Diptych

Occupy. That is all.

2011-10-28T22:19:00.000-05:00

Tea Party

2011-03-04T22:29:00.009-06:00

In Federalist 12, which was a marketing brochure for ratifying the Constitution, Publius (probably Hamilton) takes on the subject of The Utility of the Union In Respect to Revenue.

Although he completely poo-poohs direct taxation* (such as the Income Tax), saying...

It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation. Tax laws have in vain been multiplied; new methods to enforce the collection have in vain been tried; the public expectation has been uniformly disappointed, and the treasuries of the States have remained empty. The popular system of administration inherent in the nature of popular government, coinciding with the real scarcity of money incident to a languid and mutilated state of trade, has hitherto defeated every experiment for extensive collections, and has at length taught the different legislatures the folly of attempting them.
...
In so opulent a nation as that of Britain, where direct taxes from superior wealth must be much more tolerable, and, from the vigor of the government, much more practicable, than in America, far the greatest part of the national revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts, and from excises. Duties on imported articles form a large branch of this latter description.

In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties.

He seems not to be arguing against direct taxation in principle, only in effectiveness. He is saying that you just can't raise enough revenue to make Government work through direct taxation. At the time, "direct tax" had an extremely negative connotation due to the highly effective campaign against the Stamp Act of 1765.

I'm bringing this up because it seems to me that our benevolent overlords have decreed that we be taught that America was founded on the notion that Taxes Are Evil, and it's just not so. The revolt was not against Taxation, but against Taxation Without Representation, because the colonies had no one in Parliament. For this reason, the colonists absolutely rejected Parliament's power to lay taxes, but acceeded to all kinds of taxes within their own systems of self-government.

Anyway...

That direct tax, the Stamp Act, didn't pan out for the Brits, so they decided to back off of that idea and try an Indirect Tax. The Revenue Act of 1767 (the "Townshend Act") imposed tariffs on imports of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea (basic commodities that were not produced in the New World) to the colonies. They thought that the Sons of Liberty's propaganda campaign against the Stamp Act, which had made "direct tax" a four letter word, inoculated these tariffs against negative advertising. They were wrong.

The real problem was that they were trying to raise enough money so that Britain could afford to pay its Colonial Governors a salary. You see, those guys were appointed and anointed by the Crown, but they were paid by the colonists, from taxes laid by colonial governments. The colonists held, through their elected representatives, the "power of the purse" over their benevolent overlords, and they were right to see the danger in delegating that power to Parliament. The reaction was so bad that in 1770, the tariffs were rescinded on all those commodities except one: tea.

They left that tax on tea in place because it continued to assert their right to tax the colonies. They stated that openly.

Tea.

Britain got all of its tea through a private corporation, the British East India Corporation. BEIC was granted a monopoly on the tea harvests in India, and the tea business in England, in exchange for a tariff on all the tea the imported to the Isles. The law that granted this monopoly also required that all of their tea had to land in England, and pay the tariff there. After that, they could send some on to the colonies, and pay that tariff too.

This double taxation and shipping cost made BEIC tea pretty expensive over here, and since it had that ugly taxation without representation attached, people wanted to avoid it anyway. A healthy business in smuggled Dutch tea arose, and some of the Founders were raking in good money in that space. Meanwhile, BEIC was behind in its payments to the Crown. Parliament had structured the rules for the BEIC so one-sidedly that the corporation was in trouble, so they decided to pass a law that made things easier on them.

If you ask any random American what the Boston Tea Party of 1773 was about, they'll likely answer "a tax on tea". This would be sort of correct, but the "Tea Act", which caused all the trouble, contained no taxes at all. Instead, it provided that the BEIC could move tea directly from India to the colonies, bypassing the British tariff. There was no change to the tea tariff on the colonies, which had been in place for six years.

This law had the effect of halving the price of tea in the colonies, undercutting the price of smuggled Dutch tea (which was, by the way, an inferior product). It was a strong arm play to push the "taxation without representation" of the Townshend tariff through "market" processes, and the money was going to strip the colonists' financial leverage over their local Governors, to boot.

What got their panties in a wad wasn't any new tax, it was a TAX BREAK for a corporation that was in tight with the ~~Congress~~ Parliament. It was Government acting in the interests of the powerful, to the detriment of most people.

It really pisses me off that we don't teach History in this country.

*Tea Partiers and such may latch onto this to argue against the Income Tax (ED: another day), but you just can't escape the basic fact that Government requires revenue, which must be obtained by taxation. As far as I know, this was not in dispute at the time, certainly not among the Founders. In case there was any doubt, Publius adds...

A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events. In this country, if the principal part be not drawn from commerce, it must fall with oppressive weight upon land.

Friday X-Blogging

2010-11-19T19:08:00.000-06:00

I have a new favorite blog, or whatever you call it.

Hyperbole and a Half/

Friday X-Blogging

2010-10-30T01:36:00.001-05:00

A song for our times...

What Digby Said

2010-10-21T21:40:00.002-05:00

(Talking about Christian conservatives)

These people simply don't believe in democracy and they refuse to accept that they have to share the governance of the country with people they don't agree with.

Pithy.

Dr Benway

2010-10-21T20:40:00.007-05:00

As it turns out, William S. Burroughs was a genius after all.

"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct."
(...)
"While in general I avoid the use of torture-- torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance --the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject's teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded thinking machine.

"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.

"Ever pop coke in the mainline?" (...)

From Naked Lunch
© 1959, William S. Burroughs

Hat tip to the hoary dowager.

A Second Look

2010-10-11T23:27:00.004-05:00

Let's look at this another way.

Let's say I'm a single guy with a taxable income of $200,000. Sweet. Under Bush's plan, which has been the law of the land for ten years, my 2011 taxes would be $56,256.00. If we have gridlock, that is if no new law is passed, this will be my tax. Under Obama's plan, or the current Republican Party proposal, my 2011 taxes would be $50,876.50. That is to say, if you're single, and paying less than $50,876.50 in income taxes, the Republican Party isn't offering anything different this year.

Now let's say I'm extra-productive, and I make $210,000 after deductions. The Republicans are offering me a tax bill of either $59,856.00 or $59,556.00, depending on whether they pass a bill or not. Obama is putting $59,856.00 on the table straight up. For the upper middle class (if you call the top 2% "middle class") taxpayer, Obama is asking $300.00 a year out of my extra $10,000.00. Of course the dollar amounts go up if you're making a lot more, but the federal deficit projections are cut by $826 billion under Obama's plan, vs the Republicans.

On the other hand, he's black.

The Galt Tax

2010-10-11T20:42:00.004-05:00

Of course the usual suspects such as the Wall Street Journal and Mankiw are all about trying to convince us that raising the top marginal income tax rate from 35% to 39.6% would make the geniuses who run our world stop gracing us with their precious contributions. They are essentially threatening to go on strike, like common laborers, if taxes on their income above $250,000 are raised by single digits.

Let's be clear here. We're talking about less than 2% of income earners in the USA. You've met them, if only on the freeway. They're the ones who must be in front of you, even if it means creating a six-car pileup in their wake. These are the cats who are going to pass on the deal that would have made them $3,250,000 this year ($5,000,000 less 35%) because it will only net $3,020,000 ($5,000,000 less 39.6%) next year. Instead, they'll be planning to keep their taxable incomes under $250,000.

What kind of idiots are persuaded by these arguments?

Another Vince Lombardi Post

2010-10-07T20:26:00.006-05:00

I'm in the habit of occasionally posting excerpts from the last public speech Vince Lombardi gave. I've always carved out parts that any liberal can sign on to, like the part about love:

Mental toughness is spartanism with its qualities of sacrifice and self-denial, also the qualities of dedication and fearlessness and love. Not the love that you have for your wife or your wife may have for you. The love I am speaking of is loyalty, which is the greatest of loves. Teamwork, which is a form of love, and the love that one man has for another is respecting the dignity of another man. The love I speak of is not detraction. You show me a man who speaks ill of another and I'll show you a man who is only temporarily successful. Or one who is not charitable. Or one who is not loyal.

and so forth.

For a while, the full transcript of this speech seemed to have fallen from the internet, but I recently ran across it again at a "conservative" site ("conservative" is in scare quotes because it's Canadian conservatism, not the real beastie).

I think it might serve the Progressive Seeker to consider some of those parts of the speech that are likely to resonate with conservative thinkers.

I want to talk a little bit about attaining a goal, a success -- what I think it is. I want to say first that I think you've got to pay a price for anything that's worthwhile and success is paying the price. You've got to pay a price to win, you've got to pay a price to stay on top, and you've got to pay a price to get there. Success is not a sometime thing -- it is an all-the-time thing. In other words, you don't do what is right once in a while, but all of the time. Success is a habit just like winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. So it has been the American zeal, gentlemen, to be first in everything that we do and to win and to win and to win.

Today we have a new ideology -- that is to be homogeneous, no letter grades, no classification. The only line that some of our people seem to want today is a line between passing and failing. There is no hunt for excellence in other words. And you and I both know that this is the easy way. The prevailing idea today is to take the easy way -- and that effort and that work are unnecessary.

You've got to pay a price. Losing is a habit. Be first in everything. Win, win, win. Classification of people is an ideology, and one that is superior to the alternative.

It just can't be overstated how thoroughly these ideas are inculcated into American kids as foundational values, as the primary lens through which all of life should be viewed. It's especially true of kids who play in organized sports, but all kids get this message in some measure.

In the right context, it's good stuff. This is the work ethic of high achievement, and it really is the road to excellence. The problem arises when people begin to view all of reality as a stinking football game, and everybody in the world (or at least everybody not on "our side") as an opponent to be vanquished. In that context, it becomes immature, and cruel, and destructive, and not just thoughtless, but anti-thought. This is not what Vince Lombardi would have wanted, but it's the American Politics of today.

Read the whole speech at the Canadian Conservative Forum.

Raising the retirement age

2010-09-16T20:37:00.009-05:00

A friend of mine sent me this without any political subtext intended. I can't help posting it here in consideration of the likely fight over raising the age of eligibility for full Social Security retirement benefits.

When are you too old for this?

This may be somewhat tendentious, because there are certainly lots of jobs that require the physical skills of a young body, and people who do those jobs must look ahead to the day when they can no longer hack it.

On the other hand, this does not look as physically demanding as many other jobs. You probably know a 64-year-old who could do it (a 168 foot vertical climb, carrying a 30 lb bag), at least occasionally. Do I hear 68? 72?

Trivia game

2010-09-15T19:28:00.005-05:00

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the ~~Tea Baggers~~ get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and ~~Muslims~~." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

~ ~~Noam Chomsky~~

I substituted a couple of words. The object of the game is to:

Replace the struck-out words with their originals.

Name the real author of the quote.

See the Comment or click here for the answer.

My, my.

2010-09-09T19:14:00.003-05:00

via John Cole

Be careful what you wish for

2010-03-23T19:33:00.004-05:00

So, as you know, these state Attorneys General are suing the Feds over the Health care bill. If I understand it correctly, their primary claim is that the Federal Gummint does not have the right to require citizens to purchase a private product - that being insurance. This will make its way to the Supreme Court, and who knows what the Big Five will conclude? It will force them to decide between two lovers - big corporations and the Republican Party. It's a conundrum.

Anyway, when the ruling comes down, it won't be on the bill as a whole, just the individual mandate provision. If the states prevail, you'll still have the provisions concerning preexisting conditions, annual and lifetime limits, rescission, buying pools, and so forth. These things are very costly, and the only way they work is to force healthy people into the premium-paying cohort. If you remove only the individual mandate from this law, it will be disastrous for the health insurance industry. Something will have to be done!

