tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125055162024-03-12T20:05:31.797-07:00DoctorDiatribeFlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-66835677099085723302011-06-25T06:54:00.000-07:002011-06-25T07:20:58.441-07:00My Obsession With the Casey Anthony TrialI have finally succumbed to reality TV. The Casey Anthony trial is what did me in. My philosophy that there is no such thing as a "functional" family (i.e. that we are all from dysfunctional families) is amply demonstrated in the Anthony's, only in their case it was dysfunctionality on steroids. You may cavil with calling a murder trial "reality TV." Yes, it's true that the action reality TV shows in prime time can't get it all in one take. (Like <span style="font-style: italic;">Cops</span>, reality is usually something between what is shown to the public and what is left on the cutting room floor. Reality TV shows are scripted, too, even if much of what we see is ad-libbed on the spot.) But the reality TV we see in the Anthony trial is more akin to the old "Playhouse 90" days, when ninety-minute dramas were presented live in prime time. Unlike reality TV, the Anthony trial cannot be rewound much less edited, but to me it is about as reality TV as I care to get.<br /><br />The latest turn is that the prosecutor "opened the door" to (mentioned, thus allowed testimony about) evidence of Casey's prior record, including a felony. I think the prosecutor weighed a potential for reversible error against the mounting evidence that the Anthony's are testifying for Casey vicariously. That is, the defense is making its case by having its witnesses say what Casey cannot say, since any testimony by Casey herself would be impeached by the State, e.g. "Are you the same Casey Anthony who was convicted on ____ of the felony crime of _____," and it would be pointed out to the jury that a felony conviction means you cannot trust anything the witness has said since all felonies are, per se, crimes involving moral turpitude.<br /><br />My feeling is, the jury will convict. The Anthony's story just doesn't add up. I think this silly, warped girl, ill equipped emotionally to handle motherhood, and tiring of its responsibilities -- it interfered with her partying -- suffocated her child and did her best to pin it on a nanny, and when the nanny story blew up in her face, she switched tales and had her being molested by her father and had her child, Caylee, drowning in a swimming pool. The one nagging question I have concerns the autopsies. Since I can only watch summaries of the trial on the news at night, I must have missed testimony about what was found in the stomach and lungs. A drowning leaves its mark. The tape found on the mouth is also very, very troubling. It may boil down to which expert the jury finds more credible.<br /><br />One thing's for sure: this is the most sensational trial since O.J. took out his wife and a male acquaintance and got off with an acquittal because some gloves didn't fit. On the other hand, Casey Anthony is not a black male with a predominantly African-American jury. I understand that because of the method chosen, the death penalty is on hold in Florida. May I take this opportuny to bloviate a bit about that. Consider this silly girl, a person who harks back to the Butterfly McQueen character in <span style="font-style: italic;">Gone With the Wind</span> (though I am misquoting her), "Missie Scarlet, I don't no nuthin' 'bout bringin' up no baby." What did she does during the 30+ days the child was missing? She partied. The death penalty, with appeals and all, will cost the state more than a life sentence (they feed these people on less than a dollar a day!). The death penalty will put Casey out of all her miseries. Life will have her wasting away while she thinks about the terrible, tragic consequences of what she has done.<br /><br />I'm convicting the innocent until proven guilty? No, but I am convinced she did it. I think she may be convicted of the lesser included offense of intentional manslaughter, which would save the silly woman's life. But I am convinced the verdict will be guilty of something. As my friend Ellie always said, "Hide and watch!"FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-13888218113041691672009-04-19T17:32:00.000-07:002009-04-19T17:35:15.558-07:00Three Little PigsPorky, Hammy, and Chops, official protectors of the tax break for the 2% of Americans who have all the nation's money....FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-39577808055511554152009-03-24T18:28:00.000-07:002009-03-24T21:47:11.739-07:00Dick Cheney in HellDick has had his final heart attack and awakens in Hell. Satan comes into his room and welcomes him to Hades, which looks something like a motel room. Satan welcomes Dick and says, "You did some fine things for me up there: casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of that huge tax giveaway to the super rich; sending all those nice young men to die in Iraq; outing that poor Plame woman the way you and Scooter did; talking that silly twit Dubya into torturing all those people. My God, man, you did us proud!"<br /><br />Cheney smiles and, through the side of his mouth, replies: "Well, I suppose that means I am to be an honored guest here?"<br /><br />Satan says: "Most decidedly. We're going to party! I've got a lot of blue agave tequila and some fine Culiacan coke, and we can look at some fuck movies and enjoy! We can fuck ourselves, lots of good orgiastic sex."<br /><br />Cheney says: "You want me to come to your place for the party?"<br /><br />Satan says: "Oh, no, no, don't bother. We can do it right here. Just gonna be me and you."FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-38192197911018286242009-02-22T15:04:00.000-08:002009-02-22T15:05:29.922-08:00Granholm for PresidentMichigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is hot. She should be nominated by the Dems for the Top Job.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-41160633750646612482009-02-20T15:56:00.000-08:002009-02-20T15:59:11.014-08:00Pontiactus Non ExtantusIn the mid to late 60's and early 70s, I owned a Pontiac Firebird. It was a classy car. I might have bought it to impress my friend Stephen Silverman, who drove a Datsun 340-Z, which I personally thought a piece of shit but never mentioned it to him, as he let me borrow it a time or two. I liked the Firebird and drove it through the early 70s gas crisis, with the long lines only to arrive at the pump posted with a sign: SORRY, NO GAS. Now that GM is going on the dole (and I don't mean bananas) they've promised to put their Pontiac division to rest. Pontiac had a huge reputation from its manufacture of aircraft engines during the war. The car ran well, but pseudo-sport models of any brand all were gas guzzlers. I eventually sold it to my brother Terry for about $75, informing him that it would cost a lot of money just filling it up with oil: it had a major leak and was virtually irreparable. Such is my experience with Pontiac. Sad, sad, sad....FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-22995533699428080692009-02-07T11:46:00.000-08:002009-02-07T12:02:30.095-08:00My Chat With Wen JiabaoI had a good long "talk" with the Chinese premier the other night, having stumbled onto him in the chat room, "Pacific Interests" by utter coincidence. I was asking how to make a good kung pao shrimp and he IM'd me with his own version, plus some advice for the United States. He said, "Your country must learn two new rules. One, quit having so many babies. Two, your next war of choice will be at someone else's expense. We can't half-sole Mr. Bush's shoes." When I protested that the economies of China and the U.S. are mutually dependent, he said, "then why are you asking me about kung pao shrimps?"<br /><br />Wen coaxed said "We are puzzled by democracy. In a country that would re-elect Bush, if that is will of people then you only get president you deserve. Cowboy person. The only reason al Qaeda has not attacked you is because you redirected their attention to problems with Shias in Iraq once the U.S. invaded and allowed a Shia government to execute Saddam. You forget, bin Laden bides his time. He has time and God on his side."<br /><br />I asked him what he thought of Citizen Dick Cheney's claim that the Obama administration will fumble the ball on security, allowing another mass attack by Jihadists. Wen said: "He knows that is bunk. If terrorists hit you again, look to Mideastern sectarian squabbles. By dividing Shia against Sunni you give Israel a bit of time is all."FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-63061915182701569712009-02-07T07:29:00.001-08:002009-02-07T07:30:00.892-08:00The Time Has ComeIt's time we nationalized our banking system in the manner of the Swedes.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-19724755942765805982009-01-22T15:08:00.001-08:002009-01-22T15:44:42.210-08:00The Short GoodbyeIt wasn't even mildly amusing to see George W. Bush almost bump his head, Gerald Ford-style, in the door of the presidential helicopter whilst making his much anticipated departure from the White House lawn; flying to a nearby base, he would there be taken to his last stay at Camp David. It was the departure of a <span style="font-style: italic;">pagliaccio</span> on his way to a final aria, or, if the Italian is inappropriate, then perhaps a bit of Spanish slang, a <span style="font-style: italic;">payaso</span>. (Some might cavil it should be <span style="font-style: italic;">pendejo, </span>but that's another matter.) This was the Bush who couldn't open doors, said "nuculer." and doesn't know the difference between a "character" and a "characteristic." English teachers wanted to cover their students' ears every time Bush gave a speech. He's a good ol' cheerleading boy only a father could love. How else could he get into Yale and actually graduate?<br /><br />The detritus in his wake manifested itself immediately, with House minority leader John Boehner equating the Gitmo closure (which actually has a 12-month deadline) and criticizing a supposed lack of planning with, e.g., the Iraqi Misadventure, using rhetorical sleight-of-hand in a silly attempt to be the first GOP to draw and fire on Obama. An equally obnoxious Louisianna senator, caught red-handed screwing prostitutes while his wife was home playing trophy mom, dissed Obama's finance nominee. And then there is that smug, sappy-faced Mitch McComical mumbling about one thing and another -- don't the voters in the states that send these people to D.C. realize they're voting for self-serving snake oil salesmen? Their only virtue, these hacks, is bringing home the pork, and that would appear to be overdrawn at the bank, Obama signaling as much with his ban on lobbying by ex-staff members.<br /><br />Then, there's that jackass John Cornyn. I begged his opponent's staff by email exchange to beg, borrow, or steal the footage of the John McCain photo op where he introduced, and was introduced by, his then "spiritual advisor," the Rev. John Hagee. There was Cornyn, that silver-haired serpent himself, standing all goofy-faced with Hagee and McCain. Shortly thereafter, Johnny Boy would have to throw Hagee under the bus: it came out that the "reverand" thought Hitler was a gift from "God" because the Jewish diaspora brought about the establishment of a Jewish state in the "Holy" land. Hey, folks, that is a necessary step in the Rapture scenario, which about a third of Americans believe. I still want to print a bumper sticker saying, "I DON'T MIND RAPTURE, I JUST DON'T WANT TO BE THERE WHEN IT HAPPENS." (Yeah, I know, a rip-off of Woody Allen, but it works.)