Pete Stark backs down

Congressman Pete Stark (who previously earned See For Yourself acclaim for making his atheism public) got pissed off last week and started acting crazy. He actually told the truth. Obviously the truth is the last thing Congress wants its member to be telling us, so 173 of them voted to censure him. For some strange reason 196 voted against and the motion failed, but he gave a tearful apology anyway. (Maybe he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.)

They'll stop you from speaking out against an illegal war, but certainly won't do anything to stop the illegal war itself. They make a big fuss about the style of the complainer and ignore the substance of the complaint. The lightning rod "poor form" diversion strategy succeeds again.

Winter Patriot has written the apology that Stark should have delivered. Go read it.

We ain't 'fraid of no turrists

This is the CIA's new logo. The tragic comedy turns slapstick.

Heroes or Zeroes

This is hilarious to me, and probably only to me. I don't watch Heroes but my wife does. Last night she watched it while I was sitting nearby but not watching, so I mainly just heard the dialog. And it was TERRIBLE. I made a point of saying so, repeatedly, which got annoying to her. But I'm validated now that someone else agrees. Seriously, there were some terrible lines.

• Like after some amnesiac found a plane ticket in his name to some Canadian city (Montreal?), he said "all the signs point to (Montreal)."
• I don't remember the exact words, but at some point a mother in her 30s wanted to join some young girls playing jump rope and they started giving her a bunch of shit, like she was some dorky looking white guy calling next at a street basketball game in the inner city or something. Apparently cute little girls playing jump rope are tough.
  
• My favorite was an ominously delivered, "Its Bob," followed by a short pause and then, "he's one of them."

So... yeah. This post really was just for me. Sorry for the diversion. I'll get back to doom and gloom pronto.

simple solutions to problems

The whole thing is well worth reading, but here's an interesting tidbit:

Among the more important lessons George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and others learned from the Vietnam conflict, he writes, was that if you want to suppress domestic questioning of foreign military adventures, then eliminate the draft, create an all-volunteer force, reduce domestic taxes, and maintain a false prosperity based on foreign borrowing.

- Chalmers Johnson reviewing Stephen Holmes reviewing Geoffry Stone (that sounds confusing because it is)

Who ever said we learned nothing from Vietnam?

Here's the prescription to cure our ills:

There is, I believe, only one solution to the crisis we face. The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge, still growing military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic -- becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force.

- Chalmers Johnson

While we're wishing that the American people will dismantle their empire and military, we might as well wish for flying ponies for everyone. Shall we lament how much easier it is to suppress objections to destructive rampage than to avoid destructive rampage?

Is there anything worth saving anyway?

Blogs I read lately

Chris Floyd is filling in for Glenn Greenwald this week at Salon. I'd been meaning to post about what blogs I'm reading these days, so this is a perfect occasion as two of my favorite bloggers cross paths.

Must Reads:

Floyd's Empire Burlesque - Well researched and scathing indictment of American foreign policy and military action, with lots of Bob Dylan lyrics mixed in.

Arthur Silber's Once Upon A Time - A passionate voice crying out in the dark, wishing someone would listen, knowing no one will.

Who is IOZ? - The dark comedian of dissent. A unique combination of razor sharp analysis, laser sharp wit, Friday sharp cheddars, and various other sharp things, all brilliantly poked right in your fucking eye!

The Primate Diaries - An anthropology-centered intellectual look at various topics.


Falling from the top, but still good:

Glenn Greenwald - I still like him a lot, and he is extremely effective at exposing the flaws in the system. I still read most of what he writes, and at least skim everything else. He's dropping on the list for a few reasons, the most significant of which is that the blogs above cover his approximate territory in a more convincing way. Glenn seems unable or unwilling to put the big picture all the way together, and holds onto romanticized, idealistic notions about this country that I just can't stomach. He can also be a bit tedious. Overall he's a brilliant writer, and worth keeping tabs on.

Digby's Hullabaloo - Falling for similar reasons as Greenwald. I read almost everything she writes, and she's extremely good at (justifiably) demonizing the right, but she still seems to love Democrats way too much.


Rising Stars:

Unqualified Offerings
Human Voices
Winter Patriot
Rick Perlstein

Personal Blogs:

Neon Gods
End The Cola Wars
Paulp

Inconvenient Gore?

Interesting if not surprising: Al Gore's record on global warming as part of the Clinton administration seems to be pretty damn weak. The work he's doing now is good and all, but it would have been nice if he had actually done something about it when he had some power.

get real

Maybe this is the kind of advice I need, courtesy of IOZ:

Friends, you must shred the assumption that the Republic is "not dead, only dreaming." The heart has stopped. The coin is on the tongue. Charon's poled the barge. Etc. A new reality is better than a new movie, as Amiri Baraka wrote. Listen. America isn't a constitutional republic. Repeat it. You'll feel better. Or, you'll feel worse at first, but then you'll feel better. You have to open yourself up to the notion that there are other kinds of freedom than living under a certain kind of benevolent government, which is what you've been taught since kindergarten. Liberty isn't a symptom of your State. It's surprising what happens to your mind when you start calling things by their real names.

to fight fire with fire

[At a speech at West Point, Bush] added an assertion that is demonstrably untrue but that, in the mouth of the president of the United States on an official occasion, amounted to an announcement of a crusade: "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, in every place." The preamble to the National Security Strategy document that followed claimed that there is a "a single sustainable model for national success" - ours - that is "right and true for every person in every society... The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere."
- Chalmers Johnson, pp. 286-287

We often hear how militant Islamists want to use violence to force the whole world to follow their belief system, which they uncritically accept as superior to all others. Our response to this alleged existential threat has been to use violence to try to force the whole world to our belief system, which we uncritically accept as superior to all others.

