It's amusing at least, the alarmist coverage of this week's big "keep 'em scared 'n' stupid" story. Could your kids be part of a covert pregnancy or suicide pact? Why yes, they could. They could also be doing drugs, setting fire to stray dogs, or memorizing Fifty Cent tracks. The world is an oyster when you're young and dumb.
But the article seems hesitant to make any necessary logical leaps here. Technology facilitates many of these little "pacts". Okay then, maybe parents need to monitor those toys a little better, or think twice about them in the first place. Amazingly, kids got along just fine without cell phones and MySpace up till about six years ago. (They also managed to have sex and get pregnant without them.)
Even worse is the "media images" assumption. Someone who patterns their major life decisions after the actions of famous, wealthy statistical anomalies has other issues anyway, among them being dumber than shit. But okay, even if you lend credence to this ridiculous notion, what then? If your kid really is that stupid, then shooting your teevee and making them read books more often is an option worth considering.
Because more dangerous than the whiff of risky sex or even gratuitous violence, what most teevee really imparts is that luck is the only sure way out, that other people are there to grease your climb to the top, whether your dream is making a fucking fool out of yourself for Simon Cowell's amusement, opening a suitacase that might have money in it, being in a bad musical based on a worse movie culled from an even crummier book, or just eating bugs and humping inanimate objects for the opportunity to swap venereal diseases with an internet whore. It's all good.
It makes sense that, in an environment where not only humans themselves but every conceivable aspect of their personalities and desires have been commodified, repurposed, and packaged, a bunch of mediocre students with mediocre aspirations from a dying town would do this. Blaming it on the latest Spears offspring absolves everyone involved, because while the media pretends to blame itself, it's not like they're gonna change a fuckin' thing.
This is an industry specially engineered and constantly tested and refined, to distract suckers into submission, to buy shit they don't really want with money they don't really have. Everywhere these girls will turn -- even if they go to college -- they will be somebody's customer for the rest of their lives. And all of those somebodies have vested interests in keeping the cash flow up.
That these girls chose to make a life-changing decision with peers that they probably won't recognize fifteen years down the road merely proves that youth is wasted on the young, and little more. It's good for whipping up the usual hysteria that teens are having Teh Sex, but guess what? They are. You did. I did. Of course they're going to.
The problem is not that they're bumping uglies, or even that they got knocked up, it's that they went into those things clearly unencumbered with even the basics of making those decisions. Parents, schools, media, themselves, whatever. All of those things are to blame, but only to the extent that no one will ever actually do anything about any of them.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Two Legs Better
In a world full of crises, one of the more neglected ones is that of Zimbabwe, where Mugabe's corrupt intransigence continues to keep an entire nation in tatters. Having completely ruined his country's ability to produce anything, by granting free pass to looters and gangs of thugs, so long as they repossessed white-owned farms, Comrade Bob has finally become precisely what he meant to rise up against a quarter-century ago.
Instead of replacing Ian Smith's brutal regime with a genuinely revolutionary one of his own, Mugabe decided to pass on becoming his country's George Washington, and settled for being its Kim Il Sung. Now, before he has decided on a trusted lieutenant or colonel to pass things off to, Morgan Tsvangirai has presented a real challenge to his power, albeit one without army backing (so far; if African armies have proven anything, it is that their loyalty is always open to negotiation).
Inexcusably, Mugabe has been enormously enabled by a neighbor who ought to know better, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki has made his sad priorities clear, that he would rather deal with a thug he knows, one who has utterly derailed Zimbabwe's economy and driven it to the brink of famine, than someone who might be on friendlier terms with western leaders. The message is clear: better to have black-on-black predation than (falsely) even the hint of yet another round of post-colonialist stooges. This was always the hallmark of the tinhorn despot, communist or otherwise -- they would rather let millions of their own people literally starve (while, of course, continuing to live large themselves) -- than to deal with their useful devils from abroad.
So, what role does a bumbling hegemon have in any sort of reconstructive process?
The pillars are actually pretty decent -- nothing beyond diplomatic and constitutionalist interference, offer emergency aid where needed, and step the hell back. We don't have any more legitimacy than that anymore. But the opening premise seems remote -- since when does anybody in this administration function past a purely limbic level of partisan ideology? When has there been an appointment that wasn't put there for their utility to the movementarians, people who have never done anything for anyone else without there being something in it for themselves? Seriously, everyone would be better off if we just went over there with a pallet of Franklins, got every inhabitant of the country in an enormous queue, and gave each person a nice crisp $100 bill, and sent them about their way.
Bellamy and Morrison also mention that "[o]nce the South African linchpin is removed, the other external props that sustain Mugabe -- Angola, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, and China -- will cease to matter." While this may be true, this also elides past our own involvement with some of those very regimes, most notably Equatorial Guinea, an even more nightmarish despotism than Mugabe's. But they have oil, so we park our platforms out in the Gulf of Guinea, send the ships back and forth to Houston with the precious, and give the murderous Obiang family their cut of the action, which is then laundered through the monkey's uncle. You don't hear too much about that one, because people are making money from it.
So while this is about figuring the right course of moral action to literally save a nation from catastrophe, this is also about the studied hypocrisies undertaken to avoid those same actions. Africa and its resources are rapidly becoming proxies for us and China; regional powers such as India and Brazil may also become involved in the continent. That any data or strategy remotely than comprehensive might be on the head blitherer's radar -- at all -- is something even the most blindered optimist could not realistically hope for.
Instead of replacing Ian Smith's brutal regime with a genuinely revolutionary one of his own, Mugabe decided to pass on becoming his country's George Washington, and settled for being its Kim Il Sung. Now, before he has decided on a trusted lieutenant or colonel to pass things off to, Morgan Tsvangirai has presented a real challenge to his power, albeit one without army backing (so far; if African armies have proven anything, it is that their loyalty is always open to negotiation).
Inexcusably, Mugabe has been enormously enabled by a neighbor who ought to know better, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki has made his sad priorities clear, that he would rather deal with a thug he knows, one who has utterly derailed Zimbabwe's economy and driven it to the brink of famine, than someone who might be on friendlier terms with western leaders. The message is clear: better to have black-on-black predation than (falsely) even the hint of yet another round of post-colonialist stooges. This was always the hallmark of the tinhorn despot, communist or otherwise -- they would rather let millions of their own people literally starve (while, of course, continuing to live large themselves) -- than to deal with their useful devils from abroad.
So, what role does a bumbling hegemon have in any sort of reconstructive process?
The Bush administration should quickly designate an envoy, a distinguished former official or public figure, to lead its efforts. It should help the envoy assemble a small team of prominent international figures from Africa, Europe, and the Commonwealth to travel to southern Africa for intensive consultations on ending the crisis in Zimbabwe. That team will need to be in the region for an extended period. Lacking internal consensus, neither the United Nations nor the African Union can mount such a mission. From its position in the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. should work in New York and in African capitals to demand more African involvement in solving the crisis in Zimbabwe.
The U.S. effort should be organized around four pillars.
First, it should create a shared consensus that Mugabe must leave office. This is the sine qua non to any solution. Restoring democracy, respecting human rights and rebuilding a shattered society and economy should be the highest priorities. These steps cannot begin until Mugabe has left the scene.
Second, it should create a shared determination to contain Mugabe's chief lieutenants. As Mugabe exits, some senior security officials may be tempted to replace him. Beginning with southern African states, support must be summoned for possible deployment of a modest African Union or U.N.-authorized monitoring force. Meanwhile, the Bush administration should disclose publicly details of the extensive corruption surrounding Mugabe's inner circle.
Third, it should press for resumed negotiations on constitutional reform, cut short by Mugabe last year, and for an early date for new presidential elections. Zimbabweans themselves will be quick to address these imperatives once Mugabe is gone. Freed of current threats, they are capable of establishing a workable framework for a democratic transition.
Last, if should accelerate international planning and support to rebuild Zimbabwe's shattered economic and social infrastructure. The United States and other donors should deploy credible, coordinated pledges of economic assistance to reinforce the diplomatic push to ease Mugabe out.
The pillars are actually pretty decent -- nothing beyond diplomatic and constitutionalist interference, offer emergency aid where needed, and step the hell back. We don't have any more legitimacy than that anymore. But the opening premise seems remote -- since when does anybody in this administration function past a purely limbic level of partisan ideology? When has there been an appointment that wasn't put there for their utility to the movementarians, people who have never done anything for anyone else without there being something in it for themselves? Seriously, everyone would be better off if we just went over there with a pallet of Franklins, got every inhabitant of the country in an enormous queue, and gave each person a nice crisp $100 bill, and sent them about their way.
Bellamy and Morrison also mention that "[o]nce the South African linchpin is removed, the other external props that sustain Mugabe -- Angola, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, and China -- will cease to matter." While this may be true, this also elides past our own involvement with some of those very regimes, most notably Equatorial Guinea, an even more nightmarish despotism than Mugabe's. But they have oil, so we park our platforms out in the Gulf of Guinea, send the ships back and forth to Houston with the precious, and give the murderous Obiang family their cut of the action, which is then laundered through the monkey's uncle. You don't hear too much about that one, because people are making money from it.
So while this is about figuring the right course of moral action to literally save a nation from catastrophe, this is also about the studied hypocrisies undertaken to avoid those same actions. Africa and its resources are rapidly becoming proxies for us and China; regional powers such as India and Brazil may also become involved in the continent. That any data or strategy remotely than comprehensive might be on the head blitherer's radar -- at all -- is something even the most blindered optimist could not realistically hope for.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Kicking Gas
So many reasons to enjoy the WorldNutDaily, from the lists of predatory female schoolteachers to the musings of Chuck Norris. Chuck has some words of wisdom regarding domestic energy production. Let's watch the fun.
It's pretty clear right from the start that Norris' intent is simply to place the blame at the feet of feckless Dummycrats. Because, you know, the two Republican oilmen at the head of the executive branch have done so much to tackle this problem. Yes, the Democrats have been full of empty promises on a variety of issues, but that doesn't excuse the ignorance and intellectual dishonesty of people like Norris on this issue. And price gouging is only one of many reasons for the spike in oil prices.
The price for all those things is going to rise whether we like it or not; the only question is if we do things that will help prepare, diffuse the impact and perhaps cushion the blow for the people who can least afford it. I mean, I know that all the oil company executives and oil futures speculators have duly earned their eight- and nine-figure bonuses and all. But all these things Professor Gingrich expounds upon are based on unsustainable premises.
Incidentally, Gingrich was on Face the Nation this morning touting much the same philosophy, with a snappy slogan of "Drill Here, Drill Now, Save Money". Yes, folks, if you let Shell and Exxon drill in ANWR and melt mountains of shale in the Rockies, gas prices will magically return to two bucks a gallon. Jesus, they just count on people to be cartoonishly gullible, don't they? It's an operative assumption for them, because they're rarely disappointed.
Here's where it gets a little weird, with hilarious results:
This is going to take a bit to unpack, this feeble nonsense, but bear with me. The first thing you might notice is the sheer redundancy of Norris' bullet points; the third and fourth points merely reiterate the first, and he rephrases the Gulf of Mexico and California (Pacific) and Florida (Atlantic) several times. And even Norris' own link on shale oil, rather than actually claiming greater resources than the entire Middle East, makes the more modest claim that "it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia". What could? Why, the shale on federal land that the oil companies wish to extract. The more exorbitant claim Norris suggests appears to come from Orrin Hatch further down in the short interview part of the article.
Here's a brief rundown on the extraction process for shale oil; it requires intense amounts of heat to be generated to separate the kerogen into refinable oil, has not been sufficiently tested and employed in any substantial ongoing process capacity, and can be environmentally destructive. This is not about a few smug latte liberals preserving the scenic views from their cabins in Telluride, it's about oil companies rushing into public land for penny-ante leases to set up processing and refining infrastructures. And by the time they recoup their R&D and overhead -- and the usual bonuses -- the offset at the pump is going to be minimal. Norris and Gingrich and the rest of them would like you to believe that oil produced domestically stays here, but that's not necessarily so. If the cash-flush Chinese or Europeans are willing to pay more for it, it will go to those places. That's how that free-market thing works, cuz.
As for this "we haven't built a new refinery lately" schtick, what do you mean "we", Chief? The oil companies have let their domestic refinery capability run off. Let's see, why might that be? Because they know that most of the major fields have peaked, and it's not cost-effective to dump billions of dollars into planned obsolescence? Naw, that's too simple -- it must be a conspiracy. Well, it is a conspiracy, Chuck, but not of bien pensant Dummycrats telling everyone how to live virtuously. It's a conspiracy of the bottom line. It's business. And hell, Montana's Democratic governor proposed building Fischer-Tropsch refineries to process the state's enormous resources of coal into oil, since the current price makes it more than cost-effective. But those infrastructural efforts take a lot of time and investment.
Meanwhile, what have Americans done to help economize, to conserve, since as we all know, conservatism is holy? Not a goddamned thing, that's what. The only thing that has finally forced individuals to take the situation seriously and dump their gas-guzzlers for more economical vehicles has been the drastic price increases. I think that sucks, because Norris' final point is actually right on the money -- this crisis most adversely impacts the people who are stuck with it. They have to commute because the local jobs pay for shit (what few of them there are), and they can't afford to move to the city because their houses are now worth maybe two-thirds of what they were two years ago, and would take a year to sell anyway.
And nowhere does Norris (nor Gingrich in his FTN appearance this morning) even mention the option of economizing, of driving smaller and smarter. It's not even on the table. No, they're perfectly happy to misdirect people who should know better but can't admit it to themselves, that the promised land of two-buck gas is theirs for the taking, if only we'll let national forests be plundered for profit.
