Lie Hard

Is it finally, brutally, disgustingly obvious? Cheney, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay, John Doolittle, Richard Perle, et bleeping al are the Hans Grubers of our current political clime. They talk neophilosophy, but they're really only in it for the money.

Intelligent Design approach to bird flu

Could somebody tell our fearless leader we don't really have to spent all those billions fighting bird flu?

The way I understand it, scientists are saying bird flu is so virulent because it is a strain of flu that has evolved so recently human beings don't have any resistance to it yet.

But there is a significant percentage of the American People who don't believe in evolution. Therefore, they are probably not concerned about the effects of avian flu. Heck, they will probably spurn any newly developed vaccines against the disease, since taking them would put the lie to their stated rejection of evolution. We really only need enough vaccine for the people who accept the scientific theory of evolution. The ID people can use the same flu vaccines that have always been available. What a great opportunity for them to demonstrate their faith.

Elections Have Consequences

I remember John McCain, shortly after Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court, putting on his half-serious, near-smirk look and saying "Elections have consequences." This was his justification for the nomination of a man to our highest court who is obviously utterly unacceptable to half the people in the United States.

The remark is the answer of a brute, a bully party getting its way.

Now, looking at the devastation in New Orleans, the chaos caused not so much by the hurricane as by Bush Administration policies and actions, I hope the Democrats will be clear about this above all:

Yes, elections have consequences.

The Shame

When will the nightmare be over? When will that childman no longer occupy the White House? When will we collectively give our political heirarchy a bath?

James Wolcott reminds us yet again why we are ashamed of our country these days.

President Baby

I blame the London blasts on George W. Bush.

President Clinton treated Al Qaida as a police matter, a position so glibly derided by the neocons and their sheep. We know of some of the successes Clinton had -- the millenium plot the most spectacular. And always against the ridicule of the whacked right, being accused of wagging the dog.

Bush came in with his arrogant, stone-walling, stubborn "my way" approach, took his eyes off Al Qaida in favor of his own preciouis prize: Saddam Hussein. He squandered our country's reputation, our fortune, our precious soldiers' lives to get Saddam Hussein and let Osama bin Laden go.

George W. Bush got what he wanted, the rest of the world be damned. You have to look no further than his life story to understand it was bound to happen. The man seems to be a sociopath. He most certainly is as dangerous, with the power of the US Presidency, as Al Qaida -- if you count lives lost as the result of one or the other's actions.

Starve the Beast

A couple of months ago, I switched my satellite service from Directv to DISH. Directv -- owned by Rupert Murdoch and contributor to Republican causes -- will not get another dime of my money, anyway.

Tonight I switched my prescriptions away from Walgreens to a local pharmacist who does not let her pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions if they have "moral objections" to them.

I am one person. I will not kill the beast, but neither will I feed it.

The Republican Party is not the party for you -- and neither is the Democratic party.

A lot of people talk about the mystery of evangelicals running with the Republican Party when that party works against working-class economic interests. But I think in their best evangelical interests, religious right activists should leave the Republican Party. In the spirit of David Brooks giving advice to the Democrats, this is One Liberal's Advice to the true believers of the religious right:

There are two "religous right" subgroups, of course. One group is of the true believers who sincerely believe their vision of God (and often Jesus) is the One Truth, like it says in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, and the Koran. These people believe with the certainty of a cult in God's Law, the Day of Judgment, the End of Times, the Rapture, the Oneness and Allness of He-whose-name-cannot-be-spoken. What they know in religious terms is as real as gravity. There is no room for another interpretation (Satan calling) or incredulity (infidel alert). The other group is of astroturf believers. Believers in name only (BINOs) whose purpose is to channel the energies (action) and resources (money) of the sincere believers in whatever direction decreed by the BINO's masters.

Now comes the Democratic Party, which says: This is all very good, but people are entitled to religious freedom and we respect all points of view here.

Now comes the Republican Party, which says: Yes! You are the good people; the others are evil. We are on your side! Heck, we even believe what you believe. Come with us!

I wonder if, and soon, sincere true believers of the working class are going to realize that the Republican Party is not the party for them -- and neither is the Democratic Party. It is time to re-think: Is a political party the same thing as a club, a church, a civic do-gooder organization? What does any political party have the power to achieve in the United States?

The simple answer is: A political party in the United States has the potential power to change the law within the confines of the Constitution and even, at the extreme, to change the Constitution itself.

