Why I Read Blogs

Sometimes things get so bad, you know, with all the fornicators & adulterers lurking around a wedding, that I need a good laugh, even if that laugh is bitter with sorrow. So I read the blogs, looking for that laugh, that particular laugh. Today I found is here.

Of course, this is the same Tom Friedman who was telling us at the time that we needed to invade Iraq because we just had to kill some Arabs. We just had to, OK? Something about a bubble or something, too - you had to be there, man, it all made perfect sense. I know it seems weird now, man, but it was this magical time, like the Golden Age of Athens or some shit - The Summer of War! - when we all just knew we were going to change the world. All that stuff our parents told us about Vietnam and all that shit? We were just going to blow that away, man, just tear down their world and build it all up new, like better than ever, like nothing you’d ever seen before! Reynolds was the man, and den Beste was the brains, and everybody was in it together, for freedom and shit. It was great. And the music … well, the music kind of blew, actually. Nickelback was big. And the drugs were pretty crappy. No sex to speak of. But the blogs! Man, you shoulda seen the blogs! Outtasite!

Good stuff, like we had back in the day. I know what he means, that summer of war.

Good For Iowa

Three down, forty-seven to go.

Bad News

Real bad news.

Abandoning Ship

Better late than never, but where was Hagel 4 years ago?

I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan. I happen to know that Pentagon planners were on their way to Central Com over the weekend -- they haven't even Team B'ed this plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives.... We'd better be damned sure what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more lives into that grinder.... and I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide any more, none of us."

Bill Moyers Speaks

Hat tip to RLK. Moyers has some good things to say in this piece in the new Jan. 22, 2007 issue of The Nation.

Here is the real political story, the one most politicians won't even acknowledge: the reality of the anonymous, disquieting daily struggle of ordinary people, including the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans but also young workers and elders and parents, families and communities, searching for dignity and fairness against long odds in a cruel market world.

Everywhere you turn you'll find people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there's a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream. So let me say what I think up front: The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people.
....
he problem with this--and still a major problem today--is that the purported ideological cease-fire ended only a few years later. But the Democrats never re-armed, and they kept pinning all their hopes on economic growth, which by its very nature is valueless and cannot alone provide answers to social and moral questions that arise in the face of resurgent crisis. While "practical management of a modern economy" had a kind of surrogate legitimacy as long as it worked, when it no longer worked, the nation faced a paralyzing moral void in deciding how the burdens should be borne. Well-organized conservative forces, firing on all ideological pistons, rushed to fill this void with a story corporate America wanted us to hear. Inspired by bumper-sticker abstractions of Milton Friedman's ideas, propelled by cascades of cash from corporate chieftans like Coors and Koch and "Neutron" Jack Welch, fortified by the pious prescriptions of fundamentalist political preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the conservative armies marched on Washington. And they succeeded brilliantly.

& so do I. Speak that is. We must now continue the "surge" we began in November 2006 & keep telling the story of how Bu$hCo & his ReThug minions are really hurting America. As long as we continue to show the inequality that is inherit in our present economic situation, as long as we continue to show the brutality of Bu$hCo's war of choice, as long as we continue to show how decent, progressive people live & behave in a democracy, we will prevail.

Positive Midwestern Sensibility

This is such a solid thing for Keith Ellison to do.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison's 5th District, was happy to help.

[...]

Ellison will take the official oath of office along with the other incoming members in the House chamber, then use the Koran in his individual, ceremonial oath with new Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers' belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself," said Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert.

My emphasis.

Well Hung, #2

Via S.M., we get Robert Fisk's take on the quicky hanging of Saddam.

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.
....
Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS Stark when, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam's excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

My emphasis.