<br /><br />It did Michelle no good to kiss Bush. Condi has been doing that for years (as well as other things we may never know). It is hard for some to grasp an administration that holds a meeting to approve of the torture of various specific detainees, enemy combatants, and so forth. Ms. Rice has been quoted as having Freudian slips in which she has imagined George W. to be her husband. Perhaps she could get a job at the Supreme Court, where one of the current justices has the best porn collection outside the Vatican and likes to force himself on co-worker women by saying things like, "Is that a pubic hair on my Coke can?"<br /><br />God Damn! I am glad to see this bunch take a hike.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-76249622162380426442009-01-17T07:59:00.000-08:002009-01-17T08:21:22.285-08:00Why Obama MUST End the Super Rich GiveawayI had not seen the figures before. I had only heard Faux News' claim (that twit Brit Hume was the chief culprit) that the super rich already "pay the most taxes." A <span style="font-style: italic;">Vanity Fair</span> article, "Fairwell to All That" (Feb. 2009) shows just how irrelevant and misleading this statement is: the May, 2001 tax cut was "skewed heavily toward the affluent," and the figures and percentages tell the tale. Persons making $1 million a year paid an average of $53,000 in taxes, while persons making $20,000 a year saw their taxes cut by only $375. Do the math: the million-a-year taxpayer's bill totaled 5%; the $20K taxpayer, 18% (more than three times more). This is fundamentally unfair.<br /><br />Ronald Reagan introduced the concept of a "trickle-down economy," which he and budget director David Stockman dubbed "supply side economics." It did not work then, and it isn't working now. (In fact, Stockman later quipped that he'd only been joking when he came up with the idea, and had no idea Ronnie Boy would actually put it into effect.) The super rich do not invest their gazillions in anything benefitting the poor and middle class (and that embraces most of us). Instead, they buy toys, like private jets, and invest their gargantuan discretionary monies in hedge funds and other things designed to do nothing but make them richer still. <span style="font-style: italic;">They do not NEED tax breaks.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>Obama ran on a platform promising an end to crony cuts in taxes. As the <span style="font-style: italic;">Vanity Fair</span> article pointed out, the loss of tax revenue based on the 13% difference between the two segments of the population resulted in a budget deficit of $400 <span style="font-style: italic;">billion </span>by 2004. This was money that could have improved the infrastructure, funded "No Child Left Behind," and mortgage restructuring. In effect, Bush became a reverse Robin Hood, robbing the poor and middle class and lining the pockets of the filthy rich. Even the fabulously wealthy Warren Buffet said it was a total rip-off.<br /><br />OBAMA! MAKE TAXES FAIR AND EQUAL!<br /><br />Put tax reform at the top of your list of priorities and many of our economic problems will be solved. DO IT NOW!<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-42556099585293071122009-01-13T16:08:00.001-08:002009-01-13T17:14:46.827-08:00ThinkProgress.org's Take on the GWB Parting Shots<h2><span style="font-weight: normal;font-size:100%;" >ThinkProgress.org sat through George W. Bush's final press conference, an orgy of self-promotion and parting gripes with the liberal media<span style="font-weight: bold;">, </span>the latest installment in the ongoing magic makeover of the 43rd presidential administration that came on the heels of a Faux News "interview" with Prick Cheney. I thought the report so exceptionally done and keenly observed, I would preserve it here, interspersed with the Doctor's comments, set off in italics.</span><br /></h2><h2>Bush's 'Ultimate Exit Interview'</h2> <!-- BODY OF TOP STORY GOES HERE --> <p> Yesterday, President Bush appeared before the White House press corps for his <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14448&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">47th</a> -- and last -- full-scale press conference, taking questions in what he called "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">the ultimate exit interview</a>." Though the White House had high expectations for Bush's farewell meeting with the media, telling reporters that it would be "standing room only," the last two rows in the seven-row briefing room were empty. Subsequently, a press aide had to tell <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14450&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">White House interns to fill the seats</a>.***</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Isn't this par for the course? I mean, any administration that gets caught red-handed planting a stud hustler in the press room to ask planned questions designed to make it look good is an administration that would go to any lengths to persuade us that it continues to have the love and respect of the American people even as polls show it in a downward spiral even as the economy heads south as well. Planting a claque into a photo op goes hand in hand with the refusal to allow photographs of the bagged bodies coming in from Baghdad, providing Sean Hannity with the latest GOP talking points, and a myriad of other attempts to manipulate public opinion in an ongoing effort to become the least transparent administration in history.</span><br /></p><p>***Despite job approval ratings <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14451&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">around or below 30 percent</a> since February 2007, Bush "seemed <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14448&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">largely in good spirits</a>" as he pontificated on his years in office.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">A wise choice of words: Remember, this is the president who referred to his "war on terror" as a "crusade," immediately informing those who Bush's good friend Ann Coulter characterizes as "swarthy" Mideastern types that </span>jihad <span style="font-style: italic;">is on the table. Bush was in fact the Pope of Profiteering, as witness all of the army functions that were privitized for the benefit of crony corporations that did not even have to submit to competitive bidding. The only reasons Bush's approval ratings are so high is that Americans are sentimental. Some folks just feel sorry for him.</span><br /></p><p>***Bush "was by turns <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14452&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">impassioned and defiant</a>, reflective and light-hearted, even as he conceded that some things 'didn't go according to plan,'" notes the New York Times.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Actually, nothing he did went "according to plan," as even his crony appointments had disastrous blowback for him. First, he praised the "fine work" of "Brownie" of FEMA fame -- the man who learned just what America's school districts found with "No child left behind": the Bush administration was all talk and no substance. No help for Katrina victims, no rebuilding of New Orleans. Brownie became the symbol of Bush's buddy system. One was reminded of the scene in John Ford's </span>The Last Hurrah,<span style="font-style: italic;"> where the savvy old Irish pol, running for mayor one last time, talks his opponent's halfwit sun into donning a fire chief's hat so that photographs can be taken for the morning edition. Brownie was made to look like a fool; one imagines him having a stiff drink with Colin Powell following the latter's ultimately humiliating U.N. speech, talking about "weapons of mass destruction."</span><br /></p><p> ***"Clearly putting a 'Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">a mistake</a>," said Bush. "Running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake." Bush continued his administration's efforts to <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14453&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">paint his legacy</a> in a positive light, declaring that he had "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">a good, strong record</a>."<br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Poor George! He's a person only a father could love. (That tough old broad, Barbara Pierce Bush probably gave up on him years ago.) The "Mission Accomplished" banner was Bush's fire chief's hat, providing anti-war liberals with all the ammo they needed to paint the prez as a village idiot. In fact, it was about this time that sales of a bumper sticker along these lines began to skyrocket: SOME VILLAGE IN TEXAS HAS LOST ITS IDIOT. Even GOPS thought ill of the Social Security overhaul. Oh, sure, the neocons were dead set on dismantling entirely the New Deal reforms of FDR, but the more middle-of-the-road among them thought the idea of privitizing social security a certain way to lose their seat in the next election. Claiming his is a "good, strong recor" is simply laughable.</span><br /></p><p>***Unfortunately for Bush, the American public believes his administration "will be remembered <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14454&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">more for its failures than its accomplishments</a>."</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Excuse me! WHAT accomplishments.</span></p><p>***Asked if he "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">made any mistakes</a>" while in office, Bush said he had "thought long and hard about Katrina" and admitted that "things [could] have been done better." However, he denied any problem with the federal response to the disaster, insisting, "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14455&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">Don't tell me the federal response was slow</a>." The fact is that the federal response was <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=8871&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">disastrously slow</a>. As the White House itself acknowledged in <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14456&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">a February 2006 report</a>, "the response to Hurricane Katrina revealed a lack of familiarity with incident management, planning discipline, and field-level crisis leadership." A 2006 report compiled by House Republicans slammed what it called "a failure of leadership," saying that the federal government's "blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision making <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14457&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina's horror</a>." The report specifically blamed Bush, noting that "earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response" because the President alone could have cut through bureaucratic resistance. In fact, despite a FEMA official's eyewitness accounts of New Orleans's levees being breached starting at 7 p.m. on Aug. 29, the Bush administration "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14458&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">did not consider them confirmed</a>" until 11 hours later. FEMA did not order the evacuation of New Orleans until 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 31, two full days after Katrina made landfall. Bush even praised the rescue efforts as a "pretty good response."