Noam Chomsky on 9-11

There is no doubt that the 9-11 atrocities were an event of historic importance, not - regrettably - because of their scale, but because of the choice of innocent victims. It had been recognized that for some time that with new technology, the industrial powers would probably lose their virtual monopoly of violence, retaining only an enormous preponderance. No one could have anticipated the specific way in which the expectations were fulfilled, but they were. For the first time in modern history, Europe and its offshoots were subjected, on home soil, to the kind of atrocity that they routinely have carried out elsewhere. The history should be too familiar to review and though the West may choose to disregard it, the victims do not.
-pp. 119-120


One often hears that we must not consider these matters, because that would be justification for terrorism, a position so foolish and destructive as scarcely to merit comment, but unfortunately common.
-p.81

Often when I've argued that "they hate us for our freedom" is wrong, and that the real reason we're hated is because of our actions in the world, I'm told that I am some kind of terrorist sympathizer, a position quite foolish and destructive indeed. I agree with Chomsky that on any intellectual level that position is unworthy of reply, but I think its unfortunate commonness makes it something that needs to be addressed. So I will address it here.

(Listen up, Rudy and all my authoritarian acquaintances.)

SOMEONE HAVING A GOOD REASON TO BE PISSED OFF DOESN'T MEAN THEY ARE JUSTIFIED IN USING VIOLENCE.

Of course, saying this loudly or in bold capital letters won't change the way their minds work. The only justification they need to attack someone is not liking them. The link is automatic, hence their enthusiasm for the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. This is why it is so important for them that "they hate us for our freedoms." If that wasn't true, and America had actually done something wrong that makes people angry, that would justify the use of violence against us, and their lizard brains would explode.

Even if they weren't so wrong, they're still assholes

Politics aside, the Graeme Frost case demonstrates the true depth of the health care crisis: every other advanced country has universal health insurance, but in America, insurance is now out of reach for many hard-working families, even if they have incomes some might call middle-class.

And there’s one more point that should not be forgotten: ultimately, this isn’t about the Frost parents. It’s about Graeme Frost and his sister.

I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.

The whole thing is pretty good.

read this now.

talking myself in circles about healthcare reform

Now having identified the perverse tactics of the right as lightning rods to distract from the main issue, health care for children, I suppose I ought not let them succeed, and spend some time contemplating the main issue. Honestly, I don't know much about it. I see it a small step of the battle for socialized medicine, and I don't know what to think about that either.

It seems to me that other nations are getting better results and spending a lot less money with a more nationalized system. It seems to me that insurance companies are getting fat off a steady flow administrative fees, and siphoning back some of that loot to the politicians to make sure they don't turn off the spigot. So it seems like turning off that flow and moving towards a more efficient system would be the right thing to do. But it also seems to me that more government power and bureaucracy are likely to be quite bad for everyone, given how the government has managed to turn basically everything they touch into a machine to make more money for rich people with utter disregard for the welfare of the population as a whole.

So I think essentially the question is: would a national single-payer healthcare system be a good thing, given that it will be run by this government? Some kind of idealism versus realism question. And of course it is just some incremental change in a system that basically needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Are any of these kinds of incremental changes useful? I don't even know how to evaluate these questions, and I imagine I sound pretty naive and pathetic. As a result I'm pretty ambivalent on the issue.

Ignorance. I guess that's why we'd rather focus on the lightning rods; it is much simpler to figure out what is right and wrong there.

Bill O'Reilly: "I'd rather be assraped than go to school"

On January 15, O'Reilly decided that kidnapping victim Shawn Hornbeck didn't escape from his abuser soon enough, and so he must have "liked his circumstances" and "had a lot more fun" because he could "run around and do whatever he wanted" instead of going to school.

Yesterday, Michael Devlin was sentenced to 3 life terms for attempted murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. Hornbeck talked Devlin out of killing him by promising to do whatever Devlin asked. Further sexual assaults followed. This arrangement continued for four years.

Thanks to Mr. Smiles for the links.

I fell for it

All of this disgusting bullshit was just another right-wing lightning rod.

ps - Rush Limbaugh is such a disgusting liar it makes my eyes bleed.

only in the CHURCH bathrooms?

Why is it some kind of crime to ask for sex in a bathroom? Why are we having undercover cops doing gay bathroom stings all the time? And why aren't Republicans fighting back on this, considering every single one of them has gay bathroom sex?

want healthcare for your kids? WE WILL STALK YOU!!

I don't know why it continues to amaze me, but it does. However low you think the insane shrieking right-wing moonbats will go, they go lower. Congratulations, fucktards, you've blown my mind again!

update: now with even more hypocrisy!

update 2: In the comment section of this fine post at Obsidian Wings, I found a link to this, which appears to be written by someone who can read my mind:

If there were ever any doubt

that the right wing side of the blogosphere is a bunch of worthless pieces of shit, people for whom, as James Carville once said, I wouldn't piss down their throats if their hearts were on fire, let that doubt be erased. If there's a hell, Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, the writers of The National Review and the Free Republic will spend major time roasting in it for this. They've taken intellectual dishonesty to new heights with their dissembling on the story of Graeme Frost, and I hope that the party they purport to represent gets the ever-loving shit kicked out of it next year when they have to defend Bush's veto of this bill.

Columbus for President!

Christophorus Columbus wasn't the only Real American Hero to delight in the slaughter of the Native Americans. The Primate Diaries reminds us that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson continued that fine tradition three centuries later.

