RANDOM THOUGHTS

Make One Thing Sacrosanct in 2012…

2011-12-31T14:12:00.002-05:00

Another year is about to be come an irretrievable part of the past, joining all other years in memory, in the imagination