging closer to the final goal, the ideal stands a chance. If people who aren't on the left start seeing modest success instead of our present complete failure they might just think we're on to something. Especially if some of that success improves their lives. We might start building a larger coalition instead of seeing it shrinking all the time. The perfect really is the enemy of the good and it's also its own worst enemy.
So You Think It Doesn’t Matter Who Wins The Election Next Month?
Posted by olvlzl
Even more ominously, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official, reported in The American Conservative a year ago that Vice President Cheney's office had directed contingency planning for "a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons" and that "several senior Air Force officers" involved in the planning were "appalled at the implications of what they are doing -- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objection."
Read this article by Daniel Ellsberg and tell me exactly why it doesn’t matter anymore.
There isn’t anything I can add to what he says about the plans to start a third Bush II war in Iran. I know what your response will be. “The Dems didn’t stop Iraq."
You don’t think it’s worth betting that the minority of Democrats who supported the invasion of Iraq might have learned a lesson from it that the Republicans never will? If you don’t think that’s a bet worth making in 2006, I have nothing to say to you.
Even more ominously, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official, reported in The American Conservative a year ago that Vice President Cheney's office had directed contingency planning for "a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons" and that "several senior Air Force officers" involved in the planning were "appalled at the implications of what they are doing -- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objection."
Read this article by Daniel Ellsberg and tell me exactly why it doesn’t matter anymore.
There isn’t anything I can add to what he says about the plans to start a third Bush II war in Iran. I know what your response will be. “The Dems didn’t stop Iraq."
You don’t think it’s worth betting that the minority of Democrats who supported the invasion of Iraq might have learned a lesson from it that the Republicans never will? If you don’t think that’s a bet worth making in 2006, I have nothing to say to you.
I Read "Sisters"--- I Think
Posted by olvlzl
Remember when someone posted what was said to be Lynne Cheney's lesbian novel "Sisters" on the internet? It was back when this self-suppressed novel- and seldom has the term been more charitably assigned - was coming to light. Risking the need to wash out my eyes with soap afterwards I read it. I'm a sworn enemy of Lynn Cheney and her Kaffee Klatch of Kulture warriors of long standing.
Now I wish I'd saved it because it's nowhere to be seen. It disappeared shortly after. Not running to the five-hundred or so dollars a copy sold for at e-bay during that period it was the only way to see what the ultra-right-wing doyenne of Republican efforts to save Western culture might have produced by way of a lesbian romance.
I wasn't wowed. By the time I read the chapter entitled "Miracle Whip" I was certain that what was posted was a spoof. As spoof it wasn't bad, as serious writing, pee-ewwww!. But there were people who claimed it was the real thing, absent a paper copy who knows?
Today it's not only the book that isn't to be read but apparently it's the tome that dare not speak its name. On with Blitzer the other night, Lynne was mighty eager to change the topic to one of her cut and paste jobs instead.
But according to this story, you might get a chance to see it on the boards.
Lynne Cheney's still-remembered 1981 lesbian romance novel, "Sisters," was feted Monday night in a special performance by the "Lynne Cheney Players" - to the delight of an audience of liberal East Village types.
Yeah, I know it's Lloyd Groves. But it is fun. Notice this:
Choice scenes adapted from "Sisters" included one in which two female characters write to each other: "Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement."
One of Cheney's characters swoons to a Sapphic love letter: "How well her words describe our love - or the way it would be if we could remove all impediments, leave this place, and join together ... Then our union would be complete. Our lives would flow together, twin streams merging into a single river."
Maybe the book was intended as a lesbian turn off. How else would you explain a right-wing, cultural tattle-tale writing something like this?
Remember when someone posted what was said to be Lynne Cheney's lesbian novel "Sisters" on the internet? It was back when this self-suppressed novel- and seldom has the term been more charitably assigned - was coming to light. Risking the need to wash out my eyes with soap afterwards I read it. I'm a sworn enemy of Lynn Cheney and her Kaffee Klatch of Kulture warriors of long standing.