Anybody who believes that deserves what they get, and if they have to pay six bucks a gallon to fill up their penis-compensating jacked-up F350, so much the better. They can pay twelve bucks a gallon for all I care. But the rapidly rising cost of gas is directly due to ramped-up demand from China and India meeting or exceeding production and extraction capacity, and peak supply. Factor in the risk premium caused by the war, futures speculation, and failure to check consumption, and it's a perfect storm. You could start melting down the Rockies tomorrow, and that oil is not going to hit the market for at least a couple years. And not only, as I pointed out, will it be unlikely to offset significantly after initial costs are recouped, but any cleanup costs incurred would be out-of-pocket for the taxpayers as well, one way or the other.
So is there a real solution? I don't think the usual "one size fits all" approach is going to help anybody, except the people who make a direct profit off of whatever scheme they can rope a career shill like Newt Gingrich into endorsing. But one key to it is, as Orrin Hatch points out, the degree to which oil is required for transportation, and how problematic it is to switch that overnight.
A hack like Hatch instantly translates that into "more oil now". But what about infrastructure; can you get businesses and residences off-line from oil-generated power? How much oil would it free up to invest in solar power across the American Southwest? How much oil would be conserved getting the rail system back together, and letting the airline industry transform into more of a business/short-term travel scenario? How much would these things cost? Who cares; if we can pour $3bn/week into Iraq, we can find some money to do something that will pay direct dividends and free up petroleum resources.
I don't think we should be at the mercy of inbred petrocracies and corrupt dictators either, but the way out from under it is not to drill and melt everything in sight. That might be a miniscule, short-term part of a far more comprehensive energy policy, but it solves nothing. It barely qualifies as kicking the proverbial can. And there's no way it should even be proposed, much less considered, without significant efforts to curb waste and excessive consumption.
People like Chuck Norris and Newt Gingrich shouldn't just be ignored, they should be repudiated at every possible opportunity. This is only the start of a very serious situation looming, one that will require a very patient, committed restructuring of transportation and delivery systems, one that will not kill the economy but actually provide it with a new dimension of potential, one that might undercut the oil oligarchy with more regionalized or even localized systems of energy delivery. Whether or not people are happy with the idea is irrelevant; the continuing rapid depletion of oil resources is indifferent to what you think you're entitled to drive. This "math is hard, let's go shopping" approach to dealing with the real world is over, one way or the other.
The only question is whether this problem gets addressed in time before the next big resource crisis -- potable water -- will have to be dealt with.
As oil and gas prices skyrocket, Congress continues to play the blame game. In April 2006, with the Democrats poised to take over Congress with Nancy Pelosi at the helm, she released a statement saying, "With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress." She followed that with the commitment, "Democrats have a common sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging." So has the Democrat's [sic] commonsense plan worked? Average gas prices were about $2.50 a gallon at the time. Now they're $4 a gallon and rising. Some crack-down plan.
It's pretty clear right from the start that Norris' intent is simply to place the blame at the feet of feckless Dummycrats. Because, you know, the two Republican oilmen at the head of the executive branch have done so much to tackle this problem. Yes, the Democrats have been full of empty promises on a variety of issues, but that doesn't excuse the ignorance and intellectual dishonesty of people like Norris on this issue. And price gouging is only one of many reasons for the spike in oil prices.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, they are going to discuss this week a cap-and-trade system, something that Obama and MCain [sic] both support. The main problem is official estimates say that it will increase gas by another $1.50 a gallon. Or as Newt Gringrich said in an interview recently with Glenn Beck, "It should be called 'Raise prices and destroy jobs' because that's what it will do. It's going to raise the price of gasoline; it's going to raise the price of diesel fuel for truckers. It's going to raise the price of aviation fuel for an already ailing airline industry. It's going to raise the price of heating oil. It's going to raise the price of natural gas, and it's going to raise the price of coal."
The price for all those things is going to rise whether we like it or not; the only question is if we do things that will help prepare, diffuse the impact and perhaps cushion the blow for the people who can least afford it. I mean, I know that all the oil company executives and oil futures speculators have duly earned their eight- and nine-figure bonuses and all. But all these things Professor Gingrich expounds upon are based on unsustainable premises.
Incidentally, Gingrich was on Face the Nation this morning touting much the same philosophy, with a snappy slogan of "Drill Here, Drill Now, Save Money". Yes, folks, if you let Shell and Exxon drill in ANWR and melt mountains of shale in the Rockies, gas prices will magically return to two bucks a gallon. Jesus, they just count on people to be cartoonishly gullible, don't they? It's an operative assumption for them, because they're rarely disappointed.
Here's where it gets a little weird, with hilarious results:
From the steady decline in the value of our dollar, to trade deficits and oil dependency, our sovereignty is being sold out from underneath us. Might I remind the federal government what one of their original and primary charges is: to protect the American public from the tyranny of foreign powers – which is exactly what is happening through others' financial rule over us. It is sucking the life out of our economy. And Congress is virtually standing by and watching it happen.
Look at the energy chaos that our government has allowed. While we remain at the mercy of oil companies, cartels and OPEC, our government has tied the hands of states and citizens to tap even temporary energy relief from our own land. Here are a few key vistas on the oil and energy landscape at the moment:
Though we have more oil in the shale of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming than combined in the Middle East (800 billion barrels), liberals and environmentalists have made it illegal to touch it.
It's illegal to drill in northern Alaska (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), or off the coasts of Florida or California.
Oil fields in Colorado are being shut down.
We won't develop shale oil fields in the Western states
It's illegal to explore in the Atlantic.
It's illegal to explore in the Pacific
It's illegal to explore in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico
We're not receiving any more leases to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, while China, Venezuela and Cuba are.
We haven't built an oil refinery in 25 years and reduced in half those we have
There's enough natural gas beneath America (406 trillion cube feet) to heat every home in America for the next 150 years, but we can't tap it all.
We have the largest supply of coal in the world, but it's Germany who is planning to build 27 coal-fired electrical plants by 2020.
American airlines are in danger of going out of business.
American truckers are being stranded on the sides of the road.
American commuters are going bankrupt trying to travel back and forth to work, and are being forced to work locally for lower wages.
If there isn't a conspiracy going on here, someone needs to make a movie about one!
This is going to take a bit to unpack, this feeble nonsense, but bear with me. The first thing you might notice is the sheer redundancy of Norris' bullet points; the third and fourth points merely reiterate the first, and he rephrases the Gulf of Mexico and California (Pacific) and Florida (Atlantic) several times. And even Norris' own link on shale oil, rather than actually claiming greater resources than the entire Middle East, makes the more modest claim that "it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia". What could? Why, the shale on federal land that the oil companies wish to extract. The more exorbitant claim Norris suggests appears to come from Orrin Hatch further down in the short interview part of the article.
Here's a brief rundown on the extraction process for shale oil; it requires intense amounts of heat to be generated to separate the kerogen into refinable oil, has not been sufficiently tested and employed in any substantial ongoing process capacity, and can be environmentally destructive. This is not about a few smug latte liberals preserving the scenic views from their cabins in Telluride, it's about oil companies rushing into public land for penny-ante leases to set up processing and refining infrastructures. And by the time they recoup their R&D and overhead -- and the usual bonuses -- the offset at the pump is going to be minimal. Norris and Gingrich and the rest of them would like you to believe that oil produced domestically stays here, but that's not necessarily so. If the cash-flush Chinese or Europeans are willing to pay more for it, it will go to those places. That's how that free-market thing works, cuz.
As for this "we haven't built a new refinery lately" schtick, what do you mean "we", Chief? The oil companies have let their domestic refinery capability run off. Let's see, why might that be? Because they know that most of the major fields have peaked, and it's not cost-effective to dump billions of dollars into planned obsolescence? Naw, that's too simple -- it must be a conspiracy. Well, it is a conspiracy, Chuck, but not of bien pensant Dummycrats telling everyone how to live virtuously. It's a conspiracy of the bottom line. It's business. And hell, Montana's Democratic governor proposed building Fischer-Tropsch refineries to process the state's enormous resources of coal into oil, since the current price makes it more than cost-effective. But those infrastructural efforts take a lot of time and investment.
Meanwhile, what have Americans done to help economize, to conserve, since as we all know, conservatism is holy? Not a goddamned thing, that's what. The only thing that has finally forced individuals to take the situation seriously and dump their gas-guzzlers for more economical vehicles has been the drastic price increases. I think that sucks, because Norris' final point is actually right on the money -- this crisis most adversely impacts the people who are stuck with it. They have to commute because the local jobs pay for shit (what few of them there are), and they can't afford to move to the city because their houses are now worth maybe two-thirds of what they were two years ago, and would take a year to sell anyway.
And nowhere does Norris (nor Gingrich in his FTN appearance this morning) even mention the option of economizing, of driving smaller and smarter. It's not even on the table. No, they're perfectly happy to misdirect people who should know better but can't admit it to themselves, that the promised land of two-buck gas is theirs for the taking, if only we'll let national forests be plundered for profit.
Anybody who believes that deserves what they get, and if they have to pay six bucks a gallon to fill up their penis-compensating jacked-up F350, so much the better. They can pay twelve bucks a gallon for all I care. But the rapidly rising cost of gas is directly due to ramped-up demand from China and India meeting or exceeding production and extraction capacity, and peak supply. Factor in the risk premium caused by the war, futures speculation, and failure to check consumption, and it's a perfect storm. You could start melting down the Rockies tomorrow, and that oil is not going to hit the market for at least a couple years. And not only, as I pointed out, will it be unlikely to offset significantly after initial costs are recouped, but any cleanup costs incurred would be out-of-pocket for the taxpayers as well, one way or the other.
So is there a real solution? I don't think the usual "one size fits all" approach is going to help anybody, except the people who make a direct profit off of whatever scheme they can rope a career shill like Newt Gingrich into endorsing. But one key to it is, as Orrin Hatch points out, the degree to which oil is required for transportation, and how problematic it is to switch that overnight.
A hack like Hatch instantly translates that into "more oil now". But what about infrastructure; can you get businesses and residences off-line from oil-generated power? How much oil would it free up to invest in solar power across the American Southwest? How much oil would be conserved getting the rail system back together, and letting the airline industry transform into more of a business/short-term travel scenario? How much would these things cost? Who cares; if we can pour $3bn/week into Iraq, we can find some money to do something that will pay direct dividends and free up petroleum resources.
I don't think we should be at the mercy of inbred petrocracies and corrupt dictators either, but the way out from under it is not to drill and melt everything in sight. That might be a miniscule, short-term part of a far more comprehensive energy policy, but it solves nothing. It barely qualifies as kicking the proverbial can. And there's no way it should even be proposed, much less considered, without significant efforts to curb waste and excessive consumption.
People like Chuck Norris and Newt Gingrich shouldn't just be ignored, they should be repudiated at every possible opportunity. This is only the start of a very serious situation looming, one that will require a very patient, committed restructuring of transportation and delivery systems, one that will not kill the economy but actually provide it with a new dimension of potential, one that might undercut the oil oligarchy with more regionalized or even localized systems of energy delivery. Whether or not people are happy with the idea is irrelevant; the continuing rapid depletion of oil resources is indifferent to what you think you're entitled to drive. This "math is hard, let's go shopping" approach to dealing with the real world is over, one way or the other.
The only question is whether this problem gets addressed in time before the next big resource crisis -- potable water -- will have to be dealt with.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Tim Russert
My antipathy to the commentariat is unrelenting, as you know all too well, and Russert was one of many practitioners of the black art whom I pick on for their excessive chumminess and clubbiness with the people they cover. Maybe that makes me one of the stoners in the park making fun of the BMOCs and their daddy's Beemers, while I trudge home in my old clothes and my footmobile, I dunno.
But I just saw the news about Russert collapsing and dying in the studio, and that just sucks. And only 58 years old at that. Very sad. My mother was only 58 when she died eight years ago, and oddly, today is her birthday. Fifty-eight is just too soon to go. Our condolences to his family.
Yet Bill O'Reilly continues to draw breath. What the hell is up with that? Politics and all aside, Russert seemed like an okay guy. O'Reilly seems like a 24/7 garden tool, and proud of it. A bold fresh piece of inanity.
[Update: John Cole puts it pretty well, I think. Certainly it's a sad event, and I don't doubt that the sentiments and remembrances offered by Russert's colleagues are genuine. But tonally, it's hard to escape the impression that this is an industry predicated more on the individuals reading and analyzing the news, than on the information itself and its actual impact on actual lives. Once again, they are talking to each other, an insular claque of courtiers. It's their village, always has been.
I'm wondering which one will take Russert's spot on the show, even though I don't watch it. My guess would be David Gregory, who is reliably housebroken, but smug enough to fancy himself as the real deal. He may be just enough of an ankle-biter to be occasionally entertaining, but there may be more money (and, as always, Meredith Vieira) in the tedious all-morning fluffery of the Today show. Decisions, decisions.]
But I just saw the news about Russert collapsing and dying in the studio, and that just sucks. And only 58 years old at that. Very sad. My mother was only 58 when she died eight years ago, and oddly, today is her birthday. Fifty-eight is just too soon to go. Our condolences to his family.
Yet Bill O'Reilly continues to draw breath. What the hell is up with that? Politics and all aside, Russert seemed like an okay guy. O'Reilly seems like a 24/7 garden tool, and proud of it. A bold fresh piece of inanity.
[Update: John Cole puts it pretty well, I think. Certainly it's a sad event, and I don't doubt that the sentiments and remembrances offered by Russert's colleagues are genuine. But tonally, it's hard to escape the impression that this is an industry predicated more on the individuals reading and analyzing the news, than on the information itself and its actual impact on actual lives. Once again, they are talking to each other, an insular claque of courtiers. It's their village, always has been.