THAT, my friends, will be hilarious.

~~~~~

IANAL, but I predict that the Supremes won't want to unleash the hilarity, so they'll rule against the states.

I also think they love corporations more.

Fifty Years Ago Today*

2009-10-10T18:37:00.015-05:00

[...]
Philip Noel-Baker is probably today the man who possesses the greatest store of knowledge on the subject of disarmament and who best knows the difficulties involved. In his latest book, published in 1958, The Arms Race, which he has called A Programme for World Disarmament, he has pointed out the way we should go.
[...]

~ Nobel Peace Prize Presentation Speech
~ Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee
~ Oslo, Norway, 1959

I'm sure the committee regrets awarding Mr. Noel-Baker the prize that year, since to this day, he has yet to accomplish World Disarmament.

^* Actually, the speech was delivered on December 10, 1959, but by this December, nobody will remember the Rightwing Brouhaha of this moment.

Friday X-Blogging

2009-09-26T01:43:00.004-05:00

I guess we should have known

2009-09-10T20:22:00.002-05:00

In retrospect, it should have come as no surprise that the first African American who could be elected President of the USA would be someone pathologically averse to giving offense.

Excerpts

2009-05-24T15:04:00.007-05:00

Judgment
International Military Tribunal for the Far East
1 November 1948

Chapter VIII
Conventional War Crimes
(Atrocities)

At the beginning of the Pacific War in December 1941, the Japanese Government did institute a system and an organization for dealing with prisoners of war and civilian internees. Superficially, the system would appear to have been appropriate; however, from beginning to end, the customary and conventional rules of war designed to prevent inhumanity were flagrantly disregarded.

(...)

Allegation That the Laws of War Did Not Apply
To the Conduct of the War in China
From the outbreak of the Mukden Incident till the end of the war, the successive Japanese Governments refused to acknowledge that the hostilities in China constituted a war. They persistently called it an "Incident." With this as an excuse, the military authorities persistently asserted that the rules of war did not apply in the conduct of the hostilities.

(...)

Captives Taken in the China War Were Treated as Bandits
The Japanese Delegate at Geneva, in accepting the resolution of the League of Nations of 10 December 1931 (...) maintained that (...) those Chinese troops who resisted the Japanese Army were not lawful combatants, but were merely "bandits."

(...)

Torture and Other Inhumane Treatment
The practice of torturing prisoners of war and civilian internees prevailed at practically all places occupied by Japanese troops, both in the occupied territories and in Japan. The Japanese indulged in this practice during the entire period of the Pacific War. Methods of torture were employed in all areas so uniformly as to indicate policy both in training and execution. Among these tortures were the water treatment, burning, electric shocks, the knee spread,

--1057--

suspension, kneeling on sharp instruments and flogging.

The Japanese Military Police, the Kempetai, was most active in inflicting these tortures. Other Army and Navy units, however, used the same methods as the Kempetai. Camp guards also employed similar methods. Local police forces organized by the Kempetai in the occupied territories also applied the same methods of torture.

We will show how the Chiefs of Camps were instructed in Tokyo before assuming their duties. We will also show that these Chiefs of Camps were under the administrative control and supervision of the

--1058--

Prisoner of War Administration Section of the Military Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry to which they rendered monthly reports. The Kempetai were administered by the War Ministry. A Kempetai training school was maintained and operated by the War Ministry in Japan. It is a reasonable inference that the conduct of the Kempetai and the camp guards reflected the policy of the War Ministry.

To indicate the prevalence of torture and the uniformity of the methods employed we give a brief summary of these methods.

The so-called "water treatment" was commonly applied. The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost consciousness. Pressure was then applied, sometimes by jumping upon his abdomen to force the water out. The usual practice was to revive the victim and successively repeat the process. (...)

(...)

The System
(...) "the question of whether Chinese captives would be treated as prisoners of war or not was quite a problem, and it ws finally decided in 1938 that because the Chinese conflict was officially known as an 'incident' although it was really a war, that Chinese captives would not be regarded as prisoners of war."

I would point out that these excerpts are not from indictments or arguments. They are from the judgment against the Japanese defendants. 25 of them were still around at the end of the trial, and all of them were found guilty. Seven were executed, and sixteen were sentenced to life in prison. One of the remaining two died in prison, and the other one went on to be appointed Japanese foreign minister. Presumably, Cheney has studied the last case very carefully.

Cassandra

2009-03-27T19:32:00.001-05:00

Via Suburban Guerrilla...

Winning is the only thing

2008-12-16T23:05:00.001-06:00

Back in May of 2005, in the darkest depths of my despair over our country having chosen (by popular election) the path of tyranny, impoverishment, and death, I ran across a transcript of Vince Lombardi's last public speech. I can't bear to read whatever drunken gibberish I dumped on top of Lombardi's words at that time, but these excerpts deserve another look, in another context:

...Right now in a large sense I think, we’re engaged in a struggle which is far more fiercely contested than anything, and it’s a struggle for the hearts and it’s a struggle for the souls and minds of all of us. And it’s a game in which there are no spectators, only players, and it’s a struggle which is going to test all of our courage, and all of our stamina, and all of our teamwork. At the same time, I want to say too that I think we live in an age for heroes.

At no other time in our history have the prizes and the perils at one and the same time been so great. But I think we have to decide whether we want to provide a full life for humanity or destroy ourselves with our own problems. And the test is going to be whether man mistakes the growth of wealth and power with the growth of spirit and character. Or like some infant who is playing with matches destroys the very house he may have inherited.
...
Mental toughness is spartanism with its qualities of sacrifice and self-denial, also the qualities of dedication and fearlessness and love. Not the love that you have for your wife or your wife may have for you. The love I am speaking of is loyalty, which is the greatest of loves. Teamwork, which is a form of love, and the love that one man has for another is respecting the dignity of another man. The love I speak of is not detraction. You show me a man who speaks ill of another and I’ll show you a man who is only temporarily successful. Or one who is not charitable. Or one who is not loyal.

I’m not advocating that love is the answer to everything, but when I speak about the love which forces everyone to love everyone else. For example, you’ve got to love the white man because he is white or the black man because he is black or the poor man because he is poor or your enemy because he is your enemy, but rather a love of one human for another human -- who just happens to be white or black, rich or poor, enemy or friend, because heart-power is your strength, heart-power is the strength of your company, heart-power is the strength of America and hate-power is the weakness of the world.
...
How you do this, I think is essential to understand that conquests are won primarily in the hearts of men and once you have won their hearts, they’ll follow you anywhere. Man will respond to this type of leadership in a most remarkable way. Success is based upon a spiritual quality, a power to inspire others. Sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, sometimes for one’s own personal ends. Sometimes it can be partially or wholly evil. When it is evil, fortunately, while it may temporarily succeed, it always keeps within itself the seeds of its own destruction...

Zappadan

2008-12-04T20:20:00.000-06:00

That Digby

2008-11-25T20:57:00.003-06:00

"If they don't like being called bigots, they shouldn't be bigots."

Hail Digby.

Accounts Receivable transcends race

2008-11-08T12:42:00.003-06:00

In Charge of the Senate

2008-10-22T18:31:00.004-05:00

I really, really, really don't want McCain to win, but if he loses, there will be one huge downside - we'll be denied the spectacle of Sarah Palin being "in charge" of the Senate. I would dearly love to see her try to "really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes".

I have looked into the matter, and I think there may be a way to have the best of both worlds. Here's the part of the Constitution that talks about people presiding over the Senate:

Article 1 Section 3:

... The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States...

The way I read this, it doesn't say that the Senate has to 'chuse' a Senator for the office of President pro tempore.

If Obama wins, I say let's petition the Senate to draft Sarah Palin for the office of President pro tempore. That way, we'd have both good governance and non-stop entertainment also too!

Fascinating.

2008-09-29T22:42:00.003-05:00

I am not a smart or a wise person, and I'm often confused by the events of the day.

One would think that I would experience at least a tiny bit of schadenfreude when (at long last) even the most public of intellectuals are forced to admit that they don't have a clue what's going on, or what to do about it.

Oddly enough, that's not the case.

Patriot

2008-09-24T21:06:00.002-05:00

John McCain says that the crisis facing the Republic is so grave that he can't communicate with the American people until after the controlling legislation has been jammed through by means of secret high-level meetings in Washington.

After that's all buttoned up, he'll talk, but (alas!) Sarah Palin won't be able to appear, 'cause, well, it's just such a parlous time.

I'm so swooning for this big strong daddy and his little woman.

Dangerous Moonbats

2008-09-19T19:27:00.001-05:00

and their loony socialist rantings:

John McCain - Champion of Feminism

2008-08-30T19:03:00.003-05:00

Disturbing

2008-05-22T20:43:00.000-05:00

The American Gene

2008-05-17T00:34:00.001-05:00

I found out what Michael Medved has been up to lately over at Crooks and Liars, who apparently got the signal from Pharyngula.

He's been reading some popularizations by Eminent Psychologists that have given him new reason to believe that America's Specialness stems from genetic causes. In this chapter, it turns out that there is a special gene that makes people more adventurous, self-confident, optimistic, and gritty. That's the gene that makes you leave your old soggy downtrodden country of origin and come to America. According to Medved, only two percent of people have that gene, and they are the perfect definition of self-selection for American Exceptionalism. All the people with boring old genes stayed home, but we got all the Live Wires.

Unfortunately for the Negroes, they were dragged here against their will, so they didn't inherit the Power of The Gene, and that's why they're so inferior.

One of Medved's sources (and there were two!) was this guy Peter C. Whybrow (and I won't comment on that name), who reportedly identified the special American Genetic Factor as the "exploratory and novelty-seeking D4-7 allele" in the dopamine receptor system. When I read that, I thought to myself, "Woo, sciency", and I went off to see about it.

There are quite a few scholarly papers that talk about the DRD4 alleles, in reference to historical world migration patterns, ADD/HD, schizophrenia, and assorted other subjects, but I could not find one that discussed the distribution of D4 variants among the races in the USA. The closest I got was a study about smoking that broke down the D4 variants among its subjects by race. It was a small sample, but among them, there was a slightly higher incidence of the D4.7 variant among African Americans than among Caucasians. For what that's worth.

I'm not sure why I bothered to look for data, because the whole premise of Medved's silly tripe is so far distant from anything like science that it's just silly. I probably don't need to explain, but just for example, how does Medved reconcile the "adventure" gene with the "running away" motive? And so forth.

Anyway, I expect this bullshit to become a Talking Point soon, since we have an African American Democratic nominee, and I'm looking for equally sciency ammunition to shoot it down with.

Can anyone point to a study that purports to estimate the distribution of this magical D4.7 allele among the races in the US?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Tweety

2008-05-13T19:09:00.002-05:00

Chris Matthews just said that Hillary Clinton is like "the Al Sharpton of white people."

Yes, he did. He did say that.

Messiah, or virtuoso prestidigitator?

2008-04-28T21:23:00.002-05:00

Have you noticed that Obama singlehandedly put an end to the wearing of flag pins on television?

That's not charisma, that's power. Bow Doooowwwnnn.

Oh, joy!

2008-04-22T21:43:00.003-05:00

Two more weeks of campaigning.

Thanks, PA.

Speaking of Balloon Juice

2008-04-20T17:50:00.005-05:00

Michael D. over there lets us know what he thinks of Lienenkugels beer:

Dumped 8 bottles down the sink. Worth more in the recycle bin. If a beer lover is driving the truck, he’ll probably leave those bottles behind.

I'm not sure that Michael isn't receiving kickbacks from the maker for reviewing this product, but I tend to doubt it.

NOTE: Most of the commenters in that thread beg to differ, in varying degrees.

The ABC's of our political discourse

2008-04-17T00:45:00.001-05:00

Ow,ow,owwww!

In which I am, again, irrelevant

2008-04-11T20:55:00.004-05:00

I was going to say something about the clown car firedrill over Obama's latest campaign-ending faux pas, but just look here instead:

UPDATE: Wow, is John Cole ever irritated.

Friday X-Blogging Late on Sunday Night

2008-04-06T23:56:00.004-05:00

Forgive me, for I have violated Copyright Law again.

The Twelfth of Squirchember.

2008-04-01T13:05:00.001-05:00

Fafblog?

Let's really have a discussion

2008-03-21T18:35:00.001-05:00

What did Chris Wallace do 20 hits of?

All this talk about preachers

2008-03-20T01:07:00.003-05:00

reminds me of a parable.

If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, he'll drink beer all day.

No, wait. That wasn't the right one.

Why do you always invite two Baptists to go fishing?

'Cause if there's only one, he'll drink all the beer.

I knew it was something about fishing and beer.

And religion.

Dreamy Ticket

2008-03-07T22:41:00.000-06:00

Of course Hillary Clinton's noises about a combined ticket are pure gamesmanship. Nobody takes such a thing seriously, not even the hardened, cynical, wide-eyed naifs of the media.

You have to hand it to her, though - it is a mesmerizing prospect. Imagine: a woman and an African American on the same Presidential ticket in the USA. Unprecedented, right?

Nope. It's been done.

In 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the presidential nominee of the Equal Rights Party, and at their convention, they nominated Frederick Douglass for veep.

Douglass never acknowledged the nomination, and in fact even served as an Elector (a dyed-in-the-wool Republican Elector) from the state of NY that election.

But still.

Malapropism alert! -- [UPDATE! -- Not!]

2008-02-23T19:45:00.009-06:00

It has come to my attention that some few lefty bloggers have been writing "going to the mattresses" when they mean to say that someone is doggedly contesting something.

That's just silly.

The idiom they are searching for is "going to the mat", which is a metaphor for putting one's body and reputation on the line in a wrestling contest.

"Going to the mattresses" would seem to refer to having several nice naps, or possibly having sex in more than one bed.

Those would be useful idioms sometimes, but I don't think they're intended.

UPDATE:

A kind commenter has clued me that I'm wrong on this. Apparently "go to the mattresses" is of Italian origin, and is much older (though less well known) than the mat version. I looked it up and darned if it isn't so. They even said it in The Godfather.

I do hate to spout off like that and be proven wrong, but (sad to say) I'm getting used to it.

The Nine Circles of My Administration

2007-11-27T19:45:00.000-06:00

Mitt Romney:

"...based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

The Constitution (Article VI, section 3):

...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Of course it's silly of me to imagine that a US Presidential candidate would have read the Constitution, sillier yet to imagine that the candidate would pay heed to it in policy formulations, and hilariously crackheaded to imagine that the press or the public would know or care about it.

Sadly granted.

I'm now ready to move beyond all that stodgy, fuzzy-headed, 18th century "enlightenment" rigamarole, and get behind Romney's modern, no-nonsense, analytical approach to political patronage.

Let's check the numbers.

Hmm. Looks like Atheist, Agnostic, Humanist, and No Religion folks comprise over 14% of the US population (since you asked, Mormons are at 1.3%). Presumably, a Mitt Administration would reflect those proportions.

Too bad Madalyn Murray O'Hair isn't available for Secretary of Education.

Presidential Signing Statements

2007-11-07T19:00:00.000-06:00

I am not a lawyer, but I'm a native English speaker, and I'm at a loss to understand what the heck Presidential "signing statements" are supposed to do.

The Constitution of the United States

Article I [The Legislative Branch]

Section 7

(...)
Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law.
(...)

Article II [The Presidency]

Section 3

(...)
he [the President] shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed
(...)

The US Constitution is full of vague language, which can be interpreted in creative ways, but this is dead straight. If the President signs a bill into law, he approves it. If he doesn't like it, he can veto, but if it becomes law, it's LAW (unless the Supremes say it's not Constitutional, but that's another issue), and the President is bound by his oath of office to execute it.

What's hard about this? It's incredible that people stand still for this kind of tyrannical horseshit.

2007-09-19T20:56:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to add an "about this picture" writeup to this post. There's quite a lot to be said - I haven't had time to do it justice. I still hope to get around to it, but not right now. Forgive me.

About this picture

2007-09-15T23:59:00.000-05:00

The picture is a WWII poster made by Edward McKnight of the United States Office of Inter-American Affairs. The words mean "Fight for the Liberty of all". I guess nobody thought it should be illegal for the government to print stuff in Spanish back then.

They didn't keep good records about ethnicity (except for thum naegroes, of course), but something like a half-million Latinos^* served in that war.

Now, with regard to the War on Terra, the Pew Hispanic Center says:

Latino enlisted personnel are underrepresented when compared to the size of the civilian labor force of the appropriate age.

They are on par when compared to civilian labor force of the appropriate age that possess the necessary educational credentials.

