Sleep is hard to find when, looking back, you see you've never been awake. No Utopia   ...W H A T ' S . A . S W E E T H E A R T . L I K E . Y O U . ....D O I N ' . I N . A . D U M P . L I K E . T H I S ?  HOME  COMMENTARY  ESSAYS/STORIES  POEMS/SONGS  LINKS Saturday November 15, 2008........................................................................................................... Clothing Designs from immaculate exception   STEVE KIRSCH   comcast President-Elect Obama's 1st YouTube address 10:36 am | Saturday November 9, 2008.. Confession of a Dunce 7:11 am | When I was 18 and in the Navy I sometimes spent 72 hour liberties at home in NJ. I traveled from Norfolk, VA, up and down the Delmarva Peninsula by means of my thumb. The trip involved a ferry ride across the mouth of Chesapeake Bay from Little Creek to Kiptopeke. This was before the building of the spectacular bridge-tunnel there. Being a studied lover of ignorance (a real dunce) who managed to make it through high school without ever reading a book cover to cover, I had little sense of, or interest in, what went on in the world beyond local happenings. So, during my first Virginia ferry ride (at about the time Barack Obama was born), I noticed a water fountain marked "colored" and the thought crossed my mind, why would they have a fountain with colored water? No, really. I remained stupid for at least the next few minutes until I had to use the john and noticed the bathrooms marked "colored" and "white". Then, bubbling up through the sludge I had been pouring into my brain came the malevolent belch of the concept "segregation". It's not that the idea had not managed to make it's way in there, it's just that I was too comfortable and disinterested to notice. But, Shazam! To say, "At that instant, a light flashed in my skull illuminating my own pathetic dumbness as well as the dumbness of that peculiar idea," would be an understatement. It does not even do justice to the idea of light. But I've changed, and so has the U.S.A. Forty-eight years after travelers criss-crossed Chesapeake Bay in segregated ferries, and I learned that stupidity is not an intelligent option, we have a "colored" president-elect. To recognize the significance of this, all you have to do is murmur to yourself the words slavery, Jim Crow, or lynching - the last recorded one of which occurred as late as 1968, seven years after Barack Obama's birth. But, despite the near miracle of the events of the past week, complacency, as well as stupidity, is not an option. Just because a majority of American voters have decided that "race" is just one more illusion used to maintain a certain monopoly of power, doesn't mean that those who still cling to stupidity won't continue to employ it. In the underbelly of nations whackos watch and wait. Still, the joy expressed from coast to coast at the election of a man who can not only think, but eloquently and believably express the wish that we might actually become a United States of America, is something worth savoring. After eight years spent wallowing in a swamp of division, unity may be anticipated as a needed cleansing. We can only hope, and hope we must. Beyond hope we have to stay on our toes and instantly smack down every irrational bit of gutter politics that would undermine our first black president. We have to challenge all off-the-wall smears of his character and intentions that are motivated by a desire to collapse his presidency in order to gloat, "See?" “Don’t think for a minute that power concedes,” president-elect Obama has warned. Smears and obstacles will occur as surely as the governors who insisted they loathed government contributed to the aftermath of Katrina (and here)… "Government is incompetent, see? We just proved it." And smears will come as surely as they did during the campaign. As much as the election proved America still has promise, the campaign showed that nothing is beneath the dignity of "honorable" and ambitious men and women. Those who, for the moment, have prudently quit their attacks on Obama's character and patriotism in light of his overwhelming win and the mood of the electorate, will be out in force at the first dip in his ratings. Those who've turned on a dime from cursing to praising him (Palin: "God bless Barack Obama!"; Lieberman: "Obama's a genuine Patriot"), will pivot on the same coin to testify again to his mysterious "otherness". As right-wing radio hack Dr. Laura Ingram just telegraphed, "Obama did make history" and "It's not the time to vilify him…" But implicit is the unspoken, "…but the time will come." Regardless of his talent and competency to lead (witness his management of his campaign), Obama will screw up —no president has not. Fair criticism will then be called for—and even required of loyal opposition, but beyond that is the province of odious wing-nuts. Will the nation refuse to travel there again, to that province, stupid and studiously ignorant, ferrying back and forth from fear to loathing, irrationally divided? Been there, done that, not going there again?. This will be a question for historians to study in a hundred years, and for us to answer in the next few. Saturday November 1, 2008.. Oh, if you become V.P. it's Canada for me... 9:07 am | Via 3 Quarks Daily: Wednesday October 30, 2008.. Obama Ad 12:43 pm | Here's the 8/29/08 Obama infomercial: Wednesday October 29, 2008.. Not of justice, but of being rich 4:06 pm | In E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Emma Goldman explains to character Evelyn Nesbit why Evelyn (having become recently newsworthy) has become such a celebrity: I am often asked the question, How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them. Carrying his newspaper with your picture the laborer goes home to his wife, an exhausted workhorse with the veins standing out in her legs, and he dreams not of justice but of being rich. This is the core of Republican political strategy and "free market" capitalism. Sunday October 26, 2008.. A matter of tense 7:43 am | Descent . ...................... ........................... Whatever else you might say about David Brooks' argument here, the accuracy of the first sentence of the following passage is arguably a matter of tense. McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straightjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times. And that’s what makes the final weeks of this campaign so unspeakably sad. "Might have been" or "would have been" might work. But "would be" will no longer work even if he wins, because John McCain the candidate has thrown John McCain the conductor of the straight talk express under the bus. With the following Barack Obama has, if McCain should win by a hair after using the tactics he's used, he will be largely disrespected by more than half the nation. He'd be more in the position of lame duck Bush, president of his base only. Saturday October 25, 2008.. Two Attitudes 10:36 am | Adam Zagajewski in Another Beauty: There are two attitudes that you can take into the world. You can side with the tight-lipped skeptics and cynics who gleefully belittle life's phenomena, reducing them to s series of minute, self-evident, even commonplace components. Or, option two, you can accept the possibility that great, unseen things do exist and, without rersorting to lofty rhetoric or the intolerable bombast of itinerant Bible-thumpers, you can try to express them, or at least pay them tribute. This doesn't mean shutting your eyes entirely to everything light and low. Not smart and capable, but he has great teeth 10:02 am | Chris Mattews had Republican Duncan Hunter on yesterday. Until Matthews called him on the remark, Hunter's best accolade for Obama was that he has "great teeth". Matthews:...we just heard from Congressman Hunter that the winning piece of this man's vocabulary, the winning piece of his resume is that he has a nice smile, he has good teeth. Is that your assessment of Barack Obama, he's the first African American with a real shot to be President of the United States and is 13 points ahead of his Republican rival, that he has good teeth? Hunter: Also a good debater and very eloquent. Congressman, he is also way smarter than your guy, more open to ideas, more likely to listen, and more knowledgable on more issues. Beyond that is Barack Obama's personal courage, which is something you don't hear spoken much about, but its there. The guy knows history, and he knows a little about racism in the nation, and he can see how opponents -- even so-called "honorable" one's like McCain-- can whip it up in their following. Obama knows about Martin Luther King. He knows about Medgar Evers. He knows about Emit Till. And he knows about John and Robert Kennedy. He has not taken up his campaign without a sit-down with Michelle and his campaign staff in which this subject came up. Yet he goes out there knowing he has "target" written all over him, by the most backward and hateful among us who are loathe to let a black man become president. He know the odds and American history are against him. Yet he put's himself in harm's way. This takes courage. Obama does have great teeth, true. But, given the background of the last eight years and John McCain's wholly empty rhetoric, Duncan Hunter's blithe dismissal has no bite. Thursday September 23, 2008.. Spreading the wealth, upward, ever upward 4:52 pm | John McCain wants all worked up over a comment Barack Obama made to Joe the Plumber (which term is starting to aggravate my heave reflex and annoy the shit out of me) —anyway, Joe, like too many people who imagine themselves with wads of money, wants to make sure they get to keep as much as possible even before they make it. I conjure up a picture of Joe conjuring