Now I wish I'd saved it because it's nowhere to be seen. It disappeared shortly after. Not running to the five-hundred or so dollars a copy sold for at e-bay during that period it was the only way to see what the ultra-right-wing doyenne of Republican efforts to save Western culture might have produced by way of a lesbian romance.
I wasn't wowed. By the time I read the chapter entitled "Miracle Whip" I was certain that what was posted was a spoof. As spoof it wasn't bad, as serious writing, pee-ewwww!. But there were people who claimed it was the real thing, absent a paper copy who knows?
Today it's not only the book that isn't to be read but apparently it's the tome that dare not speak its name. On with Blitzer the other night, Lynne was mighty eager to change the topic to one of her cut and paste jobs instead.
But according to this story, you might get a chance to see it on the boards.
Lynne Cheney's still-remembered 1981 lesbian romance novel, "Sisters," was feted Monday night in a special performance by the "Lynne Cheney Players" - to the delight of an audience of liberal East Village types.
Yeah, I know it's Lloyd Groves. But it is fun. Notice this:
Choice scenes adapted from "Sisters" included one in which two female characters write to each other: "Let us go away together, away from the anger and the imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement."
One of Cheney's characters swoons to a Sapphic love letter: "How well her words describe our love - or the way it would be if we could remove all impediments, leave this place, and join together ... Then our union would be complete. Our lives would flow together, twin streams merging into a single river."
Maybe the book was intended as a lesbian turn off. How else would you explain a right-wing, cultural tattle-tale writing something like this?
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Can you take it? Kenneth Gaburo turns all the ScREWs
Posted by olvlzl
..... among our far-outs, has the finest ear. Virgil Thomson
After mentioning him in a comment thread elsewhere last week someone kindly sent me a link to MP3s of Kenneth Gaburo’s legendary work, Lingua II, Maledetto. The piece of theater-music has a lot of material illuminating issues about misogyny discussed here earlier this week.
If you take the 45 minutes to listen to the two sections you will hear a lot of unsettling things about sex, anger, objectification and hate. It is called “Maledetto” for a good reason, a lot of this is about hostility and hate as well as about eroticism and humor.* I don’t know if he liked the term but this is avant-garde art of an extraordinarily original and disturbing kind. It uses cliches and an astonishing array of vulgarity (I’d never heard a lot of it before). But this isn’t used as Robert Mapplethorpe depicted similar material. It isn’t merely presented to shock and as a demonstration that he can do it if he wants to. The way they are used here opens windows into what they reveal about people and the communities that those people belong to. A lot of the things it contains are not easy to take, some are pretty disturbing. It’s purpose is to provoke thinking, not to please.
The delivery of the texts even those that are quite banal sometimes carries the meaning past the words themselves. When those are spoken in close succession or at the same time they become a contrapuntal experience. The canonic sections in which the same text is spoken by different voices beginning at different times are striking for the difference in tone and emphasis, from erotic and loving to contemptuous to angry that the same text can have.
As to the sound of the piece, Thomson was right, it contains great beauties, many of those in the form of wrenching emotional contrasts. The beginning with the group sustaining the sound “s” for a couple of minutes gives way to a reading of an entirely banal text about screws. A couple of minutes into that the other voices break in with challenges and commentary. The timing and skill of the ensemble is amazing. I’d like to see another group try to perform it without Gaburo’s direction to see what they came up with. It’s certainly not everyone’s idea of a good time but it isn’t likely to be like something you have experienced.