They are overrepresented when compared to the civilian labor force of the appropriate age that posses both the necessary educational credentials and immigration status.

Taking these points in reverse order, they seem to say:

Latino citizens enlist in greater numbers than other citizens.

All Latinos, including non-citizens, enlist as much as US citizens at large.

A significant number of non-citizen Latinos don't possess the necessary educational credentials for military service.

As a nation, we have decided that we're going to wage Endless War, but we're not about to have anything like a draft.

That's a problem.

Even the joyful optimist Petraeus admits that we're strapped for troops. Why would Republicans take a position so manifestly Against The Troops as to oppose Jim Webb's proposal to give them a rest between combat deployments? Would the R's deny The Troops® relief if it didn't wreak heck-all on their plans? Of course not.

It's a hard-fought issue, and it would plainly favor the Republicans to have a larger pool of boots to be ground.

So why are they trying so hard to run off the Mescans (as they're known in the Executive parlance of Texas)?

Too bad Karl Rove retired, because a genius like that would see that the more Latinos you educated and made citizens, the more volunteer warriors you'd have to work with.

You'd think Alberto Gonzales would have mentioned this before he left. Maybe he really is just a big dummy.

^* Or Hispanics, as Government tends to say. Where I'm from (back in the day), they often called themselves Chicanos (and Chicanas). That may actually be the most precise nomenclature, because it refers specifically to people with ties to Mexico, which is what we're really talking about when we say "immigration" in this day.

Unfortunately, Chicano is fraught with even more connotational hazards than the other words. It's really hard to talk sensibly about these issues, because we're a bunch of assholes.

More Better Stuff

2007-09-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

I was recently delighted to move one of my favorite blog links back up from "Sadly dormant" to the "Better Stuff" category in the sidebar at your upper right.

If you haven't spent some time perusing the riches at the nonist lately, you owe yourself a favor.

Beating a dead chestnut

2007-09-07T23:23:00.000-05:00

I know this one has been addressed countless times, but it just won't go away. I received this classic in email again today:

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, here is a sobering statistic:

There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,867 deaths. That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington.

It's usually enough to say that the DC figure of 80.6 deaths per 100,000 was for the year of 1991 (an aberrantly violent year), and the Iraq figure is per month, but I'm crabby tonight, so I decided to pick it apart.

The 2006 population of Washington, DC (US Census estimate) was 581,530. A rate of 80.6 over 22 months would be this:

80.6 (the asserted rate) x 5.83153 (per 100,000) x 22 (months) = 10311.68996

That's 10,312 firearm deaths in a 22 month period! That doesn't sound right. Let's see...

The FBI says that there were 364 murders in DC in 2005 and 2006 combined (the closest statistic I could find - at FBI.gov ).

364 (murders) / 5.83153 (per 100,000) / 24 (months) = 2.608

That's 2.6 murders (all kinds) per 100,000 per month in Washington, DC (That's BAD!)

By the way, 2,867 / 1.6 / 22 gives you 81.4 troop deaths per 100,000, per month, not 60 (but see update below),

So by these lights, Americans are about 3,000% more likely to be killed in Iraq than in Washington, DC,

To say nothing of Iraqis.

As I mentioned, that 80.6 figure for DC was in 1991. That year, at the height of the crack turf wars, DC averaged 6.7 murders per 100,000 per month.

As it happens, we were at war in Iraq in 1991, too. In the (what, maybe) 7 months of the Dad's Gulf War, I think the US had as many as 500,000 troops deployed, and there were 148 battle-related deaths.

148 / 5 / 7 = 4.2

So by this crude math, it really was safer to be deployed in Desert Storm than to live in DC that year. And Saddam Hussein really had provoked war. And the president at the time really had been a combat pilot.

Those were the days, eh?

UPDATE:
The Iraq casualty figures didn't sound right either, so I looked up the figures for the 22 months from Nov '05 through Aug '07. They add up to 1,713, not 2867 (That would be about 48.7 deaths per 100,000 per month). I'm starting to suspect that somebody just made this whole thing up!

Are we everything we wanted?

2007-09-03T19:16:00.000-05:00

No way we're good enough to deserve the Rosie treatment:

I bet Jesus was a short guy, too.

2007-08-23T21:25:00.000-05:00

Via Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon:

Dang! That's some dang Spirit, there.

Still, these folks do it better:

Saturday Night Truth

2007-08-19T01:52:00.000-05:00

W's Cowboy Suit

2007-08-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

Perhaps you've run across wry blogger comments about a WaPo gossip column that claims GW Bush got his jockstrap in a wad about an article in the Austin American-Statesman that talks about the duds he wears at his Crawford Ranchesque. Yeesh.

What a waste of time.

For my money, this is a long-settled matter. Here's one from the archives:

Hotshot Cowboys

Did you ever see that movie Hud?

Hud: "All right I'll bite. What turned you sour on me? Not that I give a damn."

Homer: "Just that, Hud. You don't give a damn. That's all, that's the whole of it. You still don't get it, do you? You don't care about people. You don't give a damn about 'em."

...

Lonnie: "Why pick on Hud, Granddad? He ain't the only one. Just about everybody around here is like him."

Homer: "That's no cause for rejoicing, is it? Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire."

What I Did on My Vacation

2007-08-16T22:08:00.000-05:00

Politics, the so-called "war", the local and international news, and several people I've encountered recently have all conspired to cause me to post a bunch of negative shit here of late.

I'm tired of it now.

Instead, here's a picture of my kids parking kayaks at our campsite last week:

Those kids make me nuts. They are so fine. They are much better people than I ever was, at their age or any other time. I try to settle myself into pure, comfortable curmudgeonhood, and they screw things up by being so utterly, blindingly luminous. Bother.

Looking left (downstream) from their spot, you would see this:

Here's the view upstream:

It was a very pretty place, but hot as hell. Nearly 100F every day, and very humid. On the other hand, the river was cool, and full of trout. We couldn't catch the trout, you understand, but that just meant that everybody lived happily.

We lounged around, and walked, and swam, and fished, and paddled around until late, so we made dinner after dark every day. The night that we cooked beans and rice on a propane stove, and made cornbread in a dutch oven in a campfire, it drove the raccoons crazy. They mounted disciplined, well-coordinated attacks on our campsite - they were deadly serious about getting some of that cornbread. It was a kind of seige.

I read on your internetz that the densest raccoon population in NY state is within NY City. Raccoons almost certainly mug people there.

If you paddled upstream from our camp for a bit, taking the side channel behind the old bald cypresses, you came to a place where water has fallen out of the hills in wet weather for a long time. This is a place that doesn't much care about politics. People can stomp around and shout here, and nothing happens.

Quite a bit of the area is made of this stuff:

I haven't a clue about the geologic science that explains the sharp division between the dull, homogenous rock below, and the white, crystalline quartz above, so I'm free to interpret it as a message from Gaia, or Bob, or Het-Heru, or someone.They inform me that instantaneous transformations are possible, maybe even routine in nature.

If you think things are not as they should be right now, that may be a comforting lesson. If you're happy as a pig in shit, it may give you pause.

I got chigger-bit.

Race to the finish

2007-08-13T21:39:00.000-05:00

I think I've mentioned before that I believe that slavery was the Original Sin in the genesis of America, and that we blew our one chance to cleanse ourselves through the blood sacrifice of the Civil War, and that it has poisoned every word, thought, and deed of our "noble experiment" to this day.

I'm not sure I've shared the true depth of the pessimism about our future that this flaw might engender, if properly worried about. Forgive me for that.

The slavery we harbored at our birth got us used to the idea that we could run around spouting off about Liberty, and Unalienable Rights, and Justice, while (truly, genuinely) ignoring the giant stinking turd of a lie buried like a stake in the very heart of our enterprise.

The ability to compartmentalize our self-image away from our reality has always been a handy license. We have used it for Ethnic Cleansing (against Native Americans, notably). We have used it on the Irish and the Chinese (to build the railroads, among else). We have used it against Americans of Japanese origin in WWII. Our old landlords, the Mexicans. Jews. Canucks. Gooks. Porta-riccans. The French. And always, of course, our troublesome ex-slaves. A license to kill (remorselessly).

All of this "race" stuff, though, was just training for the real Fall. It taught us the truest, highest discipline of mass hypocrisy - the ability to richly see, feel, hear, smell, and taste a thing, and believe most fervently in its opposite. We have at last achieved transcendent mastery of this discipline.

Our training is playing out in the direst of ways now, and I think it will be our comeuppance. I really don't think there's a way out, because our fathers have doomed us to be their spawn, and we have striven to please them.

If everyone suddenly awoke to the connections amongst us, we could all have a nice laugh about our silly foolishness, and go on about the business of life.

I don't think that's what will happen.

Later

2007-08-05T22:56:00.000-05:00

Pros, and Cons, and Family Values

2007-08-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum is the latest to slag this Mitt Romney campaign video:

Romney's staff probably got this idea from Al Gore's daughter, Kristin, who was ~10 years old when she originated it (before Gore's '88 run).

In 2000, Spike Jonze made a "family portrait" piece about Al Gore. It's around 13 minutes long, but if you watch the whole thing, it may send you screaming to Draft Gore dot com, or at least make you pine for lost chances.

If you just want to find out what I mean by Kristin's idea, see the bit with some framed memorabilia at 2:57.

Digby!

2007-07-29T20:15:00.000-05:00

When it comes to "partisanship" the Republicans have turned it into a fetish --- a risky, self destructive form of political autoerotic asphyxiation in which they are willing to risk killing themselves for the sake of the ultimate thrill.
...

My point is that in a democracy these issues are ultimately and always questions for the people. If we don't want an imperial president, we are going to have to make sure that when they do this stuff they lose their power, not at the hands of politicians of the opposing party but at our hands, the citizens of this country.

~ Digby
~ The 34 Senator Gambit

Have I mentioned that Digby is one of the most important voices of our time? Yes, I have. Please read her.

My fingers won't shut up

2007-07-27T21:21:00.000-05:00

I'm badly stuck in a History post rut, but I'm at the mercy of my fingers, which do all the typing on this blog. They're obsessed, and I can't seem to rein them in.

This time they're typing about American Attorneys General. They browsed over to Wikipedia and looked up all of them, as far back as I could give them the names. I guess they think there's some lesson to be gleaned from looking at super-brief synopses of these people's tenures in that office.

Robert F. Kennedy
AG under Kennedy, Johnson
Next job - Senator, Presidential candidate, martyr
was one of two younger brothers of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and served as United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964. He was one of President Kennedy's most trusted advisors and worked closely with the president during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His contribution to the African-American Civil Rights Movement is sometimes considered his greatest legacy.

Nicholas Katzenbach
AG under Johnson
Next job - Under Secretary of State under Johnson
On June 11 1963, Katzenbach was a primary participant in one of the most famous incidents of the Civil Rights struggle. Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation of that institution by the enrolment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. This became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door." Wallace stood aside only after being confronted by Katzenbach, accompanied by federal marshals and the Alabama National Guard.

Ramsey Clark
AG under Johnson
Next Job - Civil Rights Attorney, recipient of Gandhi Peace Award.
Supervised the drafting and executive role in passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968.

During the Vietnam War, Clark oversaw the prosecution of the Boston Five for “conspiracy to aid and abet draft resistance.” Four of the five were convicted, including pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr.

John Mitchell
AG under Nixon
Next job - jailbird
The first United States Attorney General ever to be convicted of illegal activities (conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury) and imprisoned.

Richard Kleindienst
AG under Nixon
Next job - Spender of Family Time
The day after the 1972 Watergate break-in, Attorney General Kleindienst was told by Gordon Liddy that the operation had originated in the White House and that he, Kleindienst, should effect the release of the burglars. Kleindienst refused to free the men, but failed to report Liddy's confession, which would have broken the whole case open immediately. He resigned on April 30, 1973 in the midst of the Watergate scandal and returned to private practice. Kleindienst resigned the same day John Dean was fired and H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman quit. He was convicted of a misdemeanor for perjury during his testimony in the Senate during his confirmation hearings. He was fined and given a suspended jail sentence.

Elliot Richardson
AG under Nixon
Next job - Private Citizen, then Sec'y of Commerce, US Ambassador
In October 1973, after just five months as Attorney General, President Nixon ordered Richardson to fire the top lawyer investigating the Watergate scandal, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused the order and resigned from the Nixon administration. This was the start of what became the "Saturday Night Massacre".

William B. Saxbe
AG under Nixon, Ford
Next job - ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to India
Nothing.

Edward H. Levi
AG under Ford
Next job - Law professor
During his term as Attorney General, he issued a set of guidelines (in 1976) to limit the activities of the FBI. These guidelines required the FBI to show evidence of a crime before using secret police techniques like wiretaps or entering someone's home without warning. These guidelines were replaced by new ones issued in 1983 by Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, William French Smith. He also successfully urged President Ford to appoint fellow Chicagoan John Paul Stevens to the United States Supreme Court.

Griffin Bell
AG under Carter
Next job - Special Ambassador to the Helsinki Convention
Bell led the effort to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978.

First cabinet official named to Mr. Blackwell's list of best dressed Americans.

In the scrutinized Watergate era, his nomination as a Southerner and a friend of the President had been initially controversial. As a result of the independence and professionalism many said he brought to the Department of Justice, Bell received great praise from many of his prior critics in the United States Senate and the media when he resigned the Attorney Generalship in August 1979.

Benjamin Civiletti
AG under Carter
Next job - High Priced Lawyer
As Attorney General Civiletti argued several important cases on behalf of the US Government. Notably, he argued before the International Court of Justice on behalf of Americans being held captive in Iran during the Iran Hostage Crisis. He also argued before the US Supreme Court in support of the government's right to denaturalize Nazi war criminals.

William French Smith
AG under Reagan
Next job - Board member
Largely responsible for the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor. Big friend of big business, not particularly interested in prosecuting antitrust or civil rights cases.

In 1992, Independent presidential candidate Ross Perot suggested appointing Smith to his Cabinet if Perot were to win the presidency. An aide then told Perot that this would not be possible because Smith was dead.

Edwin Meese III
AG under Reagan
Next job - Conservative Think Tank guy
Meese's tenure was highly controversial. His involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair as a "counselor" and "friend" to the President, not as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, attracted the most criticism.

Meese also courted controversy when he appointed the "Meese Commission" to investigate pornography in the United States; their report, released in July 1986, was highly critical of pornography and itself became a target of widespread criticism. That year, Meese Commission officials contacted convenience store chains and succeeded in demanding that widespread men's magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse be removed from shelves, a ban which spread nationally until being quashed with a First Amendment admonishment against prior restraint by the D.C. Federal Court in Meese v. Playboy.

Accusations of ethical violations dogged Meese's tenure at Justice. He was the subject of investigations by the United States Office of the Independent Counsel on two occasions; neither of these investigations resulted in charges being presented to a grand jury. He has been investigated by three separate Special Prosecutors. Nevertheless, Meese's critics continue to charge corruption.

Dick Thornburgh
AG under Bush I
Next job - Losing Senate candidate, undersecretary general to the United Nations
His main priorities were to crack down on drug trafficking and white-collar crime. Thornburgh also oversaw prosecution against Exxon in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Thornburg also authored the controversial Thornburgh Memo, that attempted to define the ethical rules applicable to Department of Justice lawyers (The memo declared that state ethics rules were not binding upon federal prosecutors).

William Barr
AG under Bush I
Next job - Board Member
Nothing

Janet Reno
AG under Clinton
Next job - Losing candidate for Florida Governor, Private Citizen
First female Attorney General.

Lightning rod.

Nobody ever said she didn't do the heck out of her job.

Love her or hate her, you have to admit she has mighty balls.

John Ashcroft
AG under Bush II
Next job - Lobbyist
Key supporter of passage of the USA Patriot Act.

Ashcroft proposed the creation of Operation TIPS, a domestic program in which workers and government employees would inform law enforcement agencies about suspicious behavior they encounter while performing their duties.

Enthusiastic advocate of the War on Drugs.

