the defeatists!

Want relevance? Bitch Slap Bad Guys!

Crusader AXE is not in total agreement with Chief Defeatist Philosopher and Francois Villon Chair of the Solid Waste Disposal Department at Elistest Illiterate Tech Crispin Sartwell on the state. However, things like this make me wonder if some combination of Hegel and Sartwell might be a valid epistomological tool, modified by the realization that we're stuck in an eternal do-loop...things are fucked up, there's a solution, the solution fails because of its internal contradictions, things are fucked up, and so on ad infinitum. Purposeless, meaningless activity for eternity seems to me to define hell...so, maybe Crispin, Georg Wilhelm Freiedrich and AXE have a meeting in a new school of metaphysics...

Here's what got me thinking about this...

If this is a reasonable response, why do we need the nation-state? Or, multi-national states?

I just saw this particular piece about insurance companies providing armed escorts and establishing convoys for the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Seems that NATO, the UN, the EU and the various entities in that area have been unable to secure the seas and so private business has turned to the old profit motive. I immediately thought of letters of marque and the use of privateers...in other words, in a world in which austerity by government has passed economy and spiraled down to suicide, DYSTOPIA rules the waves. Now, I claim no expertise concerning the Law of the Sea, but I thought privateers and letters of marque went out with wigs, wooden ships, and the rise of the modern state. After all, the events that established the United States as a world player if not power were those against pirates in the Mediterranean. Great Britain became great behind the wooden walls of the Royal Navy. Hell,  Julius Caesar first gained notice for action against pirates who had captured and ransomed him; Pompey became a hero of Rome (again) for eradicating the eastern Mediterranean of pirates.  And on, and on  and on...if government can not protect its commerce, care and educate its people, provide for the common defense, provide for the common defense thus securing the blessings of liberty for itself and its people then it has no purpose. Why do we need it? It's ironic that the the fast patrol boats the article alludes to are surplus Swedish Navy ships...the relevance of the Swedish Monarchy will soon be exceeded by the irrelevance of the nation state. Ayn Rand is chuckling in hell; Jefferson is shaking his head in heaven with Aristotle and Burke while sipping some suddenly bitter claret; Hobbs and Locke just spit coffee all over each other in shock in response to Drake's news as he walked in the Spectator Coffee House in Piccadilly ; and, Decatur, Jones and Hull are staring at each other utterly dumbfounded. As they should... A few things reassure me. Mercenaries have worked so well in the Horn of Africa and middle east in the past. I'm sure this future is as bright as any other flock of tame wild geese in history. Another is that bureaucracies get somewhat irate at threats to their survival. With the EU in economic disarray and the Greeks threatening the Euro, a private navy for rent protecting critical sea lanes might encourage the EU to do something kind of meaningful. Like imitate Jefferson and bitch slap some bad guys.

 

Too old to rock and roll, says who…?

  Ok, I’m a smart guy who can be very stupid at times. This is particularly true when it comes to physical limits. I know, for example, that enrolling in the ProAM Bull Riding contest would  be a serious mistake. I know that. It would have been a serious mistake 20 years ago and there’s no reason to think it might be a good idea now. I know that   El Capitan is not in my future unless they build an escalator. I’ve figured that out…

So, of course, I made a wise crack to a guy 20 some years younger than I that the Mojave Free Press ought to enter a team for the Barstow Mud Run. Figured a leisurely job across the desert, splash through some forgiving water obstacles and then pick up a T-shirt at the worst case. At the best case, he’d laugh and say no thanks, he had to cover it for the paper. How hard could it be? What could go wrong?

Most things.

Well, the principal architect of that electronic fish wrapper is a guy named Charles Waybright. He’s a nice guy, but he either has a sense of humor more twisted than mine or he’s very stupid. Charles thought it was a great idea.

So, there we were, Charles, Bruce Klein and me, surrounded by 1000 or so of like-minded lunatics set to take off across the desert to benefit the Barstow Veterans Home and the Barstow Kiwanis. Both of which are worthy of support for their services to this community which really needs it and more of it. Oh, the guys who bailed on the run so that Charles had to recruit Bruce but volunteered to video the thing and provide coverage for the paper, also bailed. Charles had his lovely wife worried that I might not show or be found and that she would have to pick up the banner. She was prescient enough to be glad to see me.

Drove up there from my home. This being primarily a fund raiser for the Vets Home there were lots of guys and gals there who were former Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who were volunteering, and of course, in charge. One of the nice things about people with military experience is that if someone needs to be in charge of something, and no one else will do it, they’ll step up. At the same time, a lot of times they’ll take charge because they need to be in charge. Of something, anything, doesn’t matter what. I work very hard at not being like that – it’s less tiring. Still, I can understand the tendency. Six to twelve of these guys were directing traffic. Guy who directed me into my parking space and made certain that I was parked on-line with the rest of the cars must have been an Aviation Bosun’s Mate in the Navy, because a couple of those folks shared with me that their primary function underway was to serve as a valet parking lot attendant for airplanes. Deviance from the line was not to be tolerated…

I kind of regretted that this guy wasn’t organizing the start. It gets hot in Barstow, in the sun, in May, and there was limited shade. Like almost none – the crowd mulled around, and the start was in heats. Somehow Charles and Bruce found me, and I pinned up my number, tied my timing chip to my shoe and we muddled our way through. One reason for running as a team – in our case, Old and Fat! – was to support each other, but somehow we all wandered into different heats. Now, back in the day, I was a distance runner. Then my back went to hell or wherever things go when they decide not to work anymore, and I don’t run. I was figuring the high intensity workouts I do in the gym would cover me. I wasn’t planning on setting records. I may have…probably was the slowest finisher. Hit the first water obstacle and found
myself running through water and mud but only up to just below the knees. Climb out, over a birm and head for the next obstacle…which was slightly deeper, and had tires that had embedded themselves in the mud at this point. If you are light on your feet, long legged and run with a high knee lift, this isn’t a problem. If you’ve just turned 61, have always had a squatty body, lift weights for sport and have short legs, this is not going to work. Step, spash, fall, get caught in the mud, pull boots out of mud and repeat.  This turned into an ordeal. Got out, shook my head, and started slowly jogging toward the next obstacle. More tires and a birm on each end…you get through the first one, and over it and then there’s another one, just like the other one… Crashed on the next one, which may have involved piranha but did involve a water truck raining on you as you fought you way through the mud, tires and so on.  Got through, got out and started walking…got to the first water stop, and stood there drinking warm water out of a cup, which frankly didn’t help all that much. I started to feel less bad when I realized that two college girls were there, both wearing women’s cross country team t-shirts, and one of them had just had an exercise induced asthma attack. She probably weighed about 100 pounds. So, on I slogged.

Skipped an obstacle, continued to slog. Got to the water slide thing…slide down the slide into the water, what could go wrong. Well, a lot…as I found out when I landed and slammed my leg into some immovable object –heap of dead bodies? Left-over rocks? Railroad ties? – pinning my leg back. Guy manning the thing in the pond pulled me out of the way, and I realized that I was now golden – I had a low calf/high ankle strain and could hobble through the rest of the course but couldn’t go through any more obstacles. Yeah, buddy – of course, I’m soaking wet, my Palladium BUDS course boots are full of desert and water as well, my ankle is not swelling that much because it is encased in a muddy, tied running boot, but it hurts like hell, and I have a mile or so of desert to cross. And, so I did. Bumped into Charles who was having problems seeing, because he had listened to someone talking jive and decided he had to splash him, primarily splashing himself. Muddy water in the eyes…hot…dirt…he told me that I had mud on my teeth and looked like a caveman in a rugby game jersey. Didn’t see Bruce…I hope it wasn’t him dead in the mud at the water slide….

OK, I can see the attraction of this event. I think it’s important not to over- or under-think the obstacles – one tire obstacle with several non-tire obstacles before the next tire obstacle one for example would be better – more aid teams and watering spots, and more attention to safety would be helpful, and if you decide to run one of these crazy things, I strongly recommend making certain that they are in fact paying a lot of attention to safety. I heard about a couple of broken bones, and the MEDEVAC chopper taking off from near the finishing line was, well, troubling.

But, this is a budding sport similar in a lot of ways to Cross-Fitness – it’s simple, it’s cheap and anyone can play. Even 61 year old men with bad backs and a smart mouth. There were a lot of kids and families which I thought was great. I was particularly taken by the number of kids running with their moms and dads, although I did see more than a few groups where the kids who appeared to be about 9 were waiting for Mom or Dad to catch up. I saw a few people I used to work with who were volunteering and having fun. Interestingly, one guy who used to work for me and resembles Mr. Clean physically and a wimpy weasel spiritually but who always had to be taking time off to take care of his two very athletic boys was there with the boys. He was dry and clean and I overheard him say, “Oh yeah, they did good…”

Well, I didn’t but I still feel good about it. Don’t know if I’ll ever do one again…whom I kidding, no way! Put this on your reverse bucket list along with spending time in a North Korean Labor Camp, using a do it yourself appendectomy kit or, hell, bull riding! But, if you feel the need, look around. I’m sure’ll you’ll find one. And, in order for there to be a “There I was, me, myself and I, alone, surrounded,” you have to be there first.

Charles asked me if it was fun when we finished. I laughed and said it was more fun after it was over than while I was doing it. Ain’t that the truth? 

Alienation is a helluva drug

Last night I dreamt of you, Abbie Hoffman peddling your books, I gave five bucks to you, the other kids just gave you dirty looks.

 I said "I'm sorry it didn't work out quite the way you planned."

You said, "That's silly boy, the revolution is at
hand."

And if you got a ten spot brother, I got a dime,
These are desperate,
desperate times.

Last night I dreamt of you, Pepe Lopez strung out on a stage, It don't even look like you, smiling like sawed-off twenty gauge.
I still remember the
Telecaster down around your knees,
It's late November and I think I smell tequila on the
breeze.

And if you got the Cuervo honey, I got the lime,
These are desperate,
desperate times.
And if you got the shotgun honey, I got the crime,
These are
desperate, desperate times.--Rhett Miller

Crusader AXE has been too busy dealing with family issues to write or think or do anything really coherent of late. Mrs. AXE retired from Federal Service after 35 years of helping to make the state function, if not optimally, at least better than if she were not there. The afternoon of her last day, she got the diagnosis of colon cancer...so, by mid-month she was in the hospital for surgery, and there she remains. Friday will be three weeks...the words rehab facility were spoken last night. I am not exactly happy about this -- I have no complaints about the quality of her care for the most part, or the professionalism or kindness of the staff. I have concerns about the quantity of the staff...I think this is a problem nationwide, but probably more acute in Southern California because there are so goddamn many people... 

Things haven't gone well. They appear to be unable to actually get the bag to seal to Joyce's skin, which results in her constantly leaking. She remains in the hospital; her surgeon was there last evening and found himself helping try to get the illeostomy bag to work. They had had five iterations earlier, all failing. Which results in linking shit all over everything. On Tuesday,  I had had a brain fart when I left the Crossroads of Opportunity to go to the hostpital after getting home at 1130 Monday night  and had to stop in Target and buy her clothes to come home with. Well, that didn't work as planned...Had gotten her a stuffed animal for a comfort thing, and that got to come home tonight along with the socks she'd been wearing, all of it shit stained. Surgeon is confused since this is a "good stoma" since the hunk of intestine that's leaking into the bag is what he can do with what's available to him. For some reason, they can't seem to get the base of the bag to seal correctly with her skin, and as a result it leaks out the sides. Now, the surgeon does not want her coming home until they get this to the point where she has some faith in it, and the topic of nursing homes came up. I noticed that they do not seem to have a standard procedure, and are experimenting. They have 1 (ONE) colostomy nurse on staff and one brand of stuff with not all the possibilities covered. Anyway, the surgeon had them get some surgical adhesive from the emergency room -- if they can get that to work, and keep the base fully closed on the body, she'll be able to come home. If not, the word nursing home was used tonight. She would prefer that to having her small intestine leak all over her home, but she'd prefer to have the bag work and be able to come home. To finish healing, so she can go back in and have the ostomy reversed and go back to a normal set of solid waste disposal equipment.

I thought that I'm pretty much ok with this. After all, I'm a tough guy, it's not fun or easy, but I'm just lending moral support and helping her when I happen to be there. And, washing the stuffed big eyed Zebra she's got for company. I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that it's a lot harder on me than I thought. Just beat all the time. I go in there, help her get out of bed to use the commode and such stuff, and feel if not helpless at best incompetent. 

Did I mention that getting her to eat is hard? Today she had a hard boiled egg, a piece of toast, and two bottles of Boost Clinical Strength. Well, since whatever she eats is leaking out of her side all over her within an hour or two, she's probably not all that interested...So, at some point this will get resolved but I'm not feeling comfortable with how it's going. She's still in a lot of pain although a lot of it is from the irritation on her skin. They were using something as a binding agent that was largely alcohol. Great...the woman has inflamed skin caused by chemical burns and part of their solution is rubbing it with alcohol. Surgeon is getting incensed...wonder why? Shit. 

Medicine could stand to have some statistical process control and analysis. Got a call from a rep at one of three companies that manufacture and distribute colostomy supplies. There are drying agents, it turns out, that do not involve alcohol. If you have what are basically chemical burns over an area and they need to dry the skin to apply something, using an alcohol drying agent is a pretty bad idea. Unless you're trying to wring out a confession....the gal apologized for the hospital, saying that "a lot of times the product works first time but a lot of times it's a process of trial and error." Sure, let's look at new, non asbestos options for brake pads. Let's start with cheese....nothing is a better stopper than curdled milk products!" 

I've always been a fan of Tiberius Caesar, pre-Capri. I know that my friends IOZ and Captain Capitualtion probably prefer him at Capri, IOZ becuse of lifestyle appeal and Crispin because he just said screw government...but pre-Capri, he was kind of a Julian John Adams.  Grumpy old bastard following Augustus who just quietly went about making the state work. Would be welcome today -- I think that is where dictators come from, the inability of representative systems to work adequately. Or at all, over time. 

 

I don't care about gay marriage.  I'm not that concerned about using predator drones, Gitmo as we sweep up the ashes of the Bush administration, and so on.  I want the state to work. Jobs,food, schools, infrastructure...I want to turn the ignition on my car and not have the fucking thing blow up because there's no requirement to make a car that won't blow up when the car is started. I want to eat a cheeseburger assured that it's not made of horse or rancid meet. I want the ideal society of 1950s Eisenhower Republican America only with racial and gender equality. The curiously fucked up world that I was alienated by/against doesn't look bad at all as a baseline. 

Reading a book on my KIndle while visiting Mrs. AXE  called The Angry Buddhist. Involves California celebrity politics, dog murder, and various forms of madness. Poor protagonist is trying to use the Dharma to keep from ripping the head off a lot of people. It ultimately seems to have the theme that, well, make a list, motherfucker. And keep making it -- you'll never run out of vacuous, vicious and verminous assholes needing to have their heads ripped off. 

 One of my brothers sent out this note about Genesse Cream Ale going back to retro packaging. Upstate NY had some pretty good local beers. Utica Club, Genesse...Utica Club had talking Beer Steins in commercials when I was a kid -- Shultz and Dooley; Genny talked about the sparkling waters of Hemlock late. Far better than 'Gansett or, for that matter, Coors or Strohs. Of course, there had been the Haverly-Congress line, that I still recall a joke of my dad's after they closed down. He said that it happened because they sent a sample in to be tested in the State Lab regulating such stuff, and got an emergency call saying, "Shoot the horse, it's got diabetes..."Still remember the song for the singing beer mugs -- "Brew me no brew with artificial bubbles, those carbonated beers of today/Cause Utica Club'll still take the trouble to AGE BEER THE NATURAL WAY! Utica Club, UC!!"

 

Walking the walk as opposed to being full of shit...