I'm wondering which one will take Russert's spot on the show, even though I don't watch it. My guess would be David Gregory, who is reliably housebroken, but smug enough to fancy himself as the real deal. He may be just enough of an ankle-biter to be occasionally entertaining, but there may be more money (and, as always, Meredith Vieira) in the tedious all-morning fluffery of the Today show. Decisions, decisions.]
History's Mysteries
Fredo, currently in Europe on whatever the opposite of a victory lap is, engages in what he seems to think is introspection:
Yeah, whatever could have given anyone that idea? Flimsy attempts to paper over past comments are only part of the problem. More disturbing is Bush's utter refusal to admit that Iraq, the U.S., and the world would be better off without his ham-fisted interference. Along with his tiresome insistence that history will vindicate him, it bespeaks a startling lack of basic empathy and intellectual honesty.
Despite his supposed Yale history degree, Bush has never shown even the slightest interest in or familiarity with that subject, nor its ancillary subjects, such as geography or economics. Really, beyond "free trade good" and "democracies never start wars with each other", it's just even more muddled boilerplate.
The history excuse is really just a way for him to punt culpability until long after he's dead. The notion that it would take twenty to forty years or more to figure out that this has been catastrophic for millions of people and is destroying our own economy is ridiculous. If Iraq were to turn around it would be in spite of, rather than because of, any of the bright ideas from this crew. They decided on a snappy marketing campaign for their invasion, on their timetable, of a country they knew nothing about and cared even less. They sent administrative peckerwoods whose priorities for rebuilding the country were political reliability, rather than say, knowing the language or having some familiarity with the culture.
Even if one were to propose that there was a "right" way to pull this off, there is no indication that any of the planners even tried to get it right. They did exactly everything that knowledgeable military and strategic advisors told them not to.
The most offensive thing about Bush's puling excuses is not his failure to see himself and the events he personally drove as they really are, but his total disinterest in even bothering with such a task. He thought it was more important to tell people how often he dropped to his knees on that stupid rug and prayed. Prayer, whether you think it works or not, is the expression of hope over events that are beyond one's control. But Bush was always in control of events; that's kinda part of the job description. They bullied and rolled and intimidated and calumniated all who objected, and got to do what they wanted in the way they wanted. To blame the failure for all that on the tone of the marketing campaign is so far past missing the forest for the trees, it beggars belief.
Which makes it par for the course for these guys. And all the revisionist mea culpas by all the no-longer-gruntled former waterboys won't change that.
President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq.
....
“I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”
Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”.
Yeah, whatever could have given anyone that idea? Flimsy attempts to paper over past comments are only part of the problem. More disturbing is Bush's utter refusal to admit that Iraq, the U.S., and the world would be better off without his ham-fisted interference. Along with his tiresome insistence that history will vindicate him, it bespeaks a startling lack of basic empathy and intellectual honesty.
Despite his supposed Yale history degree, Bush has never shown even the slightest interest in or familiarity with that subject, nor its ancillary subjects, such as geography or economics. Really, beyond "free trade good" and "democracies never start wars with each other", it's just even more muddled boilerplate.
The history excuse is really just a way for him to punt culpability until long after he's dead. The notion that it would take twenty to forty years or more to figure out that this has been catastrophic for millions of people and is destroying our own economy is ridiculous. If Iraq were to turn around it would be in spite of, rather than because of, any of the bright ideas from this crew. They decided on a snappy marketing campaign for their invasion, on their timetable, of a country they knew nothing about and cared even less. They sent administrative peckerwoods whose priorities for rebuilding the country were political reliability, rather than say, knowing the language or having some familiarity with the culture.
Even if one were to propose that there was a "right" way to pull this off, there is no indication that any of the planners even tried to get it right. They did exactly everything that knowledgeable military and strategic advisors told them not to.
The most offensive thing about Bush's puling excuses is not his failure to see himself and the events he personally drove as they really are, but his total disinterest in even bothering with such a task. He thought it was more important to tell people how often he dropped to his knees on that stupid rug and prayed. Prayer, whether you think it works or not, is the expression of hope over events that are beyond one's control. But Bush was always in control of events; that's kinda part of the job description. They bullied and rolled and intimidated and calumniated all who objected, and got to do what they wanted in the way they wanted. To blame the failure for all that on the tone of the marketing campaign is so far past missing the forest for the trees, it beggars belief.
Which makes it par for the course for these guys. And all the revisionist mea culpas by all the no-longer-gruntled former waterboys won't change that.
Like Rosa Parks, But With Chlamydia
I'm only marginally aware of whowhat this Tila Tequila bobblehead homunculus is because of The Soup, which is essential viewing. I did not realize that Miss, erm, Tequila fancies herself something of a trailblazer:
Uh-huh. So that's what all that competitive deer-penis-eating and self-abasement was all about. Yes, the inbred mossbacks who have an obsession with teh gay are this skank's target demo. Right, honey.
Somebody needs to tell this broad that fucking anything that moves is not the same thing as a "same-sex relationship". If anything, it seems like gays -- or hell, anyone in an actual relationship of any kind -- might be insulted and/or nauseated by her nonsense.
"It is because of me — I definitely think [my show] has helped the movement," she told Usmagazine.com. "Before it came out, everyone was still a little apprehensive about [same sex relationships]," she said. "Then they realized, 'Wow, everyone is really into this stuff, and it is fine.' The next thing you know, [gay marriage] is legal."
Uh-huh. So that's what all that competitive deer-penis-eating and self-abasement was all about. Yes, the inbred mossbacks who have an obsession with teh gay are this skank's target demo. Right, honey.
Somebody needs to tell this broad that fucking anything that moves is not the same thing as a "same-sex relationship". If anything, it seems like gays -- or hell, anyone in an actual relationship of any kind -- might be insulted and/or nauseated by her nonsense.
Hogan's Zeroes
There's no getting around the fact that Nick Hogan is a smug, overprivileged brat who shouldn't have a driver's license or a car (the pictures on the secondary link are horrifying; his friend's forehead is caved in), and who will probably end up doing real time in the future for some poor-impulse-control-related offense. But considering Hogan and his blow-up doll sister had parents who think it's okay to fuck their kids' friends, the poor bastard was probably just predestined.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Are You There, God? It's Me, Broder
Broderella is doing exactly what he's supposed to do. This is his job -- to represent the institutional stasis and intellectual calcification of the holders of power and their courtiers, to facilitate their internal dialogues under the guise of talking to us peons. Although they barely bother to keep up even that pretense anymore.
Occasionally he and his esteemed colleagues might swap or share their man crushes, like the seventh-grade girls they really are deep down inside, getting giggly and wet and tingly when the BMOC struts by, then regaining composure enough to pick on the girls who study and get good grades.
It's nobody's fault but their own that Broderella and Tweety and the rest of the Appletini Gang let the jocks talk them into putting out. But now they have, and now they realize too late that they gave it up too early, and since they can't undo it, they have to keep up the lies they tell themselves and each other. It does no good to remind them that when dealing with neoclowns and conservatards, they should at least insist that someone wear a condom.
Would that they had barebacked themselves into irrelevancy at this point, but since they run the airwaves and control who is allowed on to talk about what, the goal merely shifts a bit to keeping the horserace as tight as possible. It doesn't matter that one candidate has the potential to be a thoroughbred, and the other is a pale imitation of the current administration dog food, the appearance of a race is the thing, the better to distract from the maintenance of ossified, self-perpetuating power structures.
Occasionally he and his esteemed colleagues might swap or share their man crushes, like the seventh-grade girls they really are deep down inside, getting giggly and wet and tingly when the BMOC struts by, then regaining composure enough to pick on the girls who study and get good grades.
It's nobody's fault but their own that Broderella and Tweety and the rest of the Appletini Gang let the jocks talk them into putting out. But now they have, and now they realize too late that they gave it up too early, and since they can't undo it, they have to keep up the lies they tell themselves and each other. It does no good to remind them that when dealing with neoclowns and conservatards, they should at least insist that someone wear a condom.
Would that they had barebacked themselves into irrelevancy at this point, but since they run the airwaves and control who is allowed on to talk about what, the goal merely shifts a bit to keeping the horserace as tight as possible. It doesn't matter that one candidate has the potential to be a thoroughbred, and the other is a pale imitation of the current administration dog food, the appearance of a race is the thing, the better to distract from the maintenance of ossified, self-perpetuating power structures.
News You Can Lose
It occurs to me that, since the 'tards at Fux News will believe pretty much anything as long as it's wrapped in the right color bow, that maybe the best way to dilute their credibility is to just mass-bombard them with dozens, hundreds of Daily Show/Onion-style parodies in varying degrees of obviousness and ridiculousness.
Obama spotted entering a Des Moines Motel 6 love nest with Parker Posey, Kathy Bates, and an unidentified Filipina with a four-pack of wine coolers and a case of raging herpes? Sure. Hillary Clinton wipes ass with confederate flag at South Carolina rally? Why not? Al Franken's Playboy parodies turn out to be plagiarized from Ben Stein's old Penthouse columns? Run it up the flagpole; you know at least half these clowns are just dumb enough to salute it.
Between the half-hearted vetting and refuting of these nuggets, then running and eventually retracting at least some of them, it might interfere with their mission statement of making shit up and bamboozling their audience of self-selecting morons.
Obama spotted entering a Des Moines Motel 6 love nest with Parker Posey, Kathy Bates, and an unidentified Filipina with a four-pack of wine coolers and a case of raging herpes? Sure. Hillary Clinton wipes ass with confederate flag at South Carolina rally? Why not? Al Franken's Playboy parodies turn out to be plagiarized from Ben Stein's old Penthouse columns? Run it up the flagpole; you know at least half these clowns are just dumb enough to salute it.
Between the half-hearted vetting and refuting of these nuggets, then running and eventually retracting at least some of them, it might interfere with their mission statement of making shit up and bamboozling their audience of self-selecting morons.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
A Thousand Words
The post is actually speculating as to whether America's Snack Queen is (ulp!) knocked up yet again with some mystery lowbrow demon seed, but the photo itself is mightay-mightay:
Wow. Just wow. And this is on a shopping trip in LA. Does she own a mirror? I just got back from the recycler and dressed up more than that, seriously. I'm from hick stock and live in a hick town, and I can't conceive of even hanging out in my own house like that. Maybe if I'm massively hungover and it's a rainy day in December, maybe then I pull out the Bedazzler and some old sweatpants and get biz-zay for an afternoon. Sheesh. Extra points if she does turn out to be bearing bubba fruit, by the way, since she's smoking with her free hand. Because picking your pajama-clad, K-Fed-ruined ass in a doorway doesn't quite put the "k" in "klassy".
Amazing how fast she went from this....
....to just another Bakersfield chickenhead.
Wow. Just wow. And this is on a shopping trip in LA. Does she own a mirror? I just got back from the recycler and dressed up more than that, seriously. I'm from hick stock and live in a hick town, and I can't conceive of even hanging out in my own house like that. Maybe if I'm massively hungover and it's a rainy day in December, maybe then I pull out the Bedazzler and some old sweatpants and get biz-zay for an afternoon. Sheesh. Extra points if she does turn out to be bearing bubba fruit, by the way, since she's smoking with her free hand. Because picking your pajama-clad, K-Fed-ruined ass in a doorway doesn't quite put the "k" in "klassy".
Amazing how fast she went from this....
....to just another Bakersfield chickenhead.
Stop Apologizing
I thought these people were supposed to have some idea of what they had gotten into:
Jesus, did they just fall off a fuckin' turnip truck or something? "Forcing" political opponents to apologize for ridiculous shit is the most time-tested of campaign gambits. They just want to see if you're enough of a pussy to do it. You remember Arnold Schwarzenegger ever apologizing for smoking a fattie in Pumping Iron, much less for making Junior or Twins? Me neither. He just gives people that "what the hell is wrong with you?" look and a shit-eating grin and moves on. He doesn't give a shit what ankle-biters think, nor should he -- nor should anyone.
Franken should just look 'em dead in the eye and say, "Seriously, you people are worked up about a satirical essay from eight years ago? You have a problem with it, Planned Parenthood? Fine, then endorse a Bush butt-boy like Norm Coleman. See what that gets you, see how fucking 'planned' your 'parenthood' is then. Any questions?"
Anything else is playing the other side's game. It takes time and momentum away that might be spent on chipping away at Coleman. That's all this is, and they bought into it anyway. Now that they know that Franken and Klobuchar and the rest of the MN Dem posse are straight-up suckas, they can set a couple interns loose in the SNL archives to see if Franken ever made fun of Ronald Reagan or something. Why not?
Way to circle the wagons, folks. These bozos, to paraphrase David Mamet, could fuck up a baked potato.
In the latest bit of trouble in Al Franken's quest to pick up a blue-state Senate seat for the Democrats, Franken has apologized for offending anybody with his 2000 comedy essay in Playboy.
The essay, entitled "Porn-O-Rama," was hammered by state Republicans, who charged that Franken had no respect for women or family values in light of the piece's series of dirty jokes. Their condemnations were then followed by Democrats, starting with Rep. Betty McCollum and then Sen. Amy Klobuchar and the state Planned Parenthood, many of whom saw it as a political liability that Franken would have to address.
Jesus, did they just fall off a fuckin' turnip truck or something? "Forcing" political opponents to apologize for ridiculous shit is the most time-tested of campaign gambits. They just want to see if you're enough of a pussy to do it. You remember Arnold Schwarzenegger ever apologizing for smoking a fattie in Pumping Iron, much less for making Junior or Twins? Me neither. He just gives people that "what the hell is wrong with you?" look and a shit-eating grin and moves on. He doesn't give a shit what ankle-biters think, nor should he -- nor should anyone.