His hand-written resignation letter, dated November 2, 2004, stated: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

Alberto Gonzales
AG under Bush II
The book hasn't yet been written on this cretin.

You be the judge. No, really. It's your job, dammit!

Sometimes you get to thinkin'

2007-07-19T21:54:00.000-05:00

Republicans. What a maroon.

2007-07-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

Vietnam is justifiably thought of as "Johnson's War", but the US had cast its die there before he, or even Kennedy, had assumed office. Today's Republican obsession is with "the War on Terror". In the fifties, it was Communism. Way back then, they led us down a road that looked like this:

Honoring the identity and the special heritage of each nation in the world, we shall never use our strength to try to impress upon another people our own cherished political and economic institutions.

~ First Inaugural Address
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
~ Tuesday, January 20, 1953

28 August 1953
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Subject: The Navarre Concept for Operations in Indochina.
1. In a memorandum for you, dated 21 April 1953, subject: "Proposed French Strategic Plan for the Successful Conclusion of the War in Indochina," the Joint Chiefs of Staff pointed out certain weaknesses in the LeTourneau-Allard plan, but felt that it was workable. During the visit of the U.S. Joint Military Mission to Indochina, Lieutenant General Navarre submitted in writing to Lieutenant General O'Daniel, Chief of the Mission, a paper entitled "Principles for the Conduct of the War in Indochina" appended hereto, which appears to correct these weaknesses and which presents a marked improvement in French military thinking concerning operations in Indochina.
2. In his report Lieutenant General O'Daniel stated that, in his opinion, the new French command in Indochina will accomplish under the Navarre concept the decisive defeat of the Viet Minh by 1955 and that the addition of two or more French divisions from outside of Indochina would expedite this defeat. Additions other than in divisional organization would be in error since it is the divisional team, with its combat proven effectiveness, which is sorely needed in Indochina. Lieutenant General O'Daniel further reported that French military leaders were most cooperative with the mission, that several agreements were accomplished to improve the effectiveness of the proposed military operations, and that repeated invitations were extended to the U.S. mission to return in a few months to witness the progress the French will have made.
3. Based on past performances by the French, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have reservations in predicting actual results which can be expected pending additional proof by demonstration of continued French support and by further French performance in Indochina. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are of the opinion that a basic requirement for military success in Indochina is one of creating a political climate in that country which will provide the incentive for natives to support the French and supply them with adequate intelligence which is vital to the successful conduct of operations in Indochina. If this is accomplished and if the Navarre concept is vigorously pursued militarily in Indochina and given wholehearted political support in France, it does offer a promise of military success sufficient to warrant appropriate additional U.S. aid required to assist. U.S. support of the Navarre concept should be based on needs of the French Union Forces in Indochina for additional equipment necessary to implement the organization of the "Battle Corps" envisaged by the Navarre concept and necessary support of the planned expansion of indigenous forces, such needs to be screened by the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Indochina. In addition, to improve the chances of success, this support should include continued close liaison and coordination with French military authorities together with friendly but firm encouragement and advice where indicated.
4. In furtherance of the O'Daniel Mission the Joint Chiefs of Staff are receiving Progress Reports from Indochina. Information received from Indochina indicates the French are not pursuing agreements reached between General O'Daniel and General Navarre (including the Navarre concept) as vigorously as expected by General O'Daniel and as contemplated by him in his report. Progress reports state that (a) the French have "no plans for a general fall offensive beyond limited objective operations designed to keep the enemy off balance," (b) reorganization into regiments and division-size units "is still in the planning stages," (c) there is "no sense of urgency in the training of senior Vietnamese commanders and staff officers," (d) the organization of a training command is awaiting the solution of "political problems" and (e) the "organization of the amphibious plan has not gone beyond the planning stages."
5. In light of the apparent slowness of the French in following up the Navarre concept and other agreements reached between General Navarre and General O'Daniel, the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that additional U.S. support should be conditioned upon continued implementation of French support, demonstration of French intent by actual performance in Indochina, and continued French willingness to receive and act upon U.S. military advice. Further, the French should be urged at all levels to support and vigorously prosecute the Navarre concept to the maximum extent of their capabilities.

For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
ARTHUR RADFORD,
Chairman,
Joint Chiefs of Staff.

~ The Pentagon Papers

By 1954, consequently, American aid accounted for nearly 80 percent of French expenditures on the conflict, and the compulsion to win created the illusion of imminent success. Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, assured a congressional committe on the eve of France's defeat at Dienbienphu that France had arrived at "a favorable turn in the war".

~ Vietnam: A History
~ Stanley Karnow

Dien Bien Phu was the straw that broke the camel's back. Two months later, on 20 July 1954, a formal cease-fire between the French and Viet Minh was negotiated at Geneva. This agreement ended an eight year war which produced over 75,000 killed for France's Expeditionary Force. (1:367) This cease-fire was never advanced beyond a military truce, and the lack of a political settlement left the door open for the next Indochina war.
...

The first and perhaps central principle of war is the objective. [US Army Warfighting Manual] FM 100-5 describes the objective, "Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective." The objective is translated into the commander's intent which governs the conduct of an operation. The French objective at Dien Bien Phu was neither clearly defined nor attainable.
...

The French government by this point [1954] in the long war was interested in stabilizing the situation in Vietnam so that peace talks could begin. A military victory was no longer the objective as the French sought an honorable way out of the war through negotiation.
...

The Viet Minh objectives, in contrast to the French, were clear, consistent, and certainly attainable.
...

From the strategic angle, as already mentioned, the government tended to let the generals run the war without providing much assistance in resources or guidance.
...

Other officers expressed misgivings to General Navarre, and he listened to all the arguments against the operation including hard intelligence depicting a significant enemy threat. However, General Navarre listened to no one but himself
...

The French may have avoided defeat by recognizing the folly of undertaking Operation Castor and calling the whole thing off before they launched it. Once they did commit forces to this operation, the French effort was highlighted by operational and strategic blundering which staunch bravery by the fighting men could not overcome.

~ An Analysis Of The French Defeat At Dien Bien Phu
~ Major Harry D. Bloomer, USA

Diem became president of the newly formed Republic of Vietnam in the South. France had withdrawn all of its troops from South Vietnam by 1956. The United States remained the only foreign power supporting Diem. But in 1956, both the United States and South Vietnam refused to honor a key provision in the Geneva Agreement that called for national elections to be held that year to reunify the country. They feared the communists would win and gain control of South Vietnam, upsetting the balance of power with China and Russia. That refusal marked the beginning of the second Indochina War. Giap would repeat his Dien Bien Phu strategy against the United States...

~ Battle of Dien Bien Phu Shaped Southeast Asia
~ George Esper
~ LA Times
~ 1994

In those days, we didn't learn from other people's mistakes. We have now advanced to not learning from our own.

The Dean addresses his audience

2007-07-06T20:18:00.000-05:00

Smarter people than I have weighed in on David Broder's latest outrage, but I can't help jumping in with my own tendentious attack on the Dean. It's all the rage, you know.

Just who do you think Broder was talking to when he wrote his column? Do you think his target audience was someone like you? ...Or not:

...A particularly virulent strain of populism has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion.

From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, philosophers have written of the healthy tension that normally exists between the understanding and strategies of leaders and the sentiments and opinions of their people.

In today's Washington, a badly weakened president and a dangerously compliant congressional leadership are no match for the power of public opinion -- magnified and sometimes exaggerated by modern communications and interest group pressure.

The latest cave-ins ... seriously threaten the national interest.

David Broder
A Mob-Rule Moment
The Washington Post
Thursday, July 5, 2007, A17

When Adolf Hitler said the following, his audience was the Industry Club:

...So it is only natural that when the capable intelligences of a nation, which are always in a minority, are regarded only as of the same value as all the rest, then genius, capacity, the value of personality are slowly subjected to the majority and this process is then falsely named the rule of the people. For this is not rule of the people, but in reality the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of half-heartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy.

Thus democracy will in practice lead to the destruction of a people's true values.

Adolf Hitler
Speech to the Industry Club
Dusseldorf, Germany
January 27, 1932

[Sorry, no link to the revisionist history site where I found this.]

Godwin's Law - I lose. But then how could someone of my ilk ever win against the genius, capacity, and value of Broder's personality? I'm embarrassed that I even brought it up.

Let's agree to keep this little outburst within our caste, shall we?

Now that you mention History

2007-07-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

I still don't want to talk about Independence Day or current events, because they are just too depressing. Instead, I'll just throw out a few random tidbits from the Vietnam era. This is not intended to build a narrative, or draw a direct comparison to Iraq.

If there's any intent at all in this, it is to point out that the people who are running our government, many of whom were in positions of power during the Vietnam experience, should have known better.

Yeah, I know, a drunk 16-year-old should have (and probably would have) known better.

July 28, 1965

During a noontime press conference, President Johnson announces he will send 44 combat battalions to Vietnam, increasing the U.S. military presence to 125,000 men. "I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. And we will meet his needs. We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam."

Time Magazine - Jan. 07, 1966 - Time's "Man of the Year" - William Westmoreland
The Guardians at the Gate

Whatever the outcome of the war, the most significant consequence of the U.S. buildup is that, for the first time in history, the U.S. in 1965 established bastions across the nerve centers of Southeast Asia. From formidable new enclaves in South Viet Nam to a far-flung network of airfields, supply depots and naval facilities abuilding in Thailand, the U.S. will soon be able to rush aid to any threatened ally in Asia. Should the British leave Singapore, as they may do by the 1970s, the new U.S. military complex would constitute the only Western outpost of any consequence from the Sea of Japan to the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. presence will also have a beneficent impact on the countries involved. The huge new ports that are being scooped out along the coasts of Viet Nam and Thailand should permanently boost the economies of both nations. Vast, U.S.-banked civilian-aid programs are aimed at eradicating the ancient ills of disease, illiteracy and hunger...

Unless Peking and Hanoi withdraw from South Viet Nam—and lose face throughout Asia—it is the Communists themselves who risk being bogged down in wars that they can neither afford nor end...

In the next few months, the U.S. public can hardly demand major victories—at least until a serious supply bottleneck is broken and Westmoreland gets the extra combat divisions he has been pleading for. But as the U.S. troop level climbs toward 400,000 men, as the price of war begins to crimp Great Society programs and boost taxes, Americans may find it harder than ever to accept the long war predicted by the Administration. Military men talk in terms of years, and though other officials insist that "something will give" long before that, few would risk curtailing the U.S. buildup...

* The total since Jan. 1, 1961, when the Pentagon began counting casualties: U.S.: 1,484 killed in action, 7,337 wounded...

Time Magazine - Friday, Jul. 14, 1967
Taking Stock

"North Viet Nam is paying a tremendous price with nothing to show for it in return. The war is not a stalemate. We are winning, slowly but steadily." So said General William Westmoreland last week in Saigon as he briefed Robert McNamara at the outset of the Defense Secretary's ninth visit to Viet Nam.

Time Magazine - Friday, Jul. 21, 1967
Judicious Dribs and Drabs

The President's decision, arrived at after several days of anxious contemplation, was a typically Johnsonian compromise. There will be more American troops in Viet Nam at the end of this year than originally scheduled, but not so many as General Westmoreland wanted.

There are now 465,000 U.S. service men there, and another 25,000 have long since been tagged to go. With allowances for anticipated casualties, that would have given Westmoreland a total force of 480,000 troops by Jan. 1 . Now the timetable has been accelerated. The 480,000 mark will be reached by mid-October, 2½ months ahead of schedule.

Richard Nixon - Nov 3, 1969
The 'Silent Majority' Speech

In 1963, President Kennedy, with his characteristic eloquence and clarity, said: ". . . we want to see a stable government there, carrying on a struggle to maintain its national independence.

"We believe strongly in that. We are not going to withdraw from that effort. In my opinion, for us to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Viet-Nam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there."

President Eisenhower and President Johnson expressed the same conclusion during their terms of office.

For the future of peace, precipitate withdrawal would thus be a disaster of immense magnitude...

The Vietnamization plan was launched following Secretary Laird's visit to Vietnam in March. Under the plan, I ordered first a substantial increase in the training and equipment of South Vietnamese forces.

In July, on my visit to Vietnam, I changed General Abrams orders so that they were consistent with the objectives of our new policies. Under the new orders, the primary mission of our troops is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of South Vietnam...

We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable. This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness. As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater.

I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program...

My fellow Americans, I am sure you can recognize from what I have said that we really only have two choices open to us if we want to end this war: I can order an immediate, precipitate withdrawal of all Americans from Vietnam without regard to the effects of that action. Or we can persist in our search for a just peace through a negotiated settlement if possible, or through continued implementation of our plan for Vietnamization if necessary-a plan in which we will withdraw all of our forces from Vietnam on a schedule in accordance with our program, as the South Vietnamese become strong enough to defend their own freedom.

I have chosen this second course.

It is not the easy way.

It is the right way...

The last ten Marines in Vietnam evacuated the American Embassy on April 30, 1975.

There are 58,256 American Armed Forces names inscribed on the Vietnam War Memorial.

Best estimates place Vietnamese casualties of that war at over 5 million.

Let us not speak of Cambodia.

The arc of Presidential history

2007-07-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

NIXON:
Imposed Wage and Price Controls to try to fight inflation - authoritarian to the core.
Reelected by historic margins, carrying every state except Mass and DC.
His rock star VP ("nattering nabobs" Agnew) was thrown out of office for petty corruption.
Impeachment begun.
Resigned in disgrace.
Quaker.

FORD:
First act in office - pardon of Nixon: "...an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."
During his first 14 months as President he vetoed 39 measures - "A major goal was to help business operate more freely by reducing taxes upon it and easing the controls exercised by regulatory agencies."
Whip Inflation Now: "Consider it something like waving a dead cat at Old Faithful to get it to erupt." - (Dexmon)
Bumped his head (or that of Chevy Chase) a lot.
Episcopal.
Excellent golfer.

CARTER:
Democrat.
Baptist Lay preacher.
Gave away "our" Panama Canal to the Panamanians.
Lost Iran to the Iranians.
Wimpishly boycotted Olympics when Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Wore sweaters like Mr. Rogers, and encouraged Americans to do likewise.
Battled a rabbit.
Was president while inflation gave birth to the permanent "two earner family".
Good, smart, honest, frank, fair, hardworking, caring, devout man. These traits made him an historically awful President.

REAGAN:
Iran-Contra:

My fellow Americans: I've spoken to you from this historic office on many occasions and about many things. The power of the Presidency is often thought to reside within this Oval Office. Yet it doesn't rest here; it rests in you, the American people, and in your trust. Your trust is what gives a President his powers of leadership and his personal strength, and it's what I want to talk to you about this evening.

For the past 3 months, I've been silent on the revelations about Iran. And you must have been thinking: "Well, why doesn't he tell us what's happening? Why doesn't he just speak to us as he has in the past when we've faced troubles or tragedies?" Others of you, I guess, were thinking: "What's he doing hiding out in the White House?" Well, the reason I haven't spoken to you before now is this: You deserve the truth...
...