Gaburo was one of the most varied composers in the history of music. The pieces I’ve heard go from a very fine and original but clearly traditional string quartet to some of the most beautiful (as well as disturbing) electronic music to a series of these spoken pieces. One of the most difficult to listen to is “The Flow of (u)”, three voices signing the same pitch on the vowel “u” for 23 minutes. I don’t recommend that for the first time listener. The electronic pieces collected on “Tape Play”, Pogus CD P21020-2, would be a good place to start listening to Gaburo’s music. These include his revenge on a (literally) violent enemy of new music “Fat Millie’s Lament”, the pellucid “For Harry”. The collection “Five Works for Voices, Instruments and Electronics”, New World 80585-2 , including “The Flow of (u)” and the String Quartet, is more of a challenge though rewarding.
Other out of print CDs and LPs of his music can be bought second hand. One of these is the Music & Arts CD- 832 that contains ENOUGH! —(NOT ENOUGH)— for forty voices and percussion on a text by Benjamin Franklin. It speaks to our political condition.
* Gaburo once said that he liked forms that were exhaustive of ideas. His music didn’t leave much out. His Mouth-Piece: Sextet for Solo Trumpet on the New World CD is a good example of that. Kenneth Gaburo 1926-1993
..... among our far-outs, has the finest ear. Virgil Thomson
After mentioning him in a comment thread elsewhere last week someone kindly sent me a link to MP3s of Kenneth Gaburo’s legendary work, Lingua II, Maledetto. The piece of theater-music has a lot of material illuminating issues about misogyny discussed here earlier this week.
If you take the 45 minutes to listen to the two sections you will hear a lot of unsettling things about sex, anger, objectification and hate. It is called “Maledetto” for a good reason, a lot of this is about hostility and hate as well as about eroticism and humor.* I don’t know if he liked the term but this is avant-garde art of an extraordinarily original and disturbing kind. It uses cliches and an astonishing array of vulgarity (I’d never heard a lot of it before). But this isn’t used as Robert Mapplethorpe depicted similar material. It isn’t merely presented to shock and as a demonstration that he can do it if he wants to. The way they are used here opens windows into what they reveal about people and the communities that those people belong to. A lot of the things it contains are not easy to take, some are pretty disturbing. It’s purpose is to provoke thinking, not to please.
The delivery of the texts even those that are quite banal sometimes carries the meaning past the words themselves. When those are spoken in close succession or at the same time they become a contrapuntal experience. The canonic sections in which the same text is spoken by different voices beginning at different times are striking for the difference in tone and emphasis, from erotic and loving to contemptuous to angry that the same text can have.
As to the sound of the piece, Thomson was right, it contains great beauties, many of those in the form of wrenching emotional contrasts. The beginning with the group sustaining the sound “s” for a couple of minutes gives way to a reading of an entirely banal text about screws. A couple of minutes into that the other voices break in with challenges and commentary. The timing and skill of the ensemble is amazing. I’d like to see another group try to perform it without Gaburo’s direction to see what they came up with. It’s certainly not everyone’s idea of a good time but it isn’t likely to be like something you have experienced.
Gaburo was one of the most varied composers in the history of music. The pieces I’ve heard go from a very fine and original but clearly traditional string quartet to some of the most beautiful (as well as disturbing) electronic music to a series of these spoken pieces. One of the most difficult to listen to is “The Flow of (u)”, three voices signing the same pitch on the vowel “u” for 23 minutes. I don’t recommend that for the first time listener. The electronic pieces collected on “Tape Play”, Pogus CD P21020-2, would be a good place to start listening to Gaburo’s music. These include his revenge on a (literally) violent enemy of new music “Fat Millie’s Lament”, the pellucid “For Harry”. The collection “Five Works for Voices, Instruments and Electronics”, New World 80585-2 , including “The Flow of (u)” and the String Quartet, is more of a challenge though rewarding.
Other out of print CDs and LPs of his music can be bought second hand. One of these is the Music & Arts CD- 832 that contains ENOUGH! —(NOT ENOUGH)— for forty voices and percussion on a text by Benjamin Franklin. It speaks to our political condition.