Franken should just look 'em dead in the eye and say, "Seriously, you people are worked up about a satirical essay from eight years ago? You have a problem with it, Planned Parenthood? Fine, then endorse a Bush butt-boy like Norm Coleman. See what that gets you, see how fucking 'planned' your 'parenthood' is then. Any questions?"
Anything else is playing the other side's game. It takes time and momentum away that might be spent on chipping away at Coleman. That's all this is, and they bought into it anyway. Now that they know that Franken and Klobuchar and the rest of the MN Dem posse are straight-up suckas, they can set a couple interns loose in the SNL archives to see if Franken ever made fun of Ronald Reagan or something. Why not?
Way to circle the wagons, folks. These bozos, to paraphrase David Mamet, could fuck up a baked potato.
Money, It's a Gas
Via IOZ, we find out that maybe the rich are just like you 'n' me after all:
Everybody now -- Awwwww. Let's all chip in and buy these poor saps a giant fucking hug, shall we? Even in the best of times, I could never muster a glimmer of sympathy for these conspicuous-consuming leisure-class bozos; in current conditions they are welcome to divvy up their remaining net worth among the soup kitchens and animal shelters, and die broke like the rest of us.
It would at least be helpful to get an idea of how these douchebags earn their incomes and bonus checks. Experience tells most of us that, even if they're not out-and-out hedge-fund bookies who create no actual wealth, but merely sift and maneuver other people's money and divert the inevitable collapse downstream, these would-be captains of industry probably do less actual work than any of their hopeful subordinates.
Oh, it's just all so horrible. Truly we are living in the end times. Until the guillotine once again becomes socially acceptable, it's hard to go beyond a reflexive "fuck 'em". Cry me a river.
They seem to have nothing to fret about: their net worths range from $5 million to $1 billion. A blip in the markets shouldn’t send their chateau-size Park Avenue co-ops to foreclosure or exile them to Payless Shoes.
But Ms. Chemtob’s clients are concerned all the same, she said, because their incomes have shrunk, say, to $2 million a year from $8 million, and they know that their 2008 bonus checks are likely to be much less impressive.
One of her clients recently confessed that his net worth had decreased to $8 million from more than $20 million, and he thinks that his wife will leave him. He has hidden their fall in fortune by taking on debt to pay for her extravagant clothes and vacations.
“I literally had to sit there and tell him that he had to tell his wife that she had to stop spending,” she said. “He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically.”
Everybody now -- Awwwww. Let's all chip in and buy these poor saps a giant fucking hug, shall we? Even in the best of times, I could never muster a glimmer of sympathy for these conspicuous-consuming leisure-class bozos; in current conditions they are welcome to divvy up their remaining net worth among the soup kitchens and animal shelters, and die broke like the rest of us.
It would at least be helpful to get an idea of how these douchebags earn their incomes and bonus checks. Experience tells most of us that, even if they're not out-and-out hedge-fund bookies who create no actual wealth, but merely sift and maneuver other people's money and divert the inevitable collapse downstream, these would-be captains of industry probably do less actual work than any of their hopeful subordinates.
“Most people won’t go to their banker and say: ‘You know I’m in desperate trouble. I need funds,’ ” said Andy Augenblick, president of Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance, which allows clients to borrow against art collections worth more than $2 million. Mr. Augenblick said that the number of requests for these types of loans is five times higher than a year ago. He said that while these borrowers claim that they don’t need the money, their latest financial statements show that their net worth has withered in the past year.
Other wealthy clients are cutting luxuries that they think their friends and relatives won’t notice, according to Mr. Del Gatto of Circa. At Circa’s midtown offices, he said, the seven consultation rooms have been busy with customers selling their precious gems. Some older couples, he said, are selling estate jewelry to help support their children who have lost Wall Street jobs. Bankers are paring down their collections of Patek Philippe watches. Wives from Greenwich and Scarsdale are selling 2-carat to 35-carat single-stone diamond rings. One recent client explained to Mr. Del Gatto that she was selling $2 million in diamonds she rarely wore, because her friends wouldn’t notice that they were gone.
“She said, ‘If I sold my Bentley or my important art, they would notice,’ ” he said. “That we hear, in differing examples, every day.”
Oh, it's just all so horrible. Truly we are living in the end times. Until the guillotine once again becomes socially acceptable, it's hard to go beyond a reflexive "fuck 'em". Cry me a river.
Friday, June 06, 2008
668 -- The Neighbor of the Beast
Christ, what a week, not just in the news, but in real life. Nothing too traumatic, just more of a burnout week. The added news of impending economic collapse is gravy. Time for some serious thinkingdrinking, and since this weekend figures to have just enough wind to fuck up my plans to barbecue some nice London broil, maybe I'll take a break from trying to reorganize my impending student loan payments and write something constructive. Or not.
Ah well, at least I'm not one of these incoherent Clinton Kool-Aid kampfers getting thwacked in the head with reality and finding it cold, so very cold....
Dear screaming moron: Undo your Caps Lock, and back away slowly from your computer. You are a fucking idiot. You are embarrassing your candidate and yourself. Ask your doctor for a new prescription, perhaps Xanax or Vicodin. Go back to watching Celebrity Circus or cartoons or something. Catch up on what Lindsay Lohan is doing this week. Anything but politics, since you clearly cannot handle it. Please do not breed. That is all.
Ah well, at least I'm not one of these incoherent Clinton Kool-Aid kampfers getting thwacked in the head with reality and finding it cold, so very cold....
Jennifer in Full
THE TRUTH IS COMING OUT FOR ALL OF US TO SEE! THE LIGHT IS SHINING ITS RAYS ON THE LIES OF THE MSM AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY. MAY THE FALSE CRUMBLE AND FALL AWAY AND THE TRUE AND JUST RISE LIKE THE PHOENIX! HILLARY YOU ARE THAT PHOENIX RISING ABOVE AND WE CAN SEE YOUR LIGHT GUIDING A PATH TO TRUTH!!!! THERE ARE PROPHECIES ABOUT THIS TIME WE ARE ALL IN NOW AND I BELIEVE HILLARY CLINTON PLAYS A MAJOR ROLE IN BECOMING THE FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT IN HERSTORY! MAY THE ANGELS AND SUPREME BEING OF THIS UNIVERSE BLESS YOU HILLARY CLINTON AND GUIDE YOU UNSCATHED TO BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT! I PRAY FOR A CLEAR PATH FOR YOU AND FOR ALL OF US!!!!!!!!
Dear screaming moron: Undo your Caps Lock, and back away slowly from your computer. You are a fucking idiot. You are embarrassing your candidate and yourself. Ask your doctor for a new prescription, perhaps Xanax or Vicodin. Go back to watching Celebrity Circus or cartoons or something. Catch up on what Lindsay Lohan is doing this week. Anything but politics, since you clearly cannot handle it. Please do not breed. That is all.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Caveat Blecchtor
It occurred to me while I was unwinding on Geritol Ferraro's steamy load of bag-lady rhetoric that it helps to iterate periodically just what my angle is, what my interest happens to be. From consistently picking on McCain's and Clinton's respective shortcomings as candidates, while leaving Obama relatively unscathed, one might reasonably infer that I heart me some Barry Hussein, 4evah an evah.
To the extent that I can still philosophically maneuver in the fractured carapace of a sham corporatocratic political system, there may be a sliver of truth to that. It does not, per the usual snide parlance, peg me as an unthinking Obamaton. It simply means that I have far fewer misgivings about Obama than the other two. I believe that a McCain presidency would have at least a 50-50 chance of being even more catastrophic for this country's interests than the current junta.
I believe that a Clinton presidency, while not catastrophic, would simply veer between venal and ineffectual, doing nothing significant to change course that hadn't been thoroughly vetted either with corporate benefactors, virulent opposition thugs, or a team of safely "bipartisan" hacks in an advisory capacity. If I thought she was the better candidate, I'd say so. She isn't.
I don't get the Beatlemania surrounding Obama's appearances; as I've said time and again, I think there are too many people who really just want to be seen clamoring for change, endorsing a change avatar, rather than actually making comprehensive changes that mean anything. But I do think he will make better, fresher choices for advisors, and bring a level of intellectual rigor and honesty that escapes her decision-making process.
The thing about HRC's campaign is how tiresomely her vast experience has been touted (excluding, of course, her early years as a Goldwater/Rockefeller Republican). But it's that very experience that informs the perception that neither Clinton ever met an issue they couldn't triangulate, tediously unraveling lightly-clutched principles, knowing that the base has nowhere else to go.
Still, even craven political stasis would be notably better than what Straight Talk would have in store for us. The man has been brought to heel by the Bush machine in a way even Charlie couldn't, bereft of any discernible belief beyond unsustainable exceptionalist fantasies, the violent daydreams of a bankrupt, overextended hegemon. It's almost inconceivable that in picking advisors and associates, he wouldn't dip into the same rotten talent pool as Bush and Cheney did, giving unrepentant felons, thugs and killers such as John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams continued employment.
So that's where I'm at. I voted for Edwards in the primary, and would still welcome his appointment in an Obama administration, whether as VP or AG or whatever. He has been a reasonable advocate for socioeconomic justice, in an environment increasingly characterized by pyramidal economic disparities, the sort of thing we used to see routinely in Latin American oligarchies. But if Clinton had been the clear nominee, I would have voted for her in November. I wouldn't have liked it, but I feel strongly enough about McCain and the sort of creeps who would infest his administration that the differences are sufficiently distinct. And if she and Obama make peace by him offering her the VP slot on the ticket, that's fine too.
Which makes the increasingly petulant wiggery of the Clintonistas that much more irritating.
Is the media trying to stir up a fight, or is this a fair representation of the sentiments of Clinton supporters? It's up to them to endorse or repudiate this nonsense. The thing is, nearly all of the fools threatening to defect or take their ball home if they don't get their way cite the media as a major source of Clinton's woes. Following that logic, not only are they holding Obama accountable for the media's perfidy (conveniently forgetting that if their candidate were Hillary Smith instead of Hillary Clinton, she'd never have run) rather than "the media", but they are objectively implying that Obama's supporters have been addled by media tubthumping away from the "better" candidate.
So what are they going to do about it? Do everything they can to tank the election for Obama, even if it means voting for John McCain. On the one hand, they have several months to cool off and pull their heads out of their asses; on the other, they clearly aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, and any infighting between the final primary and the convention officially constitutes a complete waste of momentum from the eventual nominee.
Every candidate has their share of weirdo hangers-on, but Clinton seems to have an unusually loud and tendentious swarm of cretins threatening to botch the process.
Why? Because they're good Democrats, and they're sick of what Bush has done to this country. Fuck, who knows? These people are either stupid or crazy, swimming in a sea of cognitive dissonance. Look, you dipshits -- either you are for a continuation of the current administration's policies, or you are against such a thing. John McCain, to his credit, has made no attempt to hide his agenda, save trying to sneak Bush in and out of his fundraisers. He'll take the money Fredo can drum up, but he's embarrassed to be seen with him.
Too late for that, chump.
Some of this obnoxious skullfuckery can be attributed to the heat of the moment, that they have allowed their candidate to convince them that she's been jobbed by the media, and that they best serve their civic purpose by functioning as obstacles at this point. And from Clinton's point of view, it makes sense. This cornered-animal strategy is her last best hope.
But supporters, after this farce is over, get to live with the consequences of the decisions they've made. Hillary Clinton will not have to live with anything, in any serious capacity; her campaign has put a mild dent in the $120 million she and her husband have accumulated this decade, and if she ends up being an obstructionist super-Nader this time around, worst-case scenario is that she loses her Senate seat in '12 and retires to Westchester County.
We should all have the opportunity to fail so gloriously. But her health care is taken care of; her job is secure for now, and sinecures await should she be voted out; her child and future grandchildren will not be sent to Iraq or Iran to make old men and armchair generals feel tough. Her future is secure, win or lose. It is these vituperative fanatics, these goofy iconodules who have tethered themselves to a person come what may, who put their own futures on the line with their antics.
At this point, they want to either decide this on some bullshit tuck rule or suck up any momentum Obama might have in the summer, in the eight weeks between the last primary and the convention. It is not unreasonable, given their quotes and their actions, their responses and the narrative they have set, to presume that if their candidate cannot win, they would rather have the Republican candidate win and continue policies they profess to hate. That, to belabor the obvious, is an incoherent and delusional state of mind.
Perhaps it's time to grow the fuck up, acknowledge defeat with what grace they can still scrape up, and get with the program. There might even be a conceivable scenario in which they can constructively continue their tilt at the electoral windmill. Clinton has generated an enormous measure of support in very strategic states, obviously, and as such, Obama owes her and her supporters some tangible consideration. And if they'd cut the shit, he'd probably come correct and make her a reasonable offer.
But the ones who claim to be Democrats, who claim to be Sick Of This Shit, yet proclaim to any who'll listen how they'll monkey-wrench the whole thing because their wittle feewings are hurt....
....you will retain full ownership of the consequences. Feel free to take up your health-care, job security and safety, and foreign policy concerns with whatever Liberty University termites Saint Straight Talk decides to park in those posts.
To the extent that I can still philosophically maneuver in the fractured carapace of a sham corporatocratic political system, there may be a sliver of truth to that. It does not, per the usual snide parlance, peg me as an unthinking Obamaton. It simply means that I have far fewer misgivings about Obama than the other two. I believe that a McCain presidency would have at least a 50-50 chance of being even more catastrophic for this country's interests than the current junta.
I believe that a Clinton presidency, while not catastrophic, would simply veer between venal and ineffectual, doing nothing significant to change course that hadn't been thoroughly vetted either with corporate benefactors, virulent opposition thugs, or a team of safely "bipartisan" hacks in an advisory capacity. If I thought she was the better candidate, I'd say so. She isn't.