One thing still upsetting me, however, is that no one kept proper records of meetings or decisions. This led to my failure to recollect whether I approved an arms shipment before or after the fact. I did approve it; I just can't say specifically when. Well, rest assured, there's plenty of recordkeeping now going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Allowed Poindexter and North to run his foreign policy from the basement.
Considered a deity.
Not a religious man.

BUSH I:
Episcopal - "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
Pardoned a bunch of Reagan officials for Iran-Contra offenses (real or imagined; convicted or suspected)
Spook.
Was (and is) a bought and paid for Moonie.
Made a Good War in Iraq.
Skull and Bones.
Silver foot in mouth (RIP Ann Richards)

CLINTON:
Impeached.
Acquitted.
Good economy (record stocks, rising wages, low inflation, Federal surpluses).
Successful foreign relations (in many, many ways).
Most hated President ever (73% approval rating after impeachment hearings)
Backslid Baptist.

~~GORE~~ BUSH II:
Invaded various countries.
Declared self Supreme Dictator.
Charismatic Bullshit Bible Beater.
Skull and Bones
Dares Dems to impeach him.
Commuted sentence (preserving Fifth plea) of convicted felon who lied/obstructed justice in case closely tied to his administration.

Okay. Here's the pattern:

R: Offense to the Constitution
R: Presidential Pardon
D: Struggle (little success)
R: Offense to the Constitution
R: Presidential Pardon
D: Struggle (great success)
R: Offense(s) to the Constitution; Presidential ~~Pardon~~ Commutation

Hey!

GWB is breaking the rules. We're supposed to have another Republican President next time, and HE's supposed to pardon all the Republican felons.

This cowboy has no respect for American Institutions.

The Black Commentator

2007-07-01T22:15:00.000-05:00

While running through my pleasurable (in an agonizing way) RSS feeds, I ran across a link (via The Sideshow) to a June 11, 2007 article from Rediff India Abroad that talks about how the US Dollar is going to collapse. It's a dismally gloomy, pessimistic article about impending doom for the world economy, but set that aside. What caught my attention was this bit:

Late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was fully aware of this paradigm. Seeking to exploit the inherent weakness of the US dollar, Saddam wanted to trade his crude in Euros, which would have lead to a lower demand for the US Dollar and thereby triggered a dollar collapse. And those were his 'weapons of mass destruction -- WMD.'

This reminded me of an article from the freakin' February 20, 2003 issue of The Black Commentator, which mentioned that...

Our country is the largest consumer of the world's oil, but our economy is tied to oil in more ways than one. Since the 1940s, oil has been denominated in U.S. dollars only, making our dollar the world's preeminent reserve currency. Nations buy and hold dollars like they buy and hold gold because they can't purchase oil without dollars. With this support for our currency, U.S. foreign debt has grown to $2.8 trillion, or $10,000 owed to foreigners by every man, woman and child in our country. Last year's trade deficit alone was more than $500 billion and shows no sign of slowing. Any other country with our lack of fiscal discipline would see its currency and stock market crash hard. But the dollar's value is essentially backed by oil, which allows our Treasury to simply print money as needed to finance our debt. Since accounting makes no allowance for fiat money, the General Accounting Office has been unwilling to certify our nation's financial statements for several years. We can operate this way only while our dollar is the world's preeminent reserve currency; without dollar preeminence, there is hell to pay.

Enter the real "weapon of mass destruction," the euro. Eleven European countries formed a monetary union around this currency on January 1, 1999; Britain and Norway, the major European oil producers, were conspicuously absent. Due to the strength of European economies, the euro now presents a serious challenge to the dollar in its role as key reserve currency. The rise of the euro also threatens to hobble the British pound's eventual entry into Europe's monetary union. Britain and the U.S. have mutual interests in oil to match their interests in the euro. Of the five largest oil companies in the world, two (ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco) are U.S.-based, two (Royal Dutch/Shell and BP) are based in Britain, and one (TotalFinaElf) is French. U.S. and British oil companies are all but banned from exploration in Iraq, while French, Russian and Chinese companies have contracts waiting for the lifting of sanctions. France and Germany, the largest economies in the Euro-zone, can diminish U.S. credibility and keep the euro on track to become the key reserve currency by preventing war with Iraq.

You didn't see that kind of analysis in your precious Economist or Wall Street Journal in February of '03, did you?

Why aren't you reading The Black Commentator?

On December 5, 2002, they opined:

The figure had been bouncing around think tanks and Capitol Hill for months, and on December 1 made the front page of the Washington Post: Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq will cost the American taxpayer between $100 and $200 billion.

Think of this fantastic sum as a mountain of contracts, because that is precisely the way the gang that runs America looks at it. Citizens see the $200 billion figure as a mind-numbing cost of war. But Dick Cheney and George Bush represent the people who will soon pocket much of this money. For them, war is the ideal business environment.

The rest of us, normal human beings attempting to live in as civilized a way as we can manage, find it difficult to imagine that the world as we know it may be destroyed in a mad rush for war-generated contracts. Bush and Cheney, on the other hand, work tirelessly to achieve that result. They smell gold.

That's just an early example, to show you how dead-on this publication has been over the years. I could give you a ream of them.

This month's "Quote to ponder" is from Sterling Allen Brown (1930): "Propaganda, no matter how legitimate, can speak no louder than the truth."

You should be reading The Black Commentator. Really, you should. The art alone is worth your time.

If, someday, you find yourself reading photocopies of broadsides written by these folks, furtively scattered (late at night) on the street by the Resistance, I want you to remember that I tried to hook you up while there was still time.

Friday X-Blogging

2007-06-29T21:39:00.000-05:00

Speaking of the Supreme Court...

The distinguished jurists have reversed an earlier decision not to hear appeals in a couple of Guantanamo habeas cases. SCOTUSBlog:

In a startling turn of events in the legal combat over the war on terrorism, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to reconsider the appeals in the Guantanamo Bay detainee cases. It vacated its April 2 order denying review of the two packets of cases. The Court then granted review, consolidated the cases, and said they would be heard in a one-hour argument in the new Term starting Oct. 1. Such a switch by the Court -- from denial to rehearing and new argument and decision -- may not have occurred since 1947, in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, legal sources said Friday.

To say that I Am Not A Lawyer is gross understatement, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction - the august High Court will overturn the DC Circuit's ruling that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 had stripped detainees of their right to bring habeas challenges.

This new court has amply demonstrated its disdain for precedent and intellectual consistency, and has signalled a marked tendency to favor the interests of the state (and its master, Business) over those of the individual. In the areas of free speech, the environment, church and state, antitrust, choice, affirmative action, labor, and more, they have consistently ruled in favor of the Strong over the Weak.

How could I possibly think that they would rule in favor of the Terriss?

It's just this: the court has been shameless in shaping its decisions based on its desired outcomes, in the face of any volume of legal argument or precedent. They have been happy to rule in favor of the State (or its partners) again and again, because they are "conservative" (which means that they are giddily anxious to shred every thread of the fabric our contemporary civil society has been woven from), but this time it's different.

This is about the balance of power.

I don't think they give a shit about any of that legal crap - habeus schmabeus, and the proverbial Individual, or whatever. They need to rule on these cases because it's penis-swinging time. They are about to throw down on the Legislative Branch (now held by "Democrats") because they want their power. I expect they'll be smacking down the Executive as well, come October, because that's about to go Democratic, too.

I have lost faith in the foundational institutions of our nation.

This one goes out to the Supreme Court...

2007-06-25T19:38:00.000-05:00

Redland
by
The Waitresses

I'll be glad when the flag goes up
We'll sing new songs and invent new slogans
There'll be a party and we'll burn the old pictures
I'll finally have some fun

I'll be glad when the flag goes up
New uniforms if they know my sizes
I'll make new friends when I go to the meetings
It won't be better but I'll settle for different

Redland, red
And my house is burning
Redland, red
What took you so long
Well it really won't matter (when it's)
Redland, Redland everywhere

I'll be glad when the flag goes up
It will be clearer what is right and wrong
I don't care about the leaders and the theories
But I know I'd just like a change

I'll be glad when the flag goes up
There'll be new names for the streets and the cities
Study the lives of the great new heroes
I won't be happy but I'll be relieved

Redland, red
And my house is burning
Redland, red
What took you so long
Well it really won't matter (when it's)
Redland, Redland everywhere

© 1981 Future Fossil Musics (BMI)
Photo by Scott Nuckles, Dayton, Ohio

Do you know this man?

2007-06-24T19:38:00.000-05:00

The Executive Branch of the Government of the United States is seeking the public's assistance in identifying the man in these photos:

He is being sought for questioning as a material witness in the Richard Bruce Cheney worldwide crime spree investigation, which is expected to begin ~~soon~~ ~~someday~~ after Cheney dies.

If you know this man's location, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND (or impeach) HIM, as he is considered armed, dangerous, useless, and completely exempt from the law.

Six Days, Seven Years

2007-06-22T21:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Conyers asked McNulty if he would enforce a contempt of Congress motion against certain White House subpoena targets - a motion that could be voted on by the House Judiciary Committee as soon as June 28. McNulty said he would recuse himself (as would I). Over at Kos, Vyan discusses this in interesting, provocative detail.

Whoopee, maybe this will finally start the showdown between the American People and this outrageous gang of thugs and con-men.

I'm old enough to remember Watergate, and one of the things that stands out in my mind is the glacial pace of Justice in that matter. It seemed like it took forever for the system to purge itself of those crooks.

It did take forever, but look here:

June 18, 1972
The Washington Post reports that 5 men were arrested for burglarizing the offices of the DNC.

November 8, 1972
The Post's David Broder reports that Nixon wins reelection in "a landslide victory rivaling the greatest of American political history."

January 27, 1973
The Vietnam Peace Accord is signed.

August 8, 1974
Nixon resigns the Presidency.

Dang, we were flying through this stuff back then, even with Broder on the job. We flushed Agnew over $29,500 in bribes! In this day and age, you couldn't even get a blogger to take $29,500 seriously, much less the VP.

Anyway, yeah, maybe a big Constitutional Moment is coming in six days, if it can find a network sponsor.

Are you holding your breath yet?

Digby unmasked

2007-06-20T23:30:00.000-05:00

As an admitted Digby fanboy, I was a little worried when I heard that she was going to go public at the Take Back America cluster.

We've been through this before, when Atrios revealed himself to be the merely human Duncan Black. It didn't affect his readership, or his influence over the progressive blogosphere, but going Public seems to have circumscribed him in a significant way. He doesn't seem to write as much anymore. He is still an important arbiter of The Buzz, but wasn't he once a more essential voice in his own right? Maybe it's just me and my inveterate fondness for the lost past, but I don't recall "Atrios" being the Glenn Reynolds of the Left before he was known as Duncan.

So I was worried that Digby would become a regular eating, pooping, gesticulating ape like the rest of us, and that that would subject her to all of the ignominious imperatives of our species - the marking of territory, the saving of face, the stimulation of prestige.

All of that may happen, but Digby did a wonderful thing. She gave us a face, but no name. I've only found one blog that claims to reveal Digby's civilian name, and it's a fairly minor one. All of the "big time" blogs are playing along as though nobody had asked the face and the voice for their identification papers. It's a huge shuck, and as far as I can tell, nobody is calling them on it (yet). It's genuinely beautiful (so far).

Now, I don't begrudge Digby (or Atrios, either) the recognition they have earned, and I can't imagine how anyone could bear the pressure of maintaining pseudonymity when they had become as essential to the public discourse as Digby has. Any publication that plows the fields of politics would make a killing by signing her to an expensive contract, and I hope it happens very soon. Digby's work on Hullabaloo has shown the world that the fabled American Spirit still lives, and those of us who are paying attention (and those who are not) owe her a massive debt. I'd gladly subscribe to any MSM organ that carried her work. I'd take out subscriptions for my friends and enemies.

That said, part of me still hopes that maybe the woman who delivered the speech at TBA was Digby's college roommate or something - that it was all a shuck, and that Digby still rides through the American polity like Zorro or the Lone Ranger, masked and immortal.

Yes, this is America

2007-06-18T18:41:00.000-05:00

I'm having a lot of trouble processing Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece on what happened to "that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report" at the hands of the Pentagon. I'm reading this thing, and I really can't concentrate, because I'm thinking about Dr. Benway:

"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct."
(...)
"While in general I avoid the use of torture-- torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance --the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject's teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded thinking machine."

"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets. Ever pop coke in the mainline?" (...)

From Naked Lunch
© 1959, William S. Burroughs

I really can't get through it, but I happen to have a thinking machine handy, so I decide to externalize myself in its form. I grab the text of Hersh's piece and head over to a Cutup Engine to subject it to some mid-20th Century postmodern hermeneutic therapy. This free public Burroughs/Gysin Cutup machine hacks up the following:

“I’ll talk to you of staff wrote, “Sir: update on news up the chain of of interagency visibility to embassies a sixth grader. In response, disquieting.” At the time, his soldiers. DO PHOTOS report. “Rummy did what we called with any terrorist group. Taguba had a day for at “I didn’t quibble. If (Rumsfeld stayed in lying to protect the first complaint. On January 13, referring to the Intelligence; General Richard for example, to the few prisoners were affiliated with any aggressive than the tried to focus “female detainees exposing themselves to the what authority. By law, there. me. His orders were clear, Low-Intensity Conflict, defended the White House and told them, ‘I’ll do anything or torture?”

In response, Administration officials had soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee. guards to condition these senators were “misreading General Miller’s intent.” Questioned I wasn’t about to lie to the . . And the general nature met with the President “once or street from a Japanese-run prisoner-of-war camp Army thirty-two years by then, Abu Ghraib report. “Rummy Southern Command, with jurisdiction over Guantánamo—he had the Administration feared on. Jordan subsequently became the two other sites, largely based actions, but the White House was insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers in March. In He’s a control guy, for my three commissioned second lieutenant, he was church.”

During the the photographs were that Naval Command and Staff at used to go shopping together,” Taguba said, Jordan was “just what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone Rhode Island. While there, I’ll deny it.”

Schmidt wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator the reports that we had Ghraib was the consequence of a I didn’t know. “Rumsfeld is very told me, referring like a steel trap."

There, that's better.

Friday Normal Blogging

2007-06-15T20:33:00.000-05:00

As you know, I've been tuning up some Gogol Bordello lately, so when I saw that Everything Is Illuminated was on TV, I naturally watched it.

It's about a young American Jew named Jonathan who takes a journey to Ukraine to try to locate the woman who (he has reason to think) saved his Grandfather's life in WWII. The reason I watched it is that the front man for Gogol Bordello, Eugene Hutz, plays his translator (with engaging verve and superb aplomb, as it turns out).

One of the many striking things about the film is Jonathan's lifelong obsession with collecting little mementos of his experience - random objects that he puts in ziplock baggies that he carries everywhere. These objects are a centerpiece of the film's imagery. You don't have to have a Harvard education to get the point that they are tokens for the thread of human experience that ties the past to the present. (You really don't want me to get started on this. Just see the film. It's worth the "time".)

So, that was thought-provoking. Hutz' narration and translation was hilarious, and the story was touching. Good movie. Time to read a book.

I picked up E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime where I left off. Father has gone along with Admiral Peary on his conquest of the North Pole, and Doctorow has described Peary's detailed "system" for arranging his expedition. We join the action:

Father kept himself under control by writing in his journal. This was a system too, the system of language and conceptualization. It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through.

This is an exquisite summation of the feeling evoked by Everything Is Illuminated.

Some useless sort of bibliomancy.

"Some" are evil

2007-06-10T20:23:00.000-05:00

So, I'm in the car again.

I'm in a big city, so I'm listening to Marketplace, which is produced by something called "American Public Media", which sounds like a deeply liberal cabal.

So I'm ready to be pleased.

Only, what I hear is some dulcet-voiced Dow Jones type telling me (with regard to national health) that "Some want a system like they have over in Britain, where the National Health Service offers care for free. Or at least it's funded by the taxpayer to the tune of almost $200 billion a year."