</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, and thouands of taxpayer-purchased mobile homes that sat, rotting, in a field -- which, as it turns out, is just as well: those who were given manufactured housing have health problems associated with leaking formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals from the walls of the units. The recent PBS </span>Frontline <span style="font-style: italic;">interview with an elderly African-American who stubbornly refused to leave New Orleans pointed up the lasting human miseries of those affected: the man's large family is now cast to the winds. He struggled to get insurance money, then money from a program designed to pay off what the carriers did not cover, but he continues to have problems, not the least of which is his isolation from relatives. The point is, the Bush administration just </span>did not care <span style="font-style: italic;">about the mostly-black population of New Orleans.</span><br /></p><p>***Asked about President-elect Obama's desire to restore "America's moral standing in the world," Bush bristled at the idea, saying, "I <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">strongly disagree with the assessment</a> that our moral standing has been damaged."</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">What parallel universe is this nitwit living in? The so-called "Coalition of the Willing" early on revealed sane nations' reluctance to become involved in a Mideastern misadventure prior to the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts, and it is somewhat questionable that we would have ANY friends other than that girlie man running England at the time once the Big Lies started circulating, e.g. WMD's and an al Qaeda link (the latter simply defying logic, given that bin Laden's jihadist methods in furtherance of theocratic ends were just a little bit incompatible with Saddam's Westernized state.</span><br /></p><p>***"It may be damaged amongst some of the elite, but people still understand America stands for freedom, that America is a country that provides such great hope." But it isn't just "the elite" who question the negative effect that Bush's presidency has had on America's standing in the world. As a Gallup fact-check of Bush's comments points out, <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14459&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">69 percent of Americans</a> believe that the "U.S. position in the world" lost ground under Bush. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, "positive views of the United States <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14460&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">declined in 26 of the 33 countries</a> where the question was posed in both 2002 and 2007." "Mounting discontent with U.S. foreign policy over the last eight years has translated into a concern about American power. In the view of much of the world, <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14460&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">the United States has played the role of bully</a> in the school yard, throwing its weight around with little regard for others' interests," according to Pew.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">As another GOP president was wont to say to debate opponents, "There you go again!" What IS it with this "elites"? Does everyone who takes issue with his Napoleanic ambitions qualify as an "elite"? Since when did "elite" become synomous with most of the press, the anti-war movement and liberals in general, and all those who dared criticize our unilateral, preemptive strike against a country that posed little if any actual threat? Remember, John McShame tried to label Obama as an "elitist": remember the Power Point ad showing Barrack with the likes of Paris Hilton? "Elite" is GOP base code for "liberal." Those international polls speak for themselves. It amazes me to learn that almost eighty percent of the world's peoples thought badly of the U.S.A. due to GWB policies. Clearly, the overwhelming support and good will we enjoyed after 9/11 were simply squandered on Bush's Folly.</span><br /></p><p>***Asked to give his "closing message" to the American people about his economic policies, Bush acknowledged that "obviously these are very difficult economic times" while deflecting much responsibility for the economy's troubles. "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">This problem started before my presidency</a>, it obviously took place during my presidency," said Bush.</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Actually, Bush is right here. But if the Clinton administration put Reaganism on steroids, deregulating financial entities and encouraging bizarre experimentation in the mortage industry even as the White House thwarted all meaningful plans for oversight. Which hardly exonerates Bush. If anything, he exacerbated the problems and revved up the deregulation. Cronies in significant positions had nothing to do.</span><br /></p><p> ***He also <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14461&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">vigorously defended</a> his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, adding that he "will defend them after my presidency as the right course of action." "There's a fundamental philosophical debate about tax cuts," said Bush. "Who best can spend your money, the government or you? I've always <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">sided with the people</a> on that issue."</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">He did NOT side with the people. He sided with less than one percent of the country, given huge tax breaks at the expense of the poor and Middleclass America. Trickle-down doesn't work. The super-rich simply hoard or invest their bucks in something they think will bring the biggest bang.</span><br /></p><p> But as the Washington Post noted yesterday, Bush "has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades." The federal government "had a <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14462&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">modest budget surplus when Bush took office</a>," but his administration ran up deficits "even as the economy was growing at a healthy pace." When Bush took office, <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=9793&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">it was projected</a> that the federal government would run a $710 billion budget surplus in 2009. Now, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has calculated that Bush's tax cuts accounted for <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=9793&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">42 percent of the fiscal deterioration</a> between 2001 and 2008. Though Bush claims he "<a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=14449&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">sided with the people</a>" through his economic policies, he really just <a target="_blank" href="http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=9852&elq=11EF82DC44BA4878BEF97D242BBC4F53">squandered their money</a>.<br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">To say the least.</span><br /></p>FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-24057552792778713252008-12-31T10:27:00.000-08:002008-12-31T15:53:50.346-08:00Eyeless in Gaza: Israel 4, Hamas 1I am told that Gandhi's opinion of revenge boiled down to an illustration from Old Testament ideas about "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," the pre-Mosaic desert warlord code, a law that should have ended with the Crusades at the latest but seems to hang about like a bad cold. Gandhi is said to have said something along the lines of: "If every person plucks out the eye of his neighbor, soon everyone will be blind." Demonstrably true given facts on the ground throughout the Mideast, including the new, insane pitting of Hamas and Israel against each other (so what else is new -- shades of Hezbollah's launching of missile attacks against northern Israelis just eight years back).<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Frontline</span> has reported on the war between the U.S. and Kabul governments against the Taliban in the outer regions of Afghanistan, in an amazingly insightful program called <span style="font-style: italic;">The War Briefing</span> [of Obama]. The picture looks bleak, especially given the dire economic straits at home and simultaneous rise of a plethora of international problems, each of which poses its own little potential quagmire. One of the interviewees, commenting on a previous experience in that country, said that the tribal leaders of each clan in Afghanistan live in constant dedication to slaughtering the neighboring tribal leader -- a dead giveaway that Afghanistan is roughly analogous to the Balkans during the Christian-versus-Muslim genocides of the Bosnian War of the early 90s.<br /><br />A very good film was made of the hopelessness of such conflicts with a script from the playwright William Mastrosimone called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Beast.</span> I first thought the title referred to the bestial Afghani and Soviet combatants and to their certain sly slithering and sidewinding in the nature of beasts. But with successive viewings I have decided that the "Beast" of the title is Afghanistan itself. After all, the movie's opening credit is a quotation from Rudyard Kipling:<br /><br /> When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,<br /> And the women come out to cut up what remains,<br /> Jest roll to your rifle and blow our your brains<br /> An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;" name="KonaFilter" ><span style="font-size:100%;"></span></span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">The Young British Soldier</span>). Combat in Afghanistan is for a chosen few, and the problem is, given the age-old hatreds and mistrusts, and given that the Taliban and the tribes have not changed in virtually 1,400 years, and given the terrain and distance of the tribes from the capital, no matter how many troops we throw into the conflict, it will always be a lose-lose situation.<br /><br />Worse, we are now caught in a vise. When the Taliban (and al Qaeda) are defeated, they retreat to Pakistan's mountains, there to await the next opportunity to return and exact their toll on those suspected of betrayal or violations of the laws of strict shariah -- and Wahabbist shariah at that. Pakistan will not help us, because not only are there a good many jihadist sympathizers in their Army, the head of state only maintains his power by delicately balancing pro-Western and pro-Jihadist sentiments. The Pakistani Army is a joke. They make their leaders look like the ersatz Nazi prison guards in TV comedy.<br /><br />On the other side of Afghanistan is Iran. It is possible that we could work a deal with them to keep out of Afghanistan and cease supporting Hezbollah and other Jihadist movements, but given the sanity of their leader, I think this unlikely. If anything, Ahmadinejad is far more insane than Kim Jung Il. At least Kim is not a religious fanatic or theocratic ideologue, and he's having so much fun going through his pornographic movie collection, he seems all but irrelevant. As long as we're negotiating with him, he poses no problem.<br /><br />The problem is Ahmadinejad. To call him an ideologue would be a gross understatement, tantamount to referring to a rotweiler as a "lap dog."<br /><br />Ahmadinejad derives his power from the Shia clergy. He can't go wrong so long as he keeps putting pressure on the West, which is both a <span style="font-style: italic;">shaitan</span> and an enemy of Islam. Remember, the Frontline guest talked about age-old hatreds. With Iran, we have our own, which dates to the ouster of the Family Pahlavi a little less than thirty years ago. He was viewed as a puppet and was replaced with an aging Shia ayatollah at the top of the pecking order. A bur remained in the saddle of the Shah's Arabian horse. The Iranian people have mostly forgiven us (and begged our forgiveness for a previous generation's taking hostages at the American embassy). But the government remains an unabashed theocracy.