I don't get the Beatlemania surrounding Obama's appearances; as I've said time and again, I think there are too many people who really just want to be seen clamoring for change, endorsing a change avatar, rather than actually making comprehensive changes that mean anything. But I do think he will make better, fresher choices for advisors, and bring a level of intellectual rigor and honesty that escapes her decision-making process.
The thing about HRC's campaign is how tiresomely her vast experience has been touted (excluding, of course, her early years as a Goldwater/Rockefeller Republican). But it's that very experience that informs the perception that neither Clinton ever met an issue they couldn't triangulate, tediously unraveling lightly-clutched principles, knowing that the base has nowhere else to go.
Still, even craven political stasis would be notably better than what Straight Talk would have in store for us. The man has been brought to heel by the Bush machine in a way even Charlie couldn't, bereft of any discernible belief beyond unsustainable exceptionalist fantasies, the violent daydreams of a bankrupt, overextended hegemon. It's almost inconceivable that in picking advisors and associates, he wouldn't dip into the same rotten talent pool as Bush and Cheney did, giving unrepentant felons, thugs and killers such as John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams continued employment.
So that's where I'm at. I voted for Edwards in the primary, and would still welcome his appointment in an Obama administration, whether as VP or AG or whatever. He has been a reasonable advocate for socioeconomic justice, in an environment increasingly characterized by pyramidal economic disparities, the sort of thing we used to see routinely in Latin American oligarchies. But if Clinton had been the clear nominee, I would have voted for her in November. I wouldn't have liked it, but I feel strongly enough about McCain and the sort of creeps who would infest his administration that the differences are sufficiently distinct. And if she and Obama make peace by him offering her the VP slot on the ticket, that's fine too.
Which makes the increasingly petulant wiggery of the Clintonistas that much more irritating.
"I won't cast my vote in the general election for the first time in my life, primary or general," said Mike Grady, 53, a factory worker from Scranton, Pa. "I don't understand why the DNC hasn't received that message yet."
Calling Obama a "rookie" who lacks the experience to be president, and complaining that Clinton has been treated unfairly by the news media and party officials, Grady said that if she is not at the top of the ticket or in the vice-presidential slot, "John McCain will win the presidency."
Is the media trying to stir up a fight, or is this a fair representation of the sentiments of Clinton supporters? It's up to them to endorse or repudiate this nonsense. The thing is, nearly all of the fools threatening to defect or take their ball home if they don't get their way cite the media as a major source of Clinton's woes. Following that logic, not only are they holding Obama accountable for the media's perfidy (conveniently forgetting that if their candidate were Hillary Smith instead of Hillary Clinton, she'd never have run) rather than "the media", but they are objectively implying that Obama's supporters have been addled by media tubthumping away from the "better" candidate.
So what are they going to do about it? Do everything they can to tank the election for Obama, even if it means voting for John McCain. On the one hand, they have several months to cool off and pull their heads out of their asses; on the other, they clearly aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, and any infighting between the final primary and the convention officially constitutes a complete waste of momentum from the eventual nominee.
Every candidate has their share of weirdo hangers-on, but Clinton seems to have an unusually loud and tendentious swarm of cretins threatening to botch the process.
Why? Because they're good Democrats, and they're sick of what Bush has done to this country. Fuck, who knows? These people are either stupid or crazy, swimming in a sea of cognitive dissonance. Look, you dipshits -- either you are for a continuation of the current administration's policies, or you are against such a thing. John McCain, to his credit, has made no attempt to hide his agenda, save trying to sneak Bush in and out of his fundraisers. He'll take the money Fredo can drum up, but he's embarrassed to be seen with him.
Too late for that, chump.
Some of this obnoxious skullfuckery can be attributed to the heat of the moment, that they have allowed their candidate to convince them that she's been jobbed by the media, and that they best serve their civic purpose by functioning as obstacles at this point. And from Clinton's point of view, it makes sense. This cornered-animal strategy is her last best hope.
But supporters, after this farce is over, get to live with the consequences of the decisions they've made. Hillary Clinton will not have to live with anything, in any serious capacity; her campaign has put a mild dent in the $120 million she and her husband have accumulated this decade, and if she ends up being an obstructionist super-Nader this time around, worst-case scenario is that she loses her Senate seat in '12 and retires to Westchester County.
We should all have the opportunity to fail so gloriously. But her health care is taken care of; her job is secure for now, and sinecures await should she be voted out; her child and future grandchildren will not be sent to Iraq or Iran to make old men and armchair generals feel tough. Her future is secure, win or lose. It is these vituperative fanatics, these goofy iconodules who have tethered themselves to a person come what may, who put their own futures on the line with their antics.
At this point, they want to either decide this on some bullshit tuck rule or suck up any momentum Obama might have in the summer, in the eight weeks between the last primary and the convention. It is not unreasonable, given their quotes and their actions, their responses and the narrative they have set, to presume that if their candidate cannot win, they would rather have the Republican candidate win and continue policies they profess to hate. That, to belabor the obvious, is an incoherent and delusional state of mind.
Perhaps it's time to grow the fuck up, acknowledge defeat with what grace they can still scrape up, and get with the program. There might even be a conceivable scenario in which they can constructively continue their tilt at the electoral windmill. Clinton has generated an enormous measure of support in very strategic states, obviously, and as such, Obama owes her and her supporters some tangible consideration. And if they'd cut the shit, he'd probably come correct and make her a reasonable offer.
But the ones who claim to be Democrats, who claim to be Sick Of This Shit, yet proclaim to any who'll listen how they'll monkey-wrench the whole thing because their wittle feewings are hurt....
....you will retain full ownership of the consequences. Feel free to take up your health-care, job security and safety, and foreign policy concerns with whatever Liberty University termites Saint Straight Talk decides to park in those posts.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Driving Miss Crazy
What the hell is Geraldine Ferraro's major malfunction, other than shameless intellectual dishonesty and cheap class-baiting?
Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Look, you want to know what real sexism is? Ask yourself exactly how many women -- from either party -- have any realistic chance at a presidential campaign in this country. Even people who count their fingers in fractions would end up with spare digits. Hillary Clinton is less representative of Vaginal Americans in general than ambitious wives of former preznits in particular. This undue set of advantages more than offsets any supposed incidents of "sexism", though if such have actually occurred at more than a purely anecdotal level, Ferraro is welcome to spend the rest of her life dutifully chronicling them. Anything to get her to climb out of our asses already.
I mean, fuck. Go get me a beer or something.
And by the way, I am not minimizing how far HRC has come in this race at all, by tagging it to her more famous spouse. In any competition, any advantage you can find and utilize should be used. But make no mistake -- those advantages were there, she has utilized them to their fullest, and she was the prospective front-runner last summer. But as time has progressed, more and more people have simply gravitated toward Obama. Deal with it.
It is a testament to the Clinton campaign's increasingly Nixonian bent that there simply must be some set of sinister, ulterior factors involved in her failure to capture the nomination outright. But maybe she just lost a fair fight. Maybe Obama has motivated more people who would otherwise have stayed home. Maybe people have tired of alternating political dynasties, that four or eight years of charmless, calibrated triangulations with henchmen recycled from her husband's tenure just doesn't sound as appealing as it's supposed to. The turnout for each of them has dwarfed that for any of the Republican candidates, even well before Poor Ol' Straight Talk rode his media pony back into the lead of that pack of spavined nags. That's significant, even if it has taken a backseat to the usual horserace nattering.
The fault also lies with the DNC's failure to sufficiently clarify the punitive measures to be taken against Florida and Michigan. This is the thread that HRC has been hanging on, and it is a flimsy one. Just schedule the fuckin' primaries, tell the states that this is how it's gonna be, rotate them around every election, and make it stick. This stupid idea that Iowa and New Hampshire have to be first every damned time is just ridiculous. Maybe the party will have their shit dialed in by 2012, but that's probably too much to ask.
Even California, having lobbied to get bumped up into Super Tuesday, when Clinton still had some post-NH momentum, has had a change of heart, heading into the week when we would have normally had our primary. This may have something to do with the startling consistency of HRC coming across as grasping and petty, and probably deft in a barroom with a broken bottle. But maybe he's just not that into you, honey. Do you really need to boil the poor bunny, or can we just walk away before it gets any uglier?
In the end, though, Ferraro cannot resist temptation, and not only has to go there, but returns to well-tromped ground:
The stupid, as they say in the 'hood, burns. Interesting how "Reagan Democrats" have been co-opted into this creative cobble of Archie Bunker types who don't hate black people, they just don't get them and they're afraid of them. Perhaps if Obama would just strut out wearing a giant clock around his neck and give his next speech in "-izzle" talk at least muthafuckas would know what time it is. Ferraro clearly is disinterested in any deeper notions of what this finely-parsed "racial resentment" might entail; her goal is merely to raise the usual concerns and doubt about whether these inbred morons can be peeled off by a Democratic candidate, or only a white candidate.
Because simply stepping up and telling these sainted "Reagan Democrats" with their quaint "racial resentment" that they have been getting hosed hard for the last eight years and that John McCain will at best simply pick a different orifice would be too easy. Sometimes you have to just grit your teeth and tell ridiculous people that they're fucking ridiculous. If they want to continue to vote against themselves, then fuck 'em. They'll die sooner that way anyway, and good riddance.
Uh-huh. So let's get this straight, Gerry -- these poor, simple folk simply can't identify with the elitist Columbia-Harvard candidate and his uppity Princeton-Harvard wife, but they can identify with the Wellesley-Yale candidate and her Georgetown-Oxford-Yale husband who famously touted his own rags-to-riches epic, even after he left office. And Obama's actual policies and even his choice of running mate will matter not to these ardent (if uncertain) yokels, so directionless is the toxic passion of their inchoate "resentments". It's astonishing to consider the likelihood that Ferraro lacks the awareness to understand just how despicable such a person with the sentiments she projects truly is. Either qualifications are supposed to transcend issues of gender and race, or not. It's an all-or-nothing proposition, not this high-handed cafeteria-Democrat bullshit.
The "assurance" that this rube niche is "waiting for" about not being "left behind", I have absolutely no doubt that it doesn't ever occur to them -- nor to Ferraro -- that that might be exactly how blacks have felt about every old white man they've been forced to suck it up and vote for since forever.
This cheap, irrational race-baiting in the excuse of an increasingly failed effort, however noble the original intentions of that campaign, is just contemptible now. This is the sort of cornered-animal strategy people use when they are happy to let the lawyers move the goalposts, piss everyone off with two months of useless infighting, and sunder the party at the convention.
[Update: Per usual, The BEAST hits it nastier and better.]
Here we are at the end of the primary season, and the effects of racism and sexism on the campaign have resulted in a split within the Democratic Party that will not be easy to heal before election day. Perhaps it's because neither the Barack Obama campaign nor the media seem to understand what is at the heart of the anger on the part of women who feel that Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly because she is a woman or what is fueling the concern of Reagan Democrats for whom sexism isn't an issue, but reverse racism is.
Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Look, you want to know what real sexism is? Ask yourself exactly how many women -- from either party -- have any realistic chance at a presidential campaign in this country. Even people who count their fingers in fractions would end up with spare digits. Hillary Clinton is less representative of Vaginal Americans in general than ambitious wives of former preznits in particular. This undue set of advantages more than offsets any supposed incidents of "sexism", though if such have actually occurred at more than a purely anecdotal level, Ferraro is welcome to spend the rest of her life dutifully chronicling them. Anything to get her to climb out of our asses already.
I mean, fuck. Go get me a beer or something.
And by the way, I am not minimizing how far HRC has come in this race at all, by tagging it to her more famous spouse. In any competition, any advantage you can find and utilize should be used. But make no mistake -- those advantages were there, she has utilized them to their fullest, and she was the prospective front-runner last summer. But as time has progressed, more and more people have simply gravitated toward Obama. Deal with it.
It is a testament to the Clinton campaign's increasingly Nixonian bent that there simply must be some set of sinister, ulterior factors involved in her failure to capture the nomination outright. But maybe she just lost a fair fight. Maybe Obama has motivated more people who would otherwise have stayed home. Maybe people have tired of alternating political dynasties, that four or eight years of charmless, calibrated triangulations with henchmen recycled from her husband's tenure just doesn't sound as appealing as it's supposed to. The turnout for each of them has dwarfed that for any of the Republican candidates, even well before Poor Ol' Straight Talk rode his media pony back into the lead of that pack of spavined nags. That's significant, even if it has taken a backseat to the usual horserace nattering.
The fault also lies with the DNC's failure to sufficiently clarify the punitive measures to be taken against Florida and Michigan. This is the thread that HRC has been hanging on, and it is a flimsy one. Just schedule the fuckin' primaries, tell the states that this is how it's gonna be, rotate them around every election, and make it stick. This stupid idea that Iowa and New Hampshire have to be first every damned time is just ridiculous. Maybe the party will have their shit dialed in by 2012, but that's probably too much to ask.
Even California, having lobbied to get bumped up into Super Tuesday, when Clinton still had some post-NH momentum, has had a change of heart, heading into the week when we would have normally had our primary. This may have something to do with the startling consistency of HRC coming across as grasping and petty, and probably deft in a barroom with a broken bottle. But maybe he's just not that into you, honey. Do you really need to boil the poor bunny, or can we just walk away before it gets any uglier?
In the end, though, Ferraro cannot resist temptation, and not only has to go there, but returns to well-tromped ground:
As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.
The stupid, as they say in the 'hood, burns. Interesting how "Reagan Democrats" have been co-opted into this creative cobble of Archie Bunker types who don't hate black people, they just don't get them and they're afraid of them. Perhaps if Obama would just strut out wearing a giant clock around his neck and give his next speech in "-izzle" talk at least muthafuckas would know what time it is. Ferraro clearly is disinterested in any deeper notions of what this finely-parsed "racial resentment" might entail; her goal is merely to raise the usual concerns and doubt about whether these inbred morons can be peeled off by a Democratic candidate, or only a white candidate.