When it comes to the Vatican’s crackdown on women religious, I believe it’s time to declare that for the purpose of this struggle:we are all nuns…if you can spell Catholic, you are probably asking: how dare they go after 57,000 dedicated women whose median age is well over 70 and who work tirelessly for a more just world? How dare the very men who preside over a Church in utter disgrace due to sexual misconduct and cover-ups by bishops try to distract from their own problems by creating new ones for women religious?--     Mary E. Hunt, Theologian, Catholic Activist and Academic

I don’t really have a dog in this hunt anymore;  as an anti-theist who has reached the conclusion that the only way there could be a god would be if God was a very arbitrary and angry teenage girl named Tiffany who was primarily interested in Justin Bieber and whether or not her jeans make her ass look fat, I’m not a logical choice to defend the various orders of Nuns from the Holy See. Except, of course, that I remain a cultural Irish Catholic and a recovering victim of 16 years of Catholic confinement, most of which was largely under the attentions of the good Sisters of St Joseph and then of the good Sisters of St Francis. And, I have to admit, that the Sisters provided more encouragement to me than anyone else did. In many ways, the various orders of Catholic nuns were instrumental in most of what’s good in terms of Catholic teaching and social justice. The priests generally got all the “press” but while Father Damien gets the historical kudos for the colony at Molokai, the good sisters of the third order of St Francis – the ones who taught me from 4^th through 8^th grade – provided the nurses and the necessary assistance to make the leper colony actually work. At present, and one of the primary distractions I have been dealing with this past month, my wife is recovering from a colon resection at St Mary’s Medical Center which is managed jointly by an order of Christian Brothers and the Sisters of St Joseph of Orange, a spinoff of the Order of St Joseph that taught me how to read and cipher and make marks on paper. Now, Nuns seemed arbitrary and overwhelmingly dictatorial to a lot of Catholics over the decades. But, beginning with Vatican II, the number of nuns has steadily decreased. Those who have maintained their communities are primarily involved in social and medical work and advocacy as well as in education and foundations. I find them very admirable; in fact, I think we can say with a certain degree of certainty that Sister Mary Twinkle Toes has long since vanished from the scene, and has been replaced by what was really always there – smart women who were dedicated to a cause and a belief in caring for others and trying to live the gospel as they understood it. So the current nonsense by the Catholic hierarchy to try and “discipline” these women or drag them into compliance is a really difficult piece to justify. Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times does a good job of laying out the story as does Ms. Hunt. The Conference of Women Religious, basically the American Nun equivalent of the NCAA, isn’t doing what the bishops want them to do. The Sisters aren’t complaining about abortions, god, guns and gays and contraception. They’re arguing about the need for more attention to health care, poverty, education, hunger, the environment. Who the hell do these women think they are? Uppity bitches…They need to get back in their convents and bake some more wafers, say some more rosaries and iron some more Albs. Andrew Sullivan has an interesting piece on this; I find it interesting that Drew has moved from a Republican apologist to someone to the left of, well, me on a lot of things. It actually gives me hope – people like Andrew Sullivan and George Will are really too smart to go along with that right wing crap as presented these days.  Of course, I say that conscious that Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene had no public complaints and that Teilhard de Chardin remained loyal to church and order despite intellectual persecution and religious toment.  Sullivan wrote in an article in the April 2 edition of The Daily Beast  that The Catholic Church’s hierarchy lost much of its authority over the American flock with the unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. But in the last decade, whatever shred of moral authority that remained has evaporated. The hierarchy was exposed as enabling, and then covering up, an international conspiracy to abuse and rape countless youths and children. I don’t know what greater indictment of a church’s authority there can be—except the refusal, even now, of the entire leadership to face their responsibility and resign. Instead, they obsess about others’ sex lives, about who is entitled to civil marriage, and about who pays for birth control in health insurance. Inequality, poverty, even the torture institutionalized by the government after 9/11: these issues attract far less of their public attention. I am no fan of abortion, but at the same time, since I could never bear a child myself don’t really think that I should have a say in the decision of a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and if that termination occurs, then it should probably be under the most humane and medically safe conditions possible.  The subject to my mind is open to debate, but contraception provides an alternative more palatable than unfunded orphanages and foundling homes or back alley abortions or the type I’m hesitant about. The good enough is enemy to the good, but the perfect is enemy to the good as well. I also have come to a position which for an ubermale old soldier and Holy Cross Grad is perhaps odd – but, I really don’t care about homosexuality.  Hell, I’ve had close friends who were gay and lesbian and they never threatened me in any way, except possibly in college with a forcing bid in bridge.  Their sex lives don’t interest me --Not my business, not my concern. Now Pedophilia is my business as a citizen of the civilized world who believes that we have a duty to protect those unable to protect themselves; the abuse of power is my business, as a guy sworn to uphold the constitution and to uphold the gospels. I’m a not a priest, or a minister, or a theologian or a Catholic anymore. But, I was confirmed, and I did swear an oath to do that. Since I feel very comfortable with the parts of the New Testament that are not batshit crazy, like Jefferson, I think it’s something I can and should support as the basis for the way we treat each other. There are a lot of things in the New and Old Testament that are batshit crazy. They deserve to be treated with the same respect we treat Gilgamesh. Interesting, but not really instructive. But, the things that in the New Testament are real are certainly more direct and as articulated in the traditions of Catholic Social Justice and the Social Gospel as preached by folks as diverse as Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothy Day, more applicable to our lives as human beings responding to St Augustine’s imperative question of “How then shall we live together? “ than any other approach, tradition or set of concepts floating around. The princes of the Church pay lip service to this and then focus on issues tangential and to do with their own power. It lies in the Sisters, the priests who defend them and the poor, the orders of nuns, priests and brothers dedicated to serving the poor, the destitute, the abandoned, the condemned to live that code. Jesus knew about homosexuality; it was not only a subject of condemnation in Leviticus but was a pretty common practice in the ancient world. He didn’t have anything to say about; he didn’t have a lot to say about sexuality; he did say a lot about love, and care, and concern for others. While I’ve seen articles that indicate the author believes that the Sermon on the Mount is like some Delphic statement or Sybilline book filled with ambiguous and confusing stuff, it’s really  not. Nor is there a lot of room for argument over what the many parables about the virtues of the poor and the need to help them. Yes, Judas complains that the oil used by the repentant hooker to tend to Jesus’ feet should have been sold to raise money to feed the poor, but Jesus’ response “The poor are always with us” seems pretty obvious to me. Leave her alone, she’s trying to do what she thinks is right and it harms no one, while doing her soul good. Judas, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Rich, the Bankers, the Moneychangers, the Tax Collectors who cheat the poor get a lot of the back of Jesus’ hand…or, as Maureen Dowd put it in her column on Sunday, a sharp rap across the knuckles.  The Bishops and the Church Hierarchy joined the plutocracy of wealth and power when Constantine took over the rule of Rome and decided that everybody would be a Christian…or else. The Bishops have always sought that kind of ecclesiastical power; the Richelieus, the Borgias and the rest of the figures in Catholic history along with the Pat Robertsons, Ian Paisleys and Benny the Rat provide cover…Jesus has damn all to do with organized Christianity. I’ve written of this before, of course, but I remember talking with a parish priest in College Station 20 plus years ago who spent his vacations in India, working with Mother Teresa. He told of being there when a journalist asked her, “How can you expect to win?” and she replied with a smile, “It’s not about winning.” I expect that the good Sisters will continue to do what they are doing, ignoring the hierarchy when they can and doing what they think is right. And, in focusing on doing good instead of telling the world, that they are good and holy  and everyone should listen to them, they show what should have been Catholicism in practice. And sadly, is not and never has been. We probably should reflect that on Easter morning, the Apostles, those first Bishops led by Simon Peter, the first Pope, were hiding or trying to get out of Jerusalem as quickly as possible. Mary Magdalene and probably Mary and Martha were on their way to the tomb to anoint and care for the body, trusting that God would convince the soldiers, Roman soldiers, to move the stone aside so that they could tend to their duty…not because they had to, but because it was the right thing to do. Odd, but in a way, both bishops and nuns are fulfilling their roles in Christian tradition. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve known Mary Hunt for over 45 years, and have followed her career with interest and occasional snark. We met as sophomores in the diocesan high school where we haunted the halls and occasional classrooms, identified by some of the good sisters as the “brilliant and obnoxious one” (Mary) and the“brilliant but erratic one,” (me.) I concede her brilliance and I guess I accept my erraticism. We agreed about a lot of things, disagreed about a lot and took very divergent paths. I have a lot of respect for her, and she’s an interesting person and author. And, probably still consistently obnoxious to people in authority. Go for it, dear.)

Allen West climbs the shit pile of historical disgrace and crows about it

 

One of the benefits of the profound ignorance of a large swaithe of the American people lies in their inability to recognize irony. So, when a first term member of congress who is probably looking at being a one term member of Congress pulls something out not from the Karl Rove playbook but the Joe McCarthy playbook, people will miss it. Our political discourse has skipped self-satire and gone straight to slapstick. As Gibbs rule number 7 puts it, "when you lie, be specific."  Allan West, Congressman from Mesron and Florida, is now trying to win a redistricted, largely Democratic district by railing against the Democratic Progressive Caucus as "Communists' announcing that he's "heard that 80 member of congress are communists." You see, the American Communist party, the old Gus Hall powerhouse, has said that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is reasonably close to endorsing their goals. (In the spirit of full disclosure, this website endorsed Gus Hall for President in 2008. Mr Hall died in 2000)I'm not sure what those could be, since the Communist Party of the USA was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics which...no longer exists. Well, the language is degraded by more than West's blathering, but come on. Read something written by somebody not John Birch or J. Edgar Hoover that explains what Communism is as opposed to what you think it is...a vague threat to take your guns, your government health care, your government pension and your government roads, schools, infrastructure and pollute your precious body fluids while letting your children run wild having abortions and contraception and stuff. Dude, Democrats are to Communists in much the way that the Republicans are to the Freemen of Montana.

West also babbled that Barrack Obama is afraid to debate him. Really?  Loudmouthed first termer thinks that the President of the United States should get on a stage in South Florida and debate him?  Seriously, if the President has a few spare minutes to waste on West, he should devote it to shooting some hoops with his secret service detail or giving Bo a bath with the girls. Total lunacy... Seriously, the man is a deranged, meglomaniacal dweeb and needs to be kept in government cusody to protect himself and his loved ones from his next over the top appearance or action. 

Now, as I listened to the video (let's hold the musing on that trope for another time), I got the sense that a good number of Mr. West's constituents were laughing at him. It's possible that this is gem came out not so much as a Michelle Bachmann unsolicited bit of insanity as a response to poking the bear. West is not exactly known for reasoned discourse, a sense of balance or proportion and measured response to provocation. 

Now, the guy could have been court martialed for war crimes instead of being given a slap on the wrist and allowed to retire -- should have been court martialled for war crimes, since he fired a pistol at a prisoner of war in order to make him provide information -- and has disgraced the nation ever since. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in Army; he was in a command position in combat; and he ended up relieved of command and given the opportunity to retire -- which he took. I think West is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of an incredible magnitude and should be treated with respect for his service, compassion for his condition while being protected from himself and his demons. Well, Gulf I gave us Timothy McVie; Gulf 2 is giving us Allan West, Republican congressman from Florida. 

This is where the Republican leadership needs to step up, get West under control or expect a far rougher response than the sort given so far. This is pretty funny, actually. "Chellie is a Democrat, a farmer and a Lutheran but no, she is not a Communist," said Willy Ritch, spokesman for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), also a vice chair of the caucus." 

(Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, and as a one-time student of Luther and the Protestant Reformation, I should point out that Luther had some commie-pinko-tendencies prior to the Peasants Revolt. The whole concept of grace in the Pauline-Augustinian-Luther tradition has  a pretty strong egalitarian twist to it. But in general, in Wisconsin, yeah equating Lutheran Deomocrats to Communists is like equating Allen West to Allen A' Dale, which I guess would make Boehner Robin Hood and Cantor Little John.)

As that great American political commentator Bugs Bunny would put it, "What a maroon!"

Civilized costs more than nasty, brutish and short...

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
Thomas Hobbes 

To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life.
Thomas More

 

Can you say AN/PDR-27R?  ALPHA-NOVEMBER-PAPA-DELTA-ROMEO-TWO-SEVEN-ROMEO.

Those veterans among us have no problem with that, since it’s basic military phonetic alphabet and is the name of a pretty common piece of stuff that most were exposed to at one time or another. It’s the Geiger Counter used by the military in its various configurations over the years.  For a part of my career as a grunt, I had to use these things as a Chemical Operations type – NO LIGHT TOO BRIGHT/NO BLAST TOO FAST/SO UP YOUR ASS/WITH BUGS AND GAS! (Being the unofficial motto of the Army’s Chemical Corps.) Training people to use these things was part of the gig, and they’re frighteningly easy to use wrong; they’re reasonably delicate and fairly easy to contaminate or peg. Walk up to a hot source and check it with the meter on one of the lower scales, and bad things could happen. Open the shield to check for beta radiation, and pass it to close to a blade of grass, and you risked puncturing the shield. IF the numbers get high, you get out if you can.

While there are lots of emitters – particles that have become radioactive or are by their nature radioactive such as uranium – the primary ones monitored for in the field are GAMMA radiation, which is the most immediately deadly, Beta radiation which can be very hot but has a real limited range of its emissions, and then Alpha Radiation which is most dangerous if it gets inside the body. Think of barriers – lead is a great barrier for gamma; beta can be blocked by clothing and dust masks and goggles. Alpha is pretty insidious – the meters to detect its presence are specialized and primarily available to emergency reaction teams who would respond to a nuclear accident or a dirty bomb. IF it gets into the water table of the food chain, it can be a problem. If you inhale it or it gets into a cut, it can be a problem. Not quickly, but down the road a piece.

OK, welcome to the modern world. We have to deal with dirty water, dirty air, global climate change, extreme weather, decreasing availability of cheap energy, overcrowding, pandemics, potential famine, potential shortage of potable water…everything except the viral crop of right wing, isolationist, brain dead bigots that currently infect the US and indeed the entire civilized world. Thomas Hobbes and Thomas More weren’t exactly contemporaries, but I’ve come to believe of late that the Tea Party and their ilk, the Grover Norquist-Herman Cain-Joe Walsh axis of that world, mistook the two. They read Leviathan, and then they read Utopia and then got confused as to which one was supposed to reflect the good idea and which the bad. (This is kind of like confusing The Joy of Sex with The Joy of Cooking, but more dangerous to civil society.)Hobbes believed that in the absence of a strong central power, “Life is nasty, brutish, and short,” and advocated a very strong central government as essential to a civilized society. More described an ideal society – Utopia – where the absence of distractor and distinctions allowed for a classless and a rather bland society. But, he pointed out in the book itself that it was an intellectual exercise and in real life, he advocated a very strong central government. When that central government decided to execute him, his final speech was brief and to the point, saying in large part “I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”

There is a rhetorical tool called reduction ad absurdum that doesn’t work with these people. We’ve seen it several times this year in debates; the famous “Let him die!” crowd cheer in the Republican debate in response to Ron Paul’s brief hesitation in his response to Wolf Blitzer is the most distinct. I’ve had it happen in discussion with students who hold these beliefs; I first felt the change in argument when I said to one of the folks who was paying my salary by attending class on a mix of GI Bill and Pell Grants and Federally Guaranteed Loans that “Look, the government needs to be able to help people. No one wants to see beggars and kids starving…” The guy responded, “Who cares? That’s their problem.”

How do you argue with that sort of stuff? More, I think, encountered the same thing, as did Hobbes. More’s comment is more immediately apropos, since this was a student in a graduate business economics class –“One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.” I’d like to think that I had the same thought and possibly did at the time, but it was probably punctuated with obscenities, curses and commands to get his ass off his head and back where it belonged. I kept quiet – you don’t get to curse students until you have tenure. But, I think Hobbes again adds clarity to the argument, about the role and responsibility of government. “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”

OK, Brother AXE, how exactly do you get from Geiger counters to the Tea Party to Hobbes and More and beyond. Well, it’s relatively easy…all it takes is following More, being transformatively exposed to an engaged human life…

The discovery came in the midst of the largest federal effort to date to clean up uranium mines on the vast Indian reservation. A hearing in 2007 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led to a multiagency effort to assess and clean up hundreds of structures on the reservation through a five-year plan that ends this year….Yet while some mines have been “surgically scraped” of contamination and are impressive showpieces for the E.P.A., others, like the Cameron site, are still contaminated. Officials at the E.P.A. and the Department of Energy attribute the delay to the complexity of prioritizing mine sites. Some say it is also about politics and money… “The government can’t afford it; that’s a big reason why it hasn’t stepped in and done more,” said Bob Darr, a spokesman for the Department of Energy. “The contamination problem is vast.” Leslie MacMillan, NY Times, April 1, 2012.

The article describes another moment in the timeline of exploitation and destruction of Native American culture and people by corporate and government greed and indifference. In this case, during the great uranium boom of the 1956-period, the government not only allowed but encouraged various people ranging from major mining interests to irresponsible nutjobs – not that the two are mutually exclusive – to seek deposits of uranium on reservation land in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. When the boom died, the various mining interests left – and since then, it became obvious that they left a lot of junk behind poisoning the land. Hey, the Navajos have a lot of space, who cares? Well, that sort of lasiez-faire nonsense fails to consider the Navajo cultural and religious ties to the land. I am not an expert on Navajo religious beliefs, but their origin myth has a very strong tie not only to nature but to the very ground itself and what is beneath it. The Old Man of the story is as close to a god figure as we get here:

The Coyote of the east came where the people were and asked Old Man where he came from. Old Man told him from three worlds down below and also told Coyote how he came up, also saying “If you (Coyote) are a clever man, I will teach you all we know about our religion, etc.” So he taught him everything. 

Well, one thing Old Man did not teach Coyote was how politics work. In most cultures, including the western culture we supposedly represent, when you make a promise you fulfill it. The relationship between the US and the Navajo isn’t simple – no relationship between sovereign states where one is in fact subservient to the other can be simple. But, the role of the US in this equation is to protect the Navajo and to act as stewards so that they can maintain their way of life. Obviously, the great Uranium rush resulted in a lot of undocumented craziness in isolated backlands. Problem is, many of the reservations people live out in those backlands and are pastoral in existence…sheepherders. Sheep need to roam, and one might wonder if the reservation is huge enough to support a relatively large population in the high desert of the American Southwest. When you poison hunks of the land, it’s difficult to maintain and use. When you don’t tell people the hazards you are exposing them to, you risk exposing them to patterns of illness and sickness that they may not recognize or have the resources to care for.

