"Beware any blog that has the words musings, thoughts, and ramblings in it. This is a clear sign of the bad, boring amateur writer as deer poop is for a hunter."
Couldn't resist the beauty of it--a band called Defeatist giving up the ghost--and seemed an appropriate way to "call it quits" to my own quitting, that is, my long abstinence from this blog.
In further incongruous news, Sasha Grey, who has also been abstaining from her former career as a porn star, is in the rather sticky position--not the first time, to be sure--of having to defend the authenticity, not the legitimacy, of her recent reading to elementary schoolers. Of course the two are presumably connected: because of the backlash of those troubled by a former pornster interacting with young children, school authorities are denying it ever happened, published photographs and a statement released by Grey notwithstanding. Never underestimate the bureaucratic ability to refute reality if it threatens their status quo.
As for questioning the validity of Sasha's Reading Corner, I can only play pragmatist, and say: whatever gets kids through the library doors, these days, is alright with me. Still, I think her former vocation has more allure for the student's parents, who might actually know who she is, or was, not to mention the media, whose coverage is guaranteed by such an event. So, in that case, well done to Ms. Grey's publicity team and Red Cross America's promotions department. Better to ponder might be why it is we need any "stars"--sexualized or otherwise (or are all stars sexualized?)-- to promote reading to children (because, you know, despite our celebrity-obsessed culture, getting "personalities" to encourage other things, like sex and drug abstinence, has worked out so well...). And although it feels uncomfortably weird to bring it up now, I'll reveal the shocking truth of who it was that engendered my literacy as a child: my grandmother.
The latter part of which was one sentiment levied at the U.S. after 9-11, implying that until then we hadn't experienced a strike on our homeland from abroad by a non-state actor, meeting one of the major requisites for most definitions of "terrorism," despite the oft paired allusion to our "last" major attack on Pearl Harbor from an imperial Japan. But state-side terror was here long before the war on terror, of course. Islamic-terrorists had already attacked the WTC itself in the '90s, though to much less spectacular effect, so perhaps its oversight can be forgiven.
But also, I think, we're known much more for our home-grown terrorists and/or psychos-fucks who either go for mass casualties or political assassinations, or both--and not for nothing. In the '90s, again, we had McVeigh's bomb and student-stalking in Columbine. More recently we generated our very own Islamo-flavored terrorist, the Ft. Hood shooter. Not to mention four dead presidents and a couple that came close (a few attempts, and one assassinated almost president--RFK), and the almost slaying of a Congresswoman that left half a dozen others dead. A demographically-difficult anomaly in American political-violence is the FALN, a Puerto Rican independence movement that raged against U.S. imperialism from within the empire, but based outside the national boundary--locavore vengeance or import reprisal?
(Will this old chestnut, the second sentence, ever not be said by community members and reported by journalists?)
So now Norway, who has been a fairly-committed ally of the war on terror, but hasn't either bent over backwards for multiculturalism compared to others in Europe or had as much as a far-right backlash, has their own homegrown terrorist--though not of the political-persuasion du jour. He's a anti-immigrant, anti-government, cultural-degenerationist, from the Christian right: two parts McVeigh, vehicular explosion and gov-hate; one part the Columbine boy's patient hunting; add a dash of Loughner's Delusion, I'll call it, the conspiratorial mindset and the belief that a lone act is necessary to change the world; shake or stir; chug. Welcome to the club; membership doesn't necessarily come with advantages.
Or does it...
[I had a quote from the same NY Times article that I lost, along with a few others and half of my writing on this blog, due to overheated computer and the apparent lack of autosave function of blogger, that the Times decide to delete from the article--as well as adding other parts--overnight. It said that this hideous event was actually a good thing, because it will bring attention to the radical right fomenting across Europe, and specifically in Norway. My reaction:]
Whoa.
But still:
Mr. Romarheim said in some ways the homegrown nature of the attack made it harder for Norwegians to accept. “With 9/11 in America, people could ask, ‘Who are they?’ and could pour their rage out on someone else,” he said. “But we can’t disavow this person, he’s one of us.”
When looking at the face of "evil," it amazes me that they usually do look like monsters, or at least there seems to be something off-putting that differentiates them from the rest of us. But perhaps that's just magical thinking: the desire to be able to protect oneself by recognizing horror. Or it's just the way our brains work; once we know someone has done something horrible, we can't help but interpolate meaning into the knowing smirks of Loughner (see mug shot) and, say, Casey Anthony, and wonder, how can anyone not see the madness lying in wait?
Or something like that. Listening to Brian Lehrer's fill-in today, and was struck by just how ridiculous budgetary/austerity/taxes (no, I mean, revenue)/default discussion has become. Actually, they were talking about the potential effects of the recent EPA-empowerment by the Supreme Court. (Yes, that SCOTUS, the conservative one; still, Kennedy, the swing vote, seems to "go both ways" almost equally, and here's an example of his liberal-lean.)