* Gaburo once said that he liked forms that were exhaustive of ideas. His music didn’t leave much out. His Mouth-Piece: Sextet for Solo Trumpet on the New World CD is a good example of that. Kenneth Gaburo 1926-1993
Blogging While Tied To The Mast
Between the blogger problems this morning and the flickering electricity here I'm having trouble posting today. I will try later when the wind goes down, provided we still have electricity and a phone line. I am sorry for the problems.
The New McCarthyism In Review
WASHINGTON -- Bunnatine Greenhouse sits in a cubicle in a far corner of an office in the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, where, she says, "I am treated like a non-person." Months crawl by yet her immediate supervisor just can't seem to find the time to meet with her to discuss a work assignment. The taxpayers of the United States pay her salary but, oddly, no demands are made of her.
That's a sad plight for a dynamic woman executive who is the cover girl of the July/August issue of Fraud Magazine. She's not written up for being on the wrong side of the law, only on the wrong side of the Bush White House, now a law unto itself.
____
NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’”
Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement:
It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.
ThinkProgress has obtained the ad NBC doesn’t want you to see. Watch it:
_____
Ohio GOP Smears Al Franken In Press Release With Doctored Photo, Fabricated Quote
Yesterday, the Ohio Republican Party sent out a news release (full text here) attacking Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) for enlisting the support of comedian Al Franken:
It is not surprising that Sherrod Brown is enlisting the help of a Hollywood liberal, who like him, is so far out of the mainstream of Ohio values. What is troubling is that Brown would solicit support from someone [Franken] who compared conservatives to Nazis “who should drink poison and die.”
The quote used in the news release is taken from Bernard Goldberg book, 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America, in an alleged interview between Goldberg and Franken. But in his book, Goldberg makes it clear that the exchange is completely fictional. The Ohio Republican Party represented it as fact.
____
You know about Limbaugh already. And Coulter, Drudge, .....
That's a sad plight for a dynamic woman executive who is the cover girl of the July/August issue of Fraud Magazine. She's not written up for being on the wrong side of the law, only on the wrong side of the Bush White House, now a law unto itself.
____
NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’”
Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement:
It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.
ThinkProgress has obtained the ad NBC doesn’t want you to see. Watch it:
_____
Ohio GOP Smears Al Franken In Press Release With Doctored Photo, Fabricated Quote
Yesterday, the Ohio Republican Party sent out a news release (full text here) attacking Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) for enlisting the support of comedian Al Franken:
It is not surprising that Sherrod Brown is enlisting the help of a Hollywood liberal, who like him, is so far out of the mainstream of Ohio values. What is troubling is that Brown would solicit support from someone [Franken] who compared conservatives to Nazis “who should drink poison and die.”
The quote used in the news release is taken from Bernard Goldberg book, 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America, in an alleged interview between Goldberg and Franken. But in his book, Goldberg makes it clear that the exchange is completely fictional. The Ohio Republican Party represented it as fact.
____
You know about Limbaugh already. And Coulter, Drudge, .....
Why We Can't Avoid Fixing The Voting System Now
There are reports of voting machines recording Democratic and other votes as votes for Republicans:
A friend of our family ours went last Friday to early vote in Maplewood at Sunnen Park. He voted for Claire McCaskill, but each time he, the election worker, and the election supervisor pressed the screen for Claire, the screen said he had voted for Jim Talent.
I sent this info along to a friend that works in Claire'’s campaign. I have the name and number of the guy this happened to if you are interested.
Bradblog suggests bringing video equipment when you go to vote to record incidents of this kind of thing. I'd look into whether or not that is permitted where you vote first but a witness or making a complaint about it at the polls is certainly a good idea. Make sure that it's a big enough complaint that other voters will hear and check.
A friend of our family ours went last Friday to early vote in Maplewood at Sunnen Park. He voted for Claire McCaskill, but each time he, the election worker, and the election supervisor pressed the screen for Claire, the screen said he had voted for Jim Talent.