President Thomas Jefferson, father of American anthropology and "friend to the Indian," came to support and continue the genocidal policies begun by George “Town Destroyer”6 Washington who famously ordered

"the immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more." 7

According to Jefferson,

“[t]his unfortunate race, whom we had been taking so much pains to save and to civilize, have by their unexpected desertion and ferocious barbarities justified extermination and now await our decision on their fate.” 8

Furthermore, in a letter to his Secretary of War, Jefferson ordered

“if we are ever constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi.” 9

Jefferson later explained that this was “necessary to secure ourselves against the future effects of their savage and ruthless warfare” since all “benevolent” efforts at development had failed. 10

But hey, everyone was racist back then so I guess we'll just pretend it never happened.

Columbus Day is bullshit

It was early October 1492, and thirty-three days since he and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Now they saw branches and sticks floating in the water. They saw flocks of birds. These were signs of land. Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out. It was an island in the Bahamas, the Caribbean sea. The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension of 10,000 maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before. He got the reward.

Happy Columbus Day, Rodrigo!

And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down like dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arwaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arwaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

Happy Columbus Day everyone! (By the way if you don't think Columbus Day should be celebrated, keep it to yourself, bitch.)


Quotes from:

true lies

give it to me straight

If I were to say that Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen were the 2 greatest rock artist geniuses in the history of music, would that make me an idiot?

Please state your age when responding.

Food pictures

1 and 2, therefor 3.

1.) Impeachment is a moral imperative.

2.) Impeachment will not happen.

3.) America is an immoral monster.

Duh

Is it at all surprising that Bush used to torture animals as a child?

you are what you eat

How much thought do you give to what you eat?

Where does it come from? Who sold it to you? Who sold it to them? Who sold it to them? What do all those people do with it? What don't they do with it?

You spend thousands of dollars a year on food. Do you think about where that money goes? What it supports? Who gets rich off it?

Is it good for you? Is it good for the environment? Is it good for the economy? Does it matter as long as it tastes good?

I think these questions all are important.

Jordan worship

Sometimes I think that all the Michael Jordan worship that still pervades basketball is a product of overblown media hype. But it isn't. Jordan did anything he wanted to on a basketball court, and nobody could stop him.

My college disaster

I was looking at my college transcript as I prepare to apply to grad schools, and I re-realized what complete train wreck my college academic experience was. The blunders are almost comical, and started my very first semester.

I rode into College Park on a full scholarship - tuition, room, board, books, and a stipend - and brought along 31 credits from high school advanced placement credits. I had four years ahead of me with no concern for money and a full year of college credit already on my record. I didn't know what I wanted to select for a major, but I was considering math, economics, and psychology.

So my first semester I took an advanced math class, Real Analysis, because I had received a letter from the department inviting me to take it. I ended up barely passing with a C, and convinced myself that math wasn't the right field for me. In retrospect it was clear that I wasn't prepared for that material, and that taking a few more courses before that one would have given me a much better chance to succeed. I didn't take another math class until the last semester of my senior year (Linear Algebra, which I enjoyed and would have benefited from taking before Real Analysis).

I took Psyc100 that semester also, and found it kind of boring and very easy. It was a huge lecture with hundreds of students, most of whom sat there doing crossword puzzles. Nobody answered questions when the professor asked them, and exams were scored on a curve. Based on that experience I more or less decided Psychology wasn't the right field for me. In retrospect it was clear that an introductory class wasn't going to cover the interesting stuff, and that the material and my classmates would get more stimulating in upper-level courses. I convinced myself that smart people didn't study psychology and besides, I couldn't get much of a job with a psychology degree.

That semester I also took a seminar through the honors program called Science and Pseudoscience. It was taught by a statistician who is a prominent part of the Skeptics community and I loved the class. I made no effort to further pursue any of the subjects or methodologies that interested me until a few years after I graduated. In retrospect it was clear that class was an early indication of the kind of ideas that I found exciting, and that I should have talked to the professor about how to explore those interests.

And the last class I took that semester was an introduction to music fundamentals. From many years of music training before college, I literally already knew every single thing that was covered in the course. I could have taught it. I knew that would be the case when I signed up, but I just figured taking an easy class that filled some credit I needed was a good idea. This would become a theme of the remaining 7 semesters.

With the tremendous opportunity of a full scholarship and the cushion of a year's worth of credits before I even started, I should have taken a wide variety of classes and explored my interests. I should have uses that experience to narrow down my interests and find a field that was interesting and challenging and that could lead me down a path to a job or graduate study that I would enjoy.

Instead I was tentative about pursuing subjects that interested me, and seized on various flimsy excuses to avoid the slightest bit of challenge. I drifted into the business school because a degree in finance seemed like it would be easy but likely to result in a high-paying job. I rarely went to class, and made the honor roll every semester just by cramming before the exams and forgetting it as soon as they were over. I would say that I didn't learn a thing, but that's not true. I learned to how to make myself look as impressive as possible while putting in as little effort as possible. What a fucking waste.

I feel ashamed at the way I squandered opportunities and derailed myself like this, but I have to wonder what kind of guidance I was getting that let this happen. It is obvious to me sitting here now almost 10 years later what a huge series of blunders I was making, but at the time I didn't really have anyone steering me in the right direction. Or maybe I did and I was ignoring them. It was a huge school and it was easy to slip under the radar if you wanted to. (But I was also actively getting bad advice. Who invited me to that math class? They probably just picked everyone with minimum SAT scores and sent a letter or something. And there was more bad advising in later semesters.)

Seeing the way Kira interacts with her professors here at this tiny school, I'm realizing that for my personality type, a small college would have been so much better for me. She knows all her professors and they know her by name. Faculty and students hang out and arrange trips and extra-curricular projects together. The faculty and administrators all take a personal and active interest in the students' education.