The EPA has done a lot more than would be done without it, but these areas are environmental disasters. The Navajo don’t have the resources or the money or the expertise to handle 6-7-9=800 documented and undocumented hazmat sites. No one does, except the US. If you can identify the company that poisoned and failed to remediate the site and the company is still in business, you can take them to court if you’re either the Navajo or the US government and force them to remediate it. However, a lot of these diggings are anonymous or were dug by individuals 50 years ago and are no longer in business. I suspect it’s obvious – the US has a responsibility to fix this; someone needs to get incensed and question whether or not the senior member of the partnership of sovereigns in this case is fulfilling its responsibilities.

Of course, the Navajo people are American citizens. If the government of the United States allows and encourages Bob’s Radioactive Mining and Waste Creation service to dig up and contaminate my back yard, I have a valid claim for the US government to honor. If I get sick, I have a valid claim against Bob’s – who either goes bankrupt or has died – and against the US government.

So, the problem is money. Let’s turn briefly to another money issue.

 When the Army was made up of draftees and folks who “volunteered” to avoid being drafted, drawing down after a war wasn’t a problem. You pointed at the door and said who wants to go home first. However, after Vietnam, a lot of enlisted guys who become commissioned officers found themselves being told that they weren’t needed as officers; they could, however, stay on as NCOs. And, as a benefit, they could continue to serve in the active, individual reserve so that when they retired they could do so at whatever reserve officer rank they achieved. I know a lot of guys who were Staff Sergeants and Sergeant First Class and even a few Sergeant Majors and such who retired as…Lieutenant Colonels. In one case, the only person who could rate a SFC in my section was the Brigade Commander, because he was senior to everyone else. Weird. Most of these guys were great soldiers, but there was always some fear and resentment, no so much on their parts but on the part of the guys who were now
giving them orders.

Minor problem. Solved by 1981 or so; but the problem is greater when you have a volunteer force that you’ve used in the longest war in the Nation’s history and the Iraq war. These folks have been told they are heroes, that the nation is forever indebted to them. They are also literate and engaged human beings – they realize that they are facing a period of arbitrary eliminations and downsizings. They also are learning that the quality of life for those who remain on active duty will decrease significantly. This makes them unhappy.

As it should. It always has…you want to see a portrait of a lost soldier, check out Rome on DVD or Blue Ray and see what happens to soldiers who suddenly and without reasonable transition find themselves tossed into society. Read about what went on with the various paramilitary groups in Germany after World War I. One reason our friend Winston Churchill was able to find a small army and call it a police force, deploying it to Ireland to handle the Irish Revolution was because they had tons of veterans who had no way to make it as civilians after four years in the trenches and the Army was drawing down because of peace. So, the Black and Tans entered Irish history – it may seem a benign mixed drink of lager and stout here, but it Ireland it’s something else entirely.

 Now, I served through one peace dividend, the post Soviet Union-post Gulf I drawdown. Operations Temp became absolutely insane for units, particularly in the support base, Intelligence, Logistics and Maintenance for the Army. As a First Sergeant in a Corps Support Brigade in Germany, I was deploying people to Africa, Greece, the Balkans and Belarus on a monthly basis. It was slightly crazy. The OPTEMPO increased when Bosnia and Kosovo came into the picture; when I returned to Fort Lewis, I got another Company as First Sergeant, and went through the same stuff, deploying people to every place from Port Au Prince to Princeton. We were as an Army and as a military far busier during this period than we’d been during the Cold War.

However, since 9/11 the military has been on continuous insanity as an OPTEMPO. What I see in my
various wanderings is a force that is largely stressed by insecurity and craziness imposed by a chain of command and then further stressed when they hear that 70000 soldiers will go home this coming year, that standards for weight, PT, body art and so on are going to ratcheted up and that any screw-up will result in getting the boot. Posts are becoming overcrowded which will negatively impact both mission and quality of life. Benefits are being cut. The services are showing their loyalty to the nation and will continue to do so; but, they’d like something in return. Fulfillment of what is seen as promised –Old Veterans can smile cynically but it’s not because we don’t agree with them. It’s because we know. We’ve known since Socrates mustered out in Athens; Kipling said it for all of us --

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll…

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

Now, as a special disabled veteran and a retiree, I have a doctor at the local Army installation, in this case, the clinic at Fort Irwin. Now, Irwin in some ways reminds me of Fort Apache…the Army has done a tremendous amount to make it more livable, but the fact remains that you’re forty miles not from civilization but from the interstate. I make the drive when I need to see my doctor or when I need to pick up a prescription. When I was in to see my Doctor recently, she informed me that she was leaving because her husband was retiring from active duty in June and she had no idea what staff they’d have after she left but was sure they’d find some good ones. She also handed me a prescription for one of my medications, written for a civilian drug store, telling me that the Pharmacy wasn’t going to stock it or many other drugs that had been a normal item in their formulary. I was curious as to this, thinking that the drugs were things that were normally used by retirees and frankly, that made sense. I have had a number of conversations with the soldiers working in the pharmacy over the past couple of years as well as several with the senior officer in the Pharmacy, a Captain. I had to pick up something else, and got a chance to talk to a young sergeant with a close combat badge and a 10^th Mountain combat patch. She’s in her early 20s and would like to make this a career but said, “they’re throwing soldiers out and they’re cutting back support to the rest of us. What the hell, First Sergeant?” The Captain was very direct with me; when I said I’d leave her name out of this piece she said,  “I don’t care!! I’m getting ready to PCS and the command loves me because I always come in on budget. They know what I think, but it doesn’t matter. If I make the budget they’re happy with me.”

It takes a lot to bitch slap me with a piece of reality, but I’d never heard about the number one thing on an OER for a company grade officer being “come in at or according to plan.” That’s a civilian bean counter approach. But she told me that the particular thing I’m now getting through RiteAid  -- Androgel, I am seriously old although not as old as Gordon or Trowbridge, hehhehehe – is used by a lot of younger soldiers. The reason for the reduction in formulary –drugs carried in the pharmacy – is simple; her budget has been cut by 40% with minimal warning. Of course, the patient load is increasing.

I find this somewhat disturbing on several fronts. If it’s only retired old farts who need something, of course, send up to the pharmacy in town. The co-pay is unpleasant but I can live with it. But, a soldier on active duty, a spouse, a child who’s treatment is delayed while finding a way to Walmart (50 miles away) or waiting for a delivery through ExpressScripts is unconscionable. More than that, the feeling becomes more that they – the Army, the Nation, the People, the Congress, the Government – don’t care.

 So, when the House Armed Services Committee grill the Joint Chiefs wanting to know why the Army and the Marines aren’t looking for new tanks and a new generation of tanks in what is supposedly a time of austerity, you have to wonder. The Army says no thanks, we got lots of tanks and nobody to really fight with…with tanks. The Abrams and Bradley and to a lesser extent the Stryker are excellent platforms and weapon systems and WE HAVE ALL WE NEED. Then, the Budget Committee led by Paul Ryan who looks like a cross between a weasel, snake and Eddie Munster to me from some weird progressive sci-fi novel, ignore the Joint Chiefs and say in effect, “They’re lying to us!” as they flood more money into the defense budget, you have to wonder. I personally wouldn’t tell General’s Dempsey, Odierno, and Amos that they were lying to me unless we were playing poker. But Ryan felt comfortable with this gem. General Dempsey’s response would scare me if I was simpering chicken hawk like Ryan and his gang…

"We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice," Ryan had said, according to Politico. "We don't think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget."

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took issue with those comments.

"There’s a difference between having someone say they don't believe what you said versus ... calling us, collectively, liars," the general told reporters on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. "My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget."

Lest someone say something along the lines of “you can’t have it both ways, Brother AXE!” I have to explain something – they’re not interested in improving quality of life for soldiers on the Hill; they’re interested in keeping the Defense Contractors happy. My own representative is Chairman Buck McKeon who is pretty much on the dole from Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. The only reason they would be interested in maintaining the formulary in the Army Medical System is if Merck and Pfizer weighed in. Total BS – these are the guys who want more tanks, more systems that don’t require soldiers but cost a lot of money, more defense contractors doing things soldiers can and should do. Rachel Maddow made the comment on the Jon Stewart show that she didn’t think the Army needed people from KBR peeling potatoes; we could probably figure out some way to have soldiers do that. We don’t people from Cubic managing airspace or logistics. A lot of these people are great folks – lots of former military and retirees. But, they’re doing work that should be done by soldiers.

The number of broken promises and bad judgments made over the last 30 years is incredible. Each bad judgment ends up causing more broken promises. However, the majority of the problems I see – crumbling infrastructure, lousy schools, increased long-term unemployment, mounting debt, lagging modernization, lack of a coherent energy plan and so on and on and on  as well as what has happened to Native Americans, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsman, Civil Servants, Labor Unions, and on and on comes from the idea that we don’t have the wherewithal to pay for what we need to do. That is bullshit. We may all be Travon Martin to some extent; we are also all General Dempsey being insulted and talked down to by Ryan who now claims that he misspoke. Yeah, he’s sorry if General Dempsey didn’t understand what he was saying…if General Dempsey was offended, he’s sorry that General Dempsey was offended.

"General Dempsey and I spoke after that, and I wanted to give that to him, which was that's not what I was attempting to say," Ryan said on CNN. "What I was attempting to say is that President Obama put out his budget number for the Pentagon first ... and then they began the strategy review to conform the budget to meet that number. We think it should have been the other way around."

We are all the early 20s spouse who’s told that while her husband is deployed to Afghanistan and she’s just taken her child to the emergency room at Fort Irwin for some condition that she’s going to have to drive in to beautiful to get the medication the kid needs; we’re all the poor pharmacy specialist who has to deliver this news to a scared and lonely woman. We’re all the school teacher who has to buy supplies for her room while trying to pay student loans and for a Master’s degree that she’s required to have but is also required to pay for. We’re all the Navajo farmer who just discovered that his sheep have been munching contaminated grass and have to be put down…

What we’re all not is Paul Ryan. What we’re all not is Buck McKeon. What we’re all not is Mitt Romney – we’re closer to Shamus on the trip to Canada. We’re not the Koch brothers. We’re not worrying about how many millions of dollars we can make in bonuses; we’re not wondering about how much money we need to put into the Cayman Islands this year. We’re not GE, with a 1000 people in their tax department figuring out how little tax they can pay; we’re not the head of Goldman Sachs mortified that the word has gotten out that we’ve financed a  human trafficking website…

There are things that we can do to solve our problems. First of all, we have to acknowledge that taxes are too low and the lowness is progressive. I have no problem with current tax rates so long as at the top end, they are flat above some limit. No deductions. Sorry. So if you’re Mitt Romney, you can claim standard deductions on some portion of your income – say the first million – but the $277M after that should be taxed at the full 35%. Capital Gains up to some limit can continue to be taxed at the current rate – say, up to $2M but above that, it should be taxed at the normal income tax rate. Have somebody rational calculate the shortfall and come up with strategies to overcome it. The SHORTFALL IS NOT SOME NUMBER THAT PAUL RYAN COMES UP WITH. IT NEEDS TO BE BASED ON WHAT WE ACTUALLY NEED TO DO SO THAT THE SOVERIEGN ENTITY CAN FULFILL ITS FUNCTION ACCORDING TO HOBBES.       

In Romney’s case, under my plan, assuming he’s able to deduct everything up 1 Million and all but a half million total  is capital gains, he’d still have well over $180 mil in income this year. I think they could get by, just fun. Failing to do something like this, and letting the Randian nutcases and economic libertarians/Austrian School reactionaries and malefactors of great wealth continue to get away with things will result in another Hobbesian diagnosed problem …

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Well, what needs to happen to get there? That’s the next piece. I’ll have it posted in a few days. 

 

No terrible beauty, just falling apart...

 

When did Florida become Ulster or Pretoria 20 years ago?

When I say the name Trayvon Martin, does it mean anything to you?" Melissa Harris-Perry asked her MSNBC audience on Saturday. "If it doesn't, it should."

Harris-Perry then took some time to explain who Trayvon Martin is: a 17-year-old, unarmed black teenager who was allegedly shot and killed by a man in Florida in late February, after the man saw him walking down a street and thought he looked suspicious. The case has attracted substantial attention, in part because the man, George Zimmerman, has admitted to shooting Martin but has not been arrested or charged with any crime. 

I enjoy listening to Melissa’s work and discussions with her guests. I’m not sure why she was denied promotion to full professor at Princeton – They have a quota on attractive women, Black, Liberal Political Scientists who get opinion gigs on MSNBC and PBS? They still have investments in slavery? Paul Krugman scares them – but their loss is Tulane’s, the nation’s, and MSNBC’s gain. I was steaming over the Trayvon Martin situation anyway, and her commentary pushed a lot of buttons.

 Usually at this time of year, I’m writing something about the Irish, or Ireland or Catholicism.  I’ve been following An Problacht, (The Republic) and watching Rugby on both BBC and The Rugby Channel. Caught a brief bit of  Young Cassidy  last night on the way out to a very non-Gaelic supper that did include roast beef and cabbage. I wore a dark green  t-shirt, a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. I looked something like Rod Taylor in the damn movie. I saw some wild pictures of Shane McGowan looking like a punch-drunk old man and heard a bit of the Rocky Road to Dublin.  I’ve got a copy of  Fox Crow  on  my kindle that seems to be  set in a cross between the Land of the 7 Kingdoms and Donegal. I’ve been getting primed, but what the hell, what for?

 

If you’re not sure of the story, or  missed it with the important stuff about Seamus the Irish Setter, transvaginal probes and March Madness, Trayvon Martin was a black  kid with his dad visiting a relative in a nice, gated community in Florida. He was wandering around the neighborhood, and some neighborhood busy body named George Zimmerman decided that there was something wrong when a Black Teenager is walking around his neighborhood. He followed the kid, confronted him, hilarity ensued and this fine representative of white middle class values– Mr. Zimmermanis 28 years old and the “Neighborhood Watch – drew down  on the kid and shot him. Zimmerman supposedly was “in fear of his life” which makes it ok in Florida to kill somebody. Irony does abound amidst tragedy.

 Now, the kid was going to the 7-11. He was after a can of soda and a bag of skittles. Anyone is normally allowed the right of self-defense; the idea is appropriate self-defense, balance. Somebody cuts in front of you in a line at Walmart, you probably don’t get to use the excuse that you capped the motherfucker because he was an immediate threat. Zimmerman had been told by the police that they had dispatched a car, and to not pursue him. Zimmerman in fact ignored the order from the police, provoked the kid and killed him. Thuggish behavior of a white wannabe against a black teenager…maybe his pants were too low? He was wearing “gang colors”?

 

In 1842 a mob of clowns in Boston – Brookline, actually – burned an Ursuline Convent because there were Catholics there. Teaching Catholic stuff…the response of the Bishop of Boston was to call his fellows, the Jesuits, and have them start a high-school and college in Worcester, a joint called College of the Holy Cross. I was kind of surprised to read a piece  on Huff Po that managed to list the top ten Irish schools and skipped us; we were diverse, of course. We had 27 black students, Irish Jocks, Italian Jocks, Polish Jocks, some Hispanics, two Greek kids and three Jews.

The Great Draft Riots of New York City made famous in The Gangs of New York were provoked by the idea that Irish immigrants were treated terribly and now were being drafted to free  slaves while the Micks were being treated at least as badly by the Nativists. This has continued – I was told in a bit of openness by a professor that the reason I didn’t get into a prestigious graduate school was because the chairman had said that he already had enough Irish-Catholics. That was 40 or so years ago, and probably is not so obvious now, but it’s still there. 

The Italians, the Poles, the Blacks, the Jews and the Hispanics are all facing the same thing. As generations become accepted, they then become more and more like the intolerant bastards that stood in their way. Hell, while I suspect Zimmerman might be Jewish given the name and ethnicity attached, he’s probably big in the local Tea Party and may even be getting toasted at the local VFW for showing that kid… 

I am Kilrain of the 20th Maine and I damn all gentlemen
Whose only worth is their father's name and the sweat of a workin' man
Well we come from the farms and the city streets and a hundred foreign lands
And we spilled our blood in the battle's heat
Now we're all Americans

I am Kilrain of the 20th Maine and did I tell you friend I'm a fightin' man
And I'll not be back this way again, cause we're all goin' down to Dixieland

 

WHEN THE FUCK DID IT BECOME ALL RIGHT TO KILL CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY LOOK DIFFERENT? THEY”RE KIDS!! If A GAGGLE OF EMOS OR GOTHS HAD BEEN WANDERING DOWN THE STREET, WOULD HE HAVE FOLLOWED THEM?

 Now, in Ulster, there was a tradition of the Protestants controlling the cops and having an auxillary, the B-Specials who were empowered to go into the Irish neighborhoods and “keep the Paddies in line.” Yeah – that worked fine until 1968 –then things changed in a mass explosion of violence, hatred, blood and atrocity, in the name of keeping the strangers down because they were dangerous.

 

For 150 years in South Africa, it was possible for a white settler to shoot a kaffir (black) or mixed race person. South Africa’s treatment of the Indians resulted in a fellow named Mohandmas Ghandi becoming radicalized.