Hung Saddam

No, not like a horse, so get your minds out of the gutter. Josh Marshall talks about the state murder of Saddam Hussein. I must say that Saddam is (was?) an evil bastard. Yes, he did many awful things. There, now you know that I think Saddam was a bad man. But none of that justifies what we, the U.S. of A., under Bu$hCo, has done concerning his capture & trial. The trial itself was a sham, no one can really deny that. Because of Bu$hCo's incredible vanity, Saddam was held in U.S. custody while he was tried by Iraqi courts. Explain that to me. He should have been tried for crimes against humanity in the Hague, at the World Court. Only Bu$hCo doesn't like that court, it's too oriented towards, yes, wait for it, justice. By the U.S. keeping the keys to Saddam's cell, & then having him judged by the chirping parakeets in Iraq, the U.S. admitted that the trial was more about kangaroos & less about blind justice. This conviction (& I agree that Saddam was guilty of crimes against humanity) is so tainted that I doubt it will ever be recognized as a result of court system that was free of U.S. coercion. &, of course, killing Saddam will change nothing. It will only show the world that the U.S. condones murder, in any form. That is too bad for the world. I agree with Josh Marshall, Saddam's execution is a sign of U.S. weakness, not strength. It will go down with all the other failures in Iraq, including that miserable failure, George W. Bu$hCo.

WTF?

Via RLK we get this report. This is what is wrong with America. Really, people, let's do something.

(Text) National Public Radio News is reporting that many stranded travelers on highways in Colorado — except for the ones headed to ski resorts, to which the roads have already been cleared as a priority — and homebound residents may have to wait days for roads to reopen.

But of course, the ski industry’s inbound routes are a moneymaker. So those have to be cleared first. Never mind that few if any of those roads more than incidentally offer access to, say, groceries or firetrucks or ambulances (that aren’t making ski-accident related runs).

Calling Bullshit

I no fan of either Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton, however, what a different world it might have been. Digby has a great post on the media & their (non)role in educating the country.

Is it a sin, in and of itself, that Greenfield trivialized Barack Obama for his wardrobe and compared him to a holocaust denying psychopath? Not really. Is it a major goof for Jeanne Moos to simultaneously go out on the street and ask people if they think his "weird" middle name means that he can't be elected? Probably not.

But you'll have to excuse us hotheads for reacting strongly when we see these things because the last time the media decided to have "fun" and tell "jokes," this way, enough people believed them that it ended up changing the world in the most dramatic and violent way possible. We are in this mess today at least partly because these people failed to do their duty and approached their jobs as if it were a seventh grade slumber party instead of the serious business of the most powerful nation on earth.

I don't know what is wrong with them and their social construct that makes them so susceptible to this, or why they fail to see how this bias toward phony Republican machismo distorts political reporting, but it's a big problem for this country. Whatever their psychological or political motivations, we cannot take the chance that these narratives will go unchallenged again. Bad things happen. Wars. Torture. Dead people.

Somebody in this culture has got to be the sober, factual, reality based journalists and it only stands to reason that those who are trained and paid to be sober, factual, reality based journalists would fill that role. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are very good at political humor. (Even Dennis Miller is funnier than Greenfield.) The late night comics do a great job at skewering politicians. Leave them to it.

Until the mainstream press recognizes the extent of their laziness and gullibility --- or pay a price for their political bias --- we will keep reminding them and their audiences of their transgressions even if that makes us thin-skinned hotheads who are trying to fill blogposts. We all have our jobs to do.

Hugo!

Chavez is not the devil.

Citgo has allotted 250 gallons of heating oil or the equivalent for each household. With Citgo figuring that each gallon is worth $2.25, the donation is $562.50 per household, about a 40 percent discount on most winter heating bills for homes on Chippewa reservations. The program runs from Nov. 15 until March 15.

Buck O'Neil, R.I.P.

Obit here.

Buck O’Neil, a star first baseman and manager in the Negro leagues and a pioneering scout and coach in the major leagues who devoted the final decade of his life to chronicling the lost world of black baseball, died last night in Kansas City, Mo. He was 94.

Had Enough?

Will this finally be the wake-up call Wal-Mart workers will answer? I sure hope so. Wal-Mart is a great example of the evil side of a market economy. & yet Wall Street approves & cheers them on.

But some Wal-Mart workers say the changes are further reducing their already modest incomes and putting a serious strain on their child-rearing and personal lives. Current and former Wal-Mart workers say some managers have insisted that they make themselves available around the clock, and assert that the company is making changes with an eye to forcing out longtime higher-wage workers to make way for lower-wage part-time employees.

Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent. Wal-Mart denies it has a goal of 40 percent part-time workers, although company officials say that part-timers now make up 25 percent to 30 percent of workers, up from 20 percent last October.