The newsreader goes on to report on some egregious defects in the UK's system, mostly related to people dying from cancer while other people get sex change operations and boob jobs.

But that's neither here nor there.

I'm still thinking about what the first guy said: "Some want a system like they have over in Britain."

Who are these people?

Are they any of the declared Presidential candidates? (no) Are they Congress-critters who have proposed legislation? (no) Are they healthcare professionals who take policy stances? (no) Are they lobbyists? (no) Are they pundits, or Public Intellectuals, or Academic Researchers, or freakin' Hollywood Stars?

NO!

There are over 300 million people in the US, so it's almost certain that "some" in that cohort want a sytem like the UK's - a few low-income Brit expatriates, some doctrinaire Marxists, the odd victim of the American system, but nobody - nobody - with a voice in US policy.

The Brit system was created in the (politically pre-Hayekian) forties, and it socialized healthcare providers. It has been a source of much contention (unexplained in the Marketplace report) since at least the Thatcher era. There are exactly zero policy proposals in the US that use it as a model. Current proposals draw more from the French experiment, which socializes insurance instead. The Economist said of the French system:

Its hospitals gleam. Waiting-lists are non-existent. Doctors still make home visits. Life expectancy is two years longer than average for the western world.

....For the patient, the French health system is still a joy. Same-day appointments can be made easily; if one doctor's advice displeases, you can consult another, a habit known as nomadisme médical. Individual hospital rooms are the norm. Specialists can be consulted without referral. And while the patient pays up front, almost all the money is reimbursed, either through the public insurance system or a top-up private policy.

For family doctors too, liberty prevails. They are self-employed, can set up a practice where they like, prescribe what they like, and are paid per consultation. As the health ministry's own diagnosis put it recently: “The French system offers more freedom than any other in the world.”

I admit that I'm not truly surprised that a show called Marketplace, funded by grants from God only knows what corporate foundations, would air a disingenuous piece on an important public policy matter.

That doesn't keep it from pissing me off.

I miss Fafnir

2007-06-09T14:17:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

war follow-up

Someone has told me that the war just ended. Well loo-de-doo smarty-pants! That's what I say. Loo-dee-doo.

I dunno. Even if Baron Saddam is defeated and Emperor Bush now controls the vast resources of the Spice, doesn't this mean that the Space Guild will want to destroy America all the more? That's what I think. This thing could have like six more books in it easy.

Fafnir and Giblets, for the war.

¶ posted by Fafnir at 3:42 PM

Thursday, May 01, 2003

In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era.
...

In the images of celebrating Iraqis, we have also seen the ageless appeal of human freedom. Decades of lies and intimidation could not make the Iraqi people love their oppressors or desire their own enslavement. Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.
...

Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight. After service in the Afghan -- and Iraqi theaters of war -- after 100,000 miles, on the longest carrier deployment in recent history, you are homeward bound.

George W. Bush
(Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln)

Gogol Bordello

2007-06-06T00:45:00.001-05:00

Atrios turned me on to these guys. I'm breakin a sweat just sayin their name.

What a day.

2007-06-05T20:59:00.000-05:00

Libby gets 2.5 years, 2.5 hundred large

Charges against Guantanamo detainees dismissed

Broadcasters win right to use the word "fuck" on TV due to Bush, Cheney precedents

Iraqi Parliament: "there will be no such a thing as a blank check for renewing the UN mandate anymore, any renewal will be attached to a timetable for a complete withdrawal."

Steve Gilliard

2007-06-02T20:58:00.000-05:00

We have lost Steve Gilliard.

I didn't know him, in person or otherwise, but I have admired his work for some time. He was one of the early "front pagers" at Daily Kos, and when he left there to start The News Blog, he independently established himself as one of the defining voices of the "progressive blogosphere".

There are many tributes to him on the net tonight, and many descriptions of his unique contributions to the noble work of not only informing people about events, but encouraging them to think about them in penetrating ways. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has written a fine one, as has Sara at Orcinus. As Sara says, Gilliard is simply irreplaceable.

The News Blog is dark tonight, but archives going back to 2003 are still online at his old place.

An etymological misconception dispelled

2007-05-26T13:23:00.000-05:00

All the publicity about the Don Imus flap brought this subject to mind, but I didn't want to broach it while the story was fresh, because it's somewhat tangential to his troubles.

It's about this word "ho".

A look at the Imus story linked above, or the word's Urban Dictionary page tells us that just about everybody thinks it comes from the word "whore", but that's just not true.

Now, I'm not disputing the meaning of the word in contemporary usage. Words "mean" what people agree that they mean, and if you think "whore" when you say "ho", then that's its meaning, especially if everyone around you behaves as though they think the same thing (see the later Wittgenstein for a verbalicious discussion of this, but stay away from the Tractatus. It's a black hole).

I'm a geezer, and I remember the pre-Rap days fairly clearly. Well, somewhat clearly. Some days. Anyway... The word "ho" has been a part of African-American parlance for a long time. I don't know just how long, but in the mid-seventies, it was unambiguously a vernacular pronunciation of the word "hole". That changes things quite a bit.

As it was used then, it didn't carry any judgmental implications about a woman's dress, or behavior, or sexual proclivities. It could be used to refer to a woman of easy virtue, but it was, if anything, more likely to be used to refer to a strong woman who didn't put up with a man's bullshit. A pissed-off girlfriend, a tough professor, a chick who wouldn't put out. Really, it just meant any woman. It wasn't a particularly personal insult - it was universally misogynistic. It simply connoted that women are nothing more than pesky life support systems for their pussies.

It's interesting to think about what this shift in meaning tells us about our society.

Wittgenstein^* posits that words are given meaning by the "forms of life" in which they exist. I think he means by that something like the culture and common assumptions of the people who use them. I'm out of touch with Black youth culture these days, but I have a nagging suspicion that "ho" still carries pretty much the old meaning in that community, even if its etymology has been lost. I really think that the "whore" definition, and its connotation of a slutty, nasty, trashy woman is a misunderstanding between Black and White "forms of life".

It's not that I think White men have any more respect for Womanhood than African American men, or that they are culturally less likely to understand the word's original meaning. Not at all. Instead, I think it's because they did not learn the word in the way that language is traditionally learned - through conversation with other people. They learned it through "Urban Music" videos. These are fantasy vignettes that, at best, present an incomplete rendition of the world they describe. In a lot of cases, they are no more representative of reality than what goes on in an adolescent boy's head during masturbation, yet they have created a substitute reality that is in some ways more influential than the "real" reality (at least for White folk).

I'm fairly certain that Rap (or Hippity-Hopping, or whatever the correct term is) lyrics are understood in different ways by poor urban African Americans, and white kids, and older suburban Whites, and middle class Blacks, and so on. This word "ho" is just an example of that. It is language that has been arbitrarily projected into an alien "form of life", and dressed in a false context (music videos) that strips or distorts its meaning.

That this is possible (common, even) tells you something about America, no?

^* Please don't get the idea that I'm suggesting that you take time from your busy day to read Wittgenstein unless you have a very good reason, or a very unusual curiosity. For most purposes outside of the study of formal logic and philosophy, genuine common sense will serve at least as well. If you simply must read some philosophy, try the Tao Te Ching instead.

Social Security Facts

2007-05-24T23:34:00.000-05:00

Here are a few facts about Social Security:

1) The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Trust Funds have increased their assets in every year since the Greenspan Commission recommendations were adopted by a Dem congress and signed by Reagan in '83. The "Social Security Trust Fund" is about 2 TRILLION in the black right now.

2) That's right. The Social Security System is sitting on a $2,000,000,000,000 nest egg, which has been very conservatively invested.

3) This situation is is EXACTLY what was planned for in the 1983 law. The Greenspan Commision described a set of immediate payroll tax increases and benefit cuts that would create a large pool of money that would be used in the future to pay the Baby Boomers' SS benefits while their scarce offspring worked, paying not enough into the system in real time.

4) That 2 trillion is your money, paid every week for over 25 years in regressive Payroll Taxes and even more regressive Self Employment Taxes. It has not been "spent". It has been invested in US Federal Securities, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. These are interest bearing securities.

5) The SS Trust Funds are not "lumped" into the General Fund. Their accounting is still scrupulously separate. Unfortunately, since LBJ, they have been reported as part of the big "Federal Budget", as though they were just like revenues from the Income Tax. They aren't.

6) Anybody who says there is a "Social Security Crisis" is trying to steal the two trillion dollars from you. Another dead giveaway is the term "worthless IOUs". The IOUs are worth two trillion, and it's your actual money, that you paid into the system under a CONTRACT. They want you to forgive the debt, but there is no reason for you to do so. They hire the best publicists in the business to talk you into giving your money to them.

7) They think you're a sucker and a dumbass.

Apropos of nothing premeditated

2007-05-16T22:41:00.000-05:00

I was looking over a few of the "FAQ" docs over at the Focus on the Family website, where I ran across the following statement within Dr. James Dobson's answer to the musical question "Why can't Focus be more inclusive of gay people?":

A dear friend of mine, Bob Vernon, former assistant chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, was driven from office because of his faith. No charges were ever brought against him. The pressure was political, resulting solely from his fundamental beliefs. He is but one of thousands of people being discriminated against today because of their Christian beliefs.

I'm not a big expert on discrimination against Christians, because where I live (America), you can't hock a loogie without (unintentionally, embarrassingly) hitting a Christian who's dictating what the laws are going to be, what's going to be taught in school, who's going to hold public office, and what the freaking greeters at Wal-Mart are going to say to shoppers in December. So I'm not familiar with Bob Vernon.

And oh, what the heck does his Passion have to do with teh Gay?

So I google his name (with LAPD). Apparently he's a very famous guy, and I should know about him, because I do watch TV. Some weird quantum effect, or the work of the Devil, I suppose.

Anyway, the first hit is a link to a book he wrote, called L.A. Justice. The "About the Author" section informs me:

Robert (Bob) Vernon retired from the LAPD after 37 years on the Force. The son of a 20-year LAPD officer, Bob rose through the ranks from rookie street cop to second in command of one of the world's most respected police departments.

Help! I'm bein' repressed!

Umm, nothing here about gays, or being driven from anything, or even the Plight of Christians in America.

The second link takes me to a fascinating but dubious conspiracy site that contains what purports to be a transcript of a Public Access TV interview with one Fred Celeni, who claims to have been a "federal intelligence agent" working for the office of Congressman John Dingell. Truth OUT, baby:

FRED CELENI: It's kind of a strange story. And I'll tell you why.

One day, we were sitting at the Hamburger Hamlet. (And this is =before= the riot. This is back about January of 1992.) And Bob Vernon, every time we would meet, he would make us pray. He was a devout Christian and a deacon in his church. And we had to hold hands, and we had to pray. (Not that I have a problem with it; I was an old Catholic altar boy. I thought it was kind of strange, though, to do it in the Hamburger Hamlet.) And in the course of doing this praying... We finished praying, and he says to me, "What do you think about 'jungle bunnies' being with our white women?"

And I paused for a moment. I thought to myself, "Bunnies?" (Because I'm thinking about what we're doing, and this guy's off in the briar patch.) And he lost me for a second. Then it hit me, what he meant. I said, "Well, if the woman and the man meet, and they want to be together, I guess that's their business." I don't think it's any of =my= business.

And he said, "Well that's not the kind of attitude you should have. God means monkeys to stay in trees with monkeys; and God means white women to stay with white men."

INTERVIEWER: And this is who, saying this?

FRED CELENI: This was Robert Vernon.

Now this is the kind of dish I can sink my diabolical anti-Christian fangs into, and I am all over believing every word, but I just can't get past that bit about Celini being "lost" by the term 'jungle bunnies'. LA cops don't hold hands in the Hamburger Hamlet with five-year-olds or Canadians, so this guy's story is just shot. Plus there's no Christian-hating, and no gays (unless maybe Hamburger Hamlet is a Gay Burger Joint. Los Angeles, you know. A kazillion nasty stories in the Naked City. Really good ones, some a them. But I digress...).

I have to dig deeper.

Hits 3 and 4 are repeat info, but hit 5 points to Charisma Magazine (+Christian Life) which reports:

Bob Vernon served 38 years with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). An outspoken Christian, he retired in 1992 as director of operations responsible for 10,000 employees.

He earned the respect of his peers through gutsy policing. Early in his career he refused to engage in everyday macho street-talk by screaming the F-word at suspects. Vernon worked with a new partner who criticized his refusal to curse as dangerous.

"I'm a follower of Jesus," Vernon explained. "He wouldn't want me to talk that way."

Vernon then challenged his partner to observe his performance for a while. After two months his partner admitted: "You do get the guys out of the car without a problem."

Vernon currently provides ethics training to police departments in 21 countries and uses that platform to share the gospel.

This would appear to be a Christian (ergo authoritative) source that says that Vernon had the respect of his peers. (by the way, it also indicates that Vernon pioneered the theory that screaming the word "fuck" is not always required to dislodge perps from their getaway cars. Innovative police work, that. No wonder he rose in the ranks.)

After literally minutes of painstaking research, I was beginning to despair of ever getting to the root of this story, but at last, at Google hit #20, I hit pay dirt. This is from a piece called LAPD's first openly gay and lesbian officers greet their community:

As we entered the conference room, Chief Gates was just finishing a briefing from Assistant Chief Bob Vernon, the department's second in command, and an arch-conservative, fundamentalist Christian known throughout the agency as the leader of the "God Squad". An Elder in his church, Vernon had taken a lot of heat when some audio recordings of sermons he'd delivered to his congregation started making the rounds. In them he quoted Bible passages to justify using boat oars to discipline (beat) a child or spouse who would not "submit" to the man of the house. His views on homosexuality were equally archaic.

I'll admit that my soul did a little dance when Gates asked Vernon to remain for our meeting, because I knew that he would rather take a bullet to the brain than breathe the same air as open, proud gays and lesbians. Even if we achieved nothing on our issues, at least we'd get to watch Bob Vernon squirm.

Mark and Art took seats at Chief Gates' end of the conference table with Commander Taylor. Sandy and I sat opposite each other next to Vernon at the other end. Vernon seemed to focus his attention on the wall of picture windows along the north wall of the room, fidgeting a bit as he tried to avoid eye contact with any of us.

Mark began the meeting with his customary ego massage, assuring the Chief that we appreciated the difficulty of his job, how hard it must be to police such a diverse population, yada yada yada. Then he shifted to what we perceived to be the department's selective enforcement of lewd conduct laws in the local parks and bars. Gates appeared to be listening intently, as though it were the first time he'd heard these complaints. Vernon continued to stare pensively out the windows.

Amid Gates' assertion that gays weren't specifically targeted in vice operations, I adjusted myself in my chair, and my boot accidentally brushed the tip of Chief Vernon's shoe. He froze, but looked as though he'd just taken a bite of something really nasty, and stared with lock-jawed defiance out the window. I forced myself to stifle the giggle surging to my throat.

From that point on, whenever I would voice an opinion, I would either preface or punctuate it with an "accidental" brush of the Assistant Chief's hand or foot with my own. The memory of his reaction is still one of my life's guilty pleasures.

My attention was diverted from torturing Vernon back to the discussion when I heard Mark request permission for openly gay and lesbian officers, in uniform, to distribute LAPD recruitment materials at our upcoming GLBT Pride Festival. Expecting an outright refusal, I steeled myself for the upcoming debate, but was stunned into silence when I heard the Chief quietly give his okay. Mark was so taken aback that he repeated the request, stressing the "in uniform" part, to which the Chief replied, "Yes, in uniform."

Mark, who always wore his feelings on his sleeve, tried his best to restrain his excitement. I waited for the other shoe to drop, feeling that we were being set up for a big fall. I figured that the only reason the Chief gave his approval was that he either didn't think there were gay and lesbian members of the department, or was betting that no one would be willing to state so publicly. Still, he had given the okay, so it was up to us to follow through.

We practically floated out of Parker Center after the meeting...

Well there's your smoking gun.