up a picture of himself up to his chin in $1000 bills worring that someone not as astute and entrepreneurially clever as himself might realize some small benefit from his good fortune. Focus on me-first wealth is exactly what got us into this freaking mess. The chain from hedge fund managers, through mortgage bundlers and sub-prime shysters, right down to the guy and gal who wanted more house than they had the money to pay for all bespeak that old gremlin, Greed. So even though Joe hasn't made $250K yet (Obama's line between tax increase and tax cut) he can't help worrying about who might get some of the money he hasn't made yet. he'd sleep better if he concentrated on what he's making now. But such anxiety makes Joe a real American according to McCain-Palin standards. A small business, small town guy with the makings of mogul. If you check out the video of Obama explaining his plan to Joe, it's not all that sinister. But what the McCain campaign siezed upon was the Obama quote near the end of the very cordial exchange which spoke to spreading the wealth. But this is exactly what the Bush tax cuts, the deregulation of energy, banking, and investment industries, the governmental nurturing of lobbying relationships, in short, all of the cozy pro-elite, pro-corprate policies of Republican governance has been doing for the past eight years: redistributing the wealth upward. Upward, ever upward. See, this is the way it works: the "free-market" distribution of wealth upward through tax breaks for the rich is called an American value. It's called good capitalism. But the downward distribution of wealth is called socialism. The sharing of profit among the citizens of a nation is called socialism. The spreading of risk (the bailout) is not socialism, however; it's just ...well, uh ...it's just necessary. It's how free-market capitalism fixes itself in a crisis. In the salad days though, average Americans can just pound salt. Republicans talk and talk and talk tax reduction just short of eternally, then wind up dropping a tens-of-billions-of-dollars war tab and $700 billion bailout bill in our laps. Tell me now, honestly, what benefit will you and your offspring actually realize as result of Republican policies? Monday September 21, 2008.. Switching, conservative voters 7:02 pm | Why some Republicans, conservatives, and independents are switching to Obama. Via Huffington Post by Eric Hirshberg The Video Faked Alaska 7:15, am | Seth Kantner, Alaska Dispatch; Via: Common Dream News Center From up here in the Arctic -- not left or right but north of the campaign trail -- the reality is clear and cold: When John McCain chose Sarah Palin he wrote America out of his will. It's time for us to write him out of our future. More faked-Alaska Hello! Moose-gutting, down-home, small-town, ordinary-folk, friend of Joe-the-plumber, hockey-mom Sarah-six-pak-Palin, spent $150,000 on new duds in one month, which is a wee bit more than your average moose-gutting, down-home, small-town, ordinary-folk, friend of Joe the plumber, hockey-mom, Jane-six-pak, spent. As a matter of statistics, the average American household spends that much in 80 years on clothes. But it's no secret how she ran the tab up so fast. She was shopping at Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, not Walmart. Remember John Edwards $400 haircut? Well, according to one account at Huffington post, "...if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree)." United we fail. Divided we win. 6:30 am | Forget Who is Barack Obama? the real question is, Who is Sarah Palin? And (in light of his selection of Sarah Palin) Who is John McCain, really? Besides remembering that Barack Obama is steady as a rock, there are three things voters must keep in mind going into the voting booth next month: 1. John McCain's age, 2. his health, and 3. the fact that Sarah Palin will be his Vice President. Although McCain's medical report has been released, the NY Times notes, "A critical question concerns inconsistencies in medical opinions about the severity of his melanoma; if … his melanoma is more severe, it would increase the statistical likelihood of death from a recurrence of the cancer. It's no stretch to believe we may wake up in, say, February of 2009 with a President (or Acting President) Palin. The Alaska governor's readiness to assume the highest office in the land has been seriously questioned by many, and runs the gamut from progressive to conservative critics. Since too many on the right tend to dismiss anything from the left as anti-American -including Palin herself who recently suggested that the only "pro-Americans" in the country live in small towns- I'll just throw in a few comments from the right to bolster the argument that, among other things, Palin is woefully unprepared for the presidency. (That's "woeful" in the sense of: Woe unto you who are lured by a wink-and-a-betcha to chomp down on a sound bite and expect to be satisfied; for you shall inherit the Kingdom of Frying Pan) Appearing at a Senate Press Secretaries Association reception, George Will said, Palin is "…obviously not qualified to be President," and added that her Katie Couric interview had been a "disaster." As indeed it had, showing up Palin's scant knowledge of basic information any regular viewer of (anything other than Fox) news might have. And no less than the William-Buckley-founded National Review ran an article by Kathleen Parker who said, "As we've seen and heard more from (her), it is … clear that Palin is a problem … Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there." "If BS were currency," says Parker, "Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." Maybe this is what the McCain robo-call thugger-naught is hoping for, a magical transformation of BS into currency. If the Senator's wand is that magical he ought to be running for Shaman-and Chief, not President. We still have a separation of church and state, after all -though it's been hangin' by a thread. In any case there are other very conservative "thinkers" (I use the term loosely) who are critical of the Palin Fake-Talk express -David Frum for one. Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, said, "I think she has pretty thoroughly … proven that she is not up to the job." Finally (although there are many other critics), conservative columnist David Brooks weighs in with this: "…like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness." So if the prospect of four more years of Republican governance by John McCain in the self-satisfied, policy-image of George Bush doesn't satisfy your hunger for "The Rapture" and "Armageddon", maybe the image of Palin as a Bush clone will do the trick. But a sorry dearth of knowledge is only half of the Palin problem. The other half consists of Hockey-Bomb Sarah's deceit, crony governance, and her willingness to mine the division in the nation by pumping the wells of anger and fear, and accelerating our downward spiral into a banana republic of factions, violence, and their inevitable consequence, martial crackdown. Far fetched? I don't think so. The Bush administration, with the help of congress has already laid the groundwork in legislation following the tragedy of 9/11: we are spied upon domestically (most recent exposé in the news), we are subject to torture (ask American citizen Jose Padilla), preemptive arrest (ask Eileen Clancy, arrested before a protest at a RNC rally), and more -- all subject to the mere direction of the President. So, if the completely reasonable prospect (based upon this current trend under Republicans) of a continued descent of a proud and free USA into second-rate-ism and constitutional erosion excites you, a president McCain or Palin is the ticket to your utopia, the Real America. Yes, according to Palin, many of us do not live in the real America. We live in some fake anti-America. According to Sarah, we're beyond red and blue. In fact, if we're leaning Obama-ward we're black and blue. We're the Anti-America. Specifically, Palin says the real America, "… is in the small towns (in) hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-American areas (it's) where we find the kindness and goodness and the courage of everyday Americans, those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting our freedoms." So there you have it, the rest of us must be lazy, un-patriotic, unkind, evil, cowards. But, as the champion of division, Palin would not be our VP (or president). She would be president of Real America. Sarah the separatist, president of a break-away state, that's the ticket. For the hockey-mom and the POW it's, United we fail, divided we win. Well, maybe for them it is. The rest of us will be left sucking wind. Pedro Meyer 17:18 pm | Via: 3QuarksDaily   We are All Doves   California, USA   American Coffin Monday September 15, 2008.. Hockey mom gets pucked by Anchoragians! 