  

There is no excuse for this idiot. There’s a prima facie case to indicate that there is at least a problem with civil rights abuses – no equal protection under the law.  Any cop worth his badge should have run him in for any number of things up to and including murder. Certainly hard to prove equivalency of force to threat – however, if Zimmerman found himself driving through a Black neighborhood, would they be entitled to shoot him because he was suspicious? 

This is what the bastards have wrought. We are back in Emmett Till territory. We’re back to the burning of convents/mosques and we’re less civilized and tolerant than Ulster or South Africa.

 

If Florida doesn’t act decisively to prevent this sort of crap, then in the dock of God’s justice, Zimmerman should be joined by Wayne LePierre and the Board of the NRA, Rick Scott, and the Tea Party. When Anne Coulter advocates less craziness, you know you have a problem.

Well, when political leaders with a rock solid 30% of the country behind them and the rest of us staring in disbelief, well, strange and sad things happen. No terrible beauty born, just the center not holding…by the way, if Barrack Obama  is a Muslim, going to the Dublin City Pub, hoisting a Guinness and singing Danny Boy would probably be considered apostasy. Drinking alcohol is a violation of Sharia of course, and Islam requires adherence to the rules in a way that would make my Nun-programmers in the 50s and 60s think about the advantages of liberty and freedom.

That said, we need to open our hearts and minds to some of the stuff in the Bible that doesn’t lend itself to believing God is blessing your righteous cause so go smite the sinners, the heathen, the others.

And, Trayvon Martin joins a long line of young  people gone for no reason except ignorance, hate and stupidity by ingrate-inbred-liars and thieves. A line that includes Kevin Berry, Steve Biko, Emmett Till and Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

Say wha? This is Gotham City on Meth...

One of the things that binds loose collectives of malcontented malevolent dissidents, anarchists and soldiers, political thinkers and intellectual dilettantes that make up my small circle of freinds is our general aversion to the impact of the totalitarian mind on life, language and discourse. Particularly when afraid -- when they're afraid, they come unglued with weird explanations of events...Orwell could have had fun with that realization because it is when under pressure from the unknown that the basic spiritual bankruptcy and ontological void that is the totalitarian way becomes most obvious. Case in point, China.China has the potential to explode at any time. It's fairly obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of Marxist thought that the victory of the Communist Party in 1948 preceded the rise of the industrial proletariat. Pretty much the way that Communism has spread everywhere, by the way, except for the countries in eastern Europe that were conquered by the Soviet Union. So, given the fact the Party still rules the country as a vicious oligarchy, it should not be surprising that the government is terrified of anything that might blow it all up. Tibet, Western China, displaced living lives of misery in Guangzhou and Shanghai...labor unrest, the incredible imbalance between rich and middle class and middle class and poor...disease, famine, water impossible to drink, etc. etc. The place is an economic dynamo sputtering away on top of a volcano. 

Which presents a fair amount of hilarity masquerading as WTF? Not unlike Rush Limbaugh confusing contraception with the adult film industry and Israeli fellow-travellers eagerly sounding the drums for a war with Iran because our last religio-WMD-"Make the world safe"-enterprises have gone so well, the Chinese government is definitely after the root cause of problems at all levels. Jezebel picked up a story from The People's Daily that really makes it obvious that fantastic explanations for things is not just a Republican plutocratic art but one shared by totalitarians univerally. 

Ok, girl one loses a "remote control" to a rolling door for her home. Girl one is obviously fairly rich for China since this looks like a really bad translation of "Garage Door Opener..." although I suppose it could have been a rolling steel shutter door to a patio or perhaps a French Door with a remote to the patio but, WHAT THE HELL?  The silly damn Khardasians don't have remote controlled French doors; Trump doesn't have remote controlled French doors. That makes no sense...even in China, which at some levels, times and places is really like Batman's Gotham City, on meth...So, the kid lost a garage door opener. She decides to kill herself, so she hides in a closet -- another sign that we're dealing with some level of wealth here, there's actually a closet that is not so much in use that hiding in it is possible -- until her little friend comes over. She says she's going to commit suicide, the little friend says, OK, me too and Girl 1 writes down a note saying that she's killing herself over the garage door opener and Girl 2 is doing it because, well, they're friends and it's Tuesday and there's nothing on TV and...they are planning on visiting the Qing dynansty to make a movie of the emperor -- any emperor -- and then going to outer space. Girl 1 tells her sister to "Take Care of the Parents" because it's all about the parents, and they jump in a pool and drown. 

Sister? The Chinese still have their one child rule. Only the very well to do and party elites get to have multiple children. WHAT THE HELL? This passes no reality test...but, the inspiration for the suicide is ...TV shows about people travelling in time and marrying royalty. 

Yeah, and comic books caused juvenile delinquency and rock and roll and teenage pregnancy and communism. Ask your great, great senile grandmother!

Imagine the dialogue in the TV movie...if you've ever listened to the dialogue in a Chinese TV show, as I did by reading subtitles while there -- you'll recognize it. 

Chechette: I lost the garage door remote and have brought dishonor on myself and my family. I must kill myself! 

Chongette: I am your best friend. I will also kill myself. 

Cheechette:Well, if we kill ourselves, we can go back in time and make a movie of the emperor in the Qing dynasty!

Chongette:Oh, good. Then we can travel in space.

 

Cheechette: My parents will be so proud...let's go drown ourselves in the pool!

Both: All hail the Glorious People's Liberation Army and Chairman Mao!"

Yeah. Now, they could have blamed this on Falung Gong because everybody knows that weird calestenics and such make you crazy. They could have blamed this on the influences of capitalism. They could have blamed it on a lot of things. Hell, blame it on Guy Clark ...Time travel on the Chinese equivalent to The Gilmore Girls? Jezebel has an excellent point, by the way.  

This sounds like a cautionary tale about parenting — if your kid thinks killing herself is a good response to losing the remote control, you might not be sending the right message about the value of everyday objects. But Sun Yunxiao, deputy director of China Youth and Children Research Center, has a different moral in mind:

Schoolchildren are rich in curiosity but poor in judgment, so this kind of tragedy happens in every era. I have heard of children jumping from high buildings after watching an actor flying in a magic show. This kind of imitative behavior is in the nature of young children, but it's very dangerous. So we should give some sort of warning for children on TV programs.

I'm actually not sure that killing yourself so you can travel back in time and film an emperor (where do you get the camera?) is a tragedy that "happens in every era."...

Being not so sure about the impact of TV on suicides -- childish deaths from imitating superheroes, pro- wrestlers and such in the west aside -- and being slightly alert to conspiracies and coverups, I gotta say, this looks more like a cover-up of something else. There are lots of possibilities -- a spree of mass murder of children with or without child rape, a problem with some powerful "Big Bucks" in the local or regional Party-Wealthy Complex, drug-crazed People's Liberation Army veterans of the unpleasantness in Western China which dwarfs what we are seeing in Afghanistan or saw in Iraq -- but TV is a convenient scapegoat. Always has been and always will be...Dr. Who, in Mandarin drag, seducing the young with opium and time travel. 

My money is probably on some sort of Child 44 coverup  but who the hell knows about these things? Totalitarian countries are weirder than weird and China's internal dissension, cultural dissonance, and Commie-Confucian-Oligarchic messiness kind of makes it all seem possible, and that's funny in a weird way...and sad. 

Another possibility is that this is just some Politboro thug having a shit fit at time travel TV. Again, the oddities of totalitarianism...

 

 

So Bob Dylan and Ludwig Wittgenstein walk into a bar with Mitt Romney and Courtney

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosopher and Chief Instructor, Cambridge International Clown College and Brewery

 Very bright young woman who used to work for me posted a note to Facebook saying, "Remind me again why I keep trying to be someone that isn't me..." I think that's the universal human condition in a lot of ways, but that's a large part of the problem. 

When I seek enlightenment, I turn to Bob Dylan or Hank Williams. I misquote both at times, but get the idea back. My comment to my friend was "Be yourself but decide how much of yourself you want to be." I base that on the idea of strategic openness. I try to be the guy with no hidden agendas in my dealings with the world, but that doesn't mean I want everyone to see everything about me at everytime. Quite the contrary...I say what I think but try to say it when it can be heard. I'm not Barrack Obama with a bully pulpit, and I'm not Bob Dylan with a mystic connection to the world. Dylan is notorious, of course, for saying what he thinks but not in a way that reveals him. There are far poorer role models. Anyway, I referred her to this peformance of one of his most optimistic songs (NOT) from Subterranean Homesick Blues -- the Dylanesque version of It's a Wonderful World. 

 

There are a lot of Hank Williams songs that fit this problem. You can listen to his stuff and what you hear is total exposure of self, and yet there's just that bit of shadow over in the corner. Watch the center, but your eye keeps being drawn to the darkness. If you listen to something like I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You  or There'll be no teardrops tonight, you can feel the problems of concealing things that should be shown, and opening up the things that are best left in shadow. Well, he figured it all out pretty well...

 

The problems of self awareness and self disclosure are pretty obvious in the legends surrounding the life and trials of Thomas More. More was something of a social climber and hatchet man for Cardinal Wolsey until Henry VII decided that More was too valuable to allow the Chancellor to keep. More tried very hard to live schizophrenically in the era of the King's Great Matter--loyal to the king in all things save the divorce from Katherine. And, it should be noted, then withdrawing from public life, and refusing to comment until he was tricked by as supposed friend into a bit of self-revelation. Robert Bolt's  A Man for All Seasons captures this problem marvelously. It can be read as an indictment for the thought police state, a descendant of Orwell and 1984. It can be read as a straight political indictment of totalitarianism. Or, and I think both the Paul Scofield and Charleston Heston films catch this well, it can be read as a existentialist commentary on the problem of being a good man in the normal world. More's explanation of his behavior to the Duke of Norfolk feels a bit, on reflection, like being slammed against the wall and made to wake up and smell, not the roses, but the realities...

"Norfolk: Oh, confound all this.... I'm not a scholar, as Master Cromwell never tires of pointing out, and frankly I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas, look at those names.... You know those men! Can't you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?

"More: And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"

(Personally, I've always found the trial in Bolt's play to be exceptionally powerful; either the Heston or the Scofield versions are wonderful here, but Americans will seem to remember Moses, Ben Hur and Major Dundee when watching Heston. Either version is fine, but bear that in mind if watching Heston. Scofield is more Thomas and less hero, and that fits.)

More is struggling in the play and we struggle to be authentic yet live in the world. Well, life is a fatal experience. True, existential authenticity can lead to Kierkegaard's Either/Or life; or possibly to Heidigger's profound rejection of right, wrong, good and evil and embrace of what Sartre called nausea and H called being; or madness. Like Wittgenstein. In Kierkegaard -- whom W regarded as the most profound thinker of the 18th century -- there was a lot of madness or method; in Nietzsche, there's a lot of madness and not much method; in Heidigger, there's a lot of method to prove the best way is obfuscation; in Wittgenstein, there's a lot of clarity disguised as madness and obfuscation. 

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something — because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. — And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

I think Dylan has read a lot of Wittgenstein. Much of his work reads as does some of Wittgenstein at his most human. A lot of both of their work is about revelation -- of reality, of language, of the gap between them, of self. At our most authentic, we are least self-aware; or perhaps at our most authentic, we are most self-aware. Or both. Or neither...

But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"

Dylan has the same problem -- what is real, what is really real, what is true and how do we describe it. In Gates of Eden he finishes with this

At dawn my lover comes to me and tells me of her dreams/With no attempt to shovel a glimpse into the depths of what each one means./At times I think there are no words but these to tell what's true/and there is no truth outside the gates of Eden.

Perhaps it's unfair to add Kierkegaard here, but I think he summed it up well and with that sardonic compassion for mankind that undelies all his work, secular and religious. "Socrates says that the unexamined life is not worth living. I say that Socrates is wrong; the unexamined life is not lived.

I haven't been writing a lot about politics per se. By most objective criteria, Barrack Obama has been a B- to B+ president. Yet, listening to bits and pieces of Mitt, Newt and Ricky the Dick, I realize that we're living in a version of the end times where almost all the Republicans are on acid. I didn't know acid came on IV drips. Birth control and transvaginal probes? Satan? Two dollar gasoline? Invade Iran? ARE THESE FUCKING PEOPLE TOTALLY INSANE? Corporations are people, my friends? Really -- you said that. Really, you did. The trees are the right height? This is from the moderate conservative who now refers to himself as a "severe conservative?" Really, what the hell? Matt Taiibi nailed it, I think. He gets paid to write, so even though it seems oddly excessive, he does. And well. Me, I need inspiration. Still, this catches it for me:

Throughout this entire process, the spectacle of these clowns thrashing each other and continually seizing and then fumbling frontrunner status has left me with an oddly reassuring feeling, one that I haven't quite been able to put my finger on. In my younger days I would have just assumed it was regular old Schadenfreude at the sight of people like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich suffering, but this isn’t like that – it's something different than the pleasure of watching A-Rod strike out in the playoffs.

The two people on the stage the other night who are probably authentic are Santorum -- who's batshit crazy about social and international issues and only about a quarter not off the wall on economic issues -- and Ron Paul whose radical libertarianism is economically batshit and whose foreign policy is nostalgicly batshit and who's social views are distorted by lenses of time, place and race. But the other two...Jesus God. 

Newt Gingrich is not just batshit crazy, he's evil. He doesn't mean to be, but in a Manichean world, he's definitely on the dark side. For someone not a stupid man, he's says and does profoundly stupid things. Of course, the howling mobs buy into what he says. Romney, on the other hand, is the total package of inauthenticity. I've had a lot of LDS friends over the years, and they've generally been pretty true to whom they were. Romney, not so much. Gingrich could no more do a Lean Six Sigma thing than I can swallow fire; Romney lives by that crap, inputs-process-output and doesn't reflect on the results too much. For the human being, this is a sad thing. For the politician, it's fatal. Honest efforts to change with times and new facts are hard enough to deal with -- since the whole flip-flopping thing, the idea that the world could possibly be different than you thought at one point is beyond the ken of most politicians. Romney is hoist on his willingness to disavow his record and his common sense to try and score points with people who don't like him. He's a study in technocratic man trying to appeal to the worst elements of our nature. Good luck with that. Bolt's More has a moment that reflects his view and captures mine and probably that of most thinkers on the problem of ethics and government. 

 

Anyway, I think that my friend really has nothing much to worry about. When you worry about whether or not you're being true to yourself, you're probably being true to yourself. It's called conscience, and a person with a fully functioning conscience is never comfortable...but, they are fully alive. And, that's worth it all... 

 

 

In which we learn how the world will be taken over by cats...

Fleshy, the Defeatist's official cat, demonstrates that until Engineering Schools learn to accomodate felines, we're probably safe from total domination. And all along, I thought it was opposable thumbs that we had to worry about. I think MIT is a lower bar entirely -- evolution does take a while unless you buy divine intervention and frankly, Tiffany has better things to do these days...Justin Bieber or Adele? Leggings or torn jeans? It's hard being an eternally 15 year old chubby girl with hormonal swings. They can outsource the damn actual construction, and hell, some Republican dick like Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney would be happy to operate the damn things for their feline overlords. So, I guess this is a good time to stock up on mice, catnip and tuna...

It was 36 years ago yesterday,,,and today

So, in the proper spirit of the thing.  Ok. Yesterday was our 36th anniversary. We are very fond of each other and have a reasonably complex financial life that would make disengaging difficult. We don't want to cause the other pain or even inconvenience. I rate this as a successful marriage. We don't hate each other, wish the other grevious harm, and try not to act contrary to our mutual best interests. 

That said, we got married on Friday the 13th. My thought, being a strategic thinker, was that this way I would not forget both Valentine's day or the Anniversary and hopefully, one would key my brain as to the other. Generally has worked...I see the Valentine's bullshit in the stores, and it triggers the response that I need to do something to commemorate the day so as not to violate the "first, do no harm or cause unnecessary pain" part of my ethic. It does not make me happy. This makes me happy... 

I hate Valentine's Day. It is part of the conspiracy of the consumer society that begins in pre-school to make us all ready for a life of disappointment and conspicuous consumption. 

Educated Arrogance

Among the many abominations foisted on us is the merging of Lincoln's Birthday with Washington's and calling it President's Day. Frankly, we need more holidays, and Federal Holidays should be made mandatory paid holidays. Like in civilized countries – double time for workers and everybody else is off doing their thing. Now, celebrating Lincoln and Washington makes a lot of sense – but, Jerry Ford? Grover Cleveland? Warren G. Harding? John Tyler? James Buchanan? Seriously, give us back our holidays and make the bastards give them to workers…

There is method in my madness, by the way. Reduce work hours and you'll spur hiring to maintain productivity. It's a fairly simple idea and works very well especially when you're trying to maximize employment. If you have an idle assembly line, well, if you need a hundred employees to run it, and you cut the hours of 1000 employees enough to reduce productivity to where profit is affected, it will make economic sense to hire more workers. It probably does on a macro scale anyway – as Paul Krugman and other non-Friedmanesque economists keep saying, it's demand, stupid. No demand, no need for supply to keep up. No money, no demand…why is this hard?