No Roads

Excellent.

A federal judge Wednesday reinstated a Clinton administration ban on the building of roads in untouched sections of national forests.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte sided with states and environmentalists who sued to protect forest land.

The Clinton administration prohibited logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres of forest land in 38 states and Puerto Rico. In 2005, the Bush administration replaced the rule with a voluntary state-by-state petition process.

The judge overturned the new regulations.

America, Missing

At least it's on a chain link fence, not a milk carton. From Hoffmania.

Good For Brad

I began reading A River Runs Through It to Lucy this morning while I was feeding her. Marigny may have heard some of it, although The Kid kept cooing & stuff to her. Then I ran across this article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. You go Brad.

Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won't be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19.

September 11

I was watching MSNBC the morning that two planes flew into the World Trade Center's two buildings. On live teevee, I saw the second plane crash into the building. This became the third live teevee tragedy I witnessed. The first was in 1963 with Jack Ruby murdering Lee Harvey Oswald. I was sick that Oswald would not face justice. I was a freshman in high school when that happened. I won't go into the whole JFK beacon of true light generation, that soon faded with Viet Nam, but many of us felt great possibility with America back then, things have clearly changed. The second tragedy involved boxing. I watched as Boom Boom Mancini murdered Duk Koo Kim on a November day. I use the word murder purposely & it reflects on Mancini as it was his fists that caused the death of another person. We have so many words that deflect true meaning - execution, harvest, etc., that ought to offend everyone, but we are generally gentle creatures who like our tea weak, & in the process avoid the truth. OK, back to 9/11. I hate the term - 9/11 - since the ReThugs keep using as a whip to scare people. That's all these people have in their bag - fear. Scare the devil out of America & we'll get reelected, who cares about the proper way to govern a country? So, while reading James Wolcott this a.m., I came across this analysis of the on going 9/11 grief fest, blame fest. Simon Jenkins writes for the GuardianUlimited Network. This makes a person think & nod their head in agreement, sorrow, horror, & a fierce determination to change things.

Even if The Path to 9/11 were politically pure, its raison d'etre would be suspect. How many times and how many ways must the adrenaline be pumped, the tragedy replayed, and the suffering exploited? The fall of the towers has become a ritual fetish, an annual haunting, that doesn't exorcise fear, but replenishes it.

"What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock," Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian, delivering a splash of cold reality. "Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.

"Were I to take my life in my hands this weekend and visit Osama bin Laden's hideout in Wherever-istan, the interview would go something like this. I would ask how things have been for him since 9/11. His reply would be that he had worried at first that America would capitalise on the global revulsion, even among Muslims, and isolate him as a lone fanatic...

"In the event Bin Laden need not have worried. He would agree, as did the CIA's al-Qaida analyst in Peter Taylor's recent documentary, that the Americans have done his job for him. They panicked. They drove the Taliban back into the mountains, restoring the latter's credibility in the Arab street and turning al-Qaida into heroes. They persecuted Muslims across America. They occupied Iraq and declared Iran a sworn enemy. They backed an Israeli war against Lebanon's Shias. Soon every tinpot Muslim malcontent was citing al-Qaida as his inspiration. Bin Laden's tiny organisation, which might have been starved of funds and friends in 2001, had become a worldwide jihadist phenomenon.

"I would ask Bin Laden whether he had something special up his sleeve for the fifth anniversary. Why waste money, he would reply. The western media were obligingly re-enacting the destruction and the screaming, turning the base metal of violence into the gold of terror. They would replay the tapes and rerun the footage ad nauseam, and thus remind the world of his awesome power. Americans are more afraid of jihadists this year than last. In a Transatlantic Trends survey, the number of them describing international terrorism as an 'extremely important threat' went up from 72% to 79%...

"Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism's equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur'an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone."

I'll be in Cape May this 9/11, as I was on the 9/11 of 2001, and the ones before and since. I don't intend to watch any of the memorial coverage, listen to the radio, or pore over the newspaper supplements. It'll be a day for going to the beach and listening to the underlying bass of the sloshing tide, for birding in the meadow or at the hawk watch, a day for tuning out the too-talkative world. The vapor trails of jets flying overhead will be all the reminder one needs of that September morning.