I sent this info along to a friend that works in Claire'’s campaign. I have the name and number of the guy this happened to if you are interested.
Bradblog suggests bringing video equipment when you go to vote to record incidents of this kind of thing. I'd look into whether or not that is permitted where you vote first but a witness or making a complaint about it at the polls is certainly a good idea. Make sure that it's a big enough complaint that other voters will hear and check.
What If We Dodge The Bullet?
Posted by olvlzl
What if they lose? What if the congress investigates the crimes of the Bush regime and those are stopped? What if things go back to normal?
After what we've seen in the past six years, if things can go back to normal it won't be a blessed relief, it will be a disaster. Our recent history proves that we have fatal problems in the foundation of the American government.
Our elections have to be fixed, not just returned to c. 1964. We have to secure the vote, from before it is cast, to counting it, to reporting the results and to their fulfillment. No elections official, secretary of state, or judge can ever be allowed to prevent another legal ballot being cast or counted or made to count. The sleazy behavior we've seen from every level from elections clerk to Supreme Court and the Executive wouldn't be tolerated in a real democracy. A democracy needs it to be an impeachable crime for a Supreme Court Justice to say that a Citizen of the United States does not have a right to vote. That is a fundamental contradiction of the role of the court in a democracy. Anyone who believes that has no place on our court or in our government.
The media, and today that means the electronic media, have to have their self-interested bias exposed and it's pollution scrubbed out of our politics. They have to be forced to perform the public service they promised, including standards of fairness. Broadcast stations must provide real news, including local news, which has to be unbiased and fair. And without diverse ownership of the media, they won't serve the entire public. Women and minority groups have to control parts of the electronic media.
The cable "news" channels have betrayed the public trust even more flagrantly than broadcast, spreading lies effective enough to start the most idiotic and dangerous war of our history. We will pay the cost of their lies for decades, in blood as well as in money.
They also aided the Bush putsch of 2000 and the earlier scheme to remove a genuinely elected President on trumped up charges and lies. Pretending that a rogue cable industry isn't a danger to freedom has to stop. Anyone who defends them on their crimes against democracy is a dupe or a profiteer. Put them under the same public service requirements as broadcast media. Media passes itself off as the voice of the people, then let them show it by putting the public before their investors and owners.
Recent history proves that self-government can't depend on leaving it to chance. Laissez faire democracy dies and the death is never a natural one. It lets the powerful and wealthy swamp the Peoples's voice almost all of the time. The Supreme Court rulings making corporations artificial people made that all the more true
Our government is always presented as being those who hold office , that is where almost all of the pitiful efforts at reform are concentrated. And that hasn't worked. We have the most dishonest government of our lifetimes. Putting patches on the process to make it a level field is unrealistic to the level of willful blindness. Powerful interests have power. They will always win when they have equal access to the process and own the media. The handful of examples where individuals or small groups win over the big guy make for sentimental TV movies, using them as proof that the system works is calculated dishonesty.
If the People are neglected then it all goes wrong. They won't even show up to vote. That step isn't a naive social studies lesson that you stop thinking about after the test in fourth grade. You don't go on to the higher study of civics and leave it behind. There is nothing higher in a democracy than the People, there is no act of government more important than their Vote. Abraham Lincoln, one of the real founders of the country we live in today, gave the formula for it. You know it by heart. He didn't mention the congress, the executive or the high church of the judiciary. He said that the enormous sacrifice of the American People in the Civil War was so that government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the earth.
Any aftermath of the Bush II disaster that doesn't include changes to these laws will be just the beginning of the next time. Not securing the Vote, the will of the People; and forcing their own chosen responsibilities on the media, the only guarantee of an informed and realistic Vote, is a welcome mat for the next would-be dictator. Any liberal, leftist, Democrat, independent, even "moderate" Republican who lets two years go by without enacting real electoral and media reform had better beware. It's just a matter of waiting before the same coalition of corporate interests, bigots, oligarches and haters tries again. They might be as slow and stealthy as they were this time, buying up media, using it to spread lies that "more speech" can't drown out. And they'll make their come back having learned from the mistakes they made this time. Like the aristocratic conspirators in ancient Athens, they will be more dangerous than ever.