I was wandering through various interweb sites this morning and discovered a number of things at places I don't always visit. Probably the best way to be exposed to new thought and new thinking is to just go out and look. I recommend Twitter for that – follow some of the links that are twittered and be prepared to be amazed, enlightened and generally entertained.

Consensus is a hell of a drug…clashing Armies, widening gyres and hollow men

When you're working in a group, it's hard to know what you truly think. We're such social animals  that we instinctively mimic others' opinions, often without realizing we're doing it. And when we do disagree consciously, we pay a psychic price. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that people who dissent from group wisdom show heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the sting of social rejection. Berns calls this the "pain of independence."

 

Take the example of brainstorming sessions, which have been wildly popular in corporate America since the 1950s, when they were pioneered by a charismatic ad executive named Alex Osborn. Forty years of research shows that brainstorming in groups is a terrible way to produce creative ideas. The organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham puts it pretty bluntly: The "evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups. If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority."

This is not to say that we should abolish groupwork. But we should use it a lot more judiciously than we do today.

                                        Author Susan Cain interview with Gareth Cook, Scientific American Jan 24, 2012

A while back, I did a post on politics over at the Defeatists recently.  One of my frustrations with blogging and one reason that I have cut back is the lack of feedback, by the way. Comments are welcome, good, bad or indifferent. Anyway, most of the comments over there seem to come from people who are trying to sell something like Gucci handbags but have been fascinated by some brilliant thing one of us said, either recently or a couple of years ago. We're about due for the annual "How dare you say anything bad about boy bands, you misogynist bastards, especially you, Commandante AGI!" which has some interesting semiotic undertext in it. However, this one was from a real human being who was interested in what I said and conflicted…I might be right, but what the hell…

Here's the conversation. Any emphasis is mine…

Good post, good post...but what if the "middle" is, objectively moronic and absolutely wrong? The middle says:

"We need to invade Iraq and kill or displace a million people and turn the country over to the Shiite theocrats, but we will do so with properly audited spending and well-trained troops who will follow the letter of the rules"

The middle says: "Medical care funding in this country is broken so let's require people to buy overpriced private insurance with their minimum wage jobs".

Sometimes, to parpaphrase Jim Hightower, "the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines or dead armadillos"

And...do you really see any Democratic Party politicians with any position or any influence in the party (which means...Jesse Jackson does not really count) as being anywhere near as crazy as the current GOP? Really? Which ones? I can't think of any...I'm a little younger than you but I remember Jimmy Carter and Dukakis and their ilk...and they are NOT Santorum or Gingrich, let alone Bachmann.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 10:48 AM

The middle is also gung ho about the upcoming hot war with Iran...either run driectly by the United States or by our good buddies in Israel. (Another nuclear power. Hmmmm....why is Israel "allowed" to have nuclear weapons?"

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 10:59 AM

Not sure where the middle is...you see it further off to the right than I do. Oddly, we could take either Eisenhower or Nixon and their social policies as a starting point for the middle, and we'd look pretty leftist today. Imagine the New Deal or the Fair Deal or the Great Society in swing today...but, of course, what we got is what we got and determines what we're gonna get near term and possibly long term. What that doesn't do is allow us to just give up. I remain convinced that the lesser of two evils is the better choice. By having Bush beat Gore, how did Nader make things better? Devolve for 8 years and here we go again? (Nader is not to blame completely for Bush -- lots of things conspired to make things this bad.) However, the difference between John Kerry and George Bush can be summed up with two names -- Samuel Alito and John Roberts as well as one Supreme Court Decision -- Citizens United. A Democrat wins in 2000 or in 2004, even an uninspiring Democrat like Kerry, and money doesn't equal speech. However, it's probably time for my periodic Yeats post...

Posted by: Crusader AXE | 31 January 2012 at 11:47 AM

I guess I am gloomier than you.

I wished I believed things could be "reformed". I think Chalmers Johnston nailed it. Even as things devolve and crash and burn, the people that benefit from the system still have plentiful opportunities for looting and rent seeking. And, the system promotes sociopaths (no...I am not saying everyone in government is a sociopath...but still, there are a lot of 'em).

People like Obama merely provide a cover, a gloss, for the ongoing predation. Arguably, Obama has made things worse in that the "anti-war left" (a feeble force given America's history as a violent culture based on conquest)) was lulled to sleep and ineffectiveness.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 02:04 PM

From a guy who calls himself "The High Arka"

You can refuse to play either of their terrible games. You can resist them. Most of all, you have the power to give up the deception that Barack Obama is a hero because he might murder "fewer" innocent people. The crucial difference between voting for Obama in the real world, and choosing to allow him to murder only 3 preschoolers in the example above, is that the example above describes a terrible choice being made one time only. The presidential farce is recurring. Imagine the preschool example, but this time imagine that it happens every day. Times ten or fifty or a hundred. Every day, you go by the preschool, and every day the madmen execute either 3 or 5 children--your choice. At what point do you stop choosing? At what point do you stop playing along and say, "Enough"? At some point, it must become apparent to you that the game is never going to end.

The children are going to keep dying--there will always be new madmen willing to take the hostages, make the speeches, and carry out the killings. Choose your decade. Choose your war. Choose your murders. Choose your "party." How long can you justify this morbid farce? How long will you play the terrible game with the killer? Go back to Vietnam, if you like. Go back to Hiroshima and "choose" which rich, powerful national leader you want to press the button. Go back to the invasion of the Philippines. Go back to the Mexican American War. The fucking crusades, or the genocide of the neanderthals. Count the bodies. Is it ever going to end? Are you ever going to say, "Enough"?

Every day you walk by the school. Every day the madmen are there. When are you going to stop giving them what they want? When are you going to stop validating not only the deaths they cause, but their entire horrific game? It will never stop unless we stop it. If we keep supporting it, year after year, always justifying it as "a little less murder than we could otherwise commit," it will never end. When you refuse to vote, or vote for someone else, you are a grain of sand. But at some point, change has to happen, and it will take individual people willing to refuse to support the killing. A few crazies, at first, who refuse to compromise by saying, "I guess it's fine if Obama kills people, because he'll kill fewer than Gingrich will." (This is, essentially, what that haughty piece of shit George Clooney is saying as the televised 2012 contest approaches) A few crazies, and maybe someday, more. It's as daunting a task as any, but it has to happen for the killing to stop: human individuals--without an automatic, reassuring group consensus--refusing to support killing any longer.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 04:31 PM

I'm guessing Brian isn't the High Arka, but HA is definitely invited to the conversation…

This bothered me, and I was blogging about it. However, I was composing on Typepad, which my Defeatist brothers continually caution me against because a couple of times a year the Google or the Typepad Hobbits decide to fuck me over and eat everything I had written. I learn for a while, and then revert to form…so, I have brief moments of sanity, interspersing the Einsteinian standard insanity of doing something again and again and being surprised when it goes wrong. Terribly wrong. So, I dropped it for a while.

However, it's still bugging me. I'm a lifelong Democrat who thinks that Jefferson, Jackson, both Roosevelts and Truman were among the great presidents, but the greatest was Lincoln. Lincoln would have serious problems in today's Republican party of course. In fact, he'd probably either be a Democrat or possibly something further left. It's fun to imagine him with David Boies, arguing Citizen's United against some Koch brothers mercenary. Of course, as Jesus wouldn't be allowed to preach in modern Christianity, Lincoln could never be admitted to the bar. Paul Tillich, the Existentialist Christian theologian and philosopher wrote in the introductory remarks to his most approachable work, The Dynamics of Faith, a series of lectures given at Cambridge in the 50s that "Today, faith is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternately skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender…"

One reason that I admire Lincoln is simple – he personifies human compassion. Lincoln wasn't overtly religious publicly, but he was a man of deep spirituality and concern. Tillich contends that "Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The dymanics of faith are the dynamics of ultimate concern…" Lincoln's ultimate concern was justice which he saw as fairness, compassion, compromise and the acceptance of the other side's humanity. He was generally disappointed, but he strove to achieve that world by doing what he could to maintain the union based on that idea of justice – not because the Union was itself just, but because he saw the potential for justice as lying in the Union, depending on it, deriving it's future from it. And, in order to preserve it as source of ultimate good, he was willing to risk everything, including his soul and sanity and sense of self to preserve it. Had the South been victorious, would he have been treated like a hero by the North? He'd have been hung…he was risking his life, and the irony of his assassination lies in the reality that Wilkes egotistical madness created.

Today's political world is based largely on something that goes back to the beginning – between those who are ALWAYS RIGHT and those who suspect quietly that they could have made a mistake. I don't think Lincoln ever signed an execution order easily or without struggle; we know that George W. Bush had no such concerns, and that Rick Perry was almost gleeful about it at times. And, we know that the people who go to Republican debates cheer executions. Where would Lincoln have been on that? I suspect he'd have vomited…

I've been doing some reading about Afghanistan and our continued adventures there. Now, I have colleagues who are 9/11 Truthers, which I am not. I have colleagues who think Osama bin Laden was killed years ago and then dumped in the Ocean for a propaganda victory; I have colleagues that believe that Israel and the Mossad did 9/11 and got us into the various mid-eastern debacles. Well, if I were Israel I would probably have reacted to the news of 9/11 attacks with some restrained glee especially if I was concerned about the US cutting a separate deal that would be to Israel's disadvantage. Churchill confessed to a feeling of relief and happiness when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Do we really think Churchill planned Pearl Harbor? I know that the Israelis and their various lobbies in this country really want Iran to go away – and, they'd like us to do it. However, as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued on Hardball on Friday we're facing a reality. There is nothing that makes sense about backing an attack on Iran for us; lots to make it a really bad idea; and, exactly what does Israel get out of the attack? NBC's chief "go get shot at" correspondent Richard Engle was in the same segment, and he indicated that the political leadership in Israel might be really excited by the possibility of an attack on Iran, but the actual soldiers and covert operators think it would be stupid, that their focus needs to be on Egypt and Jordan. Brzezinski argued that Iran may be crazy, but that particular empire in various incarnations has been around for 0ver 3000 years, and do we really think they're suicidal? He also points out to those who say "Israel can't live under the threat of nuclear attack" the degree of fatuous reasoning. We did it for over 40 years as did the Soviets and Western Europe. If Iran gets a bomb and uses it, do they expect to survive? Everybody in the neighborhood who counts, including Israel, has a credible nuclear deterrent, as well as delivery systems. The Iranians are depending in so far as they are on anything, on North Korean technology…what the hell. Let them spend themselves into oblivion, which was Reagan's strategy in the 80s. It works…unless you screw up and spend yourself into oblivion.

This is relevant to Afghanistan for a number of reasons. I know that the administration has agreed to stop combat operations sooner than later, but I'm really wondering why not now! It really helps to have some historical awareness, and the only tactic that has worked with Afghanistan is the punitive raid. Get in, fuck up the bad guys and anybody in the vicinity, threaten worse if they do it again, unass the AO. Invade and try to make it better, and you'll just make it a helluva lot worse, and you'll suffer for it. By April of 2002, the Taliban is gone from power although still there; al Queida was severely damaged there; Pakistan is/was/will be totally fucked up; and we're there because…we're going to turn it into a Jeffersonian Democracy? As soon as the Taliban was defeated and Osama bin Laden et al were in Tora Bora, we should have declared victory, given them a check, possibly re-established the monarchy and gotten out. The Afghan people don't want western culture; they don't want women to have any rights; they don't want to not kill each other. It's that simple – we're trying to impose an improvement on people who see no reason to change and regard the "improvements" as evil. NATO and the US would be further ahead to fund emigration to some reasonable location – Barstow, California for example – for those who want to live under something other than Sharia law. That'll assuage some consciences. But whether we leave now or in five years or in ten years, it will be the same…only worse.

The piece from Susan Cain is very relevant here. We got into Iraq due to a rush to judgment and the influence of Ike's military industrial complex combined with green, hubris and myopia. It's interesting in comparing our Iraq-Afghanistan experience to the Soviet experience. Unlike the Soviets, we did have a reason for attacking within Afghanistan – they were harboring a threat, and we had a just reason for wanting to eliminate that threat. The Soviets had been dithering around with the Afghans for years and chose to invade because of the Brezhnev doctrine that once a Red Block Country always a Red Block combined with the belief that they could control matters. They sold themselves a bill of goods. The Soviet experience looks a lot like US experience in Vietnam – lots of people with good intentions and an absolute inability to see the consequences of their actions. I've been reading former British Ambassador to Moscow Rodric Braithwaite's Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989 with a degree of déjà vu combined with a strong sense of WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING? Working from Russian sources and interviews, Braithwaite has a history of a cosmic comedy of errors that looks and smells a lot like Vietnam. Lousy policy, self-delusion, group-think run amuck, combined with inefficient tactics, lousy planning, and dumbfounding mismatches between outcomes, methods and resources. The good news for the Soviets was that Spetznaz was really well honed in Afghanistan. The bad news is that they failed to achieve any of their goals while turning the Red Block essentially into Cuba and North Korea. We achieved our initial goals, dithered and screwed around for the next 10 years and are still looking for a goal that we can achieve. Somebody in power needs to stop talking, listen to the record and the history and start focusing on ultimate concerns, desired outcomes – I define a desired outcome as something that can be achieved within the reasonable constraints of blood, time, treasure and lost opportunity. The most desirable outcome today is not to listen to the congressional storm or the media tumult but to listen to the inner voice of reason and make the sort of courageous decision that Lincoln made routinely. And, don't wait for elections or consensus. Do what's right, now…for Lincoln's sake.

Braithwaite begins the third portion of his book, the Long Goodbye with a poem by one the Russian Afghan veterans, Igor Morozov. It reads, in part –

Down from the heights we once commanded/ with burning feet we descend to the ground/ bombarded with calumny, slander and lies/ we're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving.

Farewell you mountains you know best/ what prices paid while we were here/what foes unconquered still survive/what friends we had to leave behind…

 

I generally find Russian poems and song lyrics somewhat of a blend of overly didactic and overly romantic…peasant and soldier poetry. The Soviet Army and its soldiers deserved a better use; so did the British with Lord Elphinstone in 1820. The Soviets in many ways repeated the British experience. We repeat the Soviety experience…if history repeats itself with the first time as tragedy and the second as farce, what exactly is our experience going to be? Tragical farce? We deserve better, and if someone listens not to the crowd but to the inner voices or reason, creativity and common sense, we may get it. I remain pessimistically hopeful…

 

 

 

 

 

                                    

If A means B, in a parallel universe, does Z mean petunia?

 

F. Scott Fitgerald is one of those tragic American authors whom I personally want to beat up, take their lunch money, and duct tape to a telephone poll. Preferably in Alberta, in January. But, that doesn't mean he did write well or have some interesting insights. One of his more interesting quotes is "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

Reason this occurs to me this morning is that I have had two competing earwigs going on simultaneously for the last day or so. One's a classic rock macho song, one is an alt-indie feminine thing. Both are pretty good songs, but neither belongs in my head, bumping up against each other like ships tied to a wharf. In Juarez. In the Wintertime...

The first is this classic rock piece from a movie I've never seen and that has all that 80s rock stuff going on -- lots of midi, boring beat, and what sounds like bells in the chorus...

Ok, not as horrible as it could have been. But, it's not really my sort of thing, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from to invade my consciousness. It's not a guitar song really; while I find the eyes the most interesting and the most attractive physical aspect of a lot of women, I can't say that this one is top five in my list of "eyes" song. While it could be worse, and just thinking about these might trigger something resulting in my flipping out worse, it beats the hell out of "Eye of the Tiger" for example. Still, if I have to wander around in eye-music, I prefer this one:    

Or this one from a different genre, but still pretty great... 

So, that is one that makes no real sense. And then there's the other one that has no reason to be there...Tegan and Sara. I like Tegan and Sara. I like Canadian music, I have a lot of lesbian friends, I find these sisters from the great white north incredibly talented and doing interesting music. Hell, I like a lot of lesbian musicians, from Dusty Springfield through KD Lang and Melissa Etheridge.  But, this isn't my favorite T&S number and I know at least where it came from -- I was driving back from a haircut, on a frontage road along I-15 outside Victorville when Mighty Manfred queued it up on The Underground Garage. But, he played a lot of stuff, and how this one anchored itself in my head irritates me no end.      

Now, the first Tegan and Sara number I heard still seems to be my favorite. And, there's nothing that really strikes me about Hell as a trigger. So, I'm confused...if two very different and conflicting musical ideas are clashing around in your head, what does that mean?   

O

Miscellaneous Miscellany, Mischevious, Malicious, Malevolent, Malcontented

 

Music.  The incredible Crispin Sartwell and I had a brief discussion of Etta James over at his blog “Why the Selection of Newt Gingrich for Pope is part of my master plan to save the universe?”  Crispin’s Blog is highly recommended if you’re looking for a IFC sort of always on, sort of off philosopher with a rock and roll bent. (Except for the fucking card tricks, which can rapidly devolve to the level of cat pictures.)  Basically, we agree that Etta James was incredible as a performer although, as with many blues and rock and country and fucking Tibetan throat singers her earlier, simpler stuff was better. Some of her producers were like second rate Chet Atkins adding strings and horns to something that just needed more bass, stronger rhythm and more reverb! There are exceptions to this general rule – musicians mature and get better and more interesting and versatile. Marianne Faithful falls into this category, I think as do The Allman Brothers, Emmy Lou Harris and Steve Earle. But as her range decreased and her weight ballooned and plummeted– cocaine, heroin, abuse, and gastric by-pass add up to a helluva drug combination – she remained a great performer but a different one.