Because simply stepping up and telling these sainted "Reagan Democrats" with their quaint "racial resentment" that they have been getting hosed hard for the last eight years and that John McCain will at best simply pick a different orifice would be too easy. Sometimes you have to just grit your teeth and tell ridiculous people that they're fucking ridiculous. If they want to continue to vote against themselves, then fuck 'em. They'll die sooner that way anyway, and good riddance.
Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn't do it. They don't identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they're not stupid. What they're waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won't leave them behind.
Uh-huh. So let's get this straight, Gerry -- these poor, simple folk simply can't identify with the elitist Columbia-Harvard candidate and his uppity Princeton-Harvard wife, but they can identify with the Wellesley-Yale candidate and her Georgetown-Oxford-Yale husband who famously touted his own rags-to-riches epic, even after he left office. And Obama's actual policies and even his choice of running mate will matter not to these ardent (if uncertain) yokels, so directionless is the toxic passion of their inchoate "resentments". It's astonishing to consider the likelihood that Ferraro lacks the awareness to understand just how despicable such a person with the sentiments she projects truly is. Either qualifications are supposed to transcend issues of gender and race, or not. It's an all-or-nothing proposition, not this high-handed cafeteria-Democrat bullshit.
The "assurance" that this rube niche is "waiting for" about not being "left behind", I have absolutely no doubt that it doesn't ever occur to them -- nor to Ferraro -- that that might be exactly how blacks have felt about every old white man they've been forced to suck it up and vote for since forever.
This cheap, irrational race-baiting in the excuse of an increasingly failed effort, however noble the original intentions of that campaign, is just contemptible now. This is the sort of cornered-animal strategy people use when they are happy to let the lawyers move the goalposts, piss everyone off with two months of useless infighting, and sunder the party at the convention.
[Update: Per usual, The BEAST hits it nastier and better.]
Friday, May 30, 2008
Friday Poetry Corner
Every week distracts with more
Insipid, worthless fluff
Cutting into drinking time
And other important stuff.
So tough to be a movie star
Days of wine and sugar
Unless of course your mom turns out
To be a grasping cougar.
The mediasphere was all abuzz
With the bombshell from Ms. Yellin
That the sainted media get pushed around
By toadying corporate felons.
The loony fringe preferred to spend
Their time on keffiyehs
Donut-holes who spank it off
To pics of Rachael Ray.
I'll never be a famous face
Or an explorer like Magellan
But at least I'm not a fucking weasel
Like that asshole Scott McClellan.
Insipid, worthless fluff
Cutting into drinking time
And other important stuff.
So tough to be a movie star
Days of wine and sugar
Unless of course your mom turns out
To be a grasping cougar.
The mediasphere was all abuzz
With the bombshell from Ms. Yellin
That the sainted media get pushed around
By toadying corporate felons.
The loony fringe preferred to spend
Their time on keffiyehs
Donut-holes who spank it off
To pics of Rachael Ray.
I'll never be a famous face
Or an explorer like Magellan
But at least I'm not a fucking weasel
Like that asshole Scott McClellan.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Beg to Differ
Joel Brinkley usually manages to come across as the typical quasi-benevolent moderate -- occasionally passionate when discussing human rights issues in Third World cesspools, but generally not challenging the overall dynamic of corporate imperialism that truly drives most aspects of policy. Thus it is not especially surprising that he weighs in on the appointment of a Sandinista tool to be UN president.
I'm not sure what the controversy is, either in the accuracy of D'Escoto's assertion, or the supposedly urgent nature of his selection. It would be practically impossible -- intellectually dishonest at the very least -- to look at systematic US meddling in Central America since the days of William Walker and realize that it has been catastrophically brutal for the majority of the inhabitants there. What exactly does Brinkley think someone from that region who was not lucky enough to come from one of the oligarchic families that run those countries should say?
Brinkley ends his column ominously:
Sure, and it will be taken about as seriously as the japes of Ortega's buddy Hugo Chàvez. So what? Again, whatever the level of the Sandinistas' corruption, it doesn't remotely approach the violent kleptocracy of the Somozas or even the crude burglar Alemán. That certainly doesn't excuse the self-serving hypocrisy of autocrats such as Ortega and Chàvez, but it's fundamentally dishonest to completely decontextualize the situation the way Brinkley (and, to be fair, most American commentators on the region) has done here.
If D'Escoto wishes to be serious and comprehensive in his critiques of US policy, people will listen; if he decides to act like a buffoon and call Bush a dickhead or a devil, he'll just get an easy laugh. But the idea that we can't tolerate or discuss any grievance, no matter how legitimate, is ridiculous.
Johann Hari places things much more in their overall context:
What cheap criticisms and reflexive cries of "anti-Americanism" do is keep the discussion at the surface level, the better to muddle the substantial sociopolitical issues that might inform the antipathy of this or that individual. I mean, none of this destructive interference is a closely guarded secret; it's been going on for generations, to the point where, as Hari points out, phrases like "banana republic" become an uninformed cliché. But it means a bit more to the people who have had to endure the brunt of those policies.
The notion that we (or anyone) should be automatically inoculated from all dissent, that people are not only supposed to just forget decades of systematic expropriation and murder, but are also expected to put our interests before their own, is not automatically bad. It just displays a profound failure to understand human nature.
Starting in September, the politician in question, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, will have one of the world's most prominent podiums from which he can inveigh against Washington. D'Escoto was the Sandinista foreign minister during the 1980s, when Nicaragua was at war with the Reagan administration. Back then, he once described America's view of his country this way: "They're saying: 'You drop dead, or I will kill you.' "
I'm not sure what the controversy is, either in the accuracy of D'Escoto's assertion, or the supposedly urgent nature of his selection. It would be practically impossible -- intellectually dishonest at the very least -- to look at systematic US meddling in Central America since the days of William Walker and realize that it has been catastrophically brutal for the majority of the inhabitants there. What exactly does Brinkley think someone from that region who was not lucky enough to come from one of the oligarchic families that run those countries should say?
Brinkley ends his column ominously:
Ortega and d'Escoto, no doubt, still hold an acid view of Washington. Very soon the world will hear all about it.
Sure, and it will be taken about as seriously as the japes of Ortega's buddy Hugo Chàvez. So what? Again, whatever the level of the Sandinistas' corruption, it doesn't remotely approach the violent kleptocracy of the Somozas or even the crude burglar Alemán. That certainly doesn't excuse the self-serving hypocrisy of autocrats such as Ortega and Chàvez, but it's fundamentally dishonest to completely decontextualize the situation the way Brinkley (and, to be fair, most American commentators on the region) has done here.
If D'Escoto wishes to be serious and comprehensive in his critiques of US policy, people will listen; if he decides to act like a buffoon and call Bush a dickhead or a devil, he'll just get an easy laugh. But the idea that we can't tolerate or discuss any grievance, no matter how legitimate, is ridiculous.
Johann Hari places things much more in their overall context:
A corporation called United Fruit took one particular type – the Gros Michael – out of the jungle and decided to mass produce it on vast plantations, shipping it on refrigerated boats across the globe. The banana was standardised into one friendly model: yellow and creamy and handy for your lunchbox.
There was an entrepreneurial spark of genius there – but United Fruit developed a cruel business model to deliver it. As the writer Dan Koeppel explains in his brilliant history Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, it worked like this. Find a poor, weak country. Make sure the government will serve your interests. If it won't, topple it and replace it with one that will.
Burn down its rainforests and build banana plantations. Make the locals dependent on you. Crush any flicker of trade unionism. Then, alas, you may have to watch as the banana fields die from the strange disease that stalks bananas across the globe. If this happens, dump tonnes of chemicals on them to see if it makes a difference. If that doesn't work, move on to the next country. Begin again.
This sounds like hyperbole until you study what actually happened. In 1911, the banana magnate Samuel Zemurray decided to seize the country of Honduras as a private plantation. He gathered together some international gangsters like Guy "Machine Gun" Maloney, drummed up a private army, and invaded, installing an amigo as president.
The term "banana republic" was invented to describe the servile dictatorships that were created to please the banana companies. In the early 1950s, the Guatemalan people elected a science teacher named Jacobo Arbenz, because he promised to redistribute some of the banana companies' land among the millions of landless peasants.
President Eisenhower and the CIA (headed by a former United Fruit employee) issued instructions that these "communists" should be killed, and noted that good methods were "a hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker or kitchen knife". The tyranny they replaced it with went on to kill more than 200,000 people.
What cheap criticisms and reflexive cries of "anti-Americanism" do is keep the discussion at the surface level, the better to muddle the substantial sociopolitical issues that might inform the antipathy of this or that individual. I mean, none of this destructive interference is a closely guarded secret; it's been going on for generations, to the point where, as Hari points out, phrases like "banana republic" become an uninformed cliché. But it means a bit more to the people who have had to endure the brunt of those policies.
The notion that we (or anyone) should be automatically inoculated from all dissent, that people are not only supposed to just forget decades of systematic expropriation and murder, but are also expected to put our interests before their own, is not automatically bad. It just displays a profound failure to understand human nature.
Hopeless
Those who make a living flirting with catastrophe develop a faculty of pessimistic imagination, of anticipating the worst, that is often all but indistinguishable from clairvoyance.
-- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Give disease so the swine will marry and propagate lies.
Tough luck for elected officials. The beast you see got fifty eyes.
Bring it on home. Spread the wealth. Play it cool, the hand's been dealt.
Now all the odds are in our favor. Save the victory speeches for later.
-- Clutch, The Mob Goes Wild
At first, inexplicably, I was ready to give Hillary Clinton some benefit of the doubt in her tactless invocation of RFK's assassination. The point seemed clear -- Democratic primaries are sometimes so contentious, they run into June. Of course, none of the previous ones have ever run this long; comparatively, this probably should have been settled back in February, or maybe even late '07. Still, the point seemed innocuous enough, if inaptly phrased.
But the more you think about it, the more you recall that very little that emanates from the Clintons is ever accidental; they perfected the black art of focus-group-driven triangulation, the both of them, always adding a theatrical cherry of rhetorical anguish on top. They loved them some gay folks, until that two-ply bumwipe DOMA got drafted. Bill was all about those rights for the humans when Milosevic got uppity, even though just a couple years prior, he sold the Turks artillery so's they could level a few thousand Kurdish villages, killing far more people than Milosevic actually did. When Srebrenica happens in a day, it's a certifiable atrocity; when it happens over the course of months or years, it hardly gets noticed. Cost of doing business, really.
Obviously it's not hard to find episodes of situational ethics from the Clintons' political history; indeed, moral convenience is the grease of political ascension in every party and every country. The fact is, despite our surface cynicism and misanthropy, we are still loath to ascribe truly morally craven impulses to persons who would aspire to bekingpreznit. This is more of a cringing from the mirror than any true moral purity.
But when cast against the antics of the past two primary weeks, Clinton's comment seems especially abysmal, at least in phrasing and timing, if not explicit intent. Look, we can sniff the quals of the Appalachian mossbacks all the doo-dah day, and make our PC pretenses at avoiding the easy stereotyping of inbred hicks hatin' them some nigras. But the fact of the matter is that Clinton carried Kentucky and West Virginia by 2:1 margins, and nowhere to be found was even an anomalous townie willing to stick up for Obama, though the media lives for such cooter-bites-dawg narratives, 'specially come horse-race season. The most notable aspect of the KY and WV primaries was the proportion of Clinton voters asserting their willingness to vote McCain rather than Obama, as if wishing to affirm everyone else's assumption that these idiots would rather fuck a knothole than pay attention.
Bottom line though -- what the hell is wrong with those people, and what the hell is wrong with her? She's not remotely stupid; she knows exactly what she's saying, and what it means to her remaining marketing niche. It's not that complicated. It could have been entirely accidental, and in fact probably was. But it's of a piece with everything else the Clintons have said and implied throughout the primaries, at least once her inevitability was undone.
She has been backed into a corner where literally her last best hope is to cater to a subset of spiteful, withered crackers, people who detested her and her husband a decade ago. Her bumptious technocratic refrains mean less to many of these people than the quadrennial opportunity to once again affirm their baseless assumptions and validate their toxic insecurities, apparently based on whatever chain e-mail has been passed into their Outlook box.
It should be less of a concern that HRC might damage her career or her party -- how many Republican congressmen have to be caught wearing diapers with hookers or trying to molest teenage pages before their edifice crumbles? -- than the fact that once again, instead of disempowering and/or forcefully repudiating the stultifying ignorance these lapel-pin/apostate Muslim goobers exhibit routinely, they are once again catered to as a coveted demographic niche.
This is less about her "mistake" in particular, and more about what her campaign has left to offer at this point. She's hoping to stick around just long enough for the lawyers to intervene and fuck everything up, which is as Bushian as you can get, while she stokes classist and racist resentments, which is as Nixonian as you can get. All that's left for her is the prize itself since, win or lose, her credibility is pretty much shot. Politics is full of animals who will do literally anything to win, but rarely does it seem to come quite so naturally.
-- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Give disease so the swine will marry and propagate lies.
Tough luck for elected officials. The beast you see got fifty eyes.
Bring it on home. Spread the wealth. Play it cool, the hand's been dealt.
Now all the odds are in our favor. Save the victory speeches for later.
-- Clutch, The Mob Goes Wild
At first, inexplicably, I was ready to give Hillary Clinton some benefit of the doubt in her tactless invocation of RFK's assassination. The point seemed clear -- Democratic primaries are sometimes so contentious, they run into June. Of course, none of the previous ones have ever run this long; comparatively, this probably should have been settled back in February, or maybe even late '07. Still, the point seemed innocuous enough, if inaptly phrased.