7:25 am | Many Alaskans do have their heads on straight after all. Sarah Palin may be their governor but, by the look and sound of this demonstration, she is not universally loved up there. May their wise sentiments inspire certain credulous folks in the lower 48. Mudflats reports on anti-Palin rally in Anchorage: Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here. Saturday September 13, 2008. Cheney² 8:01 am | Remember a few years ago when Dick Cheney shot his hunting partner, Harry Whittington, in the face? He'd been spending a day drinking beer and shooting quail at the Armstrong Ranch quail shooting-gallery. A quail-shooting ranch is a place they let testosterone- challenged big men like Cheney and Antonine Scalia out with guns to shoot quail that are nurtured to be picked off by "sportsmen". They call it hunting. It's a live shooting gallery for effete elitists. It's great fun for everyone except the quail. Well, with aspirations to follow Cheney into the White House and history, Sarah Palin has a similar blood-lust bent. She promotes shooting wolves from planes. Besides the obvious technological advantage (wolves don't know much about anti-aircraft guns or surface-to-air missiles) this is done in areas of deep snow. Have you ever tried walking in deep snow without snowshoes? Have you ever even seen a wolf in snowshoes? See, the idea is, you fly around for a while in the domain of hawks enjoying the inspirational Alaskan scenery until you catch a wolf minding his own business slogging across some open range. Then you swoop down in your Cessna with a high-powered rifle with a big scope, and shoot the sucker (who can't even make a run for it because his legs keep sinking elbow-deep into the powder). Sometime you miss or wound the animal and it spends the time between bullet and death in pain. This is the kind of environmental policy the Republican nominee for VP promotes. This and Drill-Drill-Drill and drill now. Palin's a well-dressed and well-coiffed lady of the Middle Ages and is apparently a good Bible-thumping woman to boot --one who must believe quite literally in that line from Genesis: And God blessed them (Adam and Eve), and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Flyeth over them and slay them with lead projectiles if need be, and lay waste to the land if thou chooseth. Ok, ok, that last line is mine. Poetic license, but it's not far from the truth. Here's a little video to enlighten you on one of God's gift to women, Sarah Palin. Friday September 12, 2008. Lying like an oval office rug 8:01 am | You don't have to be a carpet installer to know that what we're seeing from the McCain campaign is pretty much a trailer --a preview of the feature, i.e. what we can expect if he comes to occupy the oval office. He will lie like a rug from day one. This is what a responsible president must do (he'll think). Sometimes a president must lie to the people for their own good. We have eight years of precedent (he'll muse). Worked well for our side at least. And his Vice Liar will do the same or worse should the aged McCain keel over during an angry tirade at displeasure with an aide. Theoretically, this could happen on January 21st 2009. We could very well have a president Palin on that day. I get goosebumps and hives just thinking about it. Paul Krugman has something to say about all of this here. ...how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern. I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary. I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts. Empty-Suitism 7:26 am | After eight years of Empty-Suitism gimme someone who thinks! Gimme a president with a plan. Don't give me a chip off the old hack. Don't try to sell me a guy who's single most compelling credential was that he survived 5 years as a captive. That may be proof of a stout heart and great resolve, but sometime great resolve is a filter for good sense. And coming off of eight years of ruinous government by his party, senseless resolve is no basis for voting for him. A man who wants to govern with the same policies as the current empty suit is not an agent for change no matter how loud and frequently he tries to bull-horn it into our ears, and remind us he was a POW hero (which he really doesn't like to talk about, except when he's talking about it, which is almost every time he's interviewed). Wednesday September 11, 2008.... Apology Cards 4:54 pm | More apology cards Wednesday September 10, 2008... Call it that 4:54 pm | The go-for-broke gutter politics of right-wing Republicans is reaching wretched levels in this presidential campaign. The John McCain bull-shit machine is hurling product faster than an honorable man can dodge it. Whatever character John McCain once had he’s spent in spades during the past few years, most furiously since choosing the sugar-coated, serpent-tongued Sarah Palin as his co-liar. They aspire together to be our Liar-in-Chief and Vice Liar. And this is not left-wing hyperbole. It’s gotten so bad even the corporate media, though still clinging to euphemisms, is getting close to coming right out an saying it –saying that John McCain and his new soccer-mom consort, are liars. Joe Klien of Time, for instance, says “... (McCain) is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I’ve ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won’t abet its spread by linking to it, but here’s the McClatchy fact check (regarding it). Or the Washington Post: “From the moment ... Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the ... ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ critics, the news media, and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth. But yesterday in Lebanon, Ohio, and again in Lancaster, Pa., she crossed that bridge again.” MSNBC: ”McCain and Palin together have told a broader story about the bridge that is misleading … ‘I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere,’ (Palin) said in her convention speech last week. “(But) that's not what she told Alaskans when she announced a year ago that she was ordering state transportation officials to ditch the project. Her explanation then was that it would be fruitless to try to persuade Congress to come up with the money.” But euphemisms or not, everybody knows what half-truths, un-truths, less-than-truths, misleading remarks, or fabrications are. They’re lies. We wouldn’t put up with them from friends, family, or our children (imagine scolding pre-teen Alicia with the less-than-effective, “Now honey, stop telling half truths and fabrications, and please don’t mislead or obfuscate.” No, we cut to the chase. We say, “Don’t lie!”). Therefore: my first paragraph above (anything else would be less then the truth :). McCain/Palin’s latest lie is their pretense of offense about Obama’s “pig-in-lipstick” remark. The Democratic nominee delivered it to characterize McCain’s policies. It had nothing to do with Palin, although the Republicans took pains to say it did, and called it “sexist”. But it was all fakery, McCain used the very same colloquialism at least three times before, in criticizing Obama. What’s going on? They lie and repeat the lie. They’re called on the lie, yet they repeat the lie again (Washington Post cited above) and again. There’s only one explanation. They have no character so they don’t care. They will lie to a voter’s face and not blink. They will slander an opponent’s patriotism without a blush. Palin might be as religious as the Pope, but she lies like a rug. If that’s what her religion teaches her, I'd rather vote for an out-of-the-closet atheist. At least they’re honest about who they are. But lies work. That's how we got where we are. As Digby, one of my favorite commentators, put it, “The GOP manufactures a juicy tidbit designed to get the sophomoric kewl kidz (talking heads) excited --- something sexy or silly and always stupid and distracting --- and they don't have to think about all that icky, boring wonky crap that actually affects people's lives. But it works on several levels. “Today, people like Chuck Todd (of MSNBC) and Mark Halperin (Time) are "calling out" the McCain campaign for manufacturing the scandal. Indeed, they are calling them out and calling them out and calling them out, showing the footage, discussing the ‘controversy’ all day and basically doing exactly what the GOP wants them to do --- get it out there.” This is how swift-boating works. At least half of the American public is so cranked on fear and left-loathing they suck “Rovian” sleaze with the same gusto that WWF fans take in a “wrestling” match. They know it’s all showbiz, contrived, and false to its core, but there they are nevertheless, screaming “Kill! Kill!” like the Roman masses at a Christian massacre.” And so you see otherwise normal, god-fearing people, abandoning their own integrity, surrounding the “charismatic” Sarah and the not-so McCain, waving and cheering them on as they deliver yet another raw “fabrication” …’scuze me, lie. But the problem is not just the lies themselves, the problem is that the McCain campaign is building an American house of cards on lies. They're not addressing the issues that will make or break working families and the nation during the next four years. They offer nothing but more of the same in the way of policy energy policy, education, healthcare reform, national debt, budget deficit, ecology, job loss, etc. They deliver their lies only to distract us, hoping we will not notice how empty of solutions their "program" is. If for no other reason than to say, “We are Americans, we are not chumps!” the Republican ticket should be overwhelmingly repudiated in November. As for the niceties of public discourse, Gertrude Stein wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” If that’s so, then what is a lie? Call it that. Enough is enough. 