 

Etta James is definitely in the Edith Piaf-Billie Holliday-Tammy Wynette tradition of female singers on the edge –victimized and exploited but never a victim.  I refuse to see her death as tragic. Pretty sure she ran out of steam – pneumonia, diabetes, dementia, high blood pressure, kidney failure and dialysis –and is no longer in pain. The behavior of her family in fighting over who was going to control her estate testifies to something about human nature…as a general rule, people suck.

In general, 2011 and early 2012 have not been great for the Blues. Lots of incredible talent has died—what I find interesting is that they seem to be surviving to ripe old ages which is kind of re-assuring. Etta James was 73; Johnny Otis was in his late 80s; Hubert Sumlin was in his 80s. While there have been some really smart band leaders like Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Earl Keene over the years who made their musicians pay into Social Security and Medicare, the traditional musician ends up either so rich it doesn’t matter or more likely – very much more likely – dead broke or surviving based on income from some other source like Matt Murphy and Blue Moon Marini, working as fry cooks in a catfish diner.  The Blues Review has a good summary of the folks who crossed over to play in St Michael’s Blues Band in 2011. 

Afghanistan. Norman Mailer wrote an allegorical novel in the late 60s called Why are we in Vietnam? Basically, the answer seemed to be because we can. Not a great answer to an important question, but despite the geo-political nonsense, it really seems that ultimately that was the answer. Somebody had a great fucking idea, and then it went sideways. Well, if Vietnam went sideways, Afghanistan has spun into an entirely different dimension. 

You know, the Russians advised us against this; Russian officers asked both formally and informally if we were fucking crazy or what? Well, Afghanistan made sense to destroy al Queida and to kill Bin Laden. Trying to add the Afghans to the ranks of the Muslim Jeffersonian Democracies that the Neocons were inventing in Central Asia was batshit crazy and stupid. The last successful strategic victory in Afghanistan was by the Moguls who just waged a war of virtual extermination and conversion. That was a while ago. The British got their ass handed to them, continuously; the Soviet Union was destroyed as a result of their fun and games -- Stinger Missiles and the Muhajadeen did more to make Gorbachov tear down the wall than Reagan was awake for -- and now we're stuck. The Brits are leaving; the French are leaving; the Dutch are leaving. We should be going and get gone. 

Look, some Afghans wanted us to toss the Taliban out and to have some cultural and economic liberation. They got it. Now they want us to leave. The people who wanted us to leave still want us to leave only more so. The people we're training, arming, feeding and supplying in the Afghan Army and Police Force want us to leave, express hatred for us and are shooting NATO trainers. Karzai is threatening to make a seperate peace with the Taliban and fight with Pakistan against us. Pakistan is having fun cutting the lines of communication. Anybody in the mood for The March of the 10000?

We're stuck and losing soldiers, money, prestiege and influence in a war we don't understand and can't win. Outside of waging a war of extermination and then paving the goddamn place so Pakistan and India can use it as a parking lot, there is no up side and no effective strategy going forward. The war made slightly more sense at the time and was less costly than the Iraq debacle. That didn't make it a good idea; and every day we're not withdrawing a lot and figuring out how to disengage is a really bad plan on our part. Afghanistan has been broke since Alexander visited it in 400 BC or so; why did we choose to pick up the Pottery Barn receipt on this one? 

It's a brutal, awful theo-klepto-psycho-cratic place. So, have a wide open asylum program for people who want the hell out. As for the rest, isolate it like the geo-political virus it represents and let them cheerfully kill each other. 

What the Hell is Going on With the Republican Party? Well, damned if I know, but I suspect that we're getting to see a rare instance of devolution. I find the symbolic nature of South Carolina's "war with the Federal Government" to use Rick Perry's phrase interesting. There most be something about the water in the Gamecock state. I heard a member of the executive branch of State Government say that he's an Evangelical Christian, a Tea Party Member and a Romney supporter...ok, how can you call yourself a Christian and be a Libertarian? I asked that question on Twitter, wondering if there was some special version of the Bible for these people. Some one responded to me to the effect that there was, most of the Old Testament. Well, Lewis Black had put that to rest a couple of years ago, despite everything else. "Why does he believe that? He read it in the Old Testament which is the book of my people, the Jewish People...which wasn't good enough for you Christians...was it!?"

 
 So, assuming that it's possible to somehow be a Christian and cheer for executions and letting people die and not caring for the poor, indigent and helpless but to focus on stoning women and using the bible to spread Free Enterprise, how can you be a Christian-Libertarian and a Romney supporter? 

Now, I kinda liked Michelle Bachmann. She's insane, of course, and kind of attractive in a depressed-MILFy-madwoman kind of way. An evening with Michelle Bachmann would be like taking a car ride with Lucy Jordan on amyl nitrate and Ecstasy...and lots of ritalin. Jon Huntsman seemed like a reasonable guy with a lot of great ideas compared to whatever the hell Perry, Santorum, Paul and Romney had for ideas. But, what the hell, he started babbling in Mandarin, and these people are largely opposed to things like public education...what was he, some kind of Metrosexual Communist? After watching and listening to Santorum a bit, I wonder if he doesn't realize exactly how crazy he is; could Rick Santorum be a double-agent of the devil, trying to give Evangelical Christians who are Catholics a really bad name? 

So, the obvious non-Romney face of the Republican party is actually Newt Gingrich. Barney Frank has been on the record saying that he had not thought that he had lived a good enough life to deserve a presidential campaign where Newt Gingrich was going to be the Republican nominee. Well, there's a way to go yet, but I'm betting Barney has a bunch of angry Catholic friends lighting candles all over Boston and Cambridge because nothing short of divine intervention explains the second coming of Newt Gingrich. And now, the third. 

Now, as a lifelong Democrat, I have to admit to staying home for the first election I could vote in, George McGovern in 1972. Nor did I vote for Jimminy Carter, which I kind of regret. Nor Mondale. Nor Dukakis. However, by the time Clinton ran, I had come to accept that by not voting I was voting -- not caring was allowing the greater of two evils or an actual evil or an innocuous with good intentions to triumph with my ok. So, I started voting...but, the Democrats had gone through a period of ideologically driven purity and pie in the sky social engineering dreams that were insanely unsupportable and unelectable. So, a lot of us stayed home for a couple of decades. Well, the left-center-moderates should be able to see and understand what that did for us really well after the Congressional debacle of 2010. It's really kind of simple -- in normal circumstances not including defeating totalitarianism or preserving the union -- government will occur best when it's plus or minus 20-40% from the middle. The pendulum will swing, and the wider the variation from the national consensus the crazier will be the correction. 

Now, Barrack Obama has advocated policies and programs and legal solutions to the right of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, (two famous American communists, just ask the John Birch Society) which seem to some to radically socialist and Kenyan. Among the some is, of course, Newt Gingrich. Mr. Meglomania. Gingrich is using racial buzzwords, playing to the old Southern Strategy...How can you be Black and a Republican? How can you be Gay and be a Republican? How can you be Mexican and be a Republican? How full of self-loathing do you really have to be? Or how unaware?

The Master of Disaster...so, I think the Republican Party is wandering around in the conspiracy-paranoid riven ideological desert that the Dems spent the 70s and 80s in. Could get interesting...should get interesting...might even get better. For a while...but then you have Democrats cutting education in their Tea Party state budget proposal by $53M but tossing Noah's Fun's Family Fun and Dinosaur Theme Park a $50M tax break. How full of self-loathing does a Democratic Governor have to be to recommend some insanity like that? I suppose it might create a few low paying park attendant jobs, more than making up for the loss of teaching positions. Now, if Rand Paul and Yertle Turtle McConnell can get Kaintuck an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act they can probably hire pre-teens to work there and in the schools for 30 cents an hour. Kinky will have to update his version of El Paso...Cretin from Kentucky?

 

The inevitable end of the beginning of the end...

This is the Romney Bot 10000 or what Mitt Looks Like with the Makeup Removed...Is it too early to point out that Romney's big win of barely meeting expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire have netted him a total of 6 possible delegates. ( The Iowa delegates can actually do any goddamn thing they want to do...they're not bound to the candidate at all. So it's about 6, +/- human nature? Or have two small to medium somewhat oddball places solved the problem of democracy? Who the hell knows? But the media seems to see Romney as a jaugernaut just chewing up the terrain in a Harvard Business School Blitzkrieg. Yeah...Well, things can happen, if we let them...

 

There is a marvelous article online at the Economist that makes a really simple suggestion -- stop worrying about the dogfight in the Republican party and pay attention to and force Romney to say in simple declarative sentences what it is that he intends to do as president. Since I personally think he is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do in general, I suspect that it could be a far more enlightening exercise than wondering about how Newt Gingrich can paint himself as the populist opposing a malefactor of great wealth. Won't happen, but it is an interesting idea...

 But then, so is this. They're making a porn parody of Star Wars... I'm wondering how this will impact the world of nerds, nutcases and plain old fashioned strange people who obsess about it. Some of these folks are exceptionally smart; some are exceptionally strange; some of them, as Leonard says of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, " one lab accident away from being a super-villain." Most are harmless, since the whole Star Wars/trek/thor/comic book thing is a way of handling their subliminated and frustrated sexuality and drive for power in a world that really doesn't fit them. (Note how easy it is to unintentionally pull the chain, so to speak, when writing about porn.) Given the whole Mormon, holy underwear thing that Romney has going against him, it's possible he might be able to inspire some of these folks...but, probably not, since he doesn't really seem to see himself as and that whole Master of the Universe -Venture Capitalist thing leads to something rather different indeed....

THE ROMNEY BOT HAS A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SELF IMAGE AND DREAM IN HIS ELECTRIC SLEEP!

 Since Porno films today tend to go straight -- wouldn't a Star Wars porn film need a lot of homosexual overtones, undertones and so on?--to video anyway, we'll probably be spared a raft of stories about nerves flogging the old dolphin in theatres...or, maybe not. 

THIS IS ROMNEY BOT BETA VERSION! 

On a vaguely related note, Hostess Bakery is filing for
Chapter 11, again. What is Mitt Romney going to do to save the Twinkie? (Actually, this kind of ties into the Star Wars porn thing, if you think about it...and, has anyone noticed how much Mitt actually resembles Max Headroom?) Let the market take it's course? But, what will Karl Rove and Grover Norquist wash down with their bottles of virgin blood and Dr Pepper as they plot the destruction of the social welfare net and the ability of the poor to afford toilet paper while the Koch Bros industies destroy the environment making it impossible to obtain leaves, corn cobs and so on for use in lieu of...) 

It's really not fair for me to pick on Romney for being an artifical, androidal rich bastard replicant who has devoted a life to strange cults and oddities like Capitalism and Joseph Smith. Granted, their religious ideology at it's basis is sufficient to make Scientology seem at least companionable and the 72 Virgins thing seem a reasonable alternative. Hell, Catholicism and Buddhism and Unitarianism and any religion has a lot of oddities. I was reading -- finally, I've been inspired by the hype and the Swedish versions of the movies -- to read The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and was kind of amazed to find out the importance of the Apocrophya to motivation behind various characters. Not as amazed at Calle and Lisabeth, but then, they were kind of sucked into this madness by that point. For the none theologically minded, the Apocrophya are the books that the Jews left out of what became the Old Testament but that survived and continue to influence thinking on these issues. Not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels...except maybe weirder. Now, religion does odd things. It can do wonderful things, but when you get into all that messy miracle, divine, intervention, afterlife shit, things get strange. Unfortunately, it's difficult to not take that stuff seriously when you're dealing with people who take two years of their lives out to prostelytze and annoy. (Being accosted by American Mormons on McConnell Street in Dublin was an excellent excuse many years ago for some Bushmill's in the coffee...for the next decade!) They believe this stuff... Rick Santorum scares me and his madness is something I grew up with...Pat Buchanan scares me, and his madness is something I actually can relate to quite well...

 

But, we should really follow the whole Romney thing not as a personal thing -- although it is worthwhile from a satirical point of view to do so and I'm all for satire -- but from a hard policy point of view. Governor, what exactly do you propose to do about -- jobs? And then follow-up -- there is a rule of thumb in interrogation, quality and so on. There is a significantly limited number of questions about anything that someone who may want to dissemble or is stuck in some ideological world view that they can answer without inadvertently discovering the truth of their beliefs or revealing their lie.

"Yo, Mitt-face, what are you going to do about the Middle East?

"I'm going to put troops back into Iraq, take down the Mullahs in Iran, and support Zion...err...Israel. Yeah, Israel, that's the place.

"So, you're going to re-invade Iraq? 

"They'll welcome us with open arms to protect them from al Quieda and the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and the Kurds and the Iranians!

"Sure about that? They told us to leave, you know because we wouldn't agree to their idea of a status of forces agreement. Do you want American soldiers subject to Iraqi criminal justice?

"Nobody wants that."

"Well, that was what the Iraqis wanted to have us stay." 

"I'd use more diplomacy..." 

"Yeah, ok, now Iran...How are you going to take down the Mullahs? Are you going to invade? Bomb? Use Nuclear missiles? Pray a lot? Keep using sanctions?"

"That's more than one question."

"Not so much questions as a precis of your options to take down the Mullahs? Maybe diplomacy? And, what gives us the right to impose regieme change again?"

"The people of Iran want to be free!"

"Just like in Iraq?"

The problem with the Romney-bot beta version was that it was toooooo smart. Kerry had actually thought about these things. Romney hasn't...and it shows. As Molly Ivins said, and we really miss her and need more people like her and pretty goddamn soon! "Nothin' but good times ahead."  

 

 

 

Merry Christmas to the official Defeatist Cat

Fleshy, the Defeatist's Official Cat, displays an odd aspect of catnip on Cats...they are suddenly in need of Marshall Amps, Fender Telecasters, and bandannas.. 

On a related issue, the Great Old Ones drowsing beneath the sea have sent us all a reminder that the true meaning of Christmas is that CTHULHU WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!

 
Of course, I'm waiting for all this nonsense to be over. The world still sucks despite the best wishes of the mega-corporations. I am looking forward to catching The Girl in the Dragon Tatoo -- I spent a good part of Christmas watching the Swedish version, and it was excellent. Incredible, given that it held my interest and was in Swedish...which is like German, kinda and kinda not. I'm not so sure that they had to go with Trent Raznor for composing the score -- there are a lot of Swedish emo-rock-garage-punk Celtic bands. And, if you go beyond Sweden, there's always our friends at Lordi!

 

Actually, a lot of really great music is coming out of Scandanavia. From Denmark, there's The Ravennettes, who have a lot of music that would fit the movie, especially something like The Last Dance which is an incredibly ironic piece of material...catchy, pretty, perky until you listen to the lyrics. "Every time you overdose, I rush to intensive care..."Lisabeth would approve.  

Norway has the Cocktail Slippers among others, and they're pretty amazing as a group, whether covering some Girl Group piece from the 60s or doing one of their originals. They are in Steven Van Zandt's Wicked Cool stable, and they're excellent. Again, there's a lot of irony in their stuff -- "Who'll be the last lover standing, come St Valentine's Day?" Particularly for the scene with her walking down the promenade at the end in the Swedish version; sure there's an equivalent moment in the Mara-Craig version. 

So, Happy New Year from AGI, ELS, Mr. Fun, Capt C at Defeatist Central and from our fellow travellers, Montag, Culture Ghost and all the rest at Guys From Area 51. Have yourself a very Tiffany New Year... and, if you aren't a machine and want to drop a comment even a la Rush Limberger "", well, we live for that crap. Actually, we don't...but it makes for a more fun conversation!

Run Run Rudolph...or not

 

I generally hate Christmas music. Happy, happy, joy, joy -- elves, lollypops and sugarplums. . I am looking for a Bluegrass or Rock version of the Messiah. A goth or punk version would be fun.

 

Not that there aren't some great Christmas songs. A lot of them are in Latin or German, and reflect emotions other than "oh boy, oh boy, this is gonna be great!" They reflect a sense of yearning, hope and melancoly. If you're a believer, you realize the agony necessary for the promise of the Messiah to be fulfilled...and, if you're a realist, your recognize that the agony will go on far longer than the  Passion. If you tend toward the agno-anti-atheistic side of things, you can scoff, or appreciate the need for balence and forgiveness and hope in a future that remains dark and beyond a present tied to a past full of pain, disappointment and loneliness. We are spared despair by those moments of anticipation, fulfillment and hope, and I believe that the best Christmas songs capture all of that. Even though few were written in minor keys, they can be played that way...from Away in a Manger and Silent Night -- which I once got to hear in a 9th Century Catholic Church played on zither and guitar and sung by the children of Berchtesgarden, a somewhat haunting moment --to White Christmas and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. 