I can think of 2 professors who knew my name. In almost all of my classes I was just a social security number on a scantron sheet at exam time. I'm sure there were opportunities like that at my huge school, but I would have had to actively seek them out, which I never did. Small schools create a feeling of community, where you owe it to everyone else to make the best of yourself. Huge schools create an isolation, where you're just a number and you're on your own.

I think part of my desire to go to grad school is to make right all the mistakes I made as an undergraduate. Maybe having learned all this the hard way will ultimately be better for me.

Quick links about endless awesome manly wars

Hersh on the Administration's plans to attack Iran


Floyd on the same.


Linked from the above Floyd piece, Cole on how Saddam had offered to leave Iraq and go into exile prior to Bush's illegal invasion, but Bush refused.

He had a real offer in the hand, of Saddam's flight. He rejected it. By rejecting it, he will have killed at least a million persons and became one of the more monstrous figures in recent world history.

Gravel might be a semi-decent human being

I hate all politicians until overwhelmed with reasons not to hate them. No Presidential candidate in the current field will give more than a few reasons, and most give none at all. Mike Gravel gives some here.



This shouldn't be construed as any kind of endorsement. I'm just noting how the things he's saying here are the most decent and sane things any of these fuckers say, and he's considered the crazy old man. And we're only even talking about what they say, not what they do. And we all know Democrats don't do what they say they'll do.

Everyone can go to hell.

Beer tasting

Since we moved here I've taken to trying a wide variety of beers and keeping notes on all of them. If you're inclined you can check out my records here.

So far my two favorites are Ommegang's Three Philosophers and Stone's Arrogant Bastard. Both of those beers have my name all over them. Here are those two breweries' respective descriptions of their beers.

Three Philosophers Quadrupel

Cynics can't believe it, Epicures hail it a sensation, and Pythagoreans just can't add up what makes this luscious blend of rich malty ale and cherry lambic so delightful. It might be the flavor of dark chocolate and cherry cordials; it could be the way it acquires wisdom and grace in the cellar. Maybe it's a conundrum. What's your theory?

The essence of wonder is a unique and masterful blend of strong malty ale and authentic Belgian Kriek. Our philosophers deduce that this powerful marriage of cherries, roasted malts, and dark chocolate will only achieve more wisdom and coherence as it broods in the dark recesses of your cellar.

Try Three Philosophers as:

a delightful accompaniment for roasted meats, rich cheeses, desserts, and for after dinner sipping as with a fine port.

Reviews:

"A rare international blend of dark and malty quadrupel from Ommegang, and cherry-infused lambic from Lindemans in Belgium. It is a masterful blend that is greater than the sum of its parts - a rich, ruby brew that weaves a port-like subtle fruit into a creamy elixir of chocolaty caramel effervescence."
-THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

"An exciting new addition to the Ommegang lineup is Three Philosophers, a blend of Belgian dark strong ale and Lindeman's Kriek (a classic cherry lambic directly from Belgium). On the bottleneck, it says “Strength in Union,” signaling the beer's portent and possibilities. It produces a wine-like ruby fill in the goblet and a nose of malt, dark fruits, vanilla and sweet cherries...But there's more - coffee, currants, brandied raisins, chocolate and sour notes - all blending nicely across the palate. Careful aging is this beer's friend, and I think it will definitely make this example better still."
-THE ANCHORAGE PRESS

Three Philosophers comes in a 750ml corked and caged bottle like a sparkling wine, costs only $6, and is 33 times better than a $6 bottle of wine.




Arrogant Bastard has "you're not worthy" printed on the caps of its bottles. Awesome.

How dare you not let me abuse my power!!

Where people whose job it is to enforce the law go to complain when they aren't treated like they're above the law.

Or as Thoreau says:

They even announce the names of cops who gave them speeding tickets, in hopes that other cops will take notice of this “unprofessional behavior.” Um, yeah. Sure.
I doubt that the creators of that site realize this, but by highlighting instances where the law is applied even to cops they are actually portraying law enforcement in a positive light.

I say “Bravo!” to the cops who apply the law equally and impartially to all of their fellow citizens, including people who enjoy positions of trust and authority.

Post-Mortem America

We are told that in the weeks before 9/11, then CIA chief George Tenet and his colleagues across the intelligence community were so alarmed by the flood of reports about an impending major terrorist attack that they felt their "hair was on fire." God only knows what the truth of this self-serving, after-the-fact assertion might be, but it is indeed an apt term for a sense of imminent doom in the public sphere. And given the headlong rush to a new war against Iran, and the G-force acceleration into the tyranny of a lawless, all-encompassing surveillance state that is unfolding before our eyes -- not to mention the Democratic Party's complete abandonment of even the pretense of carrying out the people's mandate and opposing the Administration's maniacal, murderous, criminal policies -- anyone whose hair isn't on fire today is either brain-dead, bought-off, or an active, eager, conniving traitor to the American people, and the human race.

Chris Floyd wrote that today. It is a fitting introduction to this post I've been trying to try to write for weeks now.

I'd strongly recommend reading this Chris Floyd essay from 3 weeks ago, as well as these 3 responses to it: Arthur Silber, IOZ, and Jim Henley. Those links contained well expressed thoughts by excellent writers. All of them have their hair on fire. So do I. And if you don't, you're either brain-dead, bought-off, or an active, eager conniving traitor to the American people, and the human race.

Floyd begins:

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.

The Republic you wanted -- and at one time might have had the power to take back -- is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it's not there ... Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.

I don't think there's really any question that Chris Floyd is right. We're living in a different country than the idealistic America we grew up believing in, and we're little more than subjects of an elite ruling class that cares nothing for anything but preserving and expanding their own influence. Read his entire essay.

Then go read Arthur's, which puts the Bush carnage in a larger context.