This seems like (and is) a big thing. Laws and arbiters of the law affect people's lives. Having Janice Rogers Brown judge your case makes it less likely you will obtain relief from injuries caused to you or your loved ones by a Corporation. Social Security "reform" means it is certain you will recieve less money when you start collecting benefits.

But there are some things the law cannot do, and these are the things sincere true believers (not BINOs) seem to be most interested in. The law cannot make people have no abortions. The law cannot make children trust bad parents. The law cannot make people stay in horrific marriages. The law cannot make people not be homosexual.

The law cannot make everyone else pretend to be like you, or at least shut up.

The world is a scary place, and everything is changing, and no one knows what is going to happen. The Republican Party is growing the fear, feasting on the fear. The Republican Party, in the hands of its present leaders, cannot help you.

When you join one political party (any political party) as a monolith and start shouting evil! to the others, you do not advance your cause. People with multiculteral minds cannot see you for your goodness while you are calling them evil, and face it: The multiculturals are multiplying; they are taking over the world, even if you cannot see this in your self-contained world.

Time to reevaluate your program. What do you want? To be a tool of a political party which will not achieve your aims for you because it cannot in a nontheocratic, free country? Wouldn't you have a better chance of getting what you really want by breaking free of political party -- especially since the people you seem so desperate to change do not belong to the party you have chosen?

Jesus meant a thing or two when he said "render unto Caeser." I believe, as so many early Christian teachers did, that staying out of politics was one.

On abortion: You cannot ban choice. Women have and always will chose abortion when they feel it is necessary. The only thing you can affect through law is whether they will be more likely to die or become sterile in their attempts.

On parental notification: Some children will always be afraid of their parents, with reason. Some children will be raped and impregnated by a parent, uncle, favored family friend. The only thing you can achieve through parental notification laws is compounding the spiritual and physical angiush a poor child in such a situation suffers. Did Jesus command you to add to the suffering of others?

On homosexuals: Homosexuals exist. Law will never change that. What you achieve through anti-homosexual law is societal unrest, injustice, and human sorrow. Jesus didn't talk about homosexuals, but he did talk about Samaritans and lepers, the "undesireables" of his day. He broke bread with them. He never said to persecute them.

To get your message out in a way that the people you are "talking about" might become the people you are "talking to," you must break away from political party and start speaking as a religious voice in the great tradition of American religious freedom. There may be less obvious power in it. It may be less grandiose and ego-flattering. But you will have a better chance of achieving results.

Choice in all things cultural is the only way. Real belief does not come from force but from education, enlightment, conversion. How will you reach across the divide with the ugly thing the Republican Party has become standing in the way?

Joining the Democratic Party is not the answer, either. Join parties and vote for candidates who will enact laws that make your and all American lives better where law is able to do so. Render unto God what is God's.

You must become apolitical in your evangelicalism, throw down the swords, pick up the ploughshares and till in the soil of the human condition.

Ayatollahs, Enablers, and Goons -- Oh, My!

Watching the John Bolton nomination debate on C-SPAN 2, it struck me: The Republican Party's turn to the Dark Side is complete. Every Republican can now be sorted into one of three categories: ayatollah, enabler, or goon.

John Bolton, obviously, is a goon. Tom DeLay is a goon.

Frist is an ayatollah -- too much of a wimp to be considered a goon.

The enablers fall into two subgroups, benign enablers and malignant enablers. Olympia Snowe, who once I admired, is a benign enabler; Ann Coulter is of the malignant persuasion.

It could become a parlor game, sorting these sorry excuses for American citizens . . .

In Some Dark Corners,The Enlightment Did Not Take

God Hates Lightning Rods

Christians used to believe that thunder storms and lightning bolts were directed by God to "discipline his servants and teach us important lessons," or they were directed by Satan ("the Prince of the Power of the Air") and his demons, or they were called forth by "witches" to "try and destroy God's holy sanctuaries and ministers. . . "

God Hates Vaccines:

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council. . .

Reverse Robin Hoods Redux

More steal from the poor and soon-to-be poor, give to the rich from the fascist Bush Administration:

From today's Talking Points Memo:

Is anyone listening to this?