 Christmas is the Holiday that is most human. Perhaps since so much of it results from Christianity ripping off the various Solstace feasts and festivals; perhaps because it speaks not to the past in our western mythology but rather to the past living through and to a future, real or not; perhaps because it is child-centered regardless of the worst Church bureaucracy and commercialization have been able to do to it since the Milesian Bridge -- it is just that way. In China today, Christmas is celebrated as a lead-in to the Spring Festival, which starts in early January. The nicest Christmasy-Christmas I've spent in recent years was in Shanghai, where there was enough Christmas stuff around to not make me homesick, but it was weird enough in many ways to make me smile. The Chinese in Shanghai and I suspect other parts of China don't really get the whole realm of sacred versus profane thing. I saw this my first evening wandering around a Shanghai mall, where the anchor store, Carre-Foure, had a large number of displays with Santa, Reindeer, Angels, Cribs and Wisemen. All together -- with a tree and presents. Go figure. 

So what are my thoughts on the best contemporary Christmas stuff? 

 

 The Guardian had a piece with some of their critics favorite Christmas songs and Fairytale of New York came in 2nd on their poll; Planet Rock did one of their listeners and the Fairytale came in first. It's one of my favorite pieces of Celtic stuff, as well as of  Christmas songs. The reason that it didn't win the Guardian poll, by the way, was that one of the judges felt it wasn't really a Christmas song and it got zero points. Well, he's a fucking idiot. Yearning, past happiness, despair in the present and acceptance of a confusing future, forgiveness and redemption. If that isn't the best of what Christmas offers, then screw it. It should be.

 While I was screwing around last night, I found a new Shane McGowan and Popes compilation and they had this one. I thought it was almost as good as the Fairytale. It looses points in my estimation because it feels overproduced and it takes the Toora-Loora-Loora melody without a lot of modification. However, I think people like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan would have little problem with it, seeing the borrowing fo the tune as part of the folk process, and who am I to argue. (In case you're wondering why I cite Dylan, I recommend listening to Dominic Behan's The Soldier's Song and then to With God on Our Side; closer to home, listen to All I Really Wanna Do and then to Muddy Waters' I Just Want to Make Love to You --same song, same phrasing, different instrumentation, voicing and lyrics.) and, as with a lot of McGowan's material, the lyrics drive the train. The Pogues were a better band, and he needs someone like Kristi McCall or Sinead O'Connor of Delores O'Riordan singing harmony to make it perfect. But, it's close. Same emotions, stronger on the hope perhaps and on the acceptance than Fairy Tale. But in the same veing.

 

On a far more contemporary note, there's my young,  sort of little friend Sheri Miller. She hasn't recorded this one yet, and doesn't want me to publish her lyrics for it until she's got a polished version and video. I can understand that -- the version is I've posted is from several years ago, and Sheri is still evolving artistically. He most recent effort included a wider variety of musicians, including people like Steve Cropper. This is more of a straight folk, kinda Shawn Colvin kind of thing, and she's done a variety of stuff in her short career. She recently wrote something about Rock and Roll Landmarks, and I'm not sure where she went with that. Although she got a kick out of Keith Moon's antics in various LA hotels and the idea of Sun Studios and Stax in Memphis among my various recommendations. I wish I had thought to mention the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, by the way -- the hotel is on pilings over Elliot Bay, and supposedly John Lennon tried to fish out his bedroom window the first time the Beatles came through Seattle. Anyway,However, she's working on another album and says that this number, Merry Christmas...Jesus it's been a helluva year will be a great fit. While I'm looking forward to it, I think the rawness and starkness of this version combined with the lushness of her voice should be a performance classic in years to come. After this, musically, I can forgive her anything, even Spoons.

- 

 

Steve Earle has kind of a classic Chrismas protest song here, showing his Woodie Guthrie-Townes Van Zandt roots. I had a senior moment earlier, thinking that it had originally been titled Christmas in Taneytown, a city in Maryland between DC and Baltimore and Gettysburg. For some reason, I thought this might have had something to do with Larry McMurtry's book store that he owned before going back to Texas. Well, the song resounds even today, and adds Phil Ochs to the list of his antecedents. It also reminds me of some Guy Clark stuff and some Robert Earl Keen stuff. But, it is a Christmas song -- calling us to do, be and build something better.

 Speaking of Robert Earl Keen, it would be blasphemous for someone like me to not cite Merry Chrismas from the Family as a marvelous contemporary take on things.And then, there's the Jeff Foxworthy vision which I first heard on a Christmas in Germany, and have chuckled over at least once a year -- especially those years where I own a Mustang GT.

Thinking again of my Celtic roots, I thought of the Chieftains. This is one of their carols, with Nanci Griffith providing the vocal. They have a history of recording with interesting talents, and here is a more normal carol, but with Ricki Lee Jones providing the vocal. However, again, the minor key and the sense of resignation.

 

How can you think about Ricky Lee Jones without a nod to Tom Waits? I suppose it's really not that hard, but this is a fascinating little piece by a major artist who irritates and illuminates. And then irritates again -- I suspect he wouldn't want to have it any other way. Now, in mercy for the season, I'm using Neko Case's cover -- his voice is an acquired taste, where as her voice is insanely good. 

 

Finally, I thought of blues and R&B. As you probably know, Hubert Sumlin died recently and Etta James is dying -- and in the tradition of the music, friends paid for Hubert Sumlin's funeral and Etta James family is squabbling over her estate. Now, I heard this piece earlier this week on Little Stephen's Underground Garage at XM21. James Brown is definitely telling us to get a grip and a perspective -- particularly at this time of economic injustice and oppression. Still resonates, and I hate to say that, but I find that very sad indeed...

 

Here's Etta James take on the holiday --

 

Sumlin isn't really identified with any Christmas music; there is a school of thought that "Sittin On Top of the World" is kind of a Christmas song. That school is wrong. If that's a Chrismas song, I can make the case that St Valentine's Day is a Christmas song. And, Sumlin wasn't in Howlin Wolf's band when he cut "Sittin..." for Sun Records before going off to Chicago and Chess. However, the Drifters cut this piece, and it's definitely worth considering..

 

 

"Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" Uhh, no...

 Jerry Harvey, expert on management dysfunction and organizational behavior, has a classic finding called The Abilene Paradox. Basically, it discusses our inability to deconflict -- agreement. We may all "want to do X but there are hidden voices saying, We should do Y because..." His story involves the disruption of a family afternoon in north Texas in the summer because his mother in law figured that he and his wife were probably bored. This resulted in a four hour car trip over beat up roads in a beat up, unairconditioned car to a Rexall Drug Store and Lunch Counter in Abilene. It was hot, it was dusty, it was a lot like the Texas in The Last Picture Show. When they finally got home and collapsed in the living room, there was dead silence punctuated by gas and burps from that fine Rexall Lunch Counter cusine for about 45 mintues. As Harvey tells the story, realizing that he was a trained social scientist with a PhD in Organizational Psychology and Behavior, felt compelled "to make a behavioral intervention." So, he said, "That was fun now, wasn't it?" To which his father-in-law responded by looking at him and visibly questioning the wisdom of letting his daughter marry this clown and then saying as only someone who's from Texas or at least spent a lot of time there can say it, "SSSSHHHEEEEIIITTTT --that was awful." The family did a post mortem, and when their reasoning got exposed -- Momma thought the kids were bored and wouldn't want to eat left overs, the kids didn't want to deny Momma anything, Papa wasn't going to push back against eveyone else so...the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in the early 70s, the road to Abilene was paved with kind thoughts and care for other people's feelings. Book is a classic, and I recommend it to anyone -- Harvey is one of my heroes along with Keith Richards, Guy Clark and Kierkegaard.

 

I am drawn to this example today as we observe the final drawdown of US Forces in Iraq and the casing of the colors... Although we were not militarily defeated and did eliminate a crazed dictator, in a very large sense this was a strategic if not ontological defeat for the United States. Bush's decision to invade Iraq may rank historically with Cyrus invading Greece, Hitler Russia or Lee Pennsylvania. 

 This war was a terrible idea as a use of blood, power, treasure and time. Our soldiers performed incredibly well -- the average enlisted guy in Vietnam served one tour of 11.5 months. Once. In World War II and Korea, once you got there, you stayed until you couldn't fight anymore but there were long lulls between battle and fear. But in Iraq, it was never quiet, never safe, never secure, never lulled -- every day, anywhere, was a day in combat. Everybody hated you, and if they didn't, you figured that there was something wrong with them. As I talked to our kids returning from this cauldron, the general theme echoed one I heard from a British Peacekeeper in 1994 -- "They're all guilty bastards."

Were there problems? Hell yes; war is nothing but problems. This one was fought so poorly that it makes you wonder if Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tommy Franks had bet against at some British bookies...their ignorance, stupidity and basic inhumanity wasn't just criminal. It was of some other dimension -- as if the DOD was run by Reptilian-Alien overlords. Bizzare...

 Did we have soldiers do some bad things? Yup -- every war has soldiers do bad things. But, the vast, vast majority of the American military served incredibly well, honorably and effectively. It was a bad idea; it's the Iraqis country; we broke it, we fixed it, and we need to get our guys all home. Now. 

So, it was with a certain degree of stunned outrage that the drumbeat from the Republican party managed to get through my skull. The leadership of the Republican party is so committed to reflexive condemnation of anything that this White House does that they're not only willing to destroy the economy of the foreseeable future, the lives and hopes of millions of Americans; they are willing to denigrate the sacrifices of the people in the boots on the ground by saying that this war was in vain because we didn't stay there. Motherfuckers...American values were defeated in Iraq, and American interests were crushed in Iraq. They were crushed when the first bombs fell in Bagdad; they were defeated when the first tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border. We lost the war then, in early 2003; our political leaders, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, etc., dealt us this defeat as sure as the Austrian high command dealt their army and empire defeat in 1914. Criminal ignorance, stupidity, cupidity, intellectual sloth and emergent dementia later, and here we are...again. 

 

If you recall when the agreement to end the war was signed, GW Bush was president, Condi Rice was Secretary of State, and Petraeus was still in charge of the Army in Iraq. That team didn't negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement; the Iraqis want us gone. We just lost 4500 killed, thousands of lives shortened by wounds both physical and psychological fighting a war to bring self-determination and Jeffersonian Democracy to a nation made up of various ethnic, religious and cultural groups that all hate each other. As a whole, they want us gone, and we need to go. 

Now the clowns are rattling their cages about Iran. Seriously, what do they expect to happen? The drone goes down in their country; we should bomb them? Was that Gingrich or Romney or Palin? Insane. Again, total lack of historical perspective on how the "great Game" or any game for that matter besides Monopoly is played. When a Soviet defector flew a MIG 25 Foxbat to Japan about 30 years ago, we totally dissassembled the plane, kept it for 67 days and returned it to the Soviets in boxes.  

Of course, these guys are all operating in a vacuum. What we do to them, they can do to us. If we torture prisoners, they will torture prisoners. If we bomb indiscriminately, they will bomb indiscriminately.

It's important as this mess ends that we honor the victors, the American Armed Forces and Veterans who overcame the strategic defeat that was the whole war, and won an operational and tactical success in conditions of incredible difficulty. 

 

So, while I find Barrack Obama less than a success, and I resent the mistake that you can have bi-partisan cooperation when only one side cooperates as being the worst of new age gibbersih made into policy, we need to make certain that he is re-elected but, more importantly, that the Democrats take back the congress, a greater majority in the Senate and begin to work dismantling the Oligarchs on the right side of the Supreme Court. 

Or, fuck it. We have backed a mythical monster -- Cthulhu -- an anarchist analytic philosopher --my brother from another mother, Crispin Sartwell -- and a dead Communist -- Gus Hall -- for President. We were being satirical...but, if you can't get your head out of your ass far enough to care this time around, just vote for our new ticket of Gary Busey and Callista Gingrich. What the hell -- he's beyond certifiable and she's obviously controlling Newt through a combination of shiny things and sexual deviance. At somepoint Gingrich will either choke on a ring or she'll suck his brains out; might as well get it over with. 

However, I am going to care. I'm going to encourage other people to care. I'm going to get goddamned irritable about people not caring and doing jejune parlor tricks with semantics. You know what the meaning is of "lesser of two evils?" The better choice. Our soldiers, our people and the world deserve to be free of these madmen for at least a complete term. It needs to be done, and if we don't do it now, who will?

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

--Bob Dylan, 1962

 

 

 

 

Weekend Anomalies with an AXE

Anomalies and the AXE

Earlier this week, on some medium somewhere, I read that a local entrepreneur was holding open auditions for proposed Christian videos, TV shows and Movies. My initial reaction was, By Bless Tiffany’s left tit, what a joke. However, turns out it’s real, and Crusader Axe is going to cover this as an unpaid staffer for the Crossroads of Opportunity’s Alternative Newspaper, the Mojave Free Press. This will be my first foray into true Gonzo journalism, so we’ll see how this plays out. I’ve seen some “Christian” stuff, and what they lack in aesthetic quality, they make up in perky white-anglo evangelical zeal and nonsense. So, I’m curious as to what is going on here – Why Barstow? A lot of things are filmed around here; for example, Clint Eastwood used the cave systems in the local mountains to film “Letters from Iwo Jima” and I think there are some local shots at various points in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But, the average Barstonian is neither Biff nor Muffy  and doesn’t conform to the traditional California image. It’s a small, poor, grungy blue collar town that depends on a couple of military bases, a lot of fast food restaurants and hotels, and the Burlington Northern to continue existing. So, this is either some local who spent too long in the sun or it’s a scam.

Next, I was somewhat surprised to discover this morning that it had taken this long for the Lindsay Lohan spread to leak from Playboy. I was more surprised when I followed the link on HuffPo to the pirated material. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if  Playboy’s editorial and marketing staff figured they  could get more of a bump from publicizing her and the leak as opposed from waiting for the reviews of the spread, so they leaked it all.  I feel sorry for Lohan in some ways – she is kind of pathetic. She had lots of potential I guess, as a American Hailey Mills 40 years later. However, we need to remember that the old studio system prevented a lot of nonsense from the child stars. They may have had problems later, but when Walt ran the place, the kids didn’t get into lots of trouble as soon as they were old enough to drive. And, despite obviously dysfunctional situations—Jackie Coogan, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Danny Bonaduce, Patty Duke and so on – for the most part these people hit 21 with livers, brains and bank balance more or less intact. Lohan’s situations have been weirder by far than her films; and, she doesn’t seem to get it. The Star System in Hollywood has been gone for a long time; what sells now is bad press.

Anyway, the Playboy spread might have been considered sexy and titillating back in the mid-60s. While Playboy is still less graphic than Penthouse, it’s long since started showing public hair and related anatomy. While there are people still who claim to read the damn thing to read the articles, not so much these days. I suspect that Ms. Lohan might have been willing to show more and do more for more money although maybe she has finally gotten some advisors who realize this could degenerate quickly. Her career is teetering; appearing at times like a meth-addled hag with an absolute inability to control her behavior, desires or bodily functions combined with the spoiled diva sense of entitlement that puts a lot of people’s teeth on edge. The pictures are lifeless, continuing her Marilyn Monroe meme and while more risqué than the Vanity Fair shoot, she doesn’t work as well as she did in those photos. So, if I’m Playboy, my thoughts looking at these thing s would have been how tosqueeze the most value out of these things…frankly, she looks embalmed. So, stage an act of piracy of intellectual property and raise hell without ever getting anywhere. Perhaps there’s more stuff, better stuff in the magazine; possibly not. But, this will amp up their sales and possibly the positive impact on her career.

Perhaps she should come to Barstow for the open audition.

Another striking bit of weirdness this week revolves around Karl Rove and the Republican establishment. Rove's disinformatia  operation, American Crossroads decided to go all in on the Scott Brown re-election bid, and ran an ad  in Massachusetts 12 months before the Senatorial election trying to portray her as some kind of progressive reformer in league with the Regulators and OWS and probably the Illuminati and the Communist Internationale to encourage violence, disruption and scare away the “Job Creators.” Well, the complaints were very much over the top – Dr. Warren was a Harvard Professor at Harvard Law and was asked to come into government to administer and regulate TARP. She did and then began lobbying for a consumer protection agency focused on protecting those of us who are buying the financial products the banks and brokerages are dealing. The idea that Massachusetts is populated by tea-sipping, chardonnay bathing, Pekinese sodomizing commie pinko fags is actually pretty funny. Get past Newton, and you’re in pure rustbelt, redneck country. However, it’s a well-educated and pretty smart bunch of rednecks, who may not be politically correct but are pretty savvy. The sole reason that Scott Brown won the special election to replace Ted Kennedy was that the Democrat ran a wretched campaign based on a sense of electoral entitlement. After all, it was Teddy’s seat, so the voters would give it to the anointed Dem…not hardly. Teddy Kennedy always campaigned and campaigned fiercely. So, given the choice between a guy identified as a favorite of the Hedge Fund Managers and somebody who gives the Hedge Fund Managers nightmares, and Dr. Warren has a tremendous following. It helps that she can explain this crap in plain English. So, Rove’s over the top attack ad didn’t have the desired effect. It improved her standing in the polls.

So, they next roll out some bizarre thing about how she’s buddy-buddy with the bankers. Yeah. That will work well – in this age of new media, social networks and a nascent political uprising of progressives united with a pissed off middle and working class, attacking Warren and then being identified with Rove is not terribly helpful. Saying things that are factually absurd is even more damaging. I suspect next, to Dr. Warren’s and her husband’s surpise, Rove will accuse her of either being gay or being anti-gay. We can only hope…

Karl, if you’re listening, Jon Stewart cocking an eyebrow and calling this bullshit will hurt Brown more than this ad could ever help.