(Detroit)
Offering up the conservative viewpoint, as WNYC/NPR hosts are wont to do in the name of balance, but also to be batted down by the usual left-leaning guest, Andrea Bernstein conflated two common refrains from the right (talk about taxes/regulation "hurting job creators" and "killing jobs") into one delicious, if not menacing, concern: government intervention is "killing job creators."
(That's what happened at Coney Island, right? Nah...)
Now, I'm pretty sure she didn't actually mean to say conservatives think the government will start executing small business owners (funny how the right usually only mentions them...) or CEO behemoths (no, that's only Obamacare and senior citizens... but they're not "producers," so who cares?). But she can be forgiven given the ferocity of conservative objections to any austerity decisions based on reasonable economics (spending cuts AND tax--uh, I mean, revenue--increases) that make it seem like anything but cutting the size and scope of the government will destroy the economy--or at least the part of it who are still doing extremely well.
(Chernobyl apparently didn't have enough regulation...)
Perhaps this was too cynical (and/or petty) a thing to bring me out of my blogging-hibernation, but these days, on the brink of--again, already?--Armageddon or at least the end of America as we know it, we could all use a good laugh.
He just read it on air--it's as rambling (as one sentence can be) as the stuff I've heard from Laughner. This isn't the first such non sequitur from Palin since she's been tweeting. But it wasn't a tweet. Why not? And, of course (?), it's just in defense of herself, equating the safety of ALL of our children with "anyone" who is blamed for inciting violence. Yeah, Palin, who put a gun sight on Giffords' district.
Oops, there was more from Palin to Beck, but that's just the clip he read and the media has picked-up on. This is the second time I've heard it. Ah, a problem with live posts. Corrections.
We don't know much about the guy except that he's obviously crazy and no type of politically organized conspirator like McVeigh--but that doesn't mean he didn't have similarly conspiratorial ideas about society and the government in particular. There was the guy who got stopped on his way to shoot-up a non-profit, caught with black-helicopter lit suggested by Beck on his show.
Let's be clear: this guy was probably no tea-partier. Yes, they're loud and petulant and perhaps get off on the violent imagery of revolution--as Che shirts on Leftys illustrate too--but they haven't actually been violent.
This was indeed a political act. A premeditated murder of an elected official at a, though relatively minor, political event. He had been to something similar where apparently he was snubbed when he asked her an incoherent question.
Loughner was not just spouting jibberish around grammar - see this article today from Gawker, which describes the right wing conspiracy theory around grammar.
"The Southern Law Poverty Center's Mark Potok, whose job it is to keep track of the various crazies this country breeds and nurtures, links Loughner's bizarre fixation on language and grammar to the theories of a man named David Wynn Miller—or, as he styles himself, :David-Wynn: Miller. When Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown contacted Miller, he said he "absolutely" agreed with Loughner's assertion that "the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar." Miller told The New York Times that Lougher had "probably been on my Web site."
Why Is Jared Loughner Obsessed With Grammar?So who is David Wynn Miller? According to Miller himself, he is a "Plenipotentiary-Judge" (and the King of Hawaii); he's also a 62-year-old former tool-and-die maker from Milwaukee. Miller's been selling his particular (and particularly bizarre) strain of the right-wing anti-tax "sovereign citizen" movement/conspiracy for years now, and gotten more than a few people thrown in jail for trying to use his theories. A visit to his website gives you a glimpse into the world of "QUANTUM-MATH-COMMUNICATIONS":"
Jan. 11 2011 11:51 AM]
So this was personal. The personal becomes political when paranoid delusions subsume politicians--and perhaps buttressed by an environment where dehumanizing political opponents in an Armageddon-ish battle for our country's soul is commonplace.
(Yes, from the Left too.)
Now Palin's taken down the crosshairs from her website. I'll take that as at least a tinge of guilt. Best comment during a Lehrer guest trying to get at the mental state of the shooter otherwise marred by his virulent anti-pot bias (to ridiculous to get into--basically blaming schizophrenia on pot (!)):
Tricia from Brooklyn
It's time to discuss our culture which celebrates the cult of personality of murderers who do this for the notoriety. Can we talk about this man's actions without mentioning his name or plastering his face all over the media as a murdering celebrity? Can we stop enticing deranged people with the promise of instant celebrity?
A relatively minor Dem from a Red state far from me. But now I'll remember her forever. I would have been content not to.
And it goes back to the time before she was even elected to the state legislature, back in the late 1990s, when she was a businessperson in the city of Tucson.I knew her then.But, interestingly enough, in the 2000-2003, she was a legislator and we worked on what we can do in Tucson to ensure that the University Medical Center had a very high-tech, functional, world-class trauma center.