In remarks yesterday before the Bond Market Association -- one of the hardest partying groups on the street -- Treasury Secretary John Snow explicitly linked the administration's efforts to cut the deficit to the push to partially phase-out Social Security. The logic of that statement points to only one conclusion: the deficits the administration has run up with upper-income tax cuts will be reduced by benefit cuts in Social Security.

It's not about strengthening Social Security; it's about cleaning up the mess created by the president's tax cuts.
-- Josh Marshall
(April 21, 2005 -- 12:11 PM EDT // link // print)

I Want Out

I want to move to Vermont and get out of the United States of Amalgamation. I want to live in the country I grew up in, where the libraries were open every day in every town, where no name-brand food was sold in any school cafeteria, where any good student in any school could plan on going to a good college. Where the ground was solid and the leaders tried to hide their marginal corruption. Where the unions were powerful and Republicans were weak.

Where a beast like Ann Coulter would not in a million years be considered for the cover of Time Magazine.

It was flagellation, I know

There is something very medieval about the Terri-orists, chanting, praying, emoting in the grotesque carnival they have made of her prolonged agony.

...the penitents went about, coming first out of Germany. They were men who did public penance and scourged themselves with whips of hard knotted leather with little iron spikes. Some made themselves bleed very badly between the shoulder blades and some foolish women had cloths ready to catch the blood and smear it on their eyes, saying it was miraculous blood. While they were doing penance, they sang very mournful songs about nativity and the passion of Our Lord. The object of this penance was to put a stop to the mortality, for in that time . . . at least a third of all the people in the world died.

Historian Jean Froissart, history of the Hundred Years' War

Where is the Christianity in all this melodrama? Wouldn't Jesus have contempt for these idiots?

This idolization of the body is the antithesis of Christianity. It disturbs me in all these "right to life" passion plays. Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life" -- this fixation on the human body, whether in the form of the unborn or the brain dead, is not Christian.

Maybe this is what is meant by the "antichrist", this twisting and inversion and perversion of everything Jesus was about.

Arnold + steroids

I didn't vote for the govanata. I voted against the recall.

But when Arnold came into office, I gave him the benefit of his press and thought, okay, he is an athlete, he knows about goals and the steps to get from here to there, and discipline. I thought that would make him a decent leader.

But we know now that was all lies, image. He used steriods to get that body, those "accomplishments". Which is fine, I guess. But it shows a willingness to cheat, to take shortcuts.

And he is doing that now with this reapportionment scheme, designed to take power away from his political enemies and give it to his political friends -- the steroidization of the ballot:

Are you a Repulican who can't get elected in California? Don't worry. Governer Ahnold is going to pump (clap) you up.

Sanctimony Schmanctimony

Michael Marone makes this pithy statement (among others) about some mythical progressive type he has in his brain. These are people he loathes not for their money, nor their leisure, but for their belief that one purpose of government is to provide for the common welfare:

Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt.

Which in my brain calls up something I have long thought about certain people, wealthy, connected, likely never in this world to feel lack, who believe that government should leave all of us to fend for ourselves:

Unaware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of entitlement.

Arianna Wisdom

I've been busy cleaning my garage and simply have neglected posting here.

In the interim till next time, I give you this from Arianna Huffington, which should not be necessary in a country with a decent public education system.

Media Artifact

In the coverage of Dean taking the DNC helm, hardly a story is filed without reference to The Scream. These references make me scream.

There never was a Dean Scream. It didn't happen.

Not in real life, anyway.

Everybody knows the scream was a glitch, an event that happened on television and nowhere else. It did not happen in the room where Howard Dean gave his speech while hundreds tried to hear him. Everyone knows that the din of the crowd drowned out the sound coming out of Howard Dean's body. But the unidirectional microphone picked up Howard and excluded everthing else.

It happened on television, but not in real life. It was a media artifact, obscuring the truth, much like patient motion artifact obscures the data in an MRI test, making it impossible to know what is truly going on in the body.

The media artifact was a better story (so what if it wasn't true) so it got told. Decisions were made on the basis of it being true.

How many media artifacts obscure our body politic these days? How many decisions are being made on the basis of artifact rather than fact? How long can the body of democracy stand it?

The Iconography Has The Power!

oh, yeah. 

credits

what he/she said

well put

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I didn't really watch The Game, the Annual American Holy Moment. I like the commercials, though I expected drivel this year in the wake of the Gestapoization of Things.

Drivel, yes. But don't forget the drek.