<br /><br />Both Hamas and Hezbollah take marching orders from Tehran. Althought the economy of Iran are is on the verge of starvation, tossing even massive amounts of aid wouldn't seem to matter much: as long as one is going to Paradise to cohabit with 72 virgins, one can stay hungry a long time. It's a dead-end hopeless situation and it isn't getting any better. Obama's greatest challenge next to the sorry state of our own economy might seem to be the future of the Afghan Expedition. He'd better hop to it.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-28487419338952593922008-12-21T15:05:00.000-08:002009-01-06T17:43:10.012-08:00A Long Goodbye to a Real DickThat prick, Cheney, a real Dick, has been making the rounds of the pundit programs, still completely deluded (and deluding, to some), claiming for example that history will judge the last eight years favorably to the Bushies. He justifies torture as a constitutional right and argues with critics who claim he expanded vice-presidential powers far beyond what the founders intended. Now that his "boss" (actually, his ward), George W. has remade himself by trading the Crawford digs (out in the open and easy to block air space) for a trendy Dallas exurb, thus letting down everyone who thought he was a puppet cowboy, Cheney looks for all the world like living proof of the theory that he actually ran the government, while Rove and Dubya plotted their political futures.<br /><br />In fact, I should think it perfectly obvious that when Obama takes over in January, he is actually taking on powers from a vice-president (or is that President of Vice?), not a president. One thinks back to the days when hemophilic kings were put to things like clock collecting while a regent ran the country. Shrub is now being called "a cheerleader," a reference to this good ol' boy's brewsky broad-hunting days in places like Midland, Texas. Dubya was, in fact, a cheerleader.<br /><br />Time will tell if Dick is ever brought to the High Court of Justice for his violations both of the Constitution and international law -- waterboarding is just the tip of the iceberg. But if I were he I would not make too many foreign trips. To easy to became the next Pinochet.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-42844007255316368732008-12-09T16:59:00.000-08:002008-12-09T17:02:18.338-08:00Presidential Pardon TimeNow that George W. Bush has arrived at that moment in his lameness he can pardon anyone in the country for any crime soever, convicted or not even indicted, I have a modest proposal: Why not grant a presidential pardon to former Sen. Larry ("Footloose") Craig? I mean, let's be fair. If you're going to pardon people like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, why not pardon poor old closet queen Craig?FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-78353468328487464112008-11-25T06:17:00.000-08:002008-11-29T13:41:00.061-08:00What Wouldn't Jesus Do: Dangerous Lunatics, Rap No. 665While reading the new issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">Harper's</span> magazine, I came upon one of those display ads for vanity published books that often appear both in that periodical and others (everything from <span style="font-style: italic;">Texas Monthly</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">The</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">New Yorker</span>). It touts a tome titled <span style="font-style: italic;">Why Jesus Christ Would Never, Ever Vote Republican</span>, written by one Richard John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Siviur</span>. Mr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Siviur</span> is of the opinion that the Republican Party is really "the Party of Big Business," or "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">POBB</span>." <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Siviur</span> says it is also the "Party of White Males" (though he doesn't <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">acrosticize</span> this latter slogan).<br /><br />George W. he <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">dubs</span> the "Thief in Chief." And he says that Bush "personally purloined the 2000 election" and, with Cheney, "manufactured a [<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">casus</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">belli</span>] for war with Iraq where absolutely none existed." After pointing out the statistical absence of African-Americans in GOP-held congressional seats, Mr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Siviur</span> devotes a full paragraph of his ad to welcome "our first black President," and inserts a biographical note that he is an 85-year-old, life-long "Liberal Democrat." (I don't know what his thing is with capital letters, unless perhaps a nod to old attention-grabbing ad ploys.)<br /><br />I shan't buy the book. After all, Mr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Siviur</span> is preaching to my choir. I do wish to take the ad apart and play devil's advocate in part, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">exegesist</span> for the other. For Mr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Siviur</span> has touched upon themes I have long thought of critical importance, especially the increasingly obvious fact that where once the Republican Party was "the party of big business," it is now the party of bailed-out big businesses and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">un</span>-Christian evangelical bigots who got sucked into politics by people who thought they were useful idiots (most of the Bush II administration) and who got caught short supporting McCain because they allowed their gullible acceptance of the Arizona senator. As they've sewn, so shall they reap: they got McCain because they wouldn't support a heretic in a suit.<br /><br />In these pages, I keep writing about someone named Tom, a Republican "friend" with whom I have an on-off relationship based upon a college friendship. We reconciled recently at the death of a mutual friend, and I began to once again exchange emails with him. But the exchange soon degenerated into one of our usual partisan spats, this one revealing more about Tom than I cared to know. The last straw was when he began a sentence: "If Obama survives to be inaugurated...."<br /><br />Uh-oh! Anyone who is even <span style="font-style: italic;">thinking</span> about the assassination of our president-elect is by definition a racist. Yes, I know, Tom didn't write, "Your guy will never take the oath of office," much less, "We're going to get Obama. He'll never take the oath." But, you see, this was coming from someone who thinks that there was nothing wrong with torturing prisoners even if they're not terrorists. Who thinks Karl Rove is a smart forthright fellow. Who thinks most of our problems in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Mideast</span> are caused by the Israeli Lobby.<br /><br />For years, I've been telling fellow movie buffs that my favorite Bergman film is <span style="font-style: italic;">Through a Glass Darkly</span>. It <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">is a</span> movie about "God" (who eventually crawls out of a crack in the plaster in his guise as a spider). But it's also a movie about so many other things, including a writer's inability to prevent his analytical study of his daughter's descent into madness. He cannot help her becasue he is so bent on watching her destroy herself. Because of this documentarianist's inclinations. I maintain friendships with people like Tom. I like to find out what makes them tick.<br /><br />Until he became a lame duck, George W. could not do any harm in Tom's eyes. Only now will he admit that Bush was a lousy president -- and only because "he wasn't a conservative." This is a standard GOP talking point in Republican circles. (One of Tom's heroes is Bill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Kristol</span>.) Tom started out a "Goldwater conservative," but thee kind of conservatism he espouses today would make Goldwater cringe. Tom thinks Ronald Reagan was the best president we've had. No matter that a criminal enterprise was being run in the basement of the White House and when he gave a deposition, Reagan couldn't remember...about 25 times. (Yes, I know, given that he "came down" with Alzheimer's once he left office, it's entirely possible he really <span style="font-style: italic;">couldn't</span> remember!) Tom bought every last U.S.P.S. commemorative postage stamp of his friend Ronnie and makes sure he puts them on mail to "liberals." He won't admit it, but I'll bet he's read Ann <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Coulter</span> and agreed with about 90% of what she says.<br /><br />Tom is a long-standing Unitarian. He would never see the logic of Sam <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Harris's</span> claim that membership in any religion, no matter how socially liberal, is enabling (in the A.A. sense of the term: co-dependent and mutually addicted). Membership in any religion enables evangelicals; there is a commonality of purpose in accepting faith as a justification for belief in a god. As Christopher <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Hitchens</span> demonstrates in <span style="font-style: italic;">God is Not Great</span> (and you can say anything about the author you'd like, even ad <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">hominem</span> attacks on his alcoholism, but he's awfully brave to risk fatwas from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Wahhabists</span> titling a book with so obvious an affront to Allah), religion poisons everything, including (if not especially) politics.<br /><br />The evangelicals became the definition of GOP-ism this last election. There were no other factions to woo, as renegade Republicans deserted the party like rats from a sinking ship of state. The party came to be defined as right wing nut job, especially religious nut job, to put it country simple: dangerous lunatics. Anyone who believes in creationism is a lunatic by definition. The evangelicals firmly believe the earth was created in six days no longer than 6,000 years ago. They also insist that man walked with dinosaurs, turning a cold shoulder to exhaustive scientific evidence that the earth was born about 4.5 billion years ago and that man showed up no earlier than 400,000 years back. At one time, the D.L.'s of the world insisted that the earth was flat (literally; pace Mr. Friedman) and that the sun moved around us in an orbit.<br /><br />These were some of the same folks who fought interracial marriage throughout the South (and in other parts, too; as Randy Newman observed, we should all insist on our freedom to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">discriminate</span> racially). They're the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">PAC'S</span> fighting gay and lesbian marriage in California. They screw in the missionary position, feel guilty about it later, and firmly believe that woman is a handmaid to her husband, separate and unequal. If you believe Tony Perkins is a Ken doll with red hair, you are onto something vitally important in the ongoing "culture war," which is nothing less than 21st century civilization coming to terms with Medieval notions of ethics, including their favorite of late, Machiavelli, for what is Karl Rove if not Niccolo reincarnated?