She was involved in that process back in 2003.And we have one of the best.And, as I looked down at her, I was reminded of how we worked together to provide the trauma center that is saving her life.And it was -- for me, it was a very moving event.
A good demonstration of how a public good can be of vital self-interest.
Was looking out the kitchen window just now, and outside saw one of the kids across the way, looking through a bag for something. What Xmas goodies would be hiding outside in below-freezing weather, I'm not sure, but I was convinced it must be just that, something holiday related --what else would he be doing this afternoon? From this distance I couldn't make out what he finally grabbed, but perhaps it was only a soda or sweet-treat (hey, they have their laundry and dryer outside, why not save on refrigerator space?). Still most likely what he and his family, like a lot, if not most, people on this block, in this city, across the country, and many other parts of the world, are doing right now--celebrating Xmas.
Leaving aside the meaning, practice, and politics of the holiday itself for the moment, it shares with other such days or events a reflected ubiquity: part of what makes occasions like these transcend the norm is some kind of self-identification with a prevailing tide. Of course, this is just an extremely amplified quotidian condition. (You might say that in a city, especially like NY, this everyday experience is generally more amplified than the rest of the world. Riding the subway at certain times of certain days allows quite a bit of certainty about where people are going or what they're doing--going home, "out," to work, to school, to a game, or, especially this time of year, shopping--and a bond can be formed around it. But, then again, NY, as much as or more than any other place, has such a diversity of peoples and cultures, that at any given time there are more divergent streams of human activity to temper whatever calendrical monolith might be at hand--disasters, natural and otherwise notwithstanding. Indeed, this is one of the many things I love about NY. So it is true, at this moment, that any place outside the city in any direction has a probably greater homogeneity of holiday than does my charming Bushwick block. That said...)
(disclaimer: no he doesn't)
This above-average unanimity can be both beautiful and terrifying. Most migratory birds having already fled south, their stationary brethren remain: pigeons still share the fluid simplicity of their group-think flight, even in the most casual and daring aerial acrobatics, that we, begrudgingly perhaps, admire from our earth-bound in(if you consider that we on the ground move as individuals more easily)dependence, and are left with our self-identities intact. If hesitant with appreciation, perhaps it's only the formality of their movement that can't help remind us of the lock-step of jack-boots, from the twentieth century and of today. Although China's displays of mass-maneuvering now titillate for those with Olympic fervor, their neighbors to the east prepare for thermonuclear Armageddon with similarly militaristic moves, and dressed not too dissimilar to boot.
NY in a way gets a special dispensation for being especially Xmas-y, despite our low-density celebration, and yet not in spite of but for our dour and multicultural norm--everybody's rooting for us (of course, Hollywood and literature haven't hurt). In a similar fashion, the city has now become sacred ground for those who, before almost a decade ago, would've have rejoiced if Manhattan ever wound up underwater (ironically, if puzzlingly, many of the newly devout still would). The same could be said though of most I've known, including those who were there, who now morn the loss of the towers, despite their own unique aesthetic and economic villainy they maintained while standing.
For all my resident lonely-Jew-on-Xmas status, I've had a handful/fair share of uniform Christmastime. But, today, like many, I'm the outsider looking in. Only, and here's why it's actually really hard to ever be completely alone--no matter the feeling or lack of corporal or even digital proof--there are plenty of other people similarly, for want of or for wont, passing the day like any other Saturday and yet are singularly aware of narrow focus of so many around, if for no other reason than it's a little more quiet around than usual. But, like in front of some window display, standing in the cold, there is a warmth, actually and emotionally, to be felt in a group.
Holbrooke is dead. Apparently working as U.S. envoy to AfPak, despite bringing an end to the Bosnian war and being involved in the infamous Pentagon Papers, literally broke his heart. Damn, he was a crafty bastard if nothing else; good to have around and on our side. If I were the superstitious type, I'd say this doesn't portend well. Luckily, I'm not.
Despite my moderate bent, sometimes it's not a pretty sight.