I'm sure many will rave about the commercial with the very-good-looking actors playing soldiers coming home, and all the thank you, thank you, thank yous, dissolving with feel-good smarm into the Anheuser-Busch logo.

I was caught up in the emotion of it -- till I saw that corporate logo. It made me think: The country, The United States of America, is gone; the Corporation survives.

The Corporation thanks the soldiers for their sacrifice.

et et redux

I was right as usual. We are headed back to the days of pre-revolutionary France. Are there no honorable Republicans left in congress to stand up to the new Mussolini? Because the Dems are reduced (by the American People, rabble that they have become) to whimper and discomfort signifying less than nothing.

Ex Post Epiphany

A thought is bubbling in my brain and pushing on my fingers. What follows may be crap. I may be on a Bushian yellow brick road, I admit, but this just hit me:

The pro choice position is the only successful strategy available to the anti-abortion crowd.

What is the real objective for anti-abortion loonies?

Wait. That is just the attitude that stops dialogue in its tracks, huh?

What is the real objective of anti-abortion people? I used to think they didn't want women to have abortions, and I still think the majority of them believe that's their main goal. I also think a lot of careers have been made in the Anti-Abortion Complex (much like the Military Industrial Complex, etc). The institutionalization of protest makes it hard for some folks to go home when the game is over. What would some people do with themselves if they had to live a normal life?

But let's step aside from the loonies and the hatemongers. I want to speak to the rational anti-abortion person who sincerely wants to stop abortions out of some supposedly altruistic mindset. (full disclosure: I believe in abortion on demand, that a woman should not have to be pregnant under any circumstances if she simply does not want to be.)

In that event, pro-choice is the only anti-abortion position that works.

Women have had, do have, and will always have abortions -- because they really don't for some reason want to be pregnant . It doesn't matter if god will hate them, it doesn't matter if you will hate them. It doesn't matter. They will have an abortion. Or they will hide the pregnancy and become actual instead of theoretical murderers as they visit the Dumpster after delivery.

This last paragraph is a statement of fact, the same as "rain falls from the sky to the ground" or "Tuesday comes after Monday."

Women will have abortions.

Women will have abortions no matter what.

No matter what god thinks.
No matter what the law is.

No matter what the law is.

Women choose, whether "choice" is legal or not. Women choose.

You must stop fighting the fact that women choose. Too much energy and resources are used up in that fight, and what do you get from it? Smug mouthpieces guarding cushy talk-talk jobs is only a piece of it.

Embrace the choice! If you really care about what you say you care about, don't work for laws that say rain will fall up and Tuesday will come before Monday. Work for laws that support motherhood. Make the world a better place for mothers.

Make the world a place where pregnant women choose to become mothers.

It might be harder work. But you know what? It might not be.

Pro-Choice is the only Pro-Life philosophy that works.

Putting the Jesus back in Xian

I'm telling ya, those jokers over at UCC are liable to reclaim my wandering apostate soul (by their actions, too).

Dirty Old Lady Alert

A few laugh-out-louds and a payoff for the dirty old lady in me at Gracie.

Things That Make You Go :Snark:

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it to be true.

I of the poor white trash childhood who spent my summers in libraries and my allowance on books, who read Faulkner too early and L'Engle too late, who was told by my husband that he had "married down" --

I knew all along there were "lots of us stone folk everywhere" as the stone man said in The Point.

And I will read until I die though I'll never be as educated as the next fellow.

tee hee

Which is better, the covers or the comments?

Wounds Heel

Editor & Publisher online indeed.

He added: "I'm wounded now, but, guess what, wounds heel."

Boxer's Rebellion

Sorry for the bad pun.

I've been too depressed about the election to post in a while. But I want to record here some thoughts about today's events, I fear for future reference as things become even worse.

I have never been prouder to be a Californian. Barbara Boxer's act today, to join in with the House members in protest of the tainted Ohio electoral votes was not meaningless, despite
Tim Grieve's conclusions over at Salon.

The Democrats in Congress are, yes, powerless these days. Listen to the derision in the laughter of the "get over it" crowd.

Things are bleak, and the road ahead looks full of woe. The forces for virtue recede, and the righteous seem to have lost their way. Hope is alive only in those who rise to speak Truth to Power, the last, bright weapon Brain has against Brawn.

It is when the voices for the powerless are all, at last, silent that meaninglessness comes.

Brava, The Honorable Senator Barbara Boxer.