<br /><br />Actually -- and here's the point -- asking what Jesus would or would not do amounts to a capitulation to madness. No such person as Jesus Christ ever existed. The only "historical" record is found in the writings of one <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Yosef</span> Ben <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Matityahu</span> ("Josephus"), and even his short dictum is now disputed. The Gospels? They were written decades after the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Nazz</span> was allegedly crucified. (I say "allegedly" because some Gnostic sects, pointing out that a spirit cannot be nailed to the cross, claimed that he only <em>appeared</em> to die on it.)<br /><br />At the time of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Jesus's</span> alleged existence, the Holy Land was overrun with prophets. We see one in action in the Book of Acts, where Simon of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Gitta</span> (a.k.a. Simon Magus) defies gravity and comes up losing. A good many of these louts were mountebanks and masters of legerdemain. Some were Jewish. I do not mind supposing that there was a prophet at this time who was regarded as a rabbi and thus was known as a "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">reb</span>." Nor do I cavil with insistence that his name was Joshua (<em>not</em> Jesus). <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Reb</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Yeshua</span> is OK by me.<br /><br />But the Christ part is nothing but pure speculation. For one thing, "Christ" comes from Greek, <em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Khristos</span></em>, or <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">anointed</span>. This has a hand- or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">man made</span> stamp on it. It is the nomenclature of myth, not of legend. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Reb</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Yeshua</span> was a legendary figure, as were the various probable models. The mythological models were profuse, from Osiris to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Mithras, Asclepius, </span> and many more. The dying and resurrected god is perhaps the single most common mythological deity and, again points to man's hand, not divinity. These super beings help explain Death and make us more comfortable with it.<br /><br />The divinity of "Jesus Christ" was invented not so much by disciples but by Saul of Tarsus and the emperor Constantine, both for similar purposes. There is a superb scene in the Martin Scorsese film of Paul <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Schrader's</span> script of the Kazantzakis novel, <em>The Last Temptation of Christ</em>, in which Saul (Paul) meets Jesus in a village (following the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">latter's</span> apparent death on the cross). Jesus tells him he's spreading false reports, that his death is, as Twain put it, highly exaggerated. Saul-Paul rejects his criticism and, in effect, tells him to get lost. "Don't you see?" he asks. "You're no good to us alive!"<br /><br />If we take the two hot button issues that seem to obsess evangelicals the most, abortion and gay rights, the bigotry of using scripture to defend the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">indefensible</span> is most obvious. Abortion is older than <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Soranus</span>, who might be called the world's first <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">OBGY</span>. The only thing new about abortions is that when they are done clinically today, the results are about 99% safe and effective. (When done in dark alleys using coat-hangers, as in pre-<em>Roe v. Wade</em> days, the statistic is somewhat lower.) The problem seems to be entirely theological. So-called "pro-lifers" believe that "human life begins at conception," and that moronic belief has infected evangelicals as well. The absurdity of this position should be obvious: at conception, the only "thing" that results is a fertilized egg. One must presuppose God in order to elevate this "thing" into a human life. Human life can only be said to begin at conception if there is a god who dictates as much.<br /><br />The behavior of the True Believers, including the lunatic in Florida who shot and killed an abortionist, the loony Eric Rudolf, as well as the ongoing Vatican (and now GOP platform!) insistence that a fetus must be saved even if its birth kills its mother, is not only insane; it is most <em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">un</span></em>-Christian. Jesus is said to have blessed whores. Now, you'd think that no one on earth is more likely to have ingested abortifacients or submitted to anular blades than the Magdelene. Not one red-letter word escapes the Christ's lips concerning abortion. Nor did Reb Yeshua condemn homosexuality, which might have appeared a bit unseemly, given that he partied most often with a dozen <em>men</em>.<br /><br />George Washington is said to have believed that political parties would be the undoing of American democracy. Had he lived, St. Germain-like, to see today, he would perhaps have revised that to say, instead, "Allowing religion to become a part of political dialogue and the political process will be the undoing of American democracy." Religion poisons everything.<br /><br />Tom and I poke fun at each other's White House -- and in a parallel universe, McCain won the election -- but the poking sometimes gets rough, in which cases Tom has taken to using cutesy PC lingo like "lol," only he puts it all in caps and says it thrice: LOL LOL LOL. He reminds me of a buddy I knew in film school in the 60's who was fond of saying, "I judge people as individuals, and when it comes to [epithet for African-American beggining with "N") and [epithet for Hispanic person beginning in "S"] and [epithet for Jewish person beginning in "K"], I hate every individual one." He always said it with a grin that would make a crocodile blush. We knew he meant it no matter how many teeth he exposed in contradiction.<br /><br />I am too old now to tolerate such shenanigans. And much too proud. The defeat of the Republican Party on 11-04-08 was another nail in its coffin. There aren't many nails left. The job is almost done. Alas, poor Yokel, I knew you well. I can rest assured that the Good Old Posterior is irrelevant and on its way into oblivion because I read a piece in www.politico.com by the African-American pol, Michael Steele, who begs to differ with me. In the section titled, "Return to timeless Republican principles," he claims "Our freedom is from God, not government...<br /><br />"Our prosperity comes from a free people in a free market, not overtaxing, free-spending bureaucrats. We celebrate and protect life, born and unborn...."<br /><br />Whoa! Since when is murder of physicians, bombings at abortion clinics, &c. a "timeless Republican principle"? And how did "God" give us our freedom and put the bureaucrats in place to overtax and over-spend? You can't have it both ways, Michael. The Australian philosopher John Leslie Mackie took God to task when he used common logic to show that belief in God isn't much better than belief in the Tooth Fairy. If God is all knowing, all powerful and all good, why can't he prevent the murders and bombings at abortion clinics?<br /><br />If God is punishing the persons involved in abortions because abortion is "wrong," why does Jesus say to turn the other cheek? Don't you say that because they are "from God" and therefore infallible, the Decalogue commands, e.g., "Thou Shalt Not Kill"? Where were you when Republican Texas Governor George W. Bush became the King of Capital Murder, executing more men (and one notable woman) than any other president in the 20th century. Did God prevent the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean? (The evangelical would quickly claim that the hundreds of thousands who were killed were not "saved," as they weren't, in the main, Christians. What a cruel, capricious, arbitrary -- evil -- God!)<br /><br />It is logically impossible for evil to exist in the world overseen by an omniscient, omnipotent, all good God.<br /><br />Tony Perkins has much more in common with Osama bin Laden than even some liberals would like to admit. When you stand up and oppose gay and lesbian rights and funnel so much money into a media campaign designed to pass an initiative defining marriage according to some moldy Hebraic code that your PAC almost closes due to drained funds, you are just as fanatical in your way as bin Laden in his. Worse, like bin Laden, your ideas threaten democracy, whose basic premises was written into our Declaration of Independence. It does not say, "We hold [this] truth to be self-evident: that all men -- except homosexuals -- are created equal." (Clever fellows will hasten to add, "Of course not; "homosexual," used to describe same-sex orientation, did not come into existence until the Civil War or later, but that is besides the point.)<br /><br />George W. Bush and the Republican Party suffered their greatest humiliation when gasoline was up to over $4 a gallon and, hat in hand, W went to ar-Ryadh to bow and scrape and faux cheek kiss the Crown guy and see if, uh, er, please up production or lower price, crudely put, &c. &c. &c. There was poor George, caught on cam, leaving the meeting empty handed. The symbiotic relationship between buyer and seller was tempered by family ties (the long-standing, legendary Bush-Saud thing), but the lame duck left wanting. This was the Ultimate Humiliation, and it may have gone further to explain the 11/4 result than we can imagine.<br /><br />For years, the Shrub Administration tried to convince us that the Saudis were among our best friends. One can imagine the Crown guy watching the press conference on TV and winking at his yes men. Only in the final days did Bush talk of buying oil from "people who dislike us." I do admire the president's understatement. The Saudis cannot like us, never will like us, especially because the House of Saud must play ball with the mullahs in order to stay in power, a delicate balance struck both for convenience and pocket-lining. At the bread and circuses shopping malls, ordinary Arabians were all eating well and had roofs over their heads, so who is to complain? Doesn't Allah the Merciful look out for his own?<br /><br />Their children are schooled by clerics of the dominant sect, Wahhabism, the desert warlord equivalent of our evangelicals and the Afghani Taliban as well. These people are so insane they think killing westerners and being killed themselves will immediately send them to Paradise where they will acquire 72 virgin (grapes or ladies, take your translation). This is totally bonkers. It is so insane that a relatively sane person -- he doesn't even have to be an atheist -- wants to stand up and scream: "STOP, FOOLS!" Or, as the late Paddy Chayevsky would have it, throw open their windows and scream to the people in the streets: "I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"<br /><br />The Wahhabist "home schooling" consists of indoctrination into jihadism. Why did Arabic parents and friends of the 9/11 terrorists, predominantly Saudi citizens, claim that they had <span style="font-style: italic;">no idea</span> their sons or brothers were involved in such a thing! Why were bin Laden family and friends allowed to fly out of the U.S. when all other aircraft had been grounded? Wahhabism teachest hate. Wahhabists are extreme bigots whose intolerance is an affront to democratic principles.<br /><br />As spokesman for the loony religious right and the Republican Party, Tony Perkins is emblematic. His fascistic frame of mind is best illustrated by his neo-Nazi past. He supported K.K.K. candidate David Duke but, when found out, quickly did a Claude Rains <span style="font-style: italic;">Casablanca </span>cop routine: he was shocked -- I say, shocked! to learn where his money was going. He has been known to make outrageous, totally illogical statements, such as: "The definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is rooted in the order of nature itself....."