(D.C. Metro, Thanksgiving weekend)
Senate Begins Debate on Tax Cut Bill But while the Senate looks set to pass the $858 billion package, House Democrats have protested with a raucous "Just Say No" rally. Read original story in The Wall Street Journal | Friday, Dec. 10, 2010
DADT Repeal Dies In Senate Harry Reid needed 60 votes to cut off debate on the defense authorization bill and get to an actual vote. He got 57. Read original story in Talking Points Memo Talking Points Memo | Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010
Obama Administration Retreats on Pollution Rules The EPA has decided to hold off new regulations on toxic industrial emissions fearing such environmental protections may cost jobs. Read original story in The New York Times | Friday, Dec. 10, 2010
Senate Republicans Kill Benefits for 9/11 Rescue Workers A fully paid-for piece of legislation providing health care coverage to 9/11 workers sickened by exposure to toxic fumes--sounds like a bipartisan fantasy, right? Wrong. Read original story in The Washington Monthly | Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010 Senate Tables DREAM Act The student immigration measure made it through the House on Wednesday but was tabled in the Senate Thursday because Harry Reid doesn't have enough votes to stop a Republican filibuster. Read original story in The Hill | Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010 Obama's Tax Deal Infuriates Big Donors Major donors are expressing "extreme disappointment" and considering withholding their donations in the 2012 election season. Read original story in The Los Angeles Times | Friday, Dec. 10, 2010
November's elections showed that the country is getting increasingly politically divided. Unlike the big GOP win in 1994, Republicans this time around won back the House without any real help from metropolitan areas, which remained largely Democratic. The GOP gains came mostly in districts "that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole," notes the Washington Post. The good news for Democrats is that they continue to win among minorities and whites with more education, but they are increasingly losing working-class voters. While that's good news for Republicans it's also a shrinking percentage of the electorate. "Republicans do the best in areas that are typically not growing very fast and don't look like the present, or certainly the future, of the country," one Democratic strategist said.
Can you blame those enraptured in the Beck-ian fears that have taken hold of "white" (whatever that means) America (or Europe for that matter)? Yes. Is it understandable? Yes as well.
Fear is often the result of ignorance; however, this is not the case here. Whether by first-hand experience of whites who have indeed seen the number of non-whites increasing in their lifetime or who, living in less "progressive" areas, get it indirectly from the assertions by the Right (see Beck/Limbaugh/McCain even) or the Left (see above and social science), they are aware of the demographic changes going on around them. So they aren't unaware, ignorant; they just aren't smart enough to use that knowledge to be unafraid of its consequences.
To be sure, as the the percentage of non-whites increases, so will their share of the economic--and political--pie. But that's as it should be, logically if not ethically. Only, if one conflates the natural evolution of society's statistical balance, a process that takes time and shifts only gradually, with their own immediate circumstance--the non-smart part--than we can understand how they arrive at fear; they become reactionary.
Certainly there is a part of "middle"/"white" America who are looking at the long-game and don't like what they see--again, not ignorance but stupidity. Stupid because they are fearing the loss of something that never existed--surely not in any of our lifetimes--of a "white" culture, of the "real" America for which the pine for so dearly. (Even if true, no love-loss here.) It's simple prejudice; once again, a mere manifestation of stupidity.
But here's the thing: despite the slight tilt in electoral politics this fall--slight in what it says about the psychology of the country despite the exaggerated affect on our somewhat antiquated political system and the horse-race media mentality that spins its coverage--doesn't mean we're mostly stupid. It doesn't even mean that most who voted Republican are dumb. There's plenty of reasons to vote the bums (whoever they happen to be at time) out besides straight race-based fear. Mostly just that: whatever their persuasion, there are a whole lot of bums. Most of the old blood was blue and the new blood is red.
If anything, it says more about our increasing impatience, perhaps due in part to our decreasing attention span, and lack of faith in politicians to get anything done. I say perhaps about the attention span thing because at this point there isn't the data to back it up. But also because, in all the blame the 24hr news cycle has been receiving for this apparent circumscribed mental faculty, maybe something has been missed. Has the exponential media coverage of the politics so revealed the inherent inertia and seediness of the process that our reaction--abhorrence, frustration, and, yes, fear; from the Right and Left (see displeasure (ha!) with Obama)--is justified? Perhaps even a good thing? Perhaps.
Can anyone say WikiLeaks? For whatever diplomatic muck has been stirred up so far, can anyone say that, in the end, it isn't a public good? Not me. In the face of almost a million released documents, the best a tow-the-line general on The Daily Show this week could muster was that it might cause a national security problem--might?--while at the same time saying Assange is a bigger--not just as big, but bigger--threat to America than Al Qaeda. Sorry cool-general-that-is-fairly-progressive-on-other-issues-of-foreign-policy--though not on DADT, which Stewart gave him a good drumming for--but I call bullshit.
I'm sticking with my homeboy Robert Gates on this one:
Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: “How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel." …
Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets.
Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.
Keep speaking power to truth, brother!
Just because you're critical of a country doesn't mean you're an anarchist. --Paraphrase of Daniel Ellsberg on WNYC talking about WikiLeaks
OK, not really. But I love that we finally have a tea-patsy (I'll get to that later*) who makes no bones (he probably uses this phrase, because, you know, he "works in construction") about his flagrant prejudices--against everyone who’s not male, white and right--and total lack of governing skills. This tells us two things, at least, about the people who support him: they are equally prejudiced and have no interest in making government any better, only negating its existence.