There's your Gays openly torturing Vernon, with the tacit approval of the Chief. Practically floating about it, too.

I just knew Dobson couldn't have been stretching the truth, him being a sanctimonetized Christian and all.

Whew, that's a load off.

Devastating

2007-05-10T22:15:00.000-05:00

Atrios, in his wisdom, sometimes sees fit to leave it at "What Digby said."

Digby is the most incisive and illuminating polemicist on the web, and nothing I could say would... Well, look. Here's a taste of Digby's take on the DC Media Elite:

When the equally phony George W. Bush came to town it was love at first sight, and why wouldn't it be? Here you had a man whom these people could truly admire --- a rich man of the bluest blood, born into one of the most powerful families in America who nonetheless pretended to be some hick from Midland Texas. He took great pride in his phoniness, just as they did, and they all danced this absurd kabuki in perfect step for years each pretending to the other that they were all "just regular guys."

(Yes, this post does officially expose me as a pie-eyed fanboy. I can't help it.)

Say WHAT?

2007-05-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

Marty Peretz, of The New Republic says:

Majorities have a right--even an obligation--to preserve their own ethics, norms, cultures and histories. They have a right to define the qualifications for membership in and even admission to their societies. This will be the struggle of the 21st century.

Is it just me, or is that an odd stance for a Jew to be taking in the good ol' US of A (or anywhere else, except maybe Israel)?

Doesn't he know that the term Judeo-Christian is the right wing's "politically correct" euphemism for Christian?

How does he suppose a culture-drunk Majority would fulfill their "obligation" to cleanse society of those who don't meet their "qualifications for membership"?

He has a right to peddle this kind of eliminationist rhetoric, but I don't think he has thought it through.

I rather doubt that Peretz meant to say what I read, but it's difficult for me to find a construction of his words that doesn't turn my stomach. As written, his ideas are compatible with only the very worst of the "ethics, norms, cultures and histories" of America.

To say nothing of Europe.

Friday not-X-Blogging. Just regular blogging.

2007-05-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

I have nothing against Hamilton County, Texas.

The landscape there is quite hospitable, by Texas standards. It has good rivers and streams, lined with huge native pecan trees, and it has thick woods and rich farmland on rolling hills and buttes. It's sparsely populated, but the few people I've met there seemed friendly and capable, if a little off-center, in the classic Central Texas tradition.

While driving through that county a while back, I pulled off at a little roadside picnic area to stretch my legs. There I found this Texas State Historical Marker:

Whoever wrote that blurb obviously took some pride in the rough pioneer heritage of the county, but I remember being struck by its evident tone of reverence for some pretty savage, benighted redneckery. I snapped a pic on my cellphone and got out of there.

When I got back to the familiar womb of my suburb, I found that my thoughts continue to be drawn back to that roadside marker, and away from the usual agenda of worries about drugs, and crooked politicians, and gangs, and globalization, and lawn care, and emerging diseases, and asshole school boards, and corporate robber barons.

That plaque in Hamilton County really bugs me.

I finally decided that I have to study this marker, to deconstruct it in detail, in hopes of getting rid of the damned thing. Unfortunately, results follow:

By 1860 had 489 people...

The sign doesn't mention it, but the 1860 census shows that 26 of the 489 were slaves (there were no Free Coloreds). That's about 5.3% - I think that was pretty typical in Texas at the time. Slave-owning was a ritzy upscale aspiration for people who used tallow-egg candles and coffee substitues (eww).

Vote in 1861 was 86-1 in favor of secession.

God only knows how many citizens were eligible to vote, but it was probably about 87.

The writer seems to be emphasizing the strong Confederate sympathy in the county, but there is no mention of slaves. Curious.

60 farmers were organized as Hamilton County Minute Men, a unit of part-time soldiers. Others joined Confederate regiments, and fought at Vicksburg, Shiloh, and other memorable battles.

That sounds like everybody in the county was fighting the Civil War, but the Hamilton County Minute Men were exempted from Confederate military service. It seems that the Union Army withdrew from its Injun-fightin forts in Texas, and those Minutemen guys had to ride and shoot locally, to protect the Hamilton County settlements from Native American incursions. They really did have to. White Man's hold on that area was still violently contested. However, the sign writer obscures that, and subtly associates the Minutemen with "Vicksburg, Shiloh, and other memorable battles". The wording is technically accurate, but misleading, like most of Bushco's early talk track about 9/11 and Iraq. Curious, too.

Horses, oxen, logs, creeks, acres, homemade wooden tools, corn, and wheat.

This is standard Historical Marker copy. Hardy, those pioneers.

On burned-over ground, each family grew its own tobacco, hanging the leaves inside the living room to dry.

Cheez, this sounds like Pearl S. Buck or something. Nice wordsmithing. We get the point. Hardy they were indeed, and red, red of neck.

Coffee substitutes and tallow-filled eggshells.

Yes, in their hand-hewn cabins. This is stern reality, baby. Those guys were hardy.

With few men on hand to brand and herd, feuds rose over thefts and straying cattle.

The few men still at home were pissy bitches.

In differences over war issues, two men fled [ED: fled, I want you to know] to join Federals. Later they returned, trying to recruit neighbors into a unit disloyal to Texas, to welcome planned Federal invasion.

DISLOYAL TO TEXAS! That must have been the bastard who voted against secession and his no-count nephew. I'm sure nothing came of their dastardly plot, but I can't tell you the kind of snakes you have to put up with when your Eden is Hamilton County.

Further trouble came from many Confederate deserters who took refuge along the streams and lived by theft and violence.

Villains every one, but disloyal only to the Confederacy, not necessarily to Texas. Still worth the trouble to string up, I suppose.

Okay.

The text's acreage is divided into thirds - one for the "memorable" Confederateness of the county, one for the toughness of its pioneers, and one for the pesky, evil nature of the non-Confederates. Fully two thirds of the sign is devoted to puffing up the Confederacy and demonizing its opponents.

In fairness, I must point out that the marker was erected in 1965. The writer was certainly working in a drastically different environment then. "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama was in 1965. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. The Voting Rights Act. Watts Riots.

Still, the sign stands in 2007, emblazoned with the imprimatur of the State of Texas.

According to the 2000 census, the contemporary African American population of Hamilton County is 0.3%. Slaves are way down, and Free Coloreds are up (slightly) since 1860.

Hey, it's a step in the right direction.

ADDENDUM:
As I feared, this ended up sounding like a slam against Hamilton County, Texas. I truly did not intend that. I don't know Hamilton County, and it doesn't know me. For all I know, it's a rural oasis of progressive thought. It's just that blasted sign that I want to get out of my head.

Friday X-Blogging

2007-04-27T20:40:00.000-05:00

This birdhouse used to be the tallest thing on the block. Everybody admired its optimism, enterprise, and achievement. All the purple martins in the area wanted to live there. There was a waiting list.

Now the nearby trees are encroaching, and the roof leaks, and it's full of moldy old bird-refuse. The sun is setting, and martins "in the know" nest elsewhere. The mosquitos are here, because the martins are fighting them somewhere else.

This is not the fault of the martins, and no one should be surprised.

Exceptionalism is not immune from entropy.

Guy Cry

2007-04-25T22:59:00.000-05:00

If you have not seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite, please do not read this post. It will only bore you, and it will certainly cloud your apprehension of the film, should you see it in the future.

Which I recommend.

Some columnist from the Chicago Tribune was on NPR today talking about movies that make men cry. The bit was thin gruel: mostly about how real guys are permitted to cry about dogs, sports, and patriotism (in that order, I garnered), but I was driving, and I'm prone to pondering while driving, so I pondered.

I'm the only guy in a family of five, so our house is a suitable laboratory for studying the subject. I can think of only one film that made me tear up, while leaving all the women unaffected - Napoleon Dynamite

If you've seen that film, you are probably thinking that I simply over-identified with a doofy nerd who wins in the end (and it's probably true, a little), but I clearly remember being moved by what I saw as a brilliant, poignant paean of gentle affection for that will to create, and to share the joy of creation, that so characterizes the human species. No, really, I thought that, and I told the women, too. They just said I was being a doofy nerd, but I still think it.

Look.

Most movies, and stories, and legends, and myths contain tension or struggles between opposing forces - what Lit 101 calls "conflict". Napoleon Dynamite (ND, henceforth) has loads of it, pointing in a confusing variety of directions.

In a proper story, this conflict is the audience's Guide to the plot. In good stories, the conflicts often dodge and feint, leading and misleading the audience on a merry chase, but in the end, they lend meaning and significance to the story in a didactic way, even in a car chase flick. Even in an episode of Seinfeld^*.

The conflicts in ND aren't apparently like that. They're mostly utterly pedestrian and unremarkable. There is more drama (and vastly higher stakes) in any high school in the USA each day than you can find in the entire film. To make things worse on your Lit 101 scorecard, the Conflicts (such as they are) in ND are mostly discursive and unrelated to any detectable theme.

Now let's pause right there, because I think that's where ND lost my women. As the movie developed, I was enjoying it as an idiosyncratic slice-of-life vignette with odd characters, and a wit that somehow managed to be simultaneously broad and dry. I believe (and this is conjecture, because they still won't discuss this movie with me) that somewhere along the line, they had stopped processing the movie because it a) violated their expectations for Conflict in a story (the Conflict failed to guide them), and b) was about some nerdy, doofy high school kids with drab, strangely normal lives.

But I was still hangin' in, so we go on.

Most movies, and stories, and legends, and myths contain at least one significant event. The characters are often ordinary people, but BOOM! the hero's family is kidnapped by bandidos, or BOOM! the hero is forced to choose between Impoverished Right and Affluent Wrong, or BOOM! the hero is falsely accused of a heinous crime and must live as an Outlaw to prove his innocence, or BOOM! whatever. ND honors this convention with the big Campaign Assembly at the end, where Napoleon is forced to dance. It was (as ND's makers intended) at this moment of crisis^** that the desultory threads of conflict collapsed into a single shining point, and the Meaning of Napoleon's triumphant dance came clear, and wobbly puddles welled up on my lower eyelids.

Napoleon hadn't been tossed a big, juicy, literary softball of Conflict, like a murder, or a fatal disease, or a treasure or something. What he had faced in the film was Life itself. In the face of all of the usual pettiness, timidity, routine, scripted behavior, monkey-troop posturing, unexamined assumptions, and cafeteria food of his life, when the big showdown came, and his friend was counting on him, he was ready. He came through for his friend, but he came through for himself, too. He was able to stand before the world (his world) and shine, for just that moment, like a burning hubcap, or maybe more like a pie plate in a microwave (No, that's not right either).

Anyway, all of the dreary little mundane Conflicts that had gone before were vaporized in that moment. And why was he prepared for that moment? Why did he have the chops in his repertoire to kill the house at the surprise Moment of Truth?

FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER!

He didn't suffer indignities from a Master, or hermit himself in self-discipline to prepare for some inevitable High Noon moment (though he did work on his dance moves in his room). He was just a guy, and he chanced into an opportunity to let his insides beam out in a big showy way. As Napoleon said of someone else who had just received a great gift (from him), "Lucky."

I actually have quite a bit more about that movie, and its various characters, but I've already said way too much.

I would only add that nothing in this thought experiment seems really to bear much on gender - only on the personalities in my family. So...

Never mind.^***

^* Seinfeld is the evil, evil doppelgänger of Napoleon Dynamite

^** That BOOM! of crisis/resolution at the end was an artistic shock, and it was the source of this film's power to make me leak. There's no reason to believe that Jared and Jerusha Hess have any more movies left in them, but this one was clearly bursting to get out. It is as complete a work of art as a sweet little movie can be. Maybe they should quit now. I doubt they're the Coens.

^*** ADDENDUM: I have now gotten some discussion out of one of the women (the Head Woman, in fact, and the chief of our clan). She alerted me to the simple truth that gender roles are among the "unexamined assumptions" that form the matrix of Our Hero's life, and that it would be unlikely for a female to form a strong identification with his little plights in the movie. That's so obvious, and I SO missed it without her help. She implies that I have other virtues that partially compensate for these sorts of cognitive failures, but she refuses to tell me what they are. You'll be the second to know.

2007-04-16T19:27:00.000-05:00

My heart goes out to the friends and family of the kids at Virginia Tech.

As for those of you with an Opinion about it, and how it relates to this or that... shut up, will you?

Just shut up.

Yom Hashoah

2007-04-15T22:18:00.000-05:00

Today, April 15, 2007, is Yom Hashoah, the Jewish holiday of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.

Eric Muller has graciously shared a story that has an ending.

Go read it.

Damn skippy

2007-04-11T01:03:00.000-05:00

US Constitution

Article 1

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

...(more powers)

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

...(more powers)

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

...(more powers)

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Hunting and Honesty

2007-04-09T01:31:00.000-05:00

Over at Daily Kos, there's a discussion about the current intra-Republican infighting over who's a hunter and who's not.

A few of the comments over there were of the standard-issue "Bambi-murderer" sort, and many of them were of the "Republicans Hunt; Democrats Don't" sort.

Here's my take:

There is certainly more than a grain of truth in what artofstarving says about the strange space that hunting occupies in American politics, and in the American psyche, but it's a complicated subject.

I can't begin to sort out all of the pathologies involved with the political implications of who is and is not a hunter, who's killed what, what weapons were used, etc. Most of that stuff is deserving of every bit of contempt and condescension that's heaped on it.

However, I want to defend the concept of hunting as a social Good.

There are several facets to this argument.

One is purely based on crass political reality. Like it or not, there are lots of hunters in this country, and they don't particularly like being characterized as bloodthirsty apes or anachronistic knuckleheads. Many of these folks are highly sensitive to environmental issues that affect their hobby, and they could be allies, if they thought their priorities were respected by Democratic politicians. On this point, I would refer you to Ducks Unlimited, which is a hunting-oriented group that is a real power player in wetland habitat conservation (and REPUBLICAN politics). There are many other interest groups of a similar bent. By any rational measure, these constituencies should be heavily Democratic, but we insist on driving them away, because they carry guns and shoot little animals.

Another is Range Management. There are exactly zero ecosystems in the lower 48 that closely resemble a pre-Columbian state. We simply don't have the predators that once balanced the reproduction rates of the prey species. If hunting were outlawed, populations of such game species as deer would find a new equilibrium, but it would be at the expense of massive starvation, disease, and habitat destruction, and the effects on non-game species would also be profoundly undesirable. Ask a biologist.

The last point I want to address goes to the motivation of the hunter. I know for a fact that there are some who just want to kill, want to see something bleed and die. We can agree that that's a sickness, and it should be condemned. However, I don't think that's the motivation of many hunters. If it were, there would be a business in the recreational operation of the apparatus that kills steers at slaughterhouses. Instead, I think that people hunt because they want to be connected to the natural cycle of life and death. There is no number of Big Macs that can prepare you for the impact that choosing to kill a free being - to be the agent of its death - has on your apprehension of your imprint on the world.

Legend has it that Native Americans gave thanks to their prey for giving its life that they could live. The reality of that connection for the hunter's survival is long gone, but the sense of honoring the wheel of Life, and taking personal responsibility for your part in it, is still very real.

Revolutionary Morality, or

2007-04-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

"It is not my job to make tables."

Surely this must be a joke.

(Via MaxSpeak)

Friday X-Blogging

2007-04-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

Some people say that America's ongoing fascination with the Republican Party is a symptom of some morbid pathology. I think that in part, it's a manifestation of America's fabled Boundless Optimism.

If it weren't for the blood and death and impoverishment, it would be kinda cute.

British Sailors

2007-04-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

I join the rest of the world in breathing a sigh of relief, and a prayer of thanks to the Gods of Global Politics that the 15 British citizens taken captive by Iran in the Persian Gulf are now to be released.

I also join a smaller, but still sizeable, contingent who shake their heads in sad wonderment that things have come to such a pass that a callow, trash-talking demagogue like Ahmadinejad can so effortlessly kick the asses of the mighty Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Military-Industrial, Globalized West in the game of publicity.

This sorry state of affairs is entirely the fault of George Walker Bush. I hope I don't have to explain this to you at this late date.