Along with these two absolute prerequisites to securing democracy there is the necessity for a full and public appraisal of the thefts and other crimes of the Bush II and previous presidencies. There has to be a full program of congressional hearings, done in public, of what has happened. They have to be congressional hearings because that is their responsibility. A commission or blue ribbon panel or other kind of establishment dodge won’t do it. Those are mechanisms for obscuring and stalling. This is a job for those appointed by The People. They asked for the responsibility, no one forced them to run.
There will be a chorus of media and politicians and the Republican talking points network telling us to “get over it”. They are the PR voice of the criminals. We have to be prepared to force these reforms over their constant lies and slogans.
Just going along as we have been is a guarantee that the disasters will continue. We will have to push the next Democratic congress to work simultaneously on all these issues while taking up new business. They are not extras they are the only way we are going to find out how to go forward, to make progress instead of making the same mistakes we have made before.
If the Republican who have created this disaster win a majority next week, the problems will not disappear they will certainly get worse. Giving up before those problems are fixed securely is not an option for us.
What if they lose? What if the congress investigates the crimes of the Bush regime and those are stopped? What if things go back to normal?
After what we've seen in the past six years, if things can go back to normal it won't be a blessed relief, it will be a disaster. Our recent history proves that we have fatal problems in the foundation of the American government.
Our elections have to be fixed, not just returned to c. 1964. We have to secure the vote, from before it is cast, to counting it, to reporting the results and to their fulfillment. No elections official, secretary of state, or judge can ever be allowed to prevent another legal ballot being cast or counted or made to count. The sleazy behavior we've seen from every level from elections clerk to Supreme Court and the Executive wouldn't be tolerated in a real democracy. A democracy needs it to be an impeachable crime for a Supreme Court Justice to say that a Citizen of the United States does not have a right to vote. That is a fundamental contradiction of the role of the court in a democracy. Anyone who believes that has no place on our court or in our government.
The media, and today that means the electronic media, have to have their self-interested bias exposed and it's pollution scrubbed out of our politics. They have to be forced to perform the public service they promised, including standards of fairness. Broadcast stations must provide real news, including local news, which has to be unbiased and fair. And without diverse ownership of the media, they won't serve the entire public. Women and minority groups have to control parts of the electronic media.
The cable "news" channels have betrayed the public trust even more flagrantly than broadcast, spreading lies effective enough to start the most idiotic and dangerous war of our history. We will pay the cost of their lies for decades, in blood as well as in money.
They also aided the Bush putsch of 2000 and the earlier scheme to remove a genuinely elected President on trumped up charges and lies. Pretending that a rogue cable industry isn't a danger to freedom has to stop. Anyone who defends them on their crimes against democracy is a dupe or a profiteer. Put them under the same public service requirements as broadcast media. Media passes itself off as the voice of the people, then let them show it by putting the public before their investors and owners.
Recent history proves that self-government can't depend on leaving it to chance. Laissez faire democracy dies and the death is never a natural one. It lets the powerful and wealthy swamp the Peoples's voice almost all of the time. The Supreme Court rulings making corporations artificial people made that all the more true
Our government is always presented as being those who hold office , that is where almost all of the pitiful efforts at reform are concentrated. And that hasn't worked. We have the most dishonest government of our lifetimes. Putting patches on the process to make it a level field is unrealistic to the level of willful blindness. Powerful interests have power. They will always win when they have equal access to the process and own the media. The handful of examples where individuals or small groups win over the big guy make for sentimental TV movies, using them as proof that the system works is calculated dishonesty.