It also wakes us (or maybe just me) from the somnambulism that this is New York City and "it can't happen here," in such a progressive northern metropolis. (Well, actually it can't, but, for better or worse, we're not just us. We’re a big-ass state full of rural and suburban upstate communities where this guy has all his support. It was Rick Lazio that took the Republican vote in the downstate counties.) We can't be blamed for this indulgence, after the usually status quo-loving Mike Bloomberg recently came to the defense of the downtown Islamic center (and Constitution and reason), and lulled all of us (or just me) into thinking the divisive moment had passed--north of the Mason-Dixon, anyway. But apparently it hasn't, at least until November 2nd.
But is he really a racist/sexist/general scumbag? The jokes, the comments, the idiotic ideas. But let's focus, as most are, on the jokes, emails actually, that he "forwarded" to a "select group of friends.” (Must not have been too select if they got out, huh Carl?) Defenders, calling into Brian Lehrer on WNYC (two out of three, aggravatingly and surprisingly, were women), claimed they don't make him anything, except maybe someone with a sense of humor. I'd agree, only, for one of the cartoons mentioned, it's a racist sense of humor, thus making him a racist.
Why not “call a spade a spade,” as one caller offered what she thought was one of Paladino’s attractive qualities? She suggested this right after denouncing the specific charge of racism from the email; Lehrer commented on her choice of words. Was she so oblivious to the fact that that expression shares a very common racial epithet for blacks, making her an idiot, or was she purposefully using thinly veiled language to tout his, and her, racist leanings?
All of which is a good distillation of the conundrum we find ourselves in, gazing into the psyche of these tea-freaks: either they really are that clueless, and that’s what passes for being anti-establishment these days—in part, now that The Man es moreno—or they’re not as dumb as we’d be comfortable believing. Paladino knows his audience; hell, he might’ve leaked the damn emails himself.
Hot Carl, by M. (thanks!)
“I’ll take you out!”
And if to prove my point, Paladino is now on video threatening, goomba-style, a journalist who had the gall to challenge him about unsubstantiated attack on his opponent, Cuomo, concerning something he himself is admittedly guilty—out of wedlock fatherhood. And, more tellingly, the reporter was from The New York Post, the super-conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned city’s daily. Paladino doesn’t have a problem with just the left-wing media conspiracy, but with ANY media.
Both of these, the threat and that it was against an ostensible ally, bring out the larger point—it’s not so much the obvious hypocrisy involved, but that it reveals what people who like him don’t care about. This isn’t about politics or, what conservatives might usually call, morals; it’s about tearing down the system, which to them represents, and is represented by, progress of any kind. This is the extreme-libertarian ideology.
However, despite the tea-partisan antipathy toward their institutional brethren, Republicans, as Paul Krugman points out in The New York Times, the latter shares their anarchic lack of policy or any real agenda, at least when it comes to fiscal policy. I would argue that the tea-partiers have necessitated the Republican’s shift rightward into pure platitude, devoid of the desire to help the country or even “make sense.”
“So how did we get to the point where one of our two major political parties isn’t even trying to make sense?
The answer isn’t a secret. The late Irving Kristol, one of the intellectual godfathers of modern conservatism, once wrote frankly about why he threw his support behind tax cuts that would worsen the budget deficit: his task, as he saw it, was to create a Republican majority, “so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.” In short, say whatever it takes to gain power. That’s a philosophy that now, more than ever, holds sway in the movement Kristol helped shape.
And what happens once the movement achieves the power it seeks? The answer, presumably, is that it turns to its real, not-so-secret agenda, which mainly involves privatizing and dismantling Medicare and Social Security.
Realistically, though, Republicans aren’t going to have the power to enact their true agenda any time soon — if ever. Remember, the Bush administration’s attack on Social Security was a fiasco, despite its large majority in Congress — and it actually increased Medicare spending.
So the clear and present danger isn’t that the G.O.P. will be able to achieve its long-run goals. It is, rather, that Republicans will gain just enough power to make the country ungovernable, unable to address its fiscal problems or anything else in a serious way. As I said, banana republic, here we come.”
I got your cartoon right here, Carl.
(A still from a cartoon remake of Night of the Living Dead.)
Callers also said that everyone gets these kinds of emails "nowadays." That's not the case for me. The few times I have, I either spammed the sender, or, if I knew them and didn't just want to just dismiss them (family or friends), I would tell them to "cut the shit;" perhaps not always in those words. Of course, nowadays prejudice (except for Muslims, at the moment) isn't as overtly bandied about in mainstream speech; it's coded in more appropriate ways, though sometimes not very much, as with this guy.