The destruction of America has been accomplished in the manner of a particularly skillful and diabolical con game: it has been done completely in the open. No one was fooled or misled. The ruling class has always stated explicitly exactly what they intended to do -- and then they did it. You didn't think they meant it, not really, not all the way down.

But they did. They counted on the great majority of Americans not to believe what was directly before their eyes, or to identify its full, inevitable meaning. Most of you obliged. Most of you still oblige. They could not ask for more.

And most Americans still don't believe the destruction has already occurred, because there is no thunderous crashing of chords, no widespread calamity or destruction (at least, not yet, although we've had some previews) or, as Chris puts it, it won't come "with jackboots and book burnings," or with "tanks on the street." Poor, pitiful, pathetic Americans: it isn't like a movie.

And so it has come to pass. The lives of most Americans will go on as before, for that is the plan and the point. Be careful not to credit the ruling class with too much cleverness or intelligence for having achieved their heinous end, for most of them don't begin to understand what they're doing either. They are moved for the most part by the views of the "consensus," which views come from they not know where, nor do they care about or understand the original reasons. Their concern is much narrower: consolidating and expanding their own power, and that of the State. Their focus is on how power is actualized in the petty, sordid details of their pallid, drab, arid lives. The larger dynamics never concerned them, and they don't give a damn about any of that today.

So now that we see the big picture for what it is, the question now is what the hell are we supposed to do about it? It is impossible to imagine the massive uprising that would required for genuine change actually coming into being.

Winter Patriot had the idea of a general strike on 9/11/07. Did you hear about that? Me neither.

Capt. Fogg reacts understandably to the whole mess:

I'm past caring. America will do the stupid thing - we always do and when the piper presents his invoice we will spend generations rewriting history to protect the idiots - we always do. And then we'll do it again, using fake lessons from this debacle to justify another one. We always do.

It takes the slightest knowledge of history to get the "we always do" sentiment, unfortunately Americans have no understanding of history. And Americans won't do shit about any of this. So,

First noting that we're now past any Liberty-or-Death moments for the salvation of the Republic, and further noting that violent revolutions, even where possible, aren't generally advisable or supportable, the question naturally arises: what now? The answer is not much. In large part the more pertinent question is simply how do we as individuals comport ourselves to post-citizen lives? Where do we make accommodations and accessions, and where do we offer our small resistances. What does will it mean to be a subject in the era after consensual government? What power, if any, will we have to mitigate the evils of empire abroad? Since the institutions of democracy will remain superficially central to the United States (Rome retained a Senate), to what degree is it useful or valid to participate in the preserved processes of actual democracy? Is it now meaningful to take sides in the factional disputes that will continue in the immediate future as our governors sort out their tribal affiliations and solidify a neater process of succession? What are the ethical and moral obligations of the subject, as opposed to the citizen, for the actions of his nation? If we are to some degree absolved of responsibility and culpability for something like the coming bombing of Iran, does that also abrogate our calling to speak out against it? To what extent does it remain valid to cite the extant catechisms of Republican government--the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the ideals of the Framers--and to what extent is that citation merely willful complicity in a charade?

As a wise man once said, How the fuck should I know?

I think there are two reasons we ask those kinds of questions. First, we have some sense of moral decency (a.k.a. "moral casuistry and solipsism"). When we see something bad happening, we want to try to stop it. But what if we can't? That leads to the the second reason, which is for the sake of our own sanity.

Chris, Arthur, and IOZ seem to converge on two main strategies for dealing with our moral and mental health concerns. We can refuse to acknowledge the illegitimate power our government has amassed, with Thoreau-like nuggets of civil disobedience, taking that as far as we can safely take it. And we can insist on calling things by their rightful names.

"Torture is torture. War crimes are war crimes. Police-state procedures are police-state procedures." Jim Henley says that calling things by their true names is what "bitching on the internet" (a.k.a. blogging) is all about. It helps us feel less crazy in this up-is-down, black-is-white world, and it offers some feeling of moral contribution, because "[a]t minimum, the collective record of American dissent might be some minor use to the next crew that decides to give the liberty thing a go."

So is there anything more we can do than honest bitching and minor resistance? What about Winter Patriot's general strike? Floyd concludes his article today with the acknowledgment that any efforts are almost certain to fail to divert disaster. But,

We must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don't do that? And if, in the end, all that we've accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?

Do something. Anything.

George W. Bush's Christian values

"Hey Tony, I got an idea. I say we paint a plane to look like a UN plane. Then let's fly it over Iraq. Saddam will shoot it down and kill the stupid pilot, and then we'll have an excuse to invade and fucking kill everyone! Awesome!"

In which I try to help a poor creature

There are lots of stray cats running around our new neighborhood. The woman who used to live next door would put food out for them, so they used to congregate right by our house. After she moved (about a week after we moved in), most of them moved on and seem to have found some other food source. Someone else probably puts food out, although I did watch one little kitten catch a small bird. We still see them around, and they all look fairly healthy.

Except that one tiny cat was different than all the others. This one never really moved on when the others did. It just stayed in this area, and seemed to get skinnier and skinnier. One hot day I broke down and gave it some water. After a few more days of it crying outside our window I couldn't help giving it some food.

I felt bad about it though, because feeding a stray cat ultimately just creates more stray cats. I couldn't tell if it was a male or female, but we've already seen a pregnant female running around, meaning soon there should be some homeless kittens. I gave food to the starving cat out of sympathy, but if I give it enough food it will just compound the starving cat problem.

This one was different in another way though. All the others are somewhat afraid of people, and will run away if you get too close, but this one really seemed to like people. It made me think that this one didn't really know how to fend for itself and needed a person taking care of it. I wasn't just going to adopt a feral cat off the street though. The whole thing bothered me and I didn't know what to do. I kind of just wished it would go away, but every day it'd show up and cry outside our door. It even would try to come inside when we went in and out, and we had to chase it away.

So yesterday I put some food in a crate and caught the poor little thing. We found a humane society 30 miles away and took it down there. They'll spay her (turns out she's a female, I never lifted her skirt to find out) and give her vet care if she has any diseases or parasites or anything, and give her a chance to get adopted. They said she seems friendly compared to many other stray cats that get brought in, so hopefully someone will take her. They also said they think she's full grown, which surprised me because she's so small. I know she was severely undernourished but figured she was still pretty young. She seemed very happy about the food they gave her.

The only problem now is that they sometimes do have to kill cats at that shelter. They said they give every cat a good chance to get adopted, and at the moment they had a lot of room. This little cat seemed very nice, so hopefully someone will take her. We're thinking about going back to see her after they get her all fixed up. If she's nice, maybe we'll take her.

More on the taser attack

Arthur gets it right as usual. Cops use extreme force against nonthreatening victims for simply failing to do exactly what they say. They take their cues from our imperial overlords, who invade nonthreatening countries for failing to do exactly what they say.

The public watches, and does nothing.

The Shock Doctrine

This is a short film by the director of Children of Men. It is about 6 minutes long.



If you're interested in The Shock Doctrine, here is the author discussing her research. The videos total to about an hour.

disturbing police brutality

This story of police in Florida using a taser on some poor guy is ridiculous on its own (disturbing videos at each of those links). But the crowd applauding it and John Kerry just blathering on while it happens is unreal.

I've referenced before that authoritarians personalities reflexively claim that we shouldn't worry about abuse of power. Somehow amazing things like this just rolls off their back. And what is even more disturbing is knowing that for every one of these attacks that gets caught on video, there are dozens more happening that never come to light. Many of those are far worse, and I'd bet that minorities are disproportionately the victims, probably by a large margin.

A guy talks to much and police torture him while an audience of students and an internationally prominent politician watch and do nothing. "America" doesn't really have any meaning does it?

update:

I'm posting the video of the student as well as a group of police officers tackling a man, breaking his leg in the process, for wearing a "I love the people of Iraq" button while waiting in line to enter a Congressional hearing.

Sarah Silverman

This discussion of Sarah Silverman is exactly right. I greatly enjoy what I've seen of her standup and TV show. Chick is funny.

Mindles idiotz rule our discousree

[updated to add more typos in the title. they were all on purpose. really! prove me wrong.]

Today Greenwald takes another look at the pathetic pundit class.

How has it come to the point where these people are considered respectable political analysts? They don't often do any actual analysis of anything! They just talk about how certain events might "play," how they'll be perceived. But they rarely make any effort to actually figure out how the public perceives anything; they just offer baseless speculation that fits with conventional narratives. All they're really talking about is how they themselves perceive things, except wording it as what "the people" will think.

Furthermore, even if they managed to actually look at some surveys and figure out what people really think, should that really take up much of their time? Shouldn't they report on what is actually happening? Shouldn't they then analyze it in terms of real-world effects and let people decide for themselves what they think about it? In an hour of programming, no more than 1 minute should be devoted to "analysis" of what people think about things. That stuff should be an afterthought to the real discussion of what is happening and why. That kind of discussion would take some real work though, whereas any idiot can just talk about how good a man in uniform looks or how Hillary is far too shrill to win a popular election. We wouldn't want anyone to have to actually think about something more complicated than high school popularity contests. Mindless fucking idiots lead our political dialog.

Restore Habeas

Help fight back against one of the most Anti-American measures of the Bush regime.

When I'm not raging out

Here's what my Saturday was like.

raging out

I still haven't finished that post I alluded to a little while back. Actually I haven't even worked on it since then. I had started working on it because I read a few essays that really moved me and I wanted to respond to them. But an ongoing problem is that several times every day I'm moved in the exact same way, and all sense of perspective slips away as I'm motivated in 20 different directions at the same time. The form of the movement is best described as outrage, although elements of frustration, despair, disgust, anger, and sorrow are all in the mix. But we'll call it outrage.

Ours is an outrageous world. Outrageous atrocities are committed on a daily basis and those who are responsible tell outrageous lies about all of it. An outrageous nation with by far the most powerful military force in history uses it to destroy helpless small countries and loot the wreckage, while outrageously preaching to the rest of the world about how noble this is. The internal factions driving this machine somehow manage to blame the carnage on their timid opposition, and the resulting outrage is taken to be proof of the blame. The carnage itself is agreed to be an unfortunate but necessary side effect of the gloriously noble and very important destruction/looting/aggression/killing/spreading-freedom-and-democracy-and-puppies. Heinous war crimes and violations of international law, when impolitely mentioned, are taken to be an indication of how necessary and glorious and noble and important the outrageous aggression must be, but certainly will never be fully acknowledged, yet alone prosecuted. Lies mount upon lies until everyone saying and hearing them knows full well that the words and the truth bear no resemblance. Yet the liars are outraged when their lies are not accepted. Their outrage is loud and bold and coordinated and amplified and effective, in spite of, or more likely because of, its hollow meaninglessness. Dense, genuine outrage is quiet, meek, sloppy. It is and suppressed and impotent.

And I sit here in front of my computer, outraged in a dense and genuine way, wondering what the flying fuck I can do about any of it. I try to write about it but I can't, not really. I try to talk about it but I can't, not really. And so in the end this just amounts to a semi-apologetic self-important lonely pity party, unless of course putting it where other people can read it does some good for anyone else. Then the pity party is a bit less lonely, cause we're certainly not capable of stopping the machine. The outrages accelerate and we won't know what or when the end will be, or if it will be a bang or a whimper or some outrageous third option.

Music + Kick Ass = Alanis Morissette? Seriously.

Speaking of music and kicking ass, a song that is often on my playlists these days is Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." I hadn't listen to any of her music, or really even considered her existence in many years, but on the drive from Maryland to Ohio I was in a big truck with a stack of CDs, and Jagged Little Pill ended up in the player. Holy shit! That song is pure fury. I played it like 5 times.

A few days later, Bill Simmons wrote this:

What an intriguing twist for the Manning-Brady rivalry! Manning comes through in the big Pats-Colts game, Manning wins the Super Bowl, Manning hosts Saturday Night Live ... meanwhile, the only way Brady's 2007 would have been rockier was if Bridget Moynihan named their new son "Peyton." (Which would have been the single most vindictive move by a female celebrity since Alanis Morissette released "You Oughta Know" in 1995, but that's a whole other column.)

I'm looking forward to that column. Unless he already wrote it, in which case I hope I find it in the archives.

Bush: stop all that lawyerin' and go get 'em!

1.) On the evening of September 11, 2001, in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he returned to Washington and at 8:30 p.m. addressed the nation from the Oval Office. Following his speech, he met with his senior officials concerned with the crisis in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. According to Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief for both Presidents Clinton and Bush, who was there, Bush entered the room and said, "I want you all to understand that we are at war and will stay at war until this is done. Nothing else matters. Everything is available for the pursuit of this war. Any barriers in your way, they're gone. Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda." In the ensuing discussion, according to Clarke, "Secretary Rumsfeld noted that international law allowed the use of force only to prevent future attacks and not for retribution. Bush nearly bit his head off. 'No,' the President yelled in the narrow conference room. 'I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.'"

2.) Bush himself said to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "I had to show the American people the resolve of a commander in chief that [sic] was going to do whatever it took to win. No yielding. No equivocation. No, you know, lawyering this thing to death, that we're after 'em. And that was not only for domestic, for the people at home to see. It was also vitally important for the rest of the world to watch."

These two quotes are from Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project), with my emphasis added.

I'm trying to understand the deranged psychology of George W. Bush. I find it interesting how he uses lawyers as a substitute for the law in both quotes (the first of which seems to be a paraphrase that might not be word-for-word accurate, but presumably for Clarke to quote it this way, Bush must use that kind of phrasing a lot). I can think of two ways to interpret this.

The first would be that Bush recognizes that he is advocating illegal action, but uses lawyers as some kind of emotional scapegoat to avoid acknowledging his own lawlessness. I'd interpret that as a psychological mechanism he's employing for his own benefit, rather than a deliberately misleading attempt to manipulate his audience. It softens "lawbreaking" into "ignoring lawyers" and everyone hates lawyers so how bad could it be?

The second way to read it is that Bush sees the world through the lens of power. He doesn't see The Law as a manifestation of a social contract, or a set of rules that we're all obligated to obey, and that he's obligated to uphold. He just sees power. Lawyers have power and Presidents have power. Presidents are more powerful than lawyers, therefor Bush can get his way, especially when it comes to (what Bush decides are) important things. Supporting this is how in both cases his lawyer references are associated with puerile ideas about strength, or the image of strength. Bush and all of the neocon goons have this preschool playground idea of power. It's all about kickin' ass and gettin' 'em, and demonstrating our resolve. They're overgrown little boys with wild ideas and the most destructive toys in the history of mankind at their disposal.

Anyway, there's no reason these two versions have to be mutually exclusive, but they're both pretty fucking disturbing.

Favorite Musical Acts

It has been a while since I've done any rankings. Here are my favorite musicians/groups:

1. Dave Matthews Band
2. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
3. Lyle Lovett
   
4. Counting Crows

Pearl Jam, Billy Joel, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Band, and U2 would probably form the next tier, in no particular order. It goes without saying that Tenacious D is the greatest and best band in the world, so I didn't think it was necessary to put them at the top.

Lauren Green, Kathy Griffin, and Jesus Lord of Comedy

It turns out Kathy Griffin was wrong! Jesus had everything to do with her winning that award!

But here's what I don't quite understand, although I'm sure there's a very good explanation. If Jesus really did have everything to do with Kathy Griffin's award, and think Lauren Green has undoubtedly shown that to be true, then that means Jesus had everything to do with Kathy Griffin saying "Suck it Jesus! This award is my God now!" And since Lauren Green makes it clear that she finds self-effacing humor to be amusing, why is it that Lauren Green is unamused by Kathy Griffin's remarks, which is essentially Jesus' own self-effacement? Jesus is Lord of Comedy, but Lauren Green is won't scarf down his tasty communion wafer.

But like I said, I'm sure there's a very good explanation. It is probably related to the reason why Lauren Green would have "turned the other cheek" if Kathy Griffin had just said that no one had less to do with her award than Jesus. Obviously that kind of a comment is the literal equivalent to a slap in the face, but Lauren Green, good Christian that she is, would receive that slap without complaint, and then offer her other cheek to be slapped again. But if Kathy Griffin (at Jesus' insistence) goes on to then slap again, as Lauren Green specifically offered, apparently at that point Lauren Green must spring into action.

Now, I very much believe that Lauren Green and Bill Donahue and Fox News would never have said anything if Kathy Griffin had only disavowed the involvement of a 2,000 year old fictional Jewish zombie. They would have gladly ignored that, and nobody would have censored remarks on the broadcast, and Lauren Green never would have written her well-reasoned column.

But why turn the other cheek if you won't accept the inevitable re-slap? Why doesn't Lauren Green have a sense of humor when Jesus uses an irreverent comedian to make a little fun of himself?

I guess its just that me and Jesus are on the same comedic wavelength. We get each other. That's what I love about him.

Blowback*

I've been working my way through an "inadvertent trilogy" by Chalmers Johnson. After a few years in the Navy he became a scholar of Japan and all of Asia at UC San Diego. In 2000 he published a book called "Blowback," because after decades of studying the region, he became convinced that US imperialist behavior in Asia was going to keep coming back to haunt us. Nobody really paid much attention to that book, but after 9/11 it became a best seller. He felt the need to write 2 more books over the last 6 years, expanding on those works both geographically, discussing mainly the Middle East and South America, and thematically, elaborating on our militarism and imperialism and the "sorrows" it has brought and will continue to bring. His calls for changes are obviously going unanswered.

He devoted a few paragraphs to Diego Garcia in one of the books, which was noteworthy for me because my father did a few months of Navy duty there when I was a kid. I didn't know that it was actually a British island on a 50-year lease to the US (at no charge). Apparently the American military boasts that the base at Diego Garcia is invulnerable to local politics, and the reason is that there are no local politics because the British moved the entire population of the island to some other island, where they now live in extreme poverty and face constant ethnic prejudice. The natives have been fighting that relocation in British courts for decades, where a judge has already ruled their forced relocation illegal.

Think about how those natives much feel about the British and Americans.

The Pentagon officially acknowledges about 800 bases in ~130 countries around the world, and likely has another few hundred kept secret for various reasons. Every one of those bases causes some kind of local tension, from frustration with forced displacement, to epidemics of drunk driving and sexual assault by America military around our bases (which cannot be prosecuted in local courts because the military quickly whisks the criminals back to the US), to official violent military action against defenseless civilian populations. That tension leads to resentment, leading to hatred, leading to "blowback."

Bin Laden made his issues with America very well known: (1) objection to American military presence in Saudi Arabia, a Muslim holy land, where we have numerous semi-secret bases and support a corrupt a brutal theocratic regime (while at the same time hypocritically pretending that we care about spreading democracy to the Middle East), (2) American support of Israel (a long mess of a story unto itself), and (3) American/British sanctions against Iraq, which we enforced by violating international law, which led to the death of millions of innocent civilians who couldn't obtain basic necessities (all of that was before we invaded again in 2003).

9/11 was a classic case of blowback, violent reaction to US militarism and imperialism, and yet our politicians refuse to acknowledge it. We hear nonsense about how "they hate us for our freedom" and when a rare honest moment happens where a politician actually acknowledges the reality of the situation (Ron Paul), he gets attacked by Giuliani and the rest of the pundit class as some kind of America-hater or terrorist sympathizer or just a lunatic. The Republicans lead this willfully ignorant suicidal charge, the Democrats refuse to fight it, essentially making them enablers, and the press gleefully reports the whole thing without criticism or question. And so like 35% of the American public still believes the outright falsehood spread by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was directly involved with planning the 9/11 attacks, and we're spending $2 billion per week to occupy Iraq and police a civil war hellhole that we needlessly created.




* Yes, Dave, you probably heard this term on The Simpsons before Chalmers Johnson claims to have popularized it. He doesn't claim to have invented it. It was a CIA term, and obviously The Simpsons makes all kinds of obscure references. I don't think this takes away from the scholarship of the books.

Status update

I'm crawling my way towards a blog post of some substance. I've been paralyzed by a combination of factors, and writing it is like a war of attrition with my own inertia. Whatever. That's a teaser for you and motivation for me.

Meanwhile, I'm loving life in Ohio. Kira started classes this week, and we're falling into a pretty good routine. We send her off to class around 8:45, and I go for a jog around the neighborhood. I have something ready for her to stop in for lunch around 1:15, and I start cooking dinner between 5 and 6 usually. We get all our meat and eggs from Luginbill Family Farm, (The eggs are the best eggs I've ever had, and the meat is excellent - ground beef, ground pork, breakfast sausage, smoked sausage, and whole broiler chicken.), and veggies (tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, acorn squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, bell peppers, hot peppers, sweet peppers, red and yellow onions), honey, and bread fresh from a farmer's market every Saturday. Food is good. Evenings have been some combination of DVDs, HBO, and/or reading. I'll have to do a separate post soon for the different beers we've tried.

I need to work on filling my time in between more productively than reading blog posts and fantasy football rankings. Today I filled out a survey and marked "home maker" as my occupation, though I don't think this home is particularly well-made. I've done some actual work as a consultant for the company I worked for in Maryland, but I don't think I want to keep working for them. I need to start doing the school search thing and some at least third- to half-assed version of GRE prep.

police arrest nonviolent war protesters

George Washington

emotional children

I just witnessed a young man and woman engage in a loud and profane shouting match as he walked away from her, shouting angrily as he left. This was around midnight near the local high school where I live. I wasn't sitting next to my window waiting for some excitement, so they must have been pretty loud. After it became clear to her that her attempts to lure him back ("if you fucking care anything about ... [unintelligible] ... you'll fucking come back here!!!!") would be unsuccessful she ran back to her car and sped away after him, driving dangerously fast.

As I find myself more and more bothered reading about whatever latest outrages are happening somewhere in this world, I suppose it would do some slight good for my own state of mind to keep in mind that human beings are fundamentally irrational. What little reason we do exhibit almost always comes from extensive experience or arduous training, neither of which come easily or often to most people. In their absence, we're driven by instinct, by emotion. And emotions are fucking insane.

I say this might help me because in some cases it would soften anger into sympathy, outrage into lament. You can't be mad at a crazy person can you? They're not responsible for what they do, right? Those kids pissed me off until I realized they don't realize what the hell they're doing. Now I just feel sorry for them, and anyone else in their path.