If the People are neglected then it all goes wrong. They won't even show up to vote. That step isn't a naive social studies lesson that you stop thinking about after the test in fourth grade. You don't go on to the higher study of civics and leave it behind. There is nothing higher in a democracy than the People, there is no act of government more important than their Vote. Abraham Lincoln, one of the real founders of the country we live in today, gave the formula for it. You know it by heart. He didn't mention the congress, the executive or the high church of the judiciary. He said that the enormous sacrifice of the American People in the Civil War was so that government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the earth.
Any aftermath of the Bush II disaster that doesn't include changes to these laws will be just the beginning of the next time. Not securing the Vote, the will of the People; and forcing their own chosen responsibilities on the media, the only guarantee of an informed and realistic Vote, is a welcome mat for the next would-be dictator. Any liberal, leftist, Democrat, independent, even "moderate" Republican who lets two years go by without enacting real electoral and media reform had better beware. It's just a matter of waiting before the same coalition of corporate interests, bigots, oligarches and haters tries again. They might be as slow and stealthy as they were this time, buying up media, using it to spread lies that "more speech" can't drown out. And they'll make their come back having learned from the mistakes they made this time. Like the aristocratic conspirators in ancient Athens, they will be more dangerous than ever.
Along with these two absolute prerequisites to securing democracy there is the necessity for a full and public appraisal of the thefts and other crimes of the Bush II and previous presidencies. There has to be a full program of congressional hearings, done in public, of what has happened. They have to be congressional hearings because that is their responsibility. A commission or blue ribbon panel or other kind of establishment dodge won’t do it. Those are mechanisms for obscuring and stalling. This is a job for those appointed by The People. They asked for the responsibility, no one forced them to run.
There will be a chorus of media and politicians and the Republican talking points network telling us to “get over it”. They are the PR voice of the criminals. We have to be prepared to force these reforms over their constant lies and slogans.
Just going along as we have been is a guarantee that the disasters will continue. We will have to push the next Democratic congress to work simultaneously on all these issues while taking up new business. They are not extras they are the only way we are going to find out how to go forward, to make progress instead of making the same mistakes we have made before.
If the Republican who have created this disaster win a majority next week, the problems will not disappear they will certainly get worse. Giving up before those problems are fixed securely is not an option for us.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Another Bowl of Popcorn, Please
This is a very funny reality if you manage the sarcastic angle that is necessary for full savoring of the comings-and-goings of American elections. I was reading of the impossibility of fitting Jim Webb's whole name into an election machine when I came across this comment by someone called Niranjan Ramakrishnan:
There, but for the grace of God... was my first thought as I read the report. If the machine deemed "James H. 'Jim' Webb" too long, I could only thank my luck that I had firmly turned down all requests to run for the Senate from Virginia this year.
I scanned the Post quickly to see if a similar fate had attended George Allen, Webb's incumbent opponent in the race. A quick tally revealed that George Allen had more letters in his name than James Webb -- and even more, if you added recently-acquired middle names like 'Macaca' and 'Stock Option'.
Actually, Allen did pretty well in what might be termed Great Ballot Massacre of 2006. The report goes on to say George Allen is one of the few whose names appear in full, although his party affiliation has been cut off. Fortune finally appears to be shining on Allen. What a godsend, in a time when according to every poll, the presence of the letter 'R' after the candidate's name is tantamount to electoral cyanide!
Luscious. And it is all very funny, if you're a world-weary and cynical goddess. But it's also fairly outrageous. That few people find it outrageous just goes to show how very despondent people are about democracy. What does it matter what the name is on the ballots, after all, when we don't even know how the ballots are counted or if they are counted. Who cares if you have to vote for some guy called Jim, or if you have no idea what the party affiliation of Allen might be. Who cares about anything anymore? Except the absolute necessity of requiring all voters to have photo IDs based on valid birth certificates, so that they can go vote for some guy called just Jim or some guy with no party affiliation.
What matters is that nobody should have to fix this problem before the elections. Now, that is more important than having a farce for elections.
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