4:48 pm | Having to respond to another McCain waste-of-time remark Barack Obama says, "Enough is enough." But in unprincipled power grabs enough is never enough for the right. As ifnuriating as it may be to have to endure the propagandist bullshit of the Republican do-nothing-except-wreck-the country platform, you will not see the bullshit abate because John McCain has abandoned even the appearance of having any character left. Here's Obama responding: Sunday September 8, 2008. Sunday September 7, 2008 McCain McSame McBush BuCain CaBush McMore McDitto 12:58 pm | Here's John Stewart doing what he does best ...doing what mainstream news should do but doesn't. Check out especially the segment that starts at 5:00 min. in. It's a brilliant little set of juxtapositions. Sunday August 31, 2008... Appallin' Palin 8:22 pm | John McCain's brilliant VP pick is just one more Republican with a viscious streak. Listen to Sarah Palin here, laughing, as a local Alaskan shock jock, Bob Lester, villifies another Alaskan pol, Lyda Green, with typical right-wing vitriol. Nico Pitney of HuffPo says this: Early this year, an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News ripped into Gov. Sarah Palin's appearance on a morning "shock jock" radio show as "plain and simple one of the most unprofessional, childish and inexcusable performances I've ever seen from a politician." So what happened? Palin has repeatedly feuded with the state's Senate president, Lyda Green, over a wide range of legislation. Last January, Palin appeared on "The Bob and Mark Show," whose host Bob Lester despises Green. That's when the trouble started: Early on in the conversation before Palin started to crack up, Lester referred to Sen. Green as a jealous woman and a cancer. Palin, who knows full well Lyda Green is a cancer survivor, didn't do what any decent person would do, say, "Bob, that's going too far." But as the conversation moved on, Lester intensified his attack on Green. Lester questioned Green's motherhood, asking Palin if the senator cares about her own kids. Palin laughs. These people are pretty much nothing but white trash with money. John McCain questions Barack Obamas judgement? John McCain wants to put an air-headed, creationist under investigation for abuse of power, and with essentially no experience, next in line for the presidency when, at his age, with his health, McCain could keel over in the next minute? Country first? I don't think so. Oops! 8:37 am | In the god-works-in-mysterious-ways dept. TPM posted a link to the GOP website. This screen-shot image is not great, but what it says in the circle is "McCain Chooses Sarah Palin", followed by the intended Obama-trashing: "Check out Notready08.com". The truth is an insidious interloper. It can even breach Republican bulwarks. Minneapolice: Just more police-state news 7:05 am | The police in Minneapolis have taken a page from the Bush administration's now pro forma idea of how to govern. It looks a lot like its idea for war. The Minneapolice has been conducting preemptive raids on private households, intimidating residents by busting through doors in swat regalia and big guns, handcuffing them, and generally trying to scare the shit out of them to avoid the sight of protests surrounding the RNC. Is this what our troops are fighting for? To protect a police state instead of a consitutional one? Other residents up and down the street said that the houses targeted were occupied by groups of student-age men and women who had caused no trouble in the neighborhood. They were apparently guilty of nothing more than planning perfectly legal (consitutionally speaking) protests of Republican governance --the "constitution" part is probably what irks the powers that be most. This from Glen Greenwald's site: Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying. ... In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so. You might want to check out how many "fire code violations" you have in your house, especially if you or your children are planning any un-pro-government demonstrations on the town commons. With abuse of power like this will a red-white-and-blue KrystallNacht be far behind? McPander panders with Palin 6:58 am | John McCain said Barack Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election ...that he'd sell the country down the river to win. Then McCain picks as his VP running mate a right-wing, creationist with virtually no experience (especially foreign policy experience) to replace him in the (eminently possible) event that, while he's president, his age catches up with himof him. He does this to gain advantage with women and his conservative base. You could say McCain would rather jeapordize the nation rather than lose an election. Karl Rove got it right -bless his Machiavellian heart-, except for the canidate. Just change "Obama" to "McCain" and "Tim Kaine" to "Sarah Palin" in his following quote and you've got the picture. "I think [Obama's] going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice," Rove said. "He's going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president." Rove singled out Virginia governor Tim Kaine, also a Face The Nation guest, as an example of such a pick. "With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years, he's been able but undistinguished," Rove said. "I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America." From the Anchorage Daily News -gotta be a joke: State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to give her the news. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?" Saturday August 16, 2008. . Required Listening 9:08 am | I listened last night to Bill Moyer's Journal. Moyers interviewed Andrew Bacevich about his new book, the Limits of Power. This should be required viewing and/or reading for all Americans who would like to find our way out of the morass we've followed the leaders into, and which we helped along the way during the previous decades with our rush to consumption (which one time was the name of a disease). This is definitely worth 53 minutes of your time. The Moyer's site lede: America's in a pickle. Our friends, the Russians, with whom we were about to conduct joint military exercises, decided instead to attack some of our other friends, the Georgians, who not only aspire to democracy but control access to lots of oil and pipelines in which American energy companies have huge investments. But when President Bush demands Russia go home and leave Georgia alone, his pal Vladimir Putin - the modern Russian czar - gets that sardonic smile on his face. He knows that American troops are spread so thin in Iraq and Afghanistan that Uncle Sam more resembles Gulliver, tied down by too many commitments, too much hubris, and too many mistakes, than he does to Superman. It's a pickle and a predicament, and it's serious. The limits of American power have never been more vividly on display. That's the subject of my conversation this week with Andrew J. Bacevich. Here is a public thinker who has been able to find an audience across the political spectrum, from The Nation or The American Conservative magazines, lecturing to college classes or testifying before Congress. To those of us who stood with jaws agape as the Bush administration led us, distracted by anger, fear, and jingoism, into a preemptive and totally unnecessary war, this stuff is (and was) obvious, but coming so clearly out of the mouth of a conservative (with solid conviction), it may help others think about who we are and where we're going. We are not going to survive as a free nation without a transformation in our sense of values --which, emphatically, does not mean the "values" hyped by the right wing for too long. No Comment 8:47 am | Head of the State of Inebriation 7:48 am | Maybe this is how we got into the freaking war. What would Jesus do? McClone, or the evil twin 7:25 am | One night a drunk was on his knees under a lamp post searching for his lost keys when a passerby says, “What are you doing?” “Looking for my keys,” says the drunk. “Where’d you lose them,” the stranger asks? “Across the street,” the drunk replies. “Well, how come you’re looking for them here?” “There’s more light here, Silly.” So a dumb joke becomes the logic for war and the general problem-solving strategy of an entire political party: “How come you persecuted a war against 9/11 terrorists in Iraq when they were trained and head-quartered in Afghanistan and most of them came from Saudi Arabia,” asks the world? “Because it was easier pickin’s over here, that's where the oil is, and we couldn’t attack Saudi Arabia because they sell us a lot of the stuff, Silly” As Paul Krugman said,”…the core of Republican policy and political strategy (and its) de facto slogan has become: ‘Real men don’t think things through.’” Somehow the party of the very smart and able Abe Lincoln has become the party of dumb and dumber. And it’s become so without shame and with brutish pride. For example, in a move to bond with anti-intellectuals McCain launched his speech at the big Sturgis, SD bike rally by offering his wife as a piece of meat in the often topless/sometimes bottomless Buffalo Chip beauty pageant, "I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you have a beauty pageant, so I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her, with a little luck, she could be the only woman only to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip!" HaHa. Conservative politics meets wet T-shirt competition. But the exploitation of Cindy was not the only exploitation the ol' oil panderer had on his mind. He was also intent upon exploiting the frustration and financial woes of average Americans on behalf of his partners in Big Oil. Yelling at congress for taking a vacation McCain squawked, “When I’m president of the United States, I’m not going to let them go on vacation. They’re going to become energy independent and we’re not going to pay $4 a gallon for gas because we’re going to drill offshore, and we’re going to drill now.” Drill, drill, drill —the American man's-man's answer for everything. No matter that all the experts tell us that off-shore oil drilling will not affect the price of oil for at least ten years; no matter that oil corporations have 68 million acres of federally leased land upon which they're already not drilling, he presumed nominee was just being a Republican. He was just applying the stupid, but successful, all-purpose reasoning of his party (and of the drunk under the