Then there was the shock about Albert Pujols not signing with the Cardinals or the Nationals or the Marlins but with the Angels. How could he do that? Fairly simple – he’s an excellent defensive first baseman but I watched the play where he broke his forearm this summer. He’s not stupid, the Angels are in the American League, and they have the designated hitter as an option. They also are in a huge media market and have the money, a quality manager who has National League roots and pretty decent team in a fairly weak division. He could have signed with the Cardinals at any time, but they either didn’t pursue him or they didn’t realize that the guy had alternatives. I’m wondering where Prince Fielder goes, but batting him fourth with Ichiro and Dustin Ackley in front of him would probably give the Mariners another ten or so wins with no other improvements.

Finally, I must say I’m really tired of these “Gambling in Casablanca? I’m shocked, shocked. Arrest the usual suspects…”We’re sending drones over Iran and this is a surprise? To whom? Rick Perry? Michelle Bachmann? John Boenher? Katarina van der Heuvel? A drone malfunctions and the Iranians recover it and try to make it a big deal.

Hell, this is where our media’s occasional lack of historical context and limited attention span come into question. Of course, it was over 60 years ago, but the USSR were able to shoot down a U2 and capture the pilot. Eisenhower caught hell from the nonaligned nations and the world’s press, and the poor CIA contractor-pilot, Francis Gary
Powers was vilified for not following the Geneva convention and breaking under interrogation.  But seriously, the shock was that the Soviets had the capability to engage high altitude air craft. If we had the capability to collect intelligence and didn’t then we’d have been wrong.

I’d rather they played this newest iteration of the great game with drones and technology than with human beings. Got enough problems on that front already.

 

 

Spit on statistics -- it's what you measure and how, not the results

 

WILL WRESTLE YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW FOR A BUCK!--Homeless Guy's Sign, Trust Stop Near Barstow

So, the unemployment rate has dropped below 9% to 8.6%. Why is the AXE less than excited by this? The unemployment rate is based on the number of people who are considered to be in the workforce, so if you eliminate people from the workforce who are unemployed, the percentage employed is skewed to teh right. In other words,  So, most of the drop is due not to the imaginary job creators of Republcian lore, legend and myth, but due to people giving up after months of trying, running out of unemployment benefits and falling off the grid and under the bus. In other words, a historically low number of workers are doing less badly, while there's an increase in people who are literally just waiting to die. 

American governments at all levels continued to bleed workers, for one. And the decline in the unemployment rate had a down side: It fell partly because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. That left the share of Americans actively participating in the work force at a historically depressed 64 percent, down from 64.2 percent in October.Even excluding these hundreds of thousands of dropouts, the country still had a backlog of more than 13 million unemployed workers, whose spells of unemployment averaged an all-time high of 40.9 weeks. “They say businesses are refusing to look at résumés from the unemployed,” said Esther Perry, 59, of Bedford, Mass., who participated in a recent report on unemployed workers put together by USAction, a liberal coalition. “What do you think my chances are? Once unemployment runs out, I don’t know what I will do.”

Do the Occupied folks stay in the Workforce? Probably not -- while they're doing their thing, exercising their constitutional rights and getting pepper sprayed and beaten and shot with rubber bullets and so on, they're not looking for work or, conversely, they are working, just not getting paid. See how much fun this is? Statistics measure what you measure -- basing policy decisions on them or making political decisions on them -- THE PRESIDENT"S CHANCES FOR RE-ECLECTION IMPROVE AS UNEMPLOYMENT DIPS! -- without asking some structural, almost existential questions about what these things mean is really stupid, and I'm sure we'll do it soon, 24/7 on cable news, blogs like this one and talk radio. 

So, here's the test -- who do you know who's unemployed and you don't understand why? When they get a job, assume that the unemployment rate may be going down. Whom do you know who hates their job -- trick question, the stats that I have seen are pretty straight and seem confirmed by reality, just about everybody hates their job. However, pick someone who's dramatically underpaid, overworked and unhappy...see when they get a raise. Or feel comfortable quitting their job to look for a new one. Then what's happening is an actual increase in employment, as opposed to an artifical decline in a rate.  

 

Party's ending for the big fella...our loss.

"We have a besetting sin today in our politics where people think that you show your depth of commitment to a cause by rigidity, not just by rigidity, but impugning the motives of those on your side who try to get something done." --Barney Frank

There is some universe where Hank Paulson's nudge to the hedge funds managers and their ilk is not criminal conspiracy and collusion, but not in this one. The fact that Bloomberg broke the story makes it seem even more egregious -- obviously, someone  confused the roles of Secretary of the Treasury with Lord High Protector of Plutocrats. Interesting approach to doing business. Unfortunately, how exactly does the Congress respond? How does the White House respond? We've given the Bush administration a pass on things that degrade and demean the nation; won't the Obama administration apply the same "professional courtesy" to this guy and his minions?

This is why we need public intellectuals like Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman and ultimately Barney Frank. Frank's retirement isn't terribly surprising -- I'd rather hang out in Cambridge and the South Shore than DC, and he's showing why he's been there so long while showing the good sense to leave on a high note. For him, this will be a high note, one instance where Cassandra can crow...Frank is probably incapable of appearing to gloat even while gloating. Still the thought of the former Secretary of the Treasury and the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors perp-walking into a Congressional Oversite Committee to force meaningful action on derivatives and finanical instruments without Representative Frank's presence on the committee is sad. We'd love the show.

"One of the problems you have in politics is people don't ever want to disagree with their friends. Politicians get a lot of undeserved credit for standing up to their enemies. It's not only easy to stand up to your enemies; if you're a politician, it's generally profitable. The hardest thing to do is to stand up to your friends when you think they're wrong."--Barney Frank

One of the things that makes Frank so valuable to us all is his utterly unwillingness to pander. He's not terribly good at sucking up to those in power. Part of this stems from an innate honesty that is rare in politicians. However, despite the Chardonnay-sipping, Brie-eating reputation of his district, there are a helluva lot more of middle class and working class folks in his district than there are elitests. Frank is a representative of a type of old school politician in Massachusetts -- he takes care of his constituents and pays attention to them and their needs because he understands that they are the ones who provide him the venue in which to do things he wants to do. If bitchslapping the bankers appeals to folks in Kansas or Oregon, it appeals more to the non-elite working folks who get up in the morning and take the train into Boston to work in banks or shipping companies or universities not as wealthy plutocrats but as clerks, guards, analysts, janitors, school teachers, cops, firemen and college instructors and staff. 

I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the Army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.”--Barney Frank 

When the occupy movement decided to complain about Congress, Frank responded in character and with the kind of straight forward common sense that makes a difference. Pointing out how much the house got done only to be stymied in the Senate by the Republicans led by Mitch McConnell, he refused to pander to the OWS or to the whining wing of the Democratic party. "I didn't elect those people (referring to Scott Brown and Tea-publicans added to Senate and House.) I'm not going to apologize for the congress to the people who elected this Congress by not voting. " Now, Nancy Pelosi says a lot of the same stuff that Frank has said, but she says it with a polite and strained smile as befits a lady who will have great fun this year eviscerating John Bohener and the like.(I'd say emasculate, but that happened to most of those bastards a long time ago -- there's a notch cut in scrotum of some pols everytime they go to a Koch Brothers barbecue and a Grover Norquist revival and eventually the balls just fall out.)But, Barney Frank just looks pained...Sox win, Bruins win, Pats win -- fine, but he looks pained. Ana Marie Cox points out that this is one reason Frank's comming out wasn't a big deal in his district; he just doesn't look like he's ever having fun, and it's hard to imagine him ever having fun. 

Barrney Frank, who has just announced his retirement at the next election, was the purple dinosaur of Congress, though not in the way the children in your household might recognise. He was as flamboyant as magenta and as prickly and dangerous as a T Rex – with the same short, stubby arms, come to think of it. Once he had someone in his sights, his wit flayed its victims quickly and mercilessly. Though Frank could be laugh-out-loud funny, his own range of facial expressions ran the gamut from displeased to disgusted. I've always suspected that Washington accepted his homosexuality with relative ease, in part because it's really hard to imagine Barney having sex. Or doing anything one might possibly enjoy.

Frank has been a mainstay of cable talk shows, and I can see him taking up the cause after he leaves office in much the way Ed Rendell and, from the idiot wing of the American People, Michael Steele has, either with MSNBC, CNBC or Current. That would be interesting because Barney Frank is primarily a pragmatist, not an ideologue. He believes that the purpose of government is to do that which is in the preamble to the Constitution --form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. So, he can work across the aisle and has frequently done so with folks like Ron Paul. It's interesting to me that the two liberal boogie men of the Congress in 2009-20, Barney Frank and Allan Grayson worked with Paul to pass legislation requiring the audit of the Federal Reserve. Paul and Frank will go out together, and that will be a loss. I don't agree with Paul about much except transparency and freedom from intrusive government in the private life of citizens. But, they are both honest men, and we're going to miss them. I believe substantively we'll miss Barney Frank more, but the vision of the skeletal elf and the lumbering troll scaring the hell out of lobbyists, bankers and bureaucrats is incredibly amusing.  As the Times points out

Mr. Frank supports a muscular government that exercises both oversight and aggressive action on behalf of the less fortunate. That used to be a fairly standard position for many members of both parties. Congress may be losing one of its best-informed and quotable members, but it is not losing a radical.

Probably not again in our time, because as Barney Frank has so accurately described the Republican party, “It consists half of people who think like Michele Bachmann and half of people who are afraid of losing a primary to people who think like Michele Bachmann.”

 

Too much of nothing is too much...

 Some of us have more problems with heroes. Steve Earle comes to mind -- he often tells the story of playing a gig early in his career in Houston, and his hero Townes Van Zandt showed up and sat in front. He then proceeded to heckle Steve for the rest of the evening. "Play Wabash Cannonball. You call yourself a folk singer but you don't know Wabash Cannonball." It wasn't a zen moment; Townes, when drunk and off meds could be a real asshole. While touring in support of his TVZ album, Steve touchingly says that after years of thinking about it, the main reason more people don't know Townes Van Zandt was Townes Van Zandt. 

 Steve also tells the story of leaving a tour during his drug days, driven by the sudden need to hitchhike off at Thanskgiving time and see William S. Burroughs. Not that he knew the guy, but Burroughs was a hero of his too. So, with two guitars -- one wouldn't be enough -- a gun, a stash and a roll of money he took off. He showed up, and Burroughs was the sort of host an insane junky crashed in Lawrence Kansas would be expected to be.. Burroughs was not the sort of guy to feel comfortable with a left-leaning country singer in the early 90s...do ya think?

 

Steve had better luck with people like Guy Clark, Emmy Lou Harris and Johnny Cash. But, those stories are not so funny. I'd be curious to listen to a conversation about writing and meaning between Steve and Bob Dylan. That would be interesting. 

I just saw a thing that Jabba Hut Lindbaugh has an annual Thanksgiving story about how socialism almost killed the early pilgrims. Not exactly. And, as usual, he's a total dipshit about it. It's true that the pilgrims had an agreement at first to have all thing in commons. However, they departed late with one ship instead of the two that were planned, and did not finally get to Plymouth until December. They looted some graves of corn left as offerings for the dead, but they were in coastal New England during what we know to have been a particularly cold cycle in the world's climate and they were short of supplies to begin with. 

Pure socialism is as stupid a system as pure capitalism. However, it wasn't the communitarian living plans that almost killed these folks -- it was bad navigation, poor planning, insufficient supplies and insufficient knowledge of what to expect. The Pequot tribesman who actually helped them lived in a communal arrangement that worked really well until disease, warfare and Protestant Christianity did them all in. 

Regardless of system, scarcity is the problem. If there is not enough and Jesus hasn't provided the receipe for multiplying wine, fish and bread, any system can be stressed to the near breaking point. Interestingly to me, the retreat from a communal to a more traditional structure occurred after a supply of food and goods was secured. Dylan summed this problem up very well --scarcity is the problem. 

 

As I said, it would be interesting to listen to Dylan and Earle and Clark talk about songwriting. We know that Dylan and Cash spent a lot of time together, so I suspect that some of the others have also been at Cinnamon Hill or at Hendersonville for a guitar pull or two. 

Top 100 Guitar List from Rolling Stone

 

Crusader AXE normally gets weird over these kinds of lists. There's certainly room to feel that way with this one, but I don't. I think they pretty much got it, and their top 10 is excellent. I might move Mike Campbell up, and possibly flip some positions here and there but it's hard to argue with a 1, 2 of Hendrix and Clapton. Eric hasn't been the pure guitar god since Delaney and Bonney and musically, I think that's great; but, his work hasn't just been focused on six strings. Hendrix didn't have his discipline, but no one has ever talked about how good his vocals are. I prefer Eric Clapton, but I can't argue with this ranking. In case you're wondering, Steve Stills is on the list and I would have him higher. However, the top two are the primary lead players on these cuts, from Stills first solo album. And this one includes another top 100 player along with Stills. Of course, Neil Young is on the list, but that would just be pandering... But then, what the hell, why not?

 

The ACLU, God and the Atheistic Communism

"Oh Huntsman. Take that metrosexual pink tie & good sense over to the Democratic party where you belong." Ana Marie Cox

So,the inimitable Ms.Cox twittered last evening to the effect that she couldn't understand why Jon Huntsman didn't take his calm demeanor, arched eyebrow and good ideas where they belonged, the Democratic party. After glancing through the results of the Republican foreign policy debate, I tend to agree. These people are deranaged. While Mitt Romney can probably be forgiven for feeling confident, it's sort of like feeling confident about pitching a no-hitter against the Yankees after ecking out a win over St Swithin's School for the Blind, Lame and Criminally Insane. Although frankly, they couldn't make the team at St Swithin's... 

Michelle Batship Bachmann is the most evangelical Christian in the mix and she is now embracing atheistic communism. China's education, medical, environmental and land management systems are horrendous; the Chinese Communist Party is terrified that income inequality, rural poverty and ethnic tensions will result in massive revolts by the ethnic minorities as well as by the Han Chinese who feel left out and left behind. So, she feels that we should be more like China. China is mortgaging it's future for a somewhat flakey present, and she figures we should embrace that strategy. Well, shit -- no wonder she opposed Wall Street Reform, Stimulus Packages and the Consumer Protection Program for investment. China, like Homey the Clown, don't do dat! They also have lots and lots of abortions, forced and otherwise. So, why does Michelle Bachmann hate the baby girls of China?

If I were an educated Roman as opposed to an educated American, I would regard Christianity as a totalitarian and anti-social force. Well, Bachmann is right there -- she's actually had an epiphany and wants to share it with the world. Mao Tse Tung is really Jesus.  

Then there's Herman Cain. People who get direction from God on what they are supposed to do generally tend to be relatively harmless until they're not. Anti-theist that I am, I can't bring myself to blame God for Herman Cain. God has enough fashion sense to reject anyone so confused as to wear that pimp hat. Still, the idea that God told me to do it is pretty lame. There's a moment in the classic Sergeant York, where Gary Cooper is knocked from his horse by lightning, and he finds Jesus, stops whoremongering and gambling and marries a good woman. Alvin York was interviewed toward the end of his life and asked how realistic that was, and he said it was total nonsense. He fell in love, the girl said no more moonshining, card playing and lying, and he made a choice. So, despite the St Paul paralell that the movie tries to establish, the reality was the poor guy wanted to get married and the girl wasn't willing to marry a wild man. I mention this because most life changing epiphanies are like that -- I have no idea why Cain is running. I do know that when George Will and Donna Brazille agree on the character problems of a candidate, the candidate will be toast. 

Why are we even considering Newt Gingrich at this point? Seriously, why? The guy is the Captain Kirk of Starship Ego Trip, and with less substance than a Priceline Commercial. In terms of character, Newt is one of the least crazy of the R's candidates, but he's among the most sleazy. There's probably a nastier type running for town selectman in a hamlet just north of Jacksonville or someplace, but Newt brings a wealth of general awfulness to the table. The Obama people have got to be relishing a ticket with Newt Gingrich on it. My problem is that if he's on the ticket, it's not impossible to see him actually in the White House. Horrifying as that prospect has to be...

Santorum? One trick pony with three working legs. Not worth considering. Perry? He's got a lot of money and hates Romney. He has as much chance at this point as Krusty the Klown...and before he gets excited by that comparison, someone explain fictional, cartoon character to the guy. 

Which leaves Romney...the ultimate hollow man. You know, if you've watched children vie for adults' attention, you notice that they act out more and more untilt they either get want they want or the attention they crave or both. Obviously, one way to regard Bachmann is this way. Gingrich is the smart kid, trying to be Eddie Haskell but he can't because the Eddie role is being fought for by guys who are more like Eddie and less like Mr. Toad of Toad Hall...who also had a large line of credit at Tiffany's.

So, I return to the problem posed by Ms. Cox. Why is Jon Huntsman still a Republican? My thought at this point is simple -- the combination of loyalty, disbelief, and a measure of morbid curiousity. Works for me a good deal of the time....why not for him?