For one thing, humor, as it is for many touchy subjects, can be a chief mode by which extreme speech, whether you agree with it or not, can gain social acceptance. Where I grew up just below the M&D line, in a MD suburb, one of a few Jews until high school, I was hardly ever called a kike or Christ-killer (thought it happened), but I did hear a whole hell of a lot of Jew jokes. Both made my heart flush and my throat swell just the same, and yet I knew, even at the time, that there was a difference between the two.
Was one preferable to the other? Sure. I’d go so far as to say that the relegation of racism to jokes told on playgrounds and at water-coolers (do offices still have those?) is in itself a sign of progress. But was it ever cool? Hell no. Did I let it slide? Not if I thought I had a chance to get a few punches in, or more, before I got my ass kicked or it was broken up. And this was a fairly progressive era, the 80s, and area of the country.
Satire, especially, for good reason and effect, can engender discussion about uncomfortable topics that can easily get mired in undemanding silence--or it can be a, sometimes not so subtle, cover for hate. Not to realize the difference is either ignorance or wink-and-a-smile acceptance tantamount to collusion.
I just had to.
*Finally, why would I call Paladino a patsy, or any of these folks who are running for office or voting for them, for that matter? Because, as the Right have been doing for years, by appealing to the concomitants of fear and anger, thereby obfuscating any talk of substantive issues, they have managed to get people to vote against their own interests. But so too the politicians, using the term broadly here—and I’m no politico lover—are for the most part dupes for bigger interests of deregulation and privatization (see the Koch brothers, et al.).
Carl, himself has made his fortune in large part by state and local government largess up in Albany, as reported by The Village Voice—and he wants to “throw the bums out”? He was one of the bums, from the other side of it. Maybe he’s thinking of expanding into defense department contracting or “clean” coal. Maybe he’s so stupid he doesn’t understand the ramifications of his own rhetoric. Or maybe he knows, like the rest of us, probably nothing much will no matter who’s in office. In that way, then, he’d windup gaming the system form both sides. Yeah, he’s racist—like a fox.
[My apologies to all non-racist foxes, such as the enjoyable Fleet Foxes.]
Not that I'd actually ever heard of this, but seems like an appropriate enough prompt.
Now, I'd love to to get rid of religious texts as much as the next Koran-hating, soon-to-be-burning (apparently not anymore), Southern evangelical minister with really awful facial hair. But that's where our paths diverge, of course, because I mean to relieve the world of all religion, including mister child-molester-meets-1800s-train-conductor-face's Christianity, not just the ones he deems a threat. (And only a threat to his religion and country, not to the secular world as a whole, as I see religion for the most part.)
That, and my firm belief, buttressed by human history, that prohibition as a methodology for social transformation is usually unhinged from reality. What bothers me more than the destruction of books, which I'm generally against, is the thinking that doing so will effect a desired outcome; that it will somehow stem the supposedly rising tide of supposedly dangerous Islam. (In all fairness, all religion is increasing all the time; that's just part of the deal, especially in the West. Interestingly, of the big three, despite their progenitor status, the Jews have been the worst at this.) In fact, it usually has the opposite effect, as it would here, of fomenting opposition to whatever the mechanism of suppression. And we shouldn't need a general in the field and our president to tell us that.
Not only does this conflate a small faction of violent fundamentalism with its mainstream religious counterpart--a point I've been known to concede if not proffer, though here I'll take the moderate tack--it perhaps belies an insecure uncertainty that the "best" religion, here Christianity, will win out. And so it goes, they must burn certain books, they must ban the construction of certain buildings. All to protect the children, of course. Ironically, it would seem they don't have enough faith (wow, I never thought I'd think that) in their own, well, faith to believe their children will make the same supposedly correct decisions as they have--at least when it comes to what flavor you want your theology-kool-aid.
Hey! You've got your Islam in my Bible Belt!
(Pray harder stupid)
Despite my opinions about the destructive role of religion in society (as this and many other things these days illustrate), I'm all for the freedom of expression, ethically and Constitutionally, and that includes the freedom to worship how one pleases. But if you want to start putting restrictions on religious liberty, I say start with the extremist elements of ALL religions here in the good-old U.S. of A. So that would mean Pastor Facial-Hair-Nightmare and his Fifty Fools in Florida are out of the country and the Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan gets built on the hallowed ground of the once great Burlington Coat Factory.
Still, better than doing nothing. It seems to have helped before.
"Emergency Response teams from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) are distributing tents, relief supplies, and humanitarian assistance to people displaced by the flooding. In Balochistan, UNHCR has delivered 4,000 tents, 2,700 plastic sheets, 2,200 kitchen sets, and 4,000 plastic mats to the most devastated areas. The organization has partnered with mGive to allow mobile contributions. Anyone in the world can now text the word "SWAT" to 50555 to give $10, which helps provide tents and emergency stipends to displaced families. When prompted, reply with "YES" to confirm your gift."