lamppost): Why does McCain want to look for the key to the door of our energy independence on an oil rig off Miami Beach rather than in the Province of Renewables where we’re more likely to find it, “Because it’s more convenient to run an oil-con from an (especially) American oil rig, Silly.” Republicans have raised the aspiration to dumbness to stratospheric levels. The national Republican Party embraces stupidity for the sake of power. They rely on an uninformed electorate to win elections –or to accept the stealing of elections. They love secrecy. Republicans believe that operating in the dark across the street (a la the furtive Dick Cheney) while they pander from a soapbox under a lamppost is how to get things done. This open embrace of ignorance is nowhere made clearer than in the McCain campaign’s castigation of Barack Obama for his successes. They portray him as being somehow unworthy of the presidency. They say he is presumptuous. They suggest he is uppity. Any white Republican candidate coming from Obama’s humble beginnings to graduate from Harvard law School and go on to the United States Senate would be lauded by them as a fulfillment of the American dream. Instead they call him an empty-suited elitist. Using their well-honed pretzel-logic, they twist truth inside out and offer it up for us to bite. Why should they expect otherwise, we’re still chewing their last crumbs? Rachael Maddow of Air America and MSNBC recently summed this all up succinctly on her radio show. She said, “I think that it is wrong, and weird, and Orwellian, and stupid, and counter- productive that American politics have come to the point where the facts don’t matter; where everybody acknowledges that the facts don’t matter.” And that’s a fact that probably also doesn’t matter. To illustrate the Republican party’s descent into dumbness Krugman cites this quote by GOP wag, Peggy Noonan, who once wrote in the Washington Post, “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.” See, intellect is the problem with the world. A simple man like George Bush is the route to well-being. Uh,huh –you see where that got us. Rejecting reason, todays polls say about half of us still consider another four years of Bush, under John McCain, to be wise. I don’t think we’re gonna find our keys under that lamp post. McClone, or the evil twin 7:15 am | Sunday July 27, 2008. One-trick pony 8:21 am | He's a one-trick pony one trick is all that horse can do He does one trick only it's the pricipal source of his revenue And when he steps into the spotlight you can feel the heat of his heart come rising through .............--Paul Simon I know I’m not the only one who thinks that, as a presidential candidate, John McCain is a one-trick pony. His trick is war. His fundamental credential is that he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. His one-note campaign theme is the Iraq war and specifically, the Surge. And yet this one trick pony still is toe to toe with Senator O. Why? Maybe it’s because George Bush was a no-trick pony. Maybe those presently considering McCain as Bush’s successor see one trick as a huge improvement. But when a one-trick pony is up against a multi-trick pony with a brain, it becomes clear a single trick is the nearest thing to zip that you can get, not counting fractions. While Barack Obama is in Berlin addressing a crowd of 200,000 Europeans (many waving American flags), John McCain is holding forth with10 patrons at a German Sausage Haus in Ohio having knockwurst and brot while beating a war drum. While Barack Obama delivers an intelligent, nuanced, and reasoned foreign policy speech, John McCain sings, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” with a twinkle in his eye. Or he answers questions pertaining to the violation of trade sanctions during the Bush administration with a quip —when asked about the sale of $158 million of cigarettes to Iran he says, “Maybe that’s a way of killing them.” We’ve been here before. We had glimpses of the meanness-of-spirit of the current president during his first presidential campaign. These impulses pop up unbidden because they’re honestly part and parcel of who a person is. Think of them as god’s warning lights. “Here’s the straight scoop on this guy,” flashes the Lord: And George-The-Lesser, Governor of Texas, launches into a heartfelt ridicule of the Carla Faye Tucker who had recently been executed by the state. Referring to an interview Carla Faye had given to Larry King just prior to her execution, journalist Tucker Carlson asked then Texas Governor Bush if he’d seen the show. Bush said he had, and mentioned that King had asked the death-row inmate what she might say to him if she could. “What was her answer?" Carlson wondered. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" “I must look shocked,” said Carlson, “—ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.” Even Gary Bauer, another Republican candidate for president, said "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death." But unfortunately, enough U.S. voters ignored the hints of the Lord, so that soon The United States had an institutionalized torture program, and a president with the authority to lock up any American citizen who displeased him –with no recourse to the courts. Fast-forward to 2008: If George Bush was a mean-spirited sub-par candidate who did what he could to avoid military action, John McCain is cut from the same cloth, except he volunteered to fight. But practically speaking, their potential for driving America further into the ground is about equal. In fact, it looks like McCain will do whatever he can to finish bungling the job Bush started, and with even more venom. Let’s take a look at a fuller list of god’s hot flashes: Flash 1. “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” Flash 2. Quip regarding trade-sanction violations in sale of cigarettes to Iran: “Maybe that’s a way of killing them.” Flash 3. McCain angrily calling his wife the “C” world in front of reporters. According to writer Cliff Schecter McCain said, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you C-Word!" (McCain excused himself saying it had been a long day. But Don’t presidents often have long days?) Flash 4. McCain was known as “McNasty” in high school –Schecter again Flash 5. McCain’s publically-uttered gorilla rape joke –punch line by beaten victim awaking from a coma: Where is that Marvelous gorilla? The joke was excused by McCainiacs as “John just being John.” This is what god’s trying to tell us, people! If we don't listen when the Lord speaks we might as well roll up our prayer shawls and have some fun before the axe falls. We’ve got some things to consider: A boy who, in high school, was already called "McNasty" puts this character trait to use, joins the Navy, and drops bombs. He’s shot down, captured, and held in cruel conditions wherein his stubborn nastiness helps him survive. After being abused and tortured for almost six years it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine his irascibility would not be diminished. So now, with a well established propensity to anger, he joins a political party which is congenial to his personality; hits the political trail telling bad, ugly jokes; calls opponents profane names (Schecter again); jokes about bombing Iranians or killing them with lung cancer; and suggests rape victims enjoy their abuse, especially if the perp is a gorilla. So many undertones to god's crystal clear note. It’s a country with a death wish in which a John McCain is running neck and neck with a Barack Obama. John Stewart on Obama's excellent European adventure 8:05 am | Sunday July 6, 2008 . Sad irony 8:19 am | I recently received an email that sums up, in an almost tragic-comic way, the confusion and cluelessness of Americans about the war in Iraq. The message tells the sad tale of a mother who's lost her son in a war trumped up by oil men. A mother who, in her deep desire to pay tribute to him and his fallen comrads, drives around in a vehicle covered with air-brushed images of the stars and stripes, flag-draped coffins filling C-10s, soaring jets, tanks, and helicopters. These scenes completely cover the body of a gas-hog SUV —a Hummer. "I wanted to let people know (Marines) are doing their jobs honorably, and some of them die," said the 39-year-old mother from Portland, OR "I don't want people to forget the sacrifices that my son(B (J and the other Marines made." The poignancy of her situation is clear and understandable. The death of a child is heart-wrenching for most parents. And her desire to give her son's death a meaningful context is also obvious. But the irony of her memorial being rendered on the sides of a vehicle which is a symbol for the war's real rational should be equally as clear. That it's not is another indication of how out of whack some people still are about the reasons for this woman's son's death and the deaths of over 3000 other young Americans. Finally SUV sails are way off, and it might be karma that American car manufacturers are getting creamed by foreign competitors for their stupidity. Sometimes it takes a hard blow to the wallet to see reality starkly. The launching if a pre-emptive war of choice didn't seem to do the trick, the adoption of torture techniques to interrogate the possibly-not-guilty meant little, the mounting death toll of American service personnel seemed to have little effect, the growing animosity of the rest of the world toward the USA failed to make a dent, but now that gas has topped $4.00 + a galllon, we're all upset. But unfortunately, even with all of that, some of us still don't get it. It's a sad commentary on who we are. Ironies may be both sad a cruel. And maybe I'm being nit-picky, but