<br /><br />Nature? Whose nature? A nature that presents the creation of the planet in six days by Yahweh-Johovah? A nature that has mankind walking amongst tyrannasaurus rex? A nature that combated such notions as a round earth and heliocentric universe? A nature that ignores the overwhelming evidence about our species as revealed by the true prophets of our times, Darwin and Freud? (I would put the Hon. T. H. Huxley among this group, but he only agnosticized, which is "playing chicken.") I am sure that Perkins' understanding of "natural order" makes man superior to woman because "He" created him first. Not only that, but "God" took a rib from Adam to make Eve, so she's an after-thought. How delightfully the ancients disguised their innate misogyny and mistrust of women in justifiable holy writ!<br /><br />But wait, Perkins gets much more absurd: "['union of one man and one woman] promotes the continuation of the human race and the cooperation of the mother and father in raising the children they produce." Mr. Perkins, let me introduce you to a divorce attorney; you may not need her now, but you can tuck her statistics in your wallet in case you might need it. Half the heterosexual marriages in America end up in divorce courts. Some of your staunchest religionists, e.g. Ted Haggard, have been exposed as homosexual and excommunicated from the High Church of Evangelical Theocracy as a result, or come back feigning overnight orientational conversion, thanking God for delivering them from the English [Italian, &c., take your pick] vice only to keep fan magazines around "for my daughters" so they can peek at them when they're on the toilet.<br /><br />Or the ones who get caught cheating on their wives, having sex outside their marriages with whores (boys or girls). Or the ones who tell their ignorant, gullible flocks that a gay parade caused God to send Katrina to destroy New Orleans. Or the ones who claim that God caused Hitler's rise to power and the resulting holocaust: it was His way of driving Jews into the Holy Land so that John of Patmos' coded letter to persecuted contemporaries, with its prophecy of a second coming, could come true. I mean, a Final Conflagration between Judeo-Christianith and Islam can just go ahead and kill us all: it's God's Will!<br /><br />These people are flirting with criminal insanity. Bush used the word "crusade" early in the response to 9/11, and if his war on terrorism continues unabated with a new regime, the Final Conflagration is a foregone conclusion. This will be welcomed by the bin Ladens and the Perkinses of this world. They win themselves by seeing all of us lose.<br /><br />Max Blumenthal's portrait of Perkins at theNation.com is devastating. Among other curious titbits, Blumenthal shows Perkins:<br /><ul><li>Addressing the Council of Conservative Citizens, a newly named organization born of the remnants of the old KKK bunch, the White Citizens Council, which Blumenthal characterizes as "America's premier white supremacist organization";</li><li>Using useful idiots from African-American and Catholic interest groups to browbeat the Bush administration to nominate only anti-Roe v. Wade candidates for Supreme Court judicial appointments in an effort to halt Democratic senators from "filibustering people of faith";</li><li>Being mentored by a Richard Viguerie-direct mail fund-raising strategist, Woody Jenkins, who helped found the theocratic bund known as the Council for National Policy (CNP), whose members included R. J. Rushdoony, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell; Amway founder (and convicted tax evader) Richard DeVos, conservative beer brewer Joseph Coors, &c.</li><li>Getting caught red-handed when he made a donation to David Duke, well known white supremacist, to obtain his mailing list, denying Federal Election Committee charges Jenkins tried to hide the Duke payment when, in fact, Perkins' name was on the $82,000 check.</li><li>Sponsoring a closed meeting of his Family Research Council at the Plaza Hotel in New York City where insider trading Sen. Bill Frist was given a "Thomas Jefferson Award," an irony of ironies considering Jefferson's well-known adversian to Christianity, his libertarianism, and his rejection of church-state entanglements. </li></ul>Now, how can I claim can that Perkins is a "terrorist" or no better than one? For one, his campaign to make same-sex marriage illegal, one of many evangelical assaults on human rights. Such campaigns, along with such misguided, Bible-based programs for "curing gays" as Exodus (itself a form of aversion therapy) send a message to young gays and lesbians: "You are not normal. You are abnormal. You need to be treated for your condition," &c. This only makes vulnerable minds assume that what they think or do is a "sin," is "bad," is "sick." This leads to depression and often suicide.<br /><br />It is a proven fact that gay and lesbian teens are four times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual schoolmates. These persecuted teens also become victims of homophobic violence, which activity is reinforced by the religio-hate messages of the "Family" this or "Family" that. Isn't it interesting that the same politicians pushing for laws that deprive the sexual minorities of basic human rights also vote against inclusion of "sexual orientation" in criminal code definitions of what constitutes a "hate crime." Duh! If you are dressed a bit campy and someone calling you a "f----t" blows your head off with a Saturday night special, it's kind of obvious it's a hate crime, right?<br /><br />Tony Perkins, Matthew Shepard died for your sins.<br /><br />Tony Perkins, you ignorant moron! You have blood on your hands. It is not the Blood of the Lamb but the Blood of your brother's gay son and your lesbian aunt. If Jebus really is coming again, He will be pissed. And Tony Perkins is the first person any truly righteous deity would condemn to the bottomless bowels of a hell not even a pervert like Perkins can imagine.<br /><br />No, make no mistake, God will be revealed to be Perkins' own conscience once it shakes off the cloud of unknowing and awakens him from his deluded, anti-democratic dream. I don't mind you having your Rapture, but do it in another universe.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-2105136004774322182008-11-23T07:26:00.000-08:002008-11-23T07:27:43.784-08:00To Paraphrase Will RogersWe're the only nation in the world to go into bankruptcy with our BlackBerries.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-5634736071551815892008-11-16T11:36:00.001-08:002008-11-16T11:55:19.582-08:00Bailing Out General MotorsThe proposed General Motors bailout brings out both the social liberal and fiscal conservative in me; even libertarian conservatives would rather G.M. go in to bankruptcy and, possibly, falter in the end, to no profit to the American people, but my suspicions of hard-line market economics summons up visions of soup lines and Spam (the real kind, not the emails). All those American workers losing their homes and freezing for want of heating oil, which can only go up when O.P.E.C. and Big Oil find a new way to chingle us. (Yes, "chingle." Slang Spanish for "butt fuck," which is what Congress and the multinationals have done to us during the long-running -- pre-Bush II -- laxity in oversight and grossly carte blanch deregulation of the finance industry who probably made all of the last two or three presidents shill men for bullshit and thievery.<br /><br />So part of me says bankruptcy (where is their stock right now, $4 or something?), and part of me says bailout. This latter is repugnant in the extreme. Each time I pass a pickup or SUV I scream, "Guuuuuuzleeeeer!" I see Arab shiekhs shrieking with laughter, lighting real Havana cigars with hundred dollar bills. So why should we trust anything Congress does. They're just whores for K-Street. When a company has been manufacturing Monster Vehicles for decades, fanning the flames of consumption by massive Madison Avenue ad campaigns, loses ground to smaller, cheaper, less gas-consuming autos and starts bleeding its reserves, why should we come to the rescue? You'd have thought they learning NOTHING by the Volkswagen craze that overtook the entire nation in the 50's. My own father, who once joked that they looked like the object of canine rutting (and had a cartoon of that simile to prove it) bought a Beetle. I got it second hand and only had a relapse once, a Firebird, one of the heaviest autos on the road. Guess what happened to Pontiac?) Who?<br /><br />Nope, I come down on the bankruptcy unless Congress can aid the workers with low interest loans and extended unempoyment insurance, plus job re-training and severance benefits at some level. I know ecolibs will say, "The Chrysler deal paid us back." That's the point: Chrysler is one of the Big Three asking for bailouts. As Lincoln said (in a different context): "Too many pigs for the teets!"FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-63019168616175260702008-11-02T13:47:00.000-08:002008-11-02T14:27:43.803-08:00A Tale of Two VotersWe are all racists to one extent or another: biologists say it is "hardwired" into our genetic makeup. I hasten to say, "to one extent or another" because, although many of us grew up hearing racial epithets and, out of a sense of identity, some of us -- probably most, at least when young -- went along with the peer group. My grandmother, who died at 101 a decade ago, never made reference to African-Americans without calling them "nigras." Not "niggers," mind you, but "nigras." I think this was not because she didn't <span style="font-style: italic;">mean </span>"niggers," but because her Texas dialect dictated a variant pronunciation. Her daughter, my mother, referred to her only sibling as her "sistah." My ancestors on that side of the family did not come from Alabama or Mississipi but from central Texas: Austin, in fact.<br /><br />I was predisposed by such upbringing to mistrust and even disrespect "persons of color." My father instilled in me the notion that on some basic level the Declaration of Independence was correct in positing that "all men are created equal," not just all white people. And although I always suspected he had a racist bone or two in his body, I took his position to heart. When I was in college, I defied a city-wide ban on media coverage of a demonstration in front of downtown Fort Worth movie theatres designed to confront the owners' policy of allowing blacks to sit only in the balconies. When I was awarded journalistic society honors that year for my reporting in the college paper, my coverage of the protest was not the subject of my recognition for having penned the "Best Feature" and the "Best News Story." The same people who handed out the honors were employed by the media that agreed on the blackout.<br /><br />And while I was not exposed to racial diversity in college -- I don't think our "foreign students" included anyone from African and other black-skinned nations -- I did graduate work at UCLA, as racial diverse an institution of higher learning both then and now as could be envisioned. One night I attended an off-campus party where people were smoking marijuana and I was asked if I wanted to share a joint. I said, "No thanks. My parents told me, if you smoke that stuff you'll move on to heroin sure as hell." At which point an African-American came through the kitchen door, ducking to allow his almost-seven-foot frame to miss the top of the sill.