From and for other ways: http://www.thenation.com/blog/154063/how-help-pakistan
Have been reading Richard Price's "A Multitude of Sins," a short story collection, one of which mentions "pointless acts of pointless generosity"--such as saving a butterfly, even if for only a brief time, from a parking lot--and then makes an argument for doing them anyway.
That reminded me of this pic I took recently with my camera's phone, when, walking around McCarren Park in Williamsburg, M. found a dying butterfly and decided to move it off the sidewalk, out of the way of oncoming foot-traffic.
"I am, for instance, a person who stops to move turtles off of busy interstates, or picks up butterflies in shopping mall parking lots and puts them into the bushes to give them a better chance at survival. I know these are pointless acts of pointless generosity. Yet there isn't a time when I do it that I don't get back in the car thinking more kindly about myself. (Later I often work around to thinking of myself as a fraud, too.) But the alternative is to leave the butterfly where it lies expiring, or to let the big turtle meet annihilation on the way to the pond; and in doing these things let myself in for the indictment of cruelty or the sense of loss that would follow. Possibly, anyone would argue, these issues are too small to think about seriously, since whether you preform these acts or don't perform them, you always forget them in five minutes."
Possibly, but I don't get the feeling he would have written about it if he truly believed that.
and then refuses to accept a single metaphor from Stephen Colbert.
(No, he didn't use this one.)
But before that, Colbert was pressing Frank on why the recently-created Consumer Protection Agency was needed, saying it's just another "nanny-state" measure by the Dem's. Frank then asserted that if Colbert was concerned about the nanny state he should consider ending marijuana prohibition. At which point Colbert started using obtuse metaphors about trying to make banks (tigers) change their thieving ways (stripes).
Also, watch the interview with (almost indistinguishable from that other tall, thin scary-looking blond, right-wing-moron chick, except her voice is less raspy--but not completely unraspy, as that's no doubt part of the appeal, being on the radio and their, achem, older male dmographic) Laura Ingraham. He fillets her and her stupid new NY Times best-seller quite nicely; it went well with my mac & cheese entree.
(No, this is MIA. She's like the opposite of Ingraham, but I wanted to post her spitting on a camera guy. Classy.)
So says one of the authors of "Top Secret America," The Washington Post series about the sprawling defense apparatus that has mushroomed since 9/11.
Kafka could have only dreamed of such bureaucratic inefficiency. Of course, that's absolutely false: he wrote about it. (Actually, just re-reading The Castle; a translation put out in the past decade that is much closer to what he left behind than what was originally published, and finished, after his death by his friend.)
[Lovin' that -do.]
Finally, perhaps, the always-expanding defense complex, which includes the military and all the intelligence agencies, will become part of the deficit debate. It will be interesting to see how the deficit-hawks, typically some of the strongest supporters of defense spending (of course, this crosses the aisle), will react to this indictment of the community, which includes the Congressional role of funding of the whole thing.
This was the thread picked up most by the former head of the 9/11 Commission that recommended the creation of the DNI position, the ostensible head of this ungainly beast, in the first place. On PBS News Hour, he said that no matter how well coordinated the agencies are, redundancies and inefficiencies will remain, if the funding process in Congress remains fragmented. Uh, great.
This sums up well the argument against there being different human races. And it's a 150 yo, so obviously it'll be widely accepted in no time.
Hopefully, eventually, because he's not now, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker editor and author, will be seen as a greater thinker/writer (he writes about a much wider range of subjects) than Steve Pinker--not that I dislike him, just disagree more.
Except here, where I totally agree with him about all the tech-is-rotting-our-brains shit.
The most recent iteration, which began at least fifteen years ago (reading a book of essays about tech and lit and language from '95; and while only half of them are doomsday predictions, it's interesting to read the same urgency, hasting toward the precipice, we hear so much of today), goes: print is dying, we're stopping reading, our brains are turning to mush. Bullshit. Language, as it always has, will mutate and be mutated by the mediums and environments we humans find or put ourselves in. I'm starting to think that language is the height of human accomplishment, the greatest technology, and all subsequent developments are similarly oriented towards encouraging mutually-beneficial bonds within the species, possibly with other species, by way of expanding empathy and compassion. (This is a combination of thoughts taken from the one of the essays mentioned above and Pinker's evo-bio concept of the purpose of empathy.)
Holy shit, I've turned Buddhist and linguist in one paragraph--Jesus.
"Saw photos of the brown pelican, Louisiana's state bird." --just texted from my Bushwick housemate.
My response text: "Had awesome NOLA (New Orleans, LA) BBQ shrimp last night."