images plastered on the skin of a gas-guzzling SUV to memorialize men who've died in a war fought because we're a nation addicted to oil (which, until now, has been unwilling to change its ways) somehow seems an unfitting monument —even if it's one created by a devastated mother. Pod person 7:50 am | Where's the fire in the belly? Where's the heart of the mantra for change? Oh, the mantra may still be there, but where's its heart? Where's its soul? Obama has disappeared down the chute of ambition and been replaced by a pod person. Caving on the FISA bill has so far been the worst of it, but the general drift to samedom is definitely there. Though the differences between Obama and McCain remain huge, you can't help but have the feeling that the drift of the US further into politics of ditto will not abate with an Obama presidency. Several years ago the fear crept up my spine that, having studied the presidency of the anti-democratic George Bush, its aggression and arrogance and the impunity with which it's been carried off, the amazing ease with which he's gotten away with it, all future presidents would simply embrace its notions of power and carry them forward. I continued to hope otherwise, but I have the stinking suspicion that Barak Obama, in his position on the FISA bill, is doing just that: heading off down the trail blazed by his corrupt predecessor. If we were hoping for a return to American democracy after Bush, it may not happen. The truth may be, Yes we can't. It may take another revolution. Maybe I'm wrong. God, I hope I'm wrong. Saturday June 28, 2008. Smearsville and Manchurian Candidates 12:25 pm | In a WaPo article today Matthew Mosk examines the anatomy of a smear; specifically the one that portrays Barak Obama as a closet Muslim. Or, as someone suggested, a Muslim Manchurian Candidate. But, if we're talking about Manchurian Candidates (that is, sleeper enemies nefariously slipped into the democratic process by ruthless self-interested entities to take it over and run it into the ground), George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Carl Rove fit that profile pretty well. They may not be radical Islamists, but they sure know how to implode a Republic. Anyway, the article by Mosk traces the origins of a lie-ladened email; specifically, the one about how Obama is not really a Christian, but is a Muslim. Bullshit is what was found. What Are We, Romericans? 8:04 am | Michelle Obama said she had never in her adult life been proud of her country until the 2008 presidential campaign. I knew what she meant. With just a simple google you can find info about the near-genocide of native Americans (to make room for white Europeans to build a nation), and the reliance upon slavery to grease the wheels of our fledgling economy, to our history of racial discrimination and the non-enfranchisement of women. With all of that, any patriotic, butmodestly honest American might have similar feelings. We may have things to be proud of, but these are not some of them. What Michelle Obama was expressing was her pride that the nation had risen above much of our history by the mere fact of her husband's candidacy. Aren't we all please by that —notwithstanding the attacks of those who are practiced in the high art of smear? Meanwhile, I've never been as ashamed of my country as I have since it became clear that the idea of torturing humans was something the nation appears to find acceptable. It's obviously more acceptable that $4.00 gas. There's lots of outrage in the news about the price of crude, but precious little about the crudeness of torture. Bob Herbert, in his NYT column today is right when he says that torture, for most of us, is very abstract. When was the last time, for instance, that you saw someone forced to stand naked in a stress position for hours on end. And how long ago did any of us perform our last electrocution? If these things happened within sight of the checkout counter of the local supermarket maybe they would have more excited our compassion. But with the brutality occuring conveniently out of sight, in remote prisons such as Guantanamo, or others in Afgahnistan and who knows where else(?), it's hard to imagine what torture actually is –and hard to believe how it brutalizes both the tortured and the torturer. Yet all of us feel the acute, personal pinch and pain of expensive oil. Ouch. For certain of the religious among us it must be a tough trick to juggle their conscience in one hand and what they're willing to accept as required for "security" in the other. For them a potent image of torture is central to their faith's iconography. Crucifixion. Many of them are pained to think of the brutal scourging and killing of Jesus at the hands of the Romans, as if it happened yesterday. But the same people are silent about the immediate torturing of men (some of them beaten, tortured, and simply released), Tourture probably taking place as we speak –at the hands of Americans. Bob Herbert: For most Americans, torture is something remote, abstract, reprehensible, but in the eyes of some, perhaps necessary ... Reality offers something much different. We saw the hideous photos from Abu Ghraib. And now the Nobel Prize-winning organization Physicians for Human Rights has released a report, called “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” that puts an appropriately horrifying face on a practice that is so fundamentally evil that it cannot co-exist with the idea of a just and humane society. The report profiles 11 detainees who were tortured while in U.S. custody and then released ...without ever having been charged with a crime or told why they were detained. All ...were badly beaten. One was sodomized with a broomstick ... and forced by his interrogators to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him. He fainted, the report said, “after a soldier stepped on his genitals.” Officials at Physicians for Human Rights said extensive medical and psychological examinations were conducted — and in two cases prior medical records were consulted — to help corroborate the testimony of the detainees. The organization has a long and credible history of documenting such abuses... The detainees ... were abused at facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Three said they had been subjected to electric shocks. One said he was stabbed in the cheek with a screwdriver and hit in the head and in the jaw with a rifle. For a nation that testifies to be overwhelmingly "Christian" and which "believes in God" to the tune of 90%, this ok-with-torture attitude seems not just odd but schizophrenic. They say Jesus said, "Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me." They didn't say he added, "Unless they're terror detainees." So what are we now, Romericans? Saturday June 25, 2008. Love and hate 10:59 am | I get a lot of emails that run the gamut from brilliant to banal. I get fuzzy teddy bears saying corny things. And I get a lot that share the wisdom of kids. Given the national political dialog and our attitudes in the international sphere, this quote from a six-year-old named Nikka is more than apt. As a matter of fact, it's apt even if Nikka didn't really say it. If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate. With thoughts like that Nikka may grow up to be crucified. Pot and Cancer 9:58 am | Here's another example of the supremacy of ideology over science. It will probably come as no suprise to anyone that the government has been supressing research regarding the beneficial qualities of marijuana. Yup, it's true. And it's been supressing for a long time. In fact, the first experiment documenting pot's potent anti-cancer effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest federal bureaucrats. The results of that study, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana's primary psychoactive component, THC, "slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent." Life through a micro-mesh Bible strainer 8:15 am | Now that his rebuke of Sponge Bob Square Pants is part of religious history, James Dobson is after Barak Obama. This is not surprising. It was bound to happen. Dobson's world view is so narrow not much fits within its confines. And Obama, having the temerity to have his own views about what he finds in the Bible, was certain to piss Dobson off. Here' some of what Obama said in a speech that Dobson doesn't like: "Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader. This is a legitimate question, there being more Christian sects in America than there are cereal picks in a grocer's aisle. Whose indeed? But Dobson thinks, Dobson's, of course. Should we expect any more from a guy who sifts his thoughts through a micro-mesh Bible stainer even before he has them –a guy who discards a huge portion of god's diverse creation as corrupt based (ultimately) on his own judgement as to what is good and what is bad? I'd sooner expect truthfulness from Dick Cheney. Via HuffingtonPost Saturday June 21, 2008. Old story, new story 2:08 am | English professor and writer Charles Johnson, in an article at The American Scholar, winds up with this observation about the back-story of black Americans:  ...if the old black American narrative has outlived its usefulness as a tool of interpretation, then what should we do? The answer, I think, is obvious. In the 21st century, we need new and better stories, new concepts, and new vocabularies and grammar based not on the past but on the dangerous, exciting, and unexplored present, with the understanding that each is, at best, a provisional reading of reality, a single phenomenological profile that one day is likely to be revised, if not completely overturned. At the moment a black American is the