Of course Blair is complicit, but at least he's aware of the current state of play, and is trying to make the best of a very, very bad situation. It's a spankin' for the Allied Powers, but the tireless efforts of the Royal Imperial Diplomats have yielded a victory of hrrumph and so on.

Get real.

Effin' Iran just let Britain (and, by association, the US) off the hook, and we're grateful. What's ironically worse, it should be noted, is that there was no legitimate question of torture or outrageous International Criminality on their part.

Our leaders have made a mockery of the great traditions and sacrifices of our forebears. We are weak and hollow because we have thrown away our ideals and principles.

We need to get our shit together before every Third World country in the world figures out how to make us dance.

You know what wouldn't surprise me?

2007-03-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

If Dick Cheney swept in at the last minute and had his Machine secure him the Republican Nomination, then (come to find out) the Democratic nominee is a Muslim Pig fucker.

I got nothin

2007-03-28T21:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't managed to be the least bit regular in posting to this blog, but I'm not sure that I won't want to start being so someday. I haven't decided yet, so I probably ought to post from time to time, just to keep the thing on life support.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or inclination to compose an original post, so here's some old stuff dredged out of the archive:

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Science, Religion, and Bureaucracy

In the really old days, science, government, and religion were one. The extra-smart people - the ones who figured out how to make predictions by observing patterns in things like the stars, the seasons, and the migrations - were the priests. Their predictions were a magical power, and they were duly feared, respected and obeyed. They knew that they derived their power from something greater, and they themselves feared and respected the stars, the seasons, and all the rest. If the rains didn't come on time, or the sun darkened in day, or some other thing went terribly wrong with their predictions, they (in all humility) attributed it to the dissatisfaction of their gods. This tended to be bad for the local virgins. (Have you ever noticed that non-cannibalistic ritual human sacrifice seems to be associated almost exclusively with calendar-obsessed cultures? Coincidence?)

Things took a somewhat different turn in Asia, but in the development of "Western" culture:

The Egyptians took a long look at nature and decided that the Gods must have some issues of their own, having nothing to do with human affairs. This essential insight enabled them to invent government as somewhat distinct from religion, though the pharohs were still pretty heavenly. The priests, of course, were still the scientists, engineers, and architects.

The Greeks morphed the pantheon into a veritable sitcom of human foibles, which (in my opinion) is what freed them to develop the first society that divided government, religion, and science into more-or-less separate categories of study and practice. The Romans, of course, extracted what was useful for the expansion of power from the Greek experience, but let's not talk about the Romans, shall we? It makes me nervous, things being things.

Anyway,

In the Golden Age of Islam, we see selected torches of both the ancient Greeks and the Romans taken up by a modern monotheistic religion. Science, religion, and government were again driven closely together, but now in the service of a much different type of God. Their Allah was the reason for all things, but He was not really the type to screw around arbitrarily with the laws of nature on a whim. He made the world as it is, and he gave mankind the senses and the wit to live here, within His creation. To understand it, to create good things in it, to prosper, were acts of worship. The Chinese may have invented spaghetti and gunpowder, but Muslims invented modern mathematics and, some say, the Scientific Method. Lest you think I'm a terrorist, let's mention that they were also great imperialist conquerors, and very far from egalitarian or democratic. The Alhambra was not built as a Community Center, you know.

Meanwhile, European Christianity was forming itself from the local clay of Druids, Goths, Franks, Celts, and other assorted undesirables. I think there was some squabbling involved.

Pretty soon, you had Dark Ages and lots of Crusades, and that's about where we are now.

Oh, yeah, I skipped the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, and some World Wars and Empires and other stuff, but as Alfred North Whitehead (or somebody like that) said, 'to recross is not to have crossed'. If we haven't recrossed yet, we're certainly steaming hard in that direction.

**********************

What brings me (back, yet again, today) to this conclusion (again today) is President Bush's latest endorsement of Government teaching Religion as Science. He wants schools to teach 'Intelligent Design' as a serious alternative to evolution. In science classes.

If you've stayed with me this far, you probably don't need any instruction on why this is a Bad Idea, and you probably already know why it's just outrageously stupid, to boot. Still, let's review:

First, what is Science?

This is the first of many rocky shoals of language and thought on which The President has foundered. He's probably thinking of something like 'Christian Science' or 'Bachelor of Science' or (at best) 'the Science of Baseball'. He may have missed class that day when they talked about observing, explaining, predicting and testing empirical data. Intelligent Design basically says "I don't understand how (x) could possibly be so", or (in the vernacular) "no fuckin' way, man". Sorry, that's not Science.

Second, what is a theory?

D'oh! Another rocky rock. In the jargon of Science, a 'theory' is an explanation for empirical observations that has been validated by experimental tests. You will often hear the term 'scientific fact' bandied about in loose conversation, but seldom (if ever) among scientists. It's a (non-scientific) fact that nearly nothing in science is agreed to as 'fact'. To be called 'theory', an explanation of a natural phenomenon has a very high threshold to meet. It must be susceptible to testing, and it must have survived at least some test that meets agreed, logical standards. Intelligent Design doesn't begin to make the grade as a 'theory'.

Okay, how about a hypothesis?

A hypothesis is an explanation for an observation in nature that has not been tested. Unfortunately for Intelligent Design, you must be able to base a prediction on a hypothesis, and the prediction must be able to be tested by observation. "Magic guy did it in wondrous ways" is not a hypothesis, either. Strike three.

Science doesn't address religion. Religion has nothing to offer science. "Life was created by a higher intelligence" may be a true statement, but it is not a hypothesis, and it sure ain't a theory. It doesn't predict anything, it can't be tested, and it can't ever be part of Science.

Teach it in Sunday School. The Constitution protects your right to do so. It also protects my kids from you and your preacher forcing your (sincere, heart-felt, and all sorts of wonderful I'm sure) BELIEFS on them in the guise of education.

*********************

(...)

Cheez, people who thought sticking leeches on sick people was a Good Thing^TM could figure this stuff out, but we're too damn stupid. I'm going to bed.

IANAL

2007-03-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

I had wondered why it was okay with the White House to let AbuG testify, but not Harriet or Karl. Maybe it's because the case law was decided around the time of Teapot Dome...

It is quite true that the resolution directing the investigation does not in terms avow that it is intended to be in aid of legislation; but it does show that the subject to be investigated was the administration of the Department of Justice-whether its functions were being properly discharged or were being neglected or misdirected, and particularly whether the Attorney General and his assistants were performing or neglecting their duties in respect of the institution and prosecution of proceedings to punish crimes and enforce appropriate remedies against the wrongdoers; specific instances of alleged neglect being recited. Plainly the subject was one on which legislation could be had and would be materially aided by the information which the investigation was calculated to elicit. [273 U.S. 135, 178] This becomes manifest when it is reflected that the functions of the Department of Justice, the powers and duties of the Attorney General, and the duties of his assistants are all subject to regulation by congressional legislation, and that the department is maintained and its activities are carried on under such appropriations as in the judgment of Congress are needed from year to year.
...
We conclude that the investigation was ordered for a legitimate object; that the witness wrongfully refused to appear and testify before the committee and was lawfully attached; that the Senate is entitled to have him give testimony pertinent to the inquiry, either at its bar or before the committee; and that the district court erred in discharging him from custody under the attachment.
MCGRAIN v. DAUGHERTY, 273 U.S. 135 (1927)

Friday X-Blogging

2007-03-23T22:12:00.000-05:00

Some people seem, even at this late date, not to have come to the realization that "War on Terror" is an oxymoron.

Just in case you don't already know this...

2007-03-20T19:38:00.000-05:00

There is no greater living embodiment of the spirit that gave birth to America than Digby.

Digby toils in psuedonymity on a little yellow website while writers with a tenth the chops are pulling down six (some say seven. I'm pretty sure it's nine) figures.

Someday there will be statues of Digby.

Adventures in Nomenclature

2006-12-03T00:09:00.000-06:00

Went to Fry's today.

Bought a skillet.

Thanksgiving Homework

2006-11-23T18:54:00.000-06:00

I once worked in a restaurant that served ho-made turkey and dressing every Sunday (I was the ho). Our dressing recipe was one my mother, and her mother, would have been comfortable with. It had a good cornbread base, with aromatic veggies, chicken stock, and herbs. Nothing flashy - just good, simple, southern cooking. It was a constant source of conflict and intrigue.

My boss, the chef, liked it with less sage. His boss, the restaurant owner, liked it with more.

The owner came through the kitchen every Sunday morning, inspecting the troops and tasting the specials. "More sage", he would say when he got to the dressing. At first, I would add the amount of sage I liked, confident that a tasty dish would save the day. "Not enough sage", said the owner. "Good God, you've ruined this!" said the chef.

After a few weekends like this, the chef gave me explicit instructions to use no sage in the dressing. "You want to get me fired, don't you?", I complained. "The owner already thinks I'm a stubborn idiot."

"I run this kitchen.", he said. Yet next Sunday, and the Sunday after that, when Owner demanded more sage, and more, the imperious Chef was curiously absent. He showed up again after Owner retired, futzing with the gravy and berating my leaden tongue. One time he made me bake another batch of cornbread to dilute the sage.

As you might well imagine, the Sunday Dressing was not among the more consistent items on our menu, yet in two years of Sundays, I only once ever threw out more than a half-pound of that dressing, or turned away more than an order or two because it was all gone. Our internecine struggles - their strategies and consequences, their victories and defeats - meant nothing to the bottom line of that restaurant. We sold just under two dozen orders of turkey and dressing every Sunday, like clockwork.

Your assignment is to turn this story into an allegory of American politics. As always, feel free to take liberties with the facts.

Friday X-Blogging

2006-09-29T19:30:00.000-05:00

"I shall have you hanged," said a cruel and ignorant king to Nasrudin, "if you do not prove such deep perceptions such as have been attributed to you." Nasrudin at once said that he could see a golden bird in the sky and demons within the earth. "But how can you do this?" the King asked. "Fear," said the Mullah "is all you need."

Time and time again Nasrudin passed from Persia to Greece on donkey-back. Each time he had two panniers of straw and trudged back without them. Every time the guard searched him for contraband. They never found any.
"What are you carrying, Nasrudin?"
"I am a smuggler."
Years later and more prosperous in appearance, Nasrudin moved to Egypt. One of the customs men met him there.
"Tell me, Mullah, now that you are out of the jurisdiction of Greece and Persia, living here in such luxury - what was it that you were smuggling when we could never catch you?"
"Donkeys."

One day Nasrudin saw a man sitting in a pall of gloom. When asked for the reason behind his sorrow, the man replied that his life had become so miserable that he had collected all his money and was wandering around seeking happiness. All of a sudden, Nasrudin picked up the man's purse and dodging him, disappeared from his sight. After some time Nasrudin placed the bag at a place where the frantic man could see it and then hid himself behind a tree. When the man found his purse he forgot his grief and began dancing with joy. Mullah murmured: "Isn't there another way to bring happiness to a sad man?"

Many years ago a wise peasant lived in China. He had a son who was the gleam in his eyes and a white stallion which was his favorite belonging. One day his horse escaped from his grounds and disappeared into the fields outside the village. The villagers came to him one by one and announced their condolences. They said, "You are such an unlucky man. It is so bad." The peasant answered, "Who knows. Maybe it's bad, maybe it's good." The people left. The next day the stallion returned followed by twelve wild horses. The same people returned and told our wise man about how lucky he was. "It's so good." He replied once more, "Who knows. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad." As it happens, the next day his one and only son was attempting to break in one of the wild horses when the horse fell down and broke his leg. Once more everyone came to condole him. They said, "It's so bad." Again he replied, ""Who knows. Maybe it's bad, maybe it's good." Three days passed and his poor son was limping around the village with his broken leg, when the emperor's army entered the village announcing that a war was starting and they conscripted all the young men of the village. However, they left the son since he had a broken leg. Once more, everyone was so jealous of our man. They surrounded him talking about his shier luck. "It is so good for you," they said. He answered all thus, "Who knows. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad."

"How old are you Mullah ?"
"Forty."
"But you said the same the last time I asked you, two years ago !"
"Yes, I always stand by what I have said."

One day the Mullah noticed that his donkey was missing. He ran to the wise man's house.
'Well, Mullah, what is it this time?'
'My donkey is gone! Where can I find it?'
The wise man was quite fed up with the Mullah. 'Nasrudin,' he said, 'the donkey has run off, turned into a man and been appointed the magistrate in the next town.'
Thanking the wise man for his information, the Mullah trudged to the court. There sat the magistrate, and Nasrudin shook his fist at him:
'Come home at once, you foolish animal!'
The magistrate was furious. 'Who are you and how dare you talk to me like that? I'll have you sent to the cells!'
'I'm the well-known Mullah Nasrudin, and I have it on the best authority that you are my donkey.'
'That's ridiculous. Nobody in his right senses would credit such a thing!'
Nasrudin drew himself up to his full height. 'Say what you like he said, 'I prefer to believe the statement of a wise man rather than that of a donkey.'

Nasrudin was walking along a lonely road one moonlit night when he heard a snore seemingly directly beneath his feet. Suddenly he experienced fear and was about to flee when he tripped over a dervish lying in a pit which he had dug for himself, partly underground.
"Who are you?" the Mullah stammered.
"I am a dervish, and this is my contemplation place."
Nasrudin replied, "You will have to let me share it. Your snoring frightened me out of my wits, and I cannot continue any further this night."
"Take the other end of this blanket, then," said the dervish without much enthusiasm, "and lie down here. Please be quiet, because I am keeping a vigil. It is a part of a complicated series of exercises. Tomorrow I must change the pattern, and I cannot stand any interruption."
Nasrudin fell asleep for a while. Then he woke up, very thirsty.
"I am thirsty," he told the dervish.
"Then go back down the road, where there is a stream."
"No,I am still afraid." replied Nasrudin.
"I shall go for you then," said the dervish. "After all, to provide water is a sacred obligation in the East."
"No, please don't go for I am still afraid to be alone!"
"Take this knife, to defend yourself then," said the dervish.
While he was away Nasrudin frightened himself still more, working himself up into a frenzy, which he tried to counter by imagining how he would attack any demon who threatened him.
Presently the dervish returned.
"Keep your distance, or "I'll kill you!" said Nasrudin.
"But I am the dervish," said the dervish.
"I don't care who you are - you're maybe a demon in disguise. Besides, you have your head and eyebrows shaved!" The dervishes of that order shave their head and eyebrows.
"But I have come to bring you water! Don't you remember-you are thirsty!"
"Don't try and ingratiate yourself with me, Demon!"
"But that is my hole you are occupying!" said the dervish.
"That's hard luck for you, isn't it? You'll just have to find another one." replied Nasrudin.
"I suppose so," said the dervish, "but I am sure I don't know what to make of all this."
"I can tell you one thing," said Nasrudin, "and that is that fear is multidirectional."
"It certainly seems stronger than thirst, or sanity, or other peoples property," said the dervish.
"AND you don't have to have it yourself in order to suffer from it!" said Nasrudin.

BONUS parable!

In India, elephant keepers train baby elephants to stay put by tying a rope around one leg and staking it into the ground. The baby elephant pulls and pulls on the rope to no avail. This teaches the elephant that no matter what he does he cannot get away when attached to the rope. Later when the elephant is grown up and the keeper wants the elephant to stay put all he does is to tie a small piece of rope on that leg and the giant elephant is held to the spot by his own mind.

Olbermann on fire

2006-09-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

You really have to watch the video of Olbermann's latest "special comment".

The man has been carefully pushing the envelope of acceptable News Commentary for a while now, and I thought I had calibrated his schtick, but tonight he's truly, righteously pissed.

Don't bother reading the transcript. Just watch the video.

It's breathtaking.

Pre 9/11 Mentality

2006-09-23T18:21:00.000-05:00

Isn't the real pre 9/11 mentality the one that thinks the USA can do whetever it wants to in all the world without consequences? That we are somehow apart from, and immune to, the afflictions that beset the little pieces on our game board? That "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" is a quaint, obsolete, 18th century notion?

Yes, it is.