Just in time, I guess. Unfortunately, I've been saying this same line about NOLA since I managed to get there just before Katrina changed it dramatically, from what I gather. Here they go again.
Perry Farrell: Being around music in a relaxed way; making it, listening to it, and all the things that magnetize to that moment.
FP: What’s your idea of misery?
PF: Misery is being inland, without an ocean around, and without the people that live by the ocean around. Also, having to pay attention a lot harder than I’m used to — being serious. Immaturity has its virtues. Not wearing the suit and tie, it keeps you youthful.
with our mega-OCD-founding father, Thomas Jefferson:
'Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.'
Yeah, whatever, bro.
That's Thomas Jefferson, born in Albemarle County, Virginia (1743). And he certainly lived by those words. He wrote the Declaration of Independence for the fledging United States and then served as its minister of France, secretary of state, vice president, and president. But he was also--among other things--an inventor, philosopher, farmer, naturalist, astronomer, food and wine connoisseur, and musician. An early biographer, James Parton, described the young Jefferson a year before he helped write the Declaration of Independence: 'A gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin.'
Jefferson was an important force in American architecture. He was inspired by Andrea Palladio's The Four Books of Architecture, which drew from classical Roman principles,and he determined to improve Virginia's architecture, which he disliked. He designed his great estate, Monticello, as well as the University of Virginia, the Virginia State Capitol, and a number of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.--he is responsible for the neoclassical look of our Capitol. He read widely in architecture throughout his life, and he observed buildings as he traveled and brought back new ideas to incorporate into his designs.
He loved to read about much more than architecture--he said, 'I cannot live without books.' He wrote to John Adams, 'I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.'
Jefferson said, 'Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight.' Even as a scientist his interests varied widely. He knew physics, anatomy, botany, and geology. He was a talented astronomer who accurately predicted an eclipse in 1778. When he founded the University of Virginia in 1819, one of his main plans for its curriculum was astronomy, and he wanted to build the first planetarium and observatory in the country. He was also an enthusiastic naturalist and paleontologist. At one point, he had the East Room of the White House covered with potential mastodon bones.
His talent for botany was evident in his Monticello gardens and farm. In the gardens, he grew 170 varieties of fruit, 330 varieties of vegetables, and ornamental plants and flowers. He grew Mexican varieties of peppers, beans collected by Lewis and Clark, broccoli from Italy. The English pea was his favorite vegetable, and he had a Garden Book in which he kept exhaustive notes on the states of his turnips, lettuces, artichokes, tomatoes, eggplants, and squash--when each variety was sown, when it was mulched and how, when the first leaves or fruits appeared, which varieties were tastiest. His household ate from the garden, and he said that he ate meat and animal products 'as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.' Some of the varieties that Jefferson cultivated at Monticello have been passed down as heirloom vegetables, and people still plant them in their backyard gardens. Overall, he had about 5,000 acres of farmland, planted mostly in wheat and other grains. The man who wrote 'All men are created equal' defended the institution of slavery, and he was dependent on the labor of hundreds of slaves to keep his farms running. He spent a large part of his days supervising them; he wrote, 'From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs.'
Jefferson loved music. He wrote to an Italian friend: 'If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.' He played the violin, and sometimes the cello and harpsichord, and sang. He walked around Monticello singing and humming to himself.
Jefferson died on July 4,1826, exactly 50 years after his Declaration of Independence had been adopted. He was 83 years old and wrote his own epitaph before he died. It didn't mention anything about being president. It said: 'Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.'
Was he ashamed of us?
He said: 'In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.'
I think I have it backwards: my style is forever stuck in mid-90s slacker mud, while I've come to distrust those of unbending principle--life is rarely simplistic enough to allow for such idealism.
Loughner was not just spouting jibberish around grammar - see this article today from Gawker, which describes the right wing conspiracy theory around grammar.
"The Southern Law Poverty Center's Mark Potok, whose job it is to keep track of the various crazies this country breeds and nurtures, links Loughner's bizarre fixation on language and grammar to the theories of a man named David Wynn Miller—or, as he styles himself, :David-Wynn: Miller. When Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown contacted Miller, he said he "absolutely" agreed with Loughner's assertion that "the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar." Miller told The New York Times that Lougher had "probably been on my Web site."
Why Is Jared Loughner Obsessed With Grammar?So who is David Wynn Miller? According to Miller himself, he is a "Plenipotentiary-Judge" (and the King of Hawaii); he's also a 62-year-old former tool-and-die maker from Milwaukee. Miller's been selling his particular (and particularly bizarre) strain of the right-wing anti-tax "sovereign citizen" movement/conspiracy for years now, and gotten more than a few people thrown in jail for trying to use his theories. A visit to his website gives you a glimpse into the world of "QUANTUM-MATH-COMMUNICATIONS":"