Democratic nominee to be President of the United States, Johnson's essay on the "end of the Black American Narrative", has some heft. Thursday June 18, 2008 . Free to see the forest and the trees 9:04 pm | Somewhere along the line John McCain forgot how our system of government is supposed to work. The man's a little confused -and no, it has nothing to do with his age, it's more about being a Republican who's drooling to be president. Drooling to be president is, first, not too attractive; and, second, it makes you say stupid things. The senator, fretting recently about the Supreme Court's decision to honor the constitution regarding the treatment of alleged perpetrators of terror, complained that judges and courts are not accountable to voters. He said this as if it were some bizarre, anti-democratic conspiracy hatched by liberals. The idea, however, goes back to the founders themselves. The concept's pretty simple, and logical. If the courts, like the other two branches of government, were as subject to the short-term whims of voters, no one would be safe from the whims of wing-nut politicians who pop into the system at intervals to whip things into a lather. Crack-pots like Tom Delay and Dick Cheney could write all sorts of laws to reflect their self-serving notions of human relations and we'd have no recourse. The courts, being somewhat insulated from the fickleness of voters (who one minute want to be free people in a just society, and the next want a Papa President with fangs to keep them safe no matter what), are free to act rationally -and legally- over time. They can exercise prudence and judgment rather than hop on whatever jingoist band-wagon happens to be picking up steam in any given decade. Courts are designed to take a long view. They're free to see the forest and the trees. Upon hearing of the Supreme Court's decision, McCain at first said "I don't agree, but let's move on." He should have left it at that. But next day, after a night with his political advisors, we got McCain's second reaction. From the senator's retake we now know that would-be president McCain has a pretty shallow understanding of the role of the courts in a Democracy. The guy they like to call "maverick" (as if that's what he is), quotes Chief Justice Roberts' dissent to the ruling about Guantanamo prisoners. Like the supreme Supreme, McCain also complained judges are unaccountable to voters. Thank God! But as writer S.Kadidal says at the Huffington Post, "That is precisely why they are well-situated to … hold the executive branch accountable for its abuses and incompetence. Measures that are popular with voters - including … the notion of detaining foreigners without legal rights or judicial review - often leave us less safe than we would have been without them" The constitution was not conceived to grant its rights and privileges as if we lived in Utopia. Poet Wislawa Szymborska fills us in on that long dreamed-of place in her poem of the same name. She says that Utopia is an "island where all becomes clear", where "the tree of understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It". In Utopia, the poet says, there is the "Valley of Obviously" over which towers the mount of "Unshakeable Confidence" whose peak "offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things." But, says Szymborska (big but): "For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, /and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches / turn without exception to the sea. / As if all you can do here is leave and plunge, never to return, into the depths. / Into unfathomable life." In other words, life ain't so neat and tidy. Utopia might be a wonderful place, but those who were smart and brave enough to set the foundation of our nation never, for an instant, thought we lived there, or ever could. They were too realistic for that. That's why they wrote the Constitution. The constitution was not created for the good times when everything is brimming with justice and very cool. It's not for the times everyone agrees; when strife is distant, and the wolf is not at the door. Who needs a constitution when everything's A-OK? You need a constitution when everything is not A-OK, when people don't agree, when the wolf is not just at the door but in the bedroom eating grandma. That's when you need laws and firm guiding principles to keep the predators in suits from feasting on the riff-raff. But John McCain, of all people, fails to apprehend this simple idea --McCain the man who spent tortured years in a prison with no recourse. Maybe, in his lust for power, he just forgot. He wouldn't be the first. If any government, on the authority of just one man -a president even- can imprison people, keep them confined, and torture them(!) without even an opportunity to suggest he got the wrong guy, forget about the price of gas, you and your kids have got a much bigger problem than that to keep yourselves occupied in the immediate future. Not all enemies come from without. Thursday June13, 2008. ... Bush McCain McBush BuCain CaBush McCush McBain McSame 12:59 am |   How low are you willing to go in the "war on terror"? 12:16 am | How low is the average American willing to go to sell their soul? What price is too great for"safety"? How much can one get for a safe soul these days? Anyway, over at Low Road, Tiger Red, fills us in on our prison ships, and things like that. The home of the brave and the land of the free with –prison ships. Doesn't this seem just a little dissonant? What's your soul worth on the market today? I'm voting Republican because the idea of America is old-hat and dangerous 12:05 am | Here are the best and only reasons to vote Republican. There's a slew of them, so take your pick. Or choose them all and really show how much you hate the idea of America. Monday June 9, 2008.. More right than Wright 10:40 am | It’s painful to watch politicians jump through religious hoops. But American politics requires a certain nimbleness in metaphysical matters. In many ways our past was light years ahead of our present in that the brains that laid the foundation of American democracy did not tangle themselves in myth to the extreme we do now. Listening to Barack Obama carefully pick his way through press questions about his religious life and beliefs following his resignation from his troublesome church made me wonder how an average person would handle such an inquisition. How many Catholics dumped their church after the revelations of sexual abuse of children by priests, and the conspiracy of bishops to ship pedophiles to other dioceses? How many evangelicals have renounced their memberships upon discovering the Jimmy Swaggart's and Jim Bakkers in their midst. How would they have handled questions about their continued attendance at services in spite of such news? How many Jews abandon their synagogs rather than live with the story of King David arranging the death of his lover’s husband. And how many Muslims are putting distance between themselves and their Koran at the news of suicide bombers and decapitations in the name of Mohammed? But in American politics all candidates have to negotiate minefields of irrationality with the agility of thirteen year-old gymnasts twisting and bouncing their way across a mat. In a society split into smithereens of creeds and religious philosophies some sect is bound to find offense at something. You can’t sprint through a briar patch without coming out with wounds. Yet this is exactly what we expect of our politicians. Not only are they responsible for what they do or say, they’re responsible for what their pastors do and say. They’re responsible for what their fellow congregants do and say. And they’re responsible to what their scriptures say even though the range of what they say runs the gamut from “Love thy neighbor” to “Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” It’s hard to keep up with the contradictions, yet we expect presidential contenders to do so and yet remain rational enough not to send up a nuclear strike to unilaterally obliterate Amalek’s entire family down to his last donkey. It’s a magic circus out there! Having been badly stung already by the antics of Reverend Wright and rebuked for them not only by the hypocritically corrupt surrogates from the Bush administration, media hacks such as the chronically hysterical Bill O’Rielly, but by his Democratic opponent as well, Barak Obama carefully tip-toed through his explanations. Who could blame him? In a press conference called to explain why he’d left his church, Obama chose his words so as not to hear them later, skewed and tape-looped back-to-back on FOX “News”, through an entire 24 hour news cycle. What an American religious litmus test means in politics is that we create controversy where none need exist. And we encourage lies. Personally, I think we’d be better off if politicians were areligious; at least I could trust them more. I wouldn’t think they were twisting their philosophy and going to church to comply with the nation’s split religious personality and its demand for “faith” —as if religious faith was the same thing as faith in God, or goodness, or truth. It’s hard to make a religious critique in a room full proselytizers, but being critical of religion is as legitimate and necessary in a democracy as being critical of anything else. Hypersensitivity to religion can get us into trouble. It may create a climate for tortured positioning, and it often leads us (under divine authority) to twist the truth to fit our creeds. By demanding religious credentials from our politicians we often sell ourselves short. As founder James Madison said in 1774 in a letter to William Bradford, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." In