But the more you think about it, the more you recall that very little that emanates from the Clintons is ever accidental; they perfected the black art of focus-group-driven triangulation, the both of them, always adding a theatrical cherry of rhetorical anguish on top. They loved them some gay folks, until that two-ply bumwipe DOMA got drafted. Bill was all about those rights for the humans when Milosevic got uppity, even though just a couple years prior, he sold the Turks artillery so's they could level a few thousand Kurdish villages, killing far more people than Milosevic actually did. When Srebrenica happens in a day, it's a certifiable atrocity; when it happens over the course of months or years, it hardly gets noticed. Cost of doing business, really.
Obviously it's not hard to find episodes of situational ethics from the Clintons' political history; indeed, moral convenience is the grease of political ascension in every party and every country. The fact is, despite our surface cynicism and misanthropy, we are still loath to ascribe truly morally craven impulses to persons who would aspire to be
But when cast against the antics of the past two primary weeks, Clinton's comment seems especially abysmal, at least in phrasing and timing, if not explicit intent. Look, we can sniff the quals of the Appalachian mossbacks all the doo-dah day, and make our PC pretenses at avoiding the easy stereotyping of inbred hicks hatin' them some nigras. But the fact of the matter is that Clinton carried Kentucky and West Virginia by 2:1 margins, and nowhere to be found was even an anomalous townie willing to stick up for Obama, though the media lives for such cooter-bites-dawg narratives, 'specially come horse-race season. The most notable aspect of the KY and WV primaries was the proportion of Clinton voters asserting their willingness to vote McCain rather than Obama, as if wishing to affirm everyone else's assumption that these idiots would rather fuck a knothole than pay attention.
Bottom line though -- what the hell is wrong with those people, and what the hell is wrong with her? She's not remotely stupid; she knows exactly what she's saying, and what it means to her remaining marketing niche. It's not that complicated. It could have been entirely accidental, and in fact probably was. But it's of a piece with everything else the Clintons have said and implied throughout the primaries, at least once her inevitability was undone.
She has been backed into a corner where literally her last best hope is to cater to a subset of spiteful, withered crackers, people who detested her and her husband a decade ago. Her bumptious technocratic refrains mean less to many of these people than the quadrennial opportunity to once again affirm their baseless assumptions and validate their toxic insecurities, apparently based on whatever chain e-mail has been passed into their Outlook box.
It should be less of a concern that HRC might damage her career or her party -- how many Republican congressmen have to be caught wearing diapers with hookers or trying to molest teenage pages before their edifice crumbles? -- than the fact that once again, instead of disempowering and/or forcefully repudiating the stultifying ignorance these lapel-pin/apostate Muslim goobers exhibit routinely, they are once again catered to as a coveted demographic niche.
This is less about her "mistake" in particular, and more about what her campaign has left to offer at this point. She's hoping to stick around just long enough for the lawyers to intervene and fuck everything up, which is as Bushian as you can get, while she stokes classist and racist resentments, which is as Nixonian as you can get. All that's left for her is the prize itself since, win or lose, her credibility is pretty much shot. Politics is full of animals who will do literally anything to win, but rarely does it seem to come quite so naturally.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Members Only
Proving once again that we may need to hold a national telethon to find a cure for fuckface-itis, Lieberman continues the epic calumniation of his former party and protégé:
This is slimy beyond belief. It's just this week's iteration of the "appeasement" bullshit Bush shoveled on the Knesset last week. It is incontrovertible that the majority of Democrats signed on to Bush's plan well in advance of the invasion, and uttered nary a peep for well over a year. Even in 2004, when Bush postponed the initial siege of Fallujah from April to October, so he'd look tough come election time while his Texas butt-boys were swiftboating Kerry, most of the opposition was rhetorical at most.
The fact of the matter is that the Democrats did not oppose and confront Bush nearly enough in 2002. Everyone knew what the events of that summer were leading to; the more obnoxious proponents had a cats' chorus of "and there's not a goddamned thing you [traitorous liebruls] can do about it" providing the beat to their nonsensical -- and now throughly debunked -- arguments.
But Lieberman of all people should know full well that the opposition party failed utterly in doing even the basic parts of their job -- such as insisting on accuracy, accountability, probity, integrity. Instead, pallets of shrink-wrapped Franklins were dropped in the fucking desert while conservatard mezzofanucs vetted their subordinates in the occupation effort by asking them how they felt about Roe v. Wade. And Rumsfeld cracked wise about any and all questions and misgivings regarding his colossal clusterfuck. Indeed, Senator Lieberman, this is the rock from which true leadership is hewn. Fucking bozo.
At some point, it occurs to sensible people -- though certainly not Lieberman -- that opposition to Bush can also be understood as opposition to incompetence, to ineptitude, to the indifference that can only come to someone who has never had to be responsible for a single goddamned thing he's done in his life. And in his eagerness to ratfuck Obama, Lieberman might as well just publicly ask McCain for a cabinet position or veep slot, or whatever the hell he's after here. Just be done with it already, and in the meantime, could Harry Reid grow a pair and kick this mendacious fuck out of every committee chairmanship already? Say what you will about the Republicans, they wouldn't put up with this happy horseshit for a nanosecond.
Really? How many is "too many"? Who are the members of this fifth column, and in what way have they become confused between our friends and our enemies? In what way, given how Bush has lawndarted the country in a bewildered, ignorant stammer for over seven years so far, are the citizens of this country -- much less the countries he's willfully invaded -- supposed to regard him as more of a "friend" than an "enemy"? He sure hasn't done me or mine any fucking favors.
Take a tip from Ronald Reagan, folks -- simply ask yourself if you're better off now than you were four years ago, and put it up against what McCain might bother to change out of all that, to the extent that he (or anyone else) can change. He's going to continue the current Gilded Age economic policies, since too many people have huffed the free-marketeer doxologies that dictate that the less we tax the super-rich, the more money magically lands in all of our pockets. Any guesses as to who might bankroll those happy PR write-ups? Do we understand the clear vested interest that the corporate owners of media entities have in government policy, or are we content to thumb our dicks, watch Deal Or No Deal, wait for that winning lottery ticket, and wonder why shit never rolls our way?
And McCain, despite his almost theatrical repudiation of the Jew-baiting evangicarnies mucking up the big tent with their megachurch blocs, is practically guaranteed to endorse a socially conservative rollback on the usual issues, the better to keep an otherwise broken populace addled with incoherent fears of sodomy and Harry Potter in the classrooms.
One group that seems not to be buying into Holy Joe's Republitard hosannas is, well, Arizona Republicans.
Hee hee. They'd probably be better off digging up the mummified carcass of Bebe Rebozo than trotting out Li'l Lord 28%, but they certainly don't need my advice. They don't need no water, let the muthafucka burn. As long as they take Connecticut's Taint with them.
The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
This is slimy beyond belief. It's just this week's iteration of the "appeasement" bullshit Bush shoveled on the Knesset last week. It is incontrovertible that the majority of Democrats signed on to Bush's plan well in advance of the invasion, and uttered nary a peep for well over a year. Even in 2004, when Bush postponed the initial siege of Fallujah from April to October, so he'd look tough come election time while his Texas butt-boys were swiftboating Kerry, most of the opposition was rhetorical at most.
The fact of the matter is that the Democrats did not oppose and confront Bush nearly enough in 2002. Everyone knew what the events of that summer were leading to; the more obnoxious proponents had a cats' chorus of "and there's not a goddamned thing you [traitorous liebruls] can do about it" providing the beat to their nonsensical -- and now throughly debunked -- arguments.
But Lieberman of all people should know full well that the opposition party failed utterly in doing even the basic parts of their job -- such as insisting on accuracy, accountability, probity, integrity. Instead, pallets of shrink-wrapped Franklins were dropped in the fucking desert while conservatard mezzofanucs vetted their subordinates in the occupation effort by asking them how they felt about Roe v. Wade. And Rumsfeld cracked wise about any and all questions and misgivings regarding his colossal clusterfuck. Indeed, Senator Lieberman, this is the rock from which true leadership is hewn. Fucking bozo.
At some point, it occurs to sensible people -- though certainly not Lieberman -- that opposition to Bush can also be understood as opposition to incompetence, to ineptitude, to the indifference that can only come to someone who has never had to be responsible for a single goddamned thing he's done in his life. And in his eagerness to ratfuck Obama, Lieberman might as well just publicly ask McCain for a cabinet position or veep slot, or whatever the hell he's after here. Just be done with it already, and in the meantime, could Harry Reid grow a pair and kick this mendacious fuck out of every committee chairmanship already? Say what you will about the Republicans, they wouldn't put up with this happy horseshit for a nanosecond.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.
Really? How many is "too many"? Who are the members of this fifth column, and in what way have they become confused between our friends and our enemies? In what way, given how Bush has lawndarted the country in a bewildered, ignorant stammer for over seven years so far, are the citizens of this country -- much less the countries he's willfully invaded -- supposed to regard him as more of a "friend" than an "enemy"? He sure hasn't done me or mine any fucking favors.
Take a tip from Ronald Reagan, folks -- simply ask yourself if you're better off now than you were four years ago, and put it up against what McCain might bother to change out of all that, to the extent that he (or anyone else) can change. He's going to continue the current Gilded Age economic policies, since too many people have huffed the free-marketeer doxologies that dictate that the less we tax the super-rich, the more money magically lands in all of our pockets. Any guesses as to who might bankroll those happy PR write-ups? Do we understand the clear vested interest that the corporate owners of media entities have in government policy, or are we content to thumb our dicks, watch Deal Or No Deal, wait for that winning lottery ticket, and wonder why shit never rolls our way?
And McCain, despite his almost theatrical repudiation of the Jew-baiting evangicarnies mucking up the big tent with their megachurch blocs, is practically guaranteed to endorse a socially conservative rollback on the usual issues, the better to keep an otherwise broken populace addled with incoherent fears of sodomy and Harry Potter in the classrooms.
One group that seems not to be buying into Holy Joe's Republitard hosannas is, well, Arizona Republicans.
A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.
According to the Phoenix Business Journal, fundraiser set for this Tuesday in the city's convention center failed to sell enough tickets, leading to fears that the anti-Bush protesters might end up outnumbering actual attendees.
The new plan is for the Bush-McCain fundraising effort, which will benefit both the McCain campaign and the RNC, to be held in private residences in the Phoenix area away from media coverage.
Hee hee. They'd probably be better off digging up the mummified carcass of Bebe Rebozo than trotting out Li'l Lord 28%, but they certainly don't need my advice. They don't need no water, let the muthafucka burn. As long as they take Connecticut's Taint with them.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Uptight
This is just weird:
Jeez, you'd think everyone at your local hamburger joint or sandwich shop was a Homer Simpson in the making. Americans do have (compared to many other parts of the world) rather unhealthy relationships to food, money, time, culture, etc., characterized by impulse and indiscipline. But that's essentially the point of freedom -- each of us gets some latitude to figure it out for ourselves.
It's kind of amusing that Kass chooses this particular area in which to excoriate us for our animalism, thus exposing his more pertinent issues. There's almost an associative psychosexual frisson to the whole thing. But if anything (and I am most definitely a burger/sandwich/ice cream type of person), most people -- even children -- generally go out of their way with hand-held food to not look like slobs. This is one of those old-school cultural hangups, like some people have about the wearing of shorts, or the showing of feet and/or soles.
No doubt Leon would disapprove of Heidi Montag working a popsicle for all it's worth, essentially teasing her dickless, chin-cozy-faced douchey sidekick.
Eating on the street--even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat--displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. ... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.
Jeez, you'd think everyone at your local hamburger joint or sandwich shop was a Homer Simpson in the making. Americans do have (compared to many other parts of the world) rather unhealthy relationships to food, money, time, culture, etc., characterized by impulse and indiscipline. But that's essentially the point of freedom -- each of us gets some latitude to figure it out for ourselves.
It's kind of amusing that Kass chooses this particular area in which to excoriate us for our animalism, thus exposing his more pertinent issues. There's almost an associative psychosexual frisson to the whole thing. But if anything (and I am most definitely a burger/sandwich/ice cream type of person), most people -- even children -- generally go out of their way with hand-held food to not look like slobs. This is one of those old-school cultural hangups, like some people have about the wearing of shorts, or the showing of feet and/or soles.
No doubt Leon would disapprove of Heidi Montag working a popsicle for all it's worth, essentially teasing her dickless, chin-cozy-faced douchey sidekick.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
No Justice, No Peace
You know, when I first caught this headline, my initial assumption was that the prison sentence was for deluging the world with shitty boy bands. My bad, though they really should consider doubling the sentence.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Lightening the Loafers
I think this cinches the deal -- if Schwarzenegger can handle the gay marriage ruling here in Homofornia, then the rest of the manly men in Gawd's Own Party oughta should be able to.
He's exactly right, legally and morally. People (including myself) have given Ahnold a hard time here and there for some of his more meatheaded antics, but the guy was the biggest movie star on the planet not so long ago. You don't get to that point without understanding what motivates large groups of people, and here he iterates precisely that the reason this court ruling is pretty solid is because it restricts the ability of one group of people to impose their proprietary "morality" on another group of people, to the detriment of their basic rights. And that's why future initiatives in California's much-abused referendum process are doomed to fail.
But more than that, what was refreshing about Schwarzenegger's take on this was his personal observation. Essentially he's saying, "It's not my thing personally, but I've been to gay weddings, and it's not a big deal. There are more important issues."