<br /><br />He looked down at me and bellowed, "You talk too much!" I suddenly realized I had been put in my place by a UCLA basketball player named Lew Alcindor, who had just taken to calling himself by his Black Muslim name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Non-plussed, I could only reply: "I think you're right." I did little talking for the rest of the evening.<br /><br />A year or two later, I was in the Presidential Suite of the Ambassador Hotel, thanks to the daughter of a huge supporter of the Democratic Party, having drinks with the assembly of folks supporting Robert F. Kennedy, who was giving a speech in the banquet hall downstairs. When word broke on the TV of his assassination and death, the entire room erupted with an almost orgasmic wail of sorrow and grief. I looked about. The suite was liberally populated by African-Americans. I felt what they felt, but in subsequent years I had to reckon with nagging feelings I felt as I had because of the circumstances I had found myself in, that I was grief-struck because I felt it incumbent upon me. This would not diminish the fact that when word of the shooting came, my hand involuntarily gripped my glass so hard that it broke the tumbler, cutting me.<br /><br />The murder of Martin Luther King did not surprise me, but every time I hear his "I have a dream" speech, I sob. The nomination of Barrack Obama as the Democratic Party's candidate for president is the most thrilling thing that has happened in this country since the election of J.F.K. It is the fulfillment of King's Dream. It is the promise of equality brought to fruition. Obama's speeches move me almost as much as memory of M.L.K. If he actually wins, racial justice will be seen to have advanced exponentially.<br /><br />Which brings me to two persons I had hoped would both vote for him. Both are friends. Both are in their 70's. One, Marian, was a Hillary supporter; the other, Georgia, an independent who usually votes for Republicans. I had dinner with them prior to the primaries and asked Marian, "If Hillary isn't nominated, will you still vote Democrat?" She said, no, that she couldn't or wouldn't vote for Obama. Georgia said she didn't trust Obama, that he was all talk and no ideas. She would probably vote Republican again, even though it could mean four more years of Bushism. <br /><br />After Obama was nominated, Marian continued to say she would "just stay home." Then, Obama named Biden as his running mate. That changed Marian's mind. She now planned to vote for Obama-Biden. Georgia's mind was not made up, but she still had serious reservations about voting for Obama. She cited his lack of experience, but I'd heard her refer to African-Americans as "N---rs," so I assumed that nothing Obama could say or do would change her mind. She just doesn't feel comfortable around black people.<br /><br />In a way, Georgia represents a generation that is fading fast and will be replaced by open-minded, diversity-supportive people. Obama is not only a breath of fresh air, he is a symbol of things to come. He may lose, but his being so close to the White House is itself a sign of the times and a positive promise for the future.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-5701700315250928592008-10-26T07:43:00.000-07:002008-10-26T07:51:50.263-07:00The McCain Mutiny Court Martial<div class="clear-block"><div class="content"> <div class="clear-block"> <div class="comment-header"><span class="new"></span> Now that the GOPS are deserting the sinking ship (of state, or, rather, John McShame's run for the White House), one is reminded of the play and movie, <em>The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.</em>. In that story, the chief antagonist ship captain, Queeg, is depicted as lording over a U.S. Navy vessel much in the way the movies have portrayed Captain William Bligh, whose mean-spirited dictates prompted the rebellion aboard the H.M.S. Bounty. </div><div class="content"> <p>In <em>The Caine Mutiny,</em> Queeg is depicted as going bonkers over who swiped the last servings of fresh strawberries. We soon gather that the man is a service-scarred schizoid with paranoid delusions. When Humphrey Bogart played Queeg in the film version, he used a facial tic and a compulsive habit of squirreling a couple of ball bearings in his palm while he testified at the resulting court martial of the officers who took command of the Caine.</p> <p>Earlier, I posted a comment saying that the only thing lacking in the Queeg = McShame equation was ball bearings. I now see that I am at least only part incorrect. On <em>Meet the Press</em> today, McShame responded to some tough questions by Tom Brokaw by rolling over and over in his fingers a pen he might have needed for a debate. But this was not a debate; hence, why the writing instrument? Clearly, the pen is McShame/Queeg's set of ball bearings.</p> <p>It was simply pathetic to sit and listen to his stuttering, illogical, non-sequitrous responses. One heard a desperate man, claiming, for example, that he disagrees with the polls. Duh! What are polls but public expressions of opinion. In effect, McShame disagrees with the public. He claims that it will be a long night November 4th. I don't think so. I think it will all be over by 11 p.m. Eastern. Meanwhile, check out the Great Bogart as Queeg:<br /></p> </div> </div></div>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9KlQPX1qiE<br /></div>FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-61137435460467524922008-09-18T11:57:00.000-07:002008-09-21T10:33:21.650-07:00Is the United States Government a Ponzi Scheme?<div>For years, I have dutifully paid my taxes and slaved away to save for retirement and almost a third of it has disappeared in two quarters: does that qualify for "recession"? Given that the administration hires experts to make up euphemisms and has been caught red-handed planting yes-men and congressional hearing-style talking pointsmen in White House press conferences, I don't expect anyone to use the "R" word. But if you look at the employment figures, the closures of finance banking institutuions, the once-quirky, now-berserk stock market, and a half dozen or more other indicators, a recession it is.<br /></div><br /><div>I am as troubled by the bailouts as much as Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby is. You've seen Shelby on the pundit programs: he's a Republican and the ranking member of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee. Shelby's as smart as a whip and knows a pig in a poke when he sees one. He says the Fed can't go on printing money indefinitely and for every destitute corporation with a hand out for a bailout. What happens is, you're borrowing money that can never really be repaid. Those who will pay are our children. Then, there's the certain inflationary spiral that will be an unavoidable consequence. I am tempted to make an allusion to the Weimar Republic. At a certain point, we won't need gasoline to go to the supermarket: we won't be able to buy food.<br /><br />Now, the Dems and GOPS are dickering as to further bailouts, billions to fix the mortgage mess. Some GOPS don't want any mortgage bailouts on grounds the guilty shouldn't be rewarded at taxpayers' expense, while the Dems in the main, reminding us that the mortgage industry preyed on the weak and ignorant, believe home mortages should be included in the fix-it. The Dems are even moving for caps on CEO salaries to corporations benefitting from the regurgitation; enough of these damned golden parachutes rewarding anyone contributing to their own company's disaster.<br /><br />Hey, folks, any way you cut it, this whole shit mess boils down to just this: we're indulging in plain old Biblical proportions borrowing Peter to pay Paul. What, pray tell, served as the collateral for all of those newly printed reserve notes? The collateral is a phantom! The United States of America, Inc., is one giant Ponzi scheme. By the time the little guys just entering the game finally fingure out that all of their money is going to the tip of the population triangle, the top 1% of the nation, the CEO of the USA, Inc. is on his merry way, back to Crawford, the World Capital of Bullshit.<br /><br />Yes, Ponzi! Read his Wikipedia biography if nothing else. (There's also a biography in print.) Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who came, saw, and conquered. He figured out on his very own, most likely from observing Wall Street, that you could fund a pyramidic "entity" that had newcomers paying off the profits to the top co-players. The more new people with funds, the richer the top folk got. That is the way some multinationals operate today: the CEO'S are the Ponzi's. This was one reason McShame sent packing a woman who single-handedly almost demolished Hewlett-Packard and walked off with millions of dollars.<br /><br />But I am divided myself about the bailouts.<br /><br /></div><div></div>You're also setting a poor example and inviting both a plethora of other importunities as well as rewarding the very twits who got the corporations into the mess we're in. Everyone is p.o.'d, and the blame game may be only in the fourth inning. One of the chief villains would seem those CEO'S with golden parachutes. But there's much too much fault to limit it to one group of people. Dems are pointing to Sen. Phil Gramm's deregulation of the finance industry, the opening of a Pandora's Box of evil demons in mortgage lending, a what's what's of horrors with not even a glance, much less oversight. But, wait! <span style="font-style: italic;">Some</span> of the Dems voted for that bill!<br /><br />So we shouldn't be too quick to blame the GOPS. Even Secretary Poulson admits that there was "scant oversight at the federal level," but de-rgulation didn't being with Bush II. But you can bet Obama will make much ado of the fact that all three sponsors of the act de-regulating the banking industry were all Republican. And the subprime recession points to that side of the aisle.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-15071250098034282392008-09-04T10:40:00.000-07:002008-09-04T10:42:38.811-07:00Why Are the Media Attacking Poor Palin?Yes, everyone who questions Palin on any subject, especially the Bush III platform of the GOP is a sexist. Everyone who questions vetting or the selection itself is an anti-female clod. Everyone who thinks Palin is right when she says the Surge was not an out-and-out Iraqi political failure is a male chauvinist pig. Solution: Have women do the attacks on Palin. Dee Dee Myers should be hired immediately as Biden's sensitivity advisor; I saw her on CNN this morning and although she scolded the Dems for making too big a thing of McShame = Bush III, she basically said Palin paled. Get Hillary involved: she can remind voters that Roe v. Wade will soon be toast, McShame having made promises to the religious right (even that zombie Richard Land) to put anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court in the event a perceived liberal justice dies or retires. She can say that Palin is a good mother and a lousy office-holder, illustrating with the official oppression incident involving a highway patrolman -- shades of Tricky Dick Nixon's "Enermies List"! -- indicative of a Bush-Cheney-Rovian type of reverse cronyism. Get good Dem women to speak on Obama ads talking about being pro-choice and pro-family, pro sex education to prevent teen pregnancies, and how Palin tugs that Down's syndrome baby around to compliment McShame's endless use of None-Verb-POW. Make women's rights an issue, and Palin will pale.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-62519310468535504742008-08-23T15:08:00.000-07:002008-09-04T19:07:03.108-07:00Things to Consider Before The Voting BoothHere is a list of things to consider before you pull the lever or electronically record your vote when you go to the polls this November:<br /><br />1. It will no longer do any good for the Dems to claim that Barack Obama will get us out of Iraq and John McCain will not. Now that the White House has done a 180 and sent Condi to formalize a withdrawal <span style="font-style: italic;">with</span> deadlines, the next president, Obama or McCain, will be stuck with a formal agreement between the U.S. and the Maliki government. These things are not entirely set in stone, especially since the current president wants to sidestep Congress and reach an agreement with Iraq, and the once and future king may decide to shred the document on such grounds. (Treaties have to be ratified. Duh!) This might be unwise, as it could alienate Iraqis eager to see us go, prompting public demonstrations protesting the continuing presence of an imperialist invader.<br /><br />2. Swiftboating will know no bounds, and most of it will come from GOP operatives. It may be that the party that airs the cleverest TV commercials during the other party's convention, will get a bump. Nobody, not even Jim Carville, can outdo Karl & Co. when it comes to dirty defamations, but rumor has it they're arranging to lure Larry Craig into the Minneapolis Airport, have him arrested in a toilet stall, and held till the convention is over.<br /><br />3. Although John McShame touts his party's reputation as standing firm against governmental intrusion into our lives, the administration of George W. Bush, a Republican, invaded our privacy in unknown, unknowable, sinister ways that would make Joe McCarthy blush. Now that habeas corpus has been abolished, you can be charged in secret of being a terrorist, arrested, and kept incommunicado without resort to bail, a preliminary hearing, or anything determinative of probable cause. Perhaps Obama will fix that.<br /><br />(To be continued as the contest rolls on....)<br /><br />2.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-59548076958475984682008-08-23T04:47:00.001-07:002008-08-23T04:49:43.229-07:00Why I Despise John McShameYes, McShame tries to hide behind his P.O.W. past as refuge from any criticism, as witness the silly "five years in one house" TV commercial, put out in a desperate attempt to justify John and Cindy's score or so of houses, condominiums, and other digs. But even Obama praises his "heroism" and "patriotic" service during Vietnam. What is lost upon both candidates is the fact that some of us thought Vietnam an immoral conflict America had no business getting involved in, and one that gave our generation a clear choice: to serve or not to serve. McShame chose to do so. I, and many others, chose not.<br /><br />It really didn't matter that we had a draft then. Those of us who objected to the war on pacifistic and moral grounds found ways to stay home. McShame did not. Not even waiting to be drafted, McShame blindly followed his family tradition of signing up: he volunteered to fight a war that was odious to many of his generation. While some of us were participating in protests and sit-in's, Mr. Flyboy eagerly joined the fray. For all I know, he dropped napalm indiscriminately on the Vietnamese people, a latter day Arnaud-Amaury, the papal legate chosen to head the Albigensian Crusade, who, being asked how his troops would recognize a Cathar from an ordinary citizen, said: "Kill them all, the Lord will recognize his own."<br /><br />Given his willing participation in an immoral war, McShame deserves no respect for his service, nor for his imprisonment. We know that many of our captured troops in that conflict were subjected to far greater deprivations and torture yet refused to cooperate with their captors. McShame was not one of them. He did a few cutesy things like telling his tormentors the names of professional football players when requested to list fellow "imperialists," but so what? He caved. Worse, he learned nothing by the experience. Not only did he support Bush's illegal, imperialist invasion of Iraq, he flip-flopped on the waterboarding issue, which made a mockery of his own captivity.<br /><br />McShame is a dangerous man who wants to attack Iran, get tough with Russia (although we now know, clearly, the Georgians provoked their invasion of South Ossetia). The last person we need in the White House today is a militaristic, jingoistic, slavering warmonger like John McShame. As for all of his dwellings, I'm surprised he hasn't gone whole hog and, in response to queries some Iraqi vets are homeless, sleeping in underpasses, and going hungry, said: "Let them eat cake."FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-10610717311893136922008-08-14T15:37:00.000-07:002008-08-14T15:50:14.309-07:00Wag the Dog?Has Hollywood repeated itself, or has history done so? It just occurred to me that perhaps when George W. said he'd looked in Putin's eyes and seen his soul, what he really meant was that he'd seen his evil twin. Psychologically, these two blowhards would seem to have been cut from the same cloth, and it may even be that they mutually agreed to be each other's film studio for their very own wag the dog.<br /><br />Now that attention needs to be taken off Iraq -- although the right wingnut pundits still blab about surge success and goal-accomplishment ("we're winning the war"), there's that nagging question of political success, divvying up the oil monies among various sects and tribes, and reconciling Shia with Sunni so that there's no Balkan style genocide (what a euphemism, "ethnic cleansing"!). These matters can easily be taken off the 24/7 cycle if only....<br /><br />That's it! Get Vladimir to invade Georgia. Between that spectacle and the Olympics, you outdo the Roman emperors' gifts of bread and circuses. You may think I am paranoid, but if I learned anything from the Sixties, it was the slogan, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean nobody's out to get you." Yeah, I know, lousy grammar, weak syntax, but you get the idea.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-1507401103226242932008-08-09T07:36:00.000-07:002008-08-09T08:06:11.560-07:00Light Sweet CrudeNothing upsets me so much as seeing a big pickup or SUV with only the driver inside. When she or he pulls into the convenience store and fills the tank, they shell out three to four times what I do to fill mine, which allows me to think they're more responsible for the ongoing energy crisis because I was wise enough to buy a Toyota Corolla. In a post to one of the egroups I subscribe to, a member made reference to SUV's and parenthetically defined them as "Stupid Useless Vehicles." I soon enough entered my hat into the ring for Fool when I told another subscriber about the definition only to be informed that he owned <span style="font-style: italic;">two</span> of them himself.<br /><br />But, hey, let's face it: SUV's in particular look like dinosaurs, don't they? I mean, notice how many people have simply parked them in the garage, on the driveway, or (as is most often the case in South Texas) on the lawn. And check out what's going on in Detroit: billion dollar quarterly losses. And at your local dealarship. I even heard a commercial by a dealer offering <span style="font-style: italic;">fifteen thousand</span> dollars off the price of a new SUV! And, now that crude has enjoyed a temporary slump in price (all the way down to $125 a barrel the other day), the SUV's and even the big pickups will see slowly rising sales.<br /><br />It's all psychology -- and mass psychology at that. The current SUV owners are using them less because they dislike paying throught the nose. Amusingly, one wag put his frustrations on his posted price sign: "Regular Unleaded: An Arm and a Leg." I mean, you can only amputate an arm or a leg once. And when the other two have been cut off, there's nothing left but the head and the unmentionable. I am not about to contend that all of these vehicles at all times of the day, all week, all month, and all year have only one person inside and are only headed for the inflation station (read: grocery store). No, of course not. During the week, the pickup might hold the implements or inventory of the breadwinner's small business, and the SUV during the school year is put to use driving the most precious cargo of all to local schools.<br /><br />But, generally, speaking, big trucks and SUV's chap my ass. Most have "BUSH-CHENEY 2004" bumper stickers. Some have N.R.A. Some have Jebus fish symbols or "In Case of Rapture, This Vehicle Will be Empty." I don't mind their naive notions about cosmogony, biology, &c., I just wish they didn't throw them in my face. (There are some aspects of Islam that I think have great value; for one, visual depictions of the founder of their religion, Mohammed, are strictly forbidden. That's why not-so-radical Islamists made such ado over the publication of cartoons showing their patriarch as a terrorist with a bomb in his turban.) Seems to me, you have a pretty weak religion if you have to run about with such proclamations of faith on your rear window or bumper. Reminds me of that old homily, "Fools' names and fools' faces always appear in public places."FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12505516.post-49922711157692790652008-08-03T06:11:00.001-07:002008-08-03T06:33:14.922-07:00McShame, Obama, and the Real Race CardAs the presidential race moves through its pre-debate, mudslinging comic opera phase, we see McShame, lacking any innovative ideas of his own and using fear and race as his only weapon, trades barbs with Obama only to further waste time by making an issue of who used the race card first. The answer is simple: Karl Rove. Nobody could have come up with such a seemingly clever, archly ironic TV commercial as the Britney-Paris fiasco. But Barack seems loathe to explain his reasoning in pointing out the true culprit in the who-hit-first debate, perhaps because getting hung up on the race issue is perceived as crippling to his campaign.<br /><br />Don't believe it? Have you heard about the GOP cash bonanza this one TV commercial brought in? Obviously, McShame's base wants more dirt. Obama probably would have only exacerbated his problem by pointing out that the juxtaposition of himself with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton -- young, svelte, attractive blonde caucasians -- would revive a stereotype that should have gone out, even in the South, with the death of Martin Luther King, the Rodney King riots, and all of the talk show ironing out of age-old recriminations in their wake. I mean, after all, has <span style="font-style: italic;">anyone</span> seen the Gregory Peck movie, <span style="font-style: italic;">To Kill a Mockingbird</span>?<br /><br />"N-----s rape white wimin!" There, I said it. In the vernacular of the ignorant, the superstitious, the intolerant, the frightened.<br /><br />When Obama accused McShame of raising the race card, both men knew what he meant (or Rove and Obama knew): all of the old (conscious and unconscious) fears of white voters all over America would be aroused, brought to bear on the current situation, and used to bolster the argument Obama is "elitist." (I actually learned from a white woman that she wouldn't be voting for Obama because "that's all we'll see in the White House is blacks.") McShame's card: fear of the unknown. It's really Bush III just as MoveOn says, only this time, not having fear of Islamists as a viable strategy, McShame is using fear of African-Americans.<br /><br />The pundits asked their guests whether the race issue should be debated head-on, and since it appears to be an inevitable component of the '08 elections, how fully should it be investigated and reported? CNN has started a "Black in America" series. A few pundits have expressed views. But the bottom line nitty gritty is <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>being discussed. The pundits and the pols seem to be saying, "Don't go there." But maybe it's time we should.FlamingLibhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15204403133955827217noreply@blogger.com0