finally splitting with his church I think Barak Obama has helped to further fit his mind for “noble enterprise” and “expanded prospects”. I hope when he and his wife do find another church to nurture their professed faith in Christ it will be one more in tune with his hope for a less divisive society and politics —one more right than Wright. Wednesday June 6, 2008.. Crossing Demographics 10:40 am | Gene Robinson in his WaPo column asks us to stop and consider what the Obama campaign has done and overcome. The obstacles between Barak Obama and his goal of becoming the Democratic nominee for president were truly formidable. The nation's history of racism and the perceived invincibility of the Clinton machine were daunting enough to have made the present outcome seem impossible. But it was not impossible. As Robinson says: A young, black, first-term senator -- a man whose father was from Kenya, whose mother was from Kansas and whose name sounds as if it might have come from the roster of Guantanamo detainees -- has won a marathon of primaries and caucuses to become the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. To reach this point, he had to do more than out duel the party's most powerful and resourceful political machine. He also had to defy, and ultimately defeat, 389 years of history. It has not been a mean feat. And it was not carried out with the meanness we've come to expect of our politics. This was the thing most gratifying about Obama's method. Even during the Rev. Wright events he was able to come away without diving into the mud himself. In fact he faced the challenge by elevating the discourse rather than wallowing in it. Besides Barak Obama's commitment to change the way he would run his campaign, its success was also measured by the inspiration he brought to it and how that inspiration drew in supporters from across the country's demographics. At the Huffington Post, writer Al Giordano had, until the advent of Obama's campaign, resigned himself to the splintering of America into smaller and smaller factions. He observes: The American home had become a bunker. People gathered around the TV, then the TiVo and the computer screen, and when they did briefly emerge from their bomb shelters it was to sterile office and workplace environments, where they are subordinate, or to socialize or worship generally with people very demographically similar to themselves. Worse, the bunkers themselves have become echo chambers and, by and large, dysfunctional and disempowering places, in which all the injustices of the world are compressed and internalized, often with violent and despairing results on the individuals inside them. But Giordano marvels at the cross-demographic happenings of the past few months and, among other things, points out two developments as most significant. He says: The Obama campaign is the first mass multi-racial collaboration in the United States since the Southern Civil Rights movement. and A critical mass of progressive Americans are learning political discipline again. Summing up Giordano says: Obama and his team have not only drawn millions of Americans out of their dysfunctional bunkers and market niches to collaborate across those lines again, but he's created and trained a new wave of community organizers with the discipline and the understanding that "no drama" essentially means putting the community ahead of individual neurosis and self-indulgence. For those few that carried those community organizing seeds across the desert all these years, this new and fertile societal terrain - upon which those seeds are now being planted - is nothing short of a miracle. Wednesday June 4, 2008. Mushroom Salvation 9:55 pm | Here's a fascinating talk about the almost magic mushroom. Via Thursday May 29, 2008. What if I really could be president? 9:55 pm | Flying off into the same fantasy world that swallowed hapless George, foolhardy Icarus (these days known as John McPander, a.k.a. McCain), last week laid out the itinerary of his own flight to the sun. Remember the myth of Icarus? Ignoring strict instructions from his dad not to fly too close to the sun, young Icky strapped on his new wings (feathers glued with beeswax) and took-off into the blue. But thoughtless Icarus over-reached and singed his feathers. He also melted his wax and, sweating like an executive poser trying to spit out a coherent phrase, dropped (feathers flying) into the Icarian Sea never to be heard from again. Good riddance. Anyone that clueless doesn’t do the world much of a favor hanging around. We invent and tell these tall tales to learn from them, but some people never learn. Some get so hung up in the finger pointing at the moon they never see the moon. In this tradition Senator McPander, (old enough to know better) ran a recent ad that dissed reality. In clips from a speech we see him, an old soldier-shaman, picking through tea leaves and the innards of an ox prophesying (without a hint as to how he’d pull it off) that by the end of his 1st term, the middle-east would be stabilized, nuclear terror would be reduced, border security would be strengthened, energy independence advanced, wasteful spending reformed, health-care choice delivered, and economic confidence restored —and all this with an elephant on his back. Bada-boom! mission accomplished, 2013. I’m stunned Mr. Maverick didn’t throw in that we’d finally be getting all those flowers we were promised from Iraqis when we invaded in 2001. But there’s been a lot of blood and bouquets gone under the bridge since then. We were never told those flowers would be for thousands of funerals.   It’s as if McPander is so eager to celebrate his own mission-accomplished he’s doing it even before he’s elected. But the senator, for all his experience, doesn’t seem to have learned that mission-accomplished celebrations are a lot easier to accomplish than actual missions accomplished. Anybody can throw a war-party, but somebody responsible has to come in and clean up the mess. In his odd trance-like speech McPander murmured: In 2013, at the end of my term “The Iraq War has been won … Iraq is a functioning democracy … al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated … Abracadabra. “Osama bin Laden has been captured or killed … there's been no major terrorist attack in the U.S. … Iran and North Korea have renounced nuclear weapon … the size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased and are now better equipped…” Alakhazam! “… in 2013 there's been a substantial increase in veterans' benefits … the genocide in Darfur has been stopped … the United States has experienced several years of robust economic growth … Americans again have confidence in their economic future …the world food crisis has ended…” Hocus pocus. McPander spins his yarn as if believes in the same voodoo wreck-o-nomics that’s been hexing us for oh, too long. We don’t need a shaman, we need an emergency operation by someone who can distinguish between scalpel and a magic wand. A different shade of “stay the course” just doesn’t cut it. We need a new way of thinking –of visioning. Well like to think that age and experience confer wisdom. It’s comforting. But sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Think of some old codgers you might know who haven’t grown an emotional or intellectual inch in all their long lives. And think of the Rumsfelds and Cheneys who cobbled together the mighty disaster we call Iraq. What’s more youth does not necessarily signal the lack of insight, ability, cleverness, understanding, or wisdom. In fact Albert Einstein was twenty-six when he published the General Theory of Relativity and thirty-six when he proposed the Special Theory. And by age twelve Mozart had written numbers of sonatas, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. John Kennedy was elected president at age forty-four. At age thirty-three Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. And it’s written that Jesus was in his early thirties when he delivered the Sermon on the Mount and inadvertently started one of the world’s great religions. And age clearly does not signal wisdom or understanding. At age 100 Senator Strom Thurmond had still not renounced his earlier racist views. Past James Hagee, at age sixty-six was calling the Catholic Church the “Great Whore” and insisting Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment of New Orleans for its sinful ways. And The Rev.Pat Robertson was sixty-eight when he claimed the acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and possibly a meteor. Abandoning wisdom McPander was against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them, was against torture before he was for it, wants to continue a war that is going nowhere, embraces the policies . Oh yeah, following the same course our debt to China will go poof, our puppet Shah will arise from the dead, we’ll find a ten-trillion-barrel sea of oil under Jersey City, all greenhouse carbon will disappear from the atmosphere, dead zones will vanish from the seas, there’ll be a chicken in every pot and a Hummer in every garage, corporations will care more about people than obscene profits, fundamentalists will finally shut up and listen to Jesus, and we’ll have invented a time machine to take us back to Florida in 2000 and redo the last eight years so we won’t even need McPander’s fantastic rhetorical phantoms! We have to be smarter than we’ve been. We cannot fall into the fake hope that doing what we’ve done these last 30 or 40 years is working. Look where it’s gotten us. As Dr. Phil would say, “Has that been working for you?” Previous Posts 05 / 17 / 08 Video : Starry Starry Night by Don McLean, with paintings of Vincent van Gogh   0