Indeed, you would think that with two simultaneous wars, a tanking economy, and a fractious campaign to anoint the next schmuck who thinks they want to lead this dog-and-pony show, this would not even be a blip. But naturally, the focus instantly turns to how the timing of this ruling favors Saint Straight Talk, especially since Obama couldn't win California. Well, it doesn't help McCain here, except in the areas (such as, um, the one I live in) that were going for him in the first place. So McCain takes San Diego, Orange and Ventura Counties, and most of Central California and the Sacramento Valley. That's not nearly enough to take the whole state, especially in a demotivated Republican climate, especially in a state where the state Republican party leadership is probably a used-car dealer from Bakersfield and a staff of three. Seriously, these guys are fuckin' incompetent.
However, it's the perfect roughage for the constant ideological kampfers. Let's take a trip to ClownHall and see what their geniuses are up to, starting with convicted felon Chuck Colson:
This is unfettered nonsense. Maybe Colson should have read the Federalist Papers while he was in the joint, and better understood what the Founding Fathers meant by "the necessity of auxiliary precautions"; i.e., the need for checks and balances, not only between branches of government, but on the occasions of buffoonery the people tend to visit upon themselves.
What the predominately Republican California Supreme Court has said is that the "will of the people" cannot be used to deny basic rights to homosexuals any more than it can be utilized to disenfranchise women or keep slaves. There is never a shortage of yahoos begging for the chance to vote against themselves or for the stupidest tripe to be plastered against a brick wall, if they think it voices their need for tribal self-identification. The court recognized that, wisely using Loving as a precedent. What Colson and his cohort need to do, instead of wasting everyone's time and diddling with the Constitution, is just get over it and grow the hell up already.
Another ClownHall denizen takes a more snide attack on California itself, for having the temerity to upset the Gawwwwwd-uh! that lives in her head:
Heh. "Land of Fruits and Nuts". Never heard that one before. Listen here, Sweet Cheeks -- one in every nine Americans lives in California. The state is the sixth largest economy in the world. We get less back from our federal tax dollars than anyone else, because of all the fucking deadbeat states in flyover country, who apparently don't produce much other than "Jesus Saves" billboards, enormous balls of twine, and the kind of desperation that can only be produced by generations of failure and cultural stasis. What else could possibly be available in Cawker City, Kansas, besides a Stuckey's and poorly-given (if no doubt eager) blowjobs? So, you know, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, m'kay?
As for Plop 22, there was a funny -- no, hilarious -- pained missive on the local news station's viewer e-mail segment. (Unfortunately, no available link to the specific e-mail.) Out of six e-mails read, five were howling in dismay at what these black-robed despots had wrought, and how mad Jeezus was going to be about it. Really, I felt like getting them a tissue.
Anyway, one of these spiteful little goobers wrote in whinging about how she had put in so much work canvassing houses for Plop 22, how all her hard work was now for naught, blah blah blah. Lady, I hope it put corns and calluses on your feet, and 'roids in your pooter. I hope it keeps you up at night, for a while at least. And I can't wait for them to come back by my house this time around; neither I nor my (yes, female) wife will be nearly as polite as last time.
But really, more than the usual scorn and contempt, what I'm really starting to feel for these people is pity, because they're utterly wasting their lives, their time, whatever good fortune they've had in life so far, squandering it on something that means utterly nothing. Their time would be better spent making a house-sized ball of twine, than endlessly nurturing this pointless obsession of theirs.
Finally we have (for ClownHall) the voice of reason, Debra J. Saunders. Saunders, to her credit, voted against Plop 22 and as a libertarian on social matters, has no weird issues about the ickiness of pole-smokers and donut-bumpers. (In fact, with this crowd, the more vocal they are, the more likely that either they're closet-cases or they have gay children that they're embarrassed about.) So Deb's on the right track, but ends her (reader-rated) one-star column on a diminished chord:
Feh. You can't have it both ways; you can't take the path of moral bravery (given your party base's rhetorical constraints) for yourself, and then turn around and excuse the moral cowardice or stupidity of others on the same issue. This is awful weak tea, prognosticating that Californians "eventually" would have grown up and overturned the previous initiative. It's like the Lost Causers claiming that the former Confederacy would have "eventually" repudiated slavery on their own had that meddling bastard Lincoln not interfered. Some things simply do not deserve to be excused or overlooked.
Not that they won't try, but this is going to be a non-starter for the mossback theosophists this time around. This ain't 2004, fools -- people are broke and pissed, and the current Republican nominee is locked in an ideological embrace with the Worst Preznit Evah, even as he finds the balls to talk about "the change [we] deserve", using a pharmaceutical slogan to inappropriately position himself. [Correction: the "change" slogan is actually being put forth by House Republicans, not directly by McCain himself. It is no less hilarious for that. Perhaps they can put Tom DeLay's mug shot on the posters.] Change what, muthafucka? From Iraq to Iran, from younger and dumber to older and crankier, from a Pinto to a Pacer? Straight Talk might peel a couple of points from the "Gawd Hates Fags" contingent, but fuck 'em anyways. I don't want to find common ground with them, I'm just waiting for them to die off already.
In the meantime, congratulations to the gay peoples for the legal recognition of a formality which many of them had already been living de facto, and hopefully this small victory proves more lasting for you.
In a meeting with The Chronicle's editorial board on Friday, Schwarzenegger was asked to clarify his position.
"First, I have always said that for me, marriage is between a man and a woman," he said.
Then he added: "But I don't want to make everyone else go in that direction."
Schwarzenegger said he vetoed same-sex marriage legislation because he felt the Legislature shouldn't override voter-approved Proposition 22, which had defined marriage as between a man and a woman and was nullified by the high court on Thursday.
However, the governor said he doesn't necessarily feel the same when it comes to the Supreme Court overturning a statute enacted by a voter initiative.
"When the people vote, people are not legal experts, constitutional experts or any of that," he said. "I think that's why we have the courts. People may vote with good intentions, but then the court says, 'This is not constitutional.'
"It's not that the court interferes with the will of the people," he added. "But the court says, 'You voted for something, but it's not constitutionally right, so let's rework this.' That's really the idea."
While he supports the notion that same-sex couples should enjoy the same protections as heterosexual couples, the governor said same-sex marriage is not something that he has felt strongly about. He added that he has attended ceremonies for domestic partnerships.
He's exactly right, legally and morally. People (including myself) have given Ahnold a hard time here and there for some of his more meatheaded antics, but the guy was the biggest movie star on the planet not so long ago. You don't get to that point without understanding what motivates large groups of people, and here he iterates precisely that the reason this court ruling is pretty solid is because it restricts the ability of one group of people to impose their proprietary "morality" on another group of people, to the detriment of their basic rights. And that's why future initiatives in California's much-abused referendum process are doomed to fail.
But more than that, what was refreshing about Schwarzenegger's take on this was his personal observation. Essentially he's saying, "It's not my thing personally, but I've been to gay weddings, and it's not a big deal. There are more important issues."
Indeed, you would think that with two simultaneous wars, a tanking economy, and a fractious campaign to anoint the next schmuck who thinks they want to lead this dog-and-pony show, this would not even be a blip. But naturally, the focus instantly turns to how the timing of this ruling favors Saint Straight Talk, especially since Obama couldn't win California. Well, it doesn't help McCain here, except in the areas (such as, um, the one I live in) that were going for him in the first place. So McCain takes San Diego, Orange and Ventura Counties, and most of Central California and the Sacramento Valley. That's not nearly enough to take the whole state, especially in a demotivated Republican climate, especially in a state where the state Republican party leadership is probably a used-car dealer from Bakersfield and a staff of three. Seriously, these guys are fuckin' incompetent.
However, it's the perfect roughage for the constant ideological kampfers. Let's take a trip to ClownHall and see what their geniuses are up to, starting with convicted felon Chuck Colson:
In essence, these judges have created a new right out of thin air. Now, they base this decision, in part, on a precedent of the case in California declaring the ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional.
But over the centuries in Western civilization, public policy has recognized the vital role of the family—that the heterosexual family needed to be protected and defended in the law, because it provided crucial benefits for the well-being of society and family. That is different than a question of civil rights. Marriage always, everywhere until recent years, has been protected for the good of the state and the families.
Now, the problem is that the people of California cannot overturn this decision. Even an amendment to the California constitution will not help now. It all boils down to this: the need for a federal constitutional amendment—and soon, before other states start doing the same thing.
....
I guess I am not surprised by what happened in California. I have seen judges out of control for years. What I cannot fathom is how they would do it under the guise of natural rights. If the democratic process means anything, it means the consent of the governed. We cannot let the courts do this, or we do not have a democracy.
This is unfettered nonsense. Maybe Colson should have read the Federalist Papers while he was in the joint, and better understood what the Founding Fathers meant by "the necessity of auxiliary precautions"; i.e., the need for checks and balances, not only between branches of government, but on the occasions of buffoonery the people tend to visit upon themselves.
What the predominately Republican California Supreme Court has said is that the "will of the people" cannot be used to deny basic rights to homosexuals any more than it can be utilized to disenfranchise women or keep slaves. There is never a shortage of yahoos begging for the chance to vote against themselves or for the stupidest tripe to be plastered against a brick wall, if they think it voices their need for tribal self-identification. The court recognized that, wisely using Loving as a precedent. What Colson and his cohort need to do, instead of wasting everyone's time and diddling with the Constitution, is just get over it and grow the hell up already.
Another ClownHall denizen takes a more snide attack on California itself, for having the temerity to upset the Gawwwwwd-uh! that lives in her head:
By one vote, the California Supreme Court today rejected the expressed will of Californians to limit marriage to a man and a woman.
In 2000, a 61.4 percent majority of Californians passed Proposition 22, which limited marriage to a man and a woman and precluded California’s recognition of same-sex “marriages” consummated elsewhere.
....
The California Supreme Court has opened the door to a legal battle royal across the nation. Homosexual couples will flock to California to marry, return to their home states, and file lawsuits to force the recognition of their Land of Fruits and Nuts marriages—and the destruction of the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act.
Heh. "Land of Fruits and Nuts". Never heard that one before. Listen here, Sweet Cheeks -- one in every nine Americans lives in California. The state is the sixth largest economy in the world. We get less back from our federal tax dollars than anyone else, because of all the fucking deadbeat states in flyover country, who apparently don't produce much other than "Jesus Saves" billboards, enormous balls of twine, and the kind of desperation that can only be produced by generations of failure and cultural stasis. What else could possibly be available in Cawker City, Kansas, besides a Stuckey's and poorly-given (if no doubt eager) blowjobs? So, you know, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, m'kay?
As for Plop 22, there was a funny -- no, hilarious -- pained missive on the local news station's viewer e-mail segment. (Unfortunately, no available link to the specific e-mail.) Out of six e-mails read, five were howling in dismay at what these black-robed despots had wrought, and how mad Jeezus was going to be about it. Really, I felt like getting them a tissue.
Anyway, one of these spiteful little goobers wrote in whinging about how she had put in so much work canvassing houses for Plop 22, how all her hard work was now for naught, blah blah blah. Lady, I hope it put corns and calluses on your feet, and 'roids in your pooter. I hope it keeps you up at night, for a while at least. And I can't wait for them to come back by my house this time around; neither I nor my (yes, female) wife will be nearly as polite as last time.
But really, more than the usual scorn and contempt, what I'm really starting to feel for these people is pity, because they're utterly wasting their lives, their time, whatever good fortune they've had in life so far, squandering it on something that means utterly nothing. Their time would be better spent making a house-sized ball of twine, than endlessly nurturing this pointless obsession of theirs.
Finally we have (for ClownHall) the voice of reason, Debra J. Saunders. Saunders, to her credit, voted against Plop 22 and as a libertarian on social matters, has no weird issues about the ickiness of pole-smokers and donut-bumpers. (In fact, with this crowd, the more vocal they are, the more likely that either they're closet-cases or they have gay children that they're embarrassed about.) So Deb's on the right track, but ends her (reader-rated) one-star column on a diminished chord:
Mayor Gavin Newsom went on CNN to chide the fogies of the world who see this decision as a threat to civilization as we know it.
Newsom is right. America will not fall into the sea and Western civilization will not collapse.
In fact, this decision changed little. California law already has ensured equal rights for gays and lesbians. All this ruling did is change a name.
In short, there was no substantive reason for the court to rule as it did. And in jumping in too soon, the judges have created a permanent opposition -- similar to the permanent opposition to abortion laws -- that would not exist if California voters had changed the law for themselves, as they eventually would have done.
Which makes the George court's decision all that much more heavy-handed.
Feh. You can't have it both ways; you can't take the path of moral bravery (given your party base's rhetorical constraints) for yourself, and then turn around and excuse the moral cowardice or stupidity of others on the same issue. This is awful weak tea, prognosticating that Californians "eventually" would have grown up and overturned the previous initiative. It's like the Lost Causers claiming that the former Confederacy would have "eventually" repudiated slavery on their own had that meddling bastard Lincoln not interfered. Some things simply do not deserve to be excused or overlooked.
Not that they won't try, but this is going to be a non-starter for the mossback theosophists this time around. This ain't 2004, fools -- people are broke and pissed, and the current Republican nominee is locked in an ideological embrace with the Worst Preznit Evah, even as he finds the balls to talk about "the change [we] deserve", using a pharmaceutical slogan to inappropriately position himself. [Correction: the "change" slogan is actually being put forth by House Republicans, not directly by McCain himself. It is no less hilarious for that. Perhaps they can put Tom DeLay's mug shot on the posters.] Change what, muthafucka? From Iraq to Iran, from younger and dumber to older and crankier, from a Pinto to a Pacer? Straight Talk might peel a couple of points from the "Gawd Hates Fags" contingent, but fuck 'em anyways. I don't want to find common ground with them, I'm just waiting for them to die off already.
In the meantime, congratulations to the gay peoples for the legal recognition of a formality which many of them had already been living de facto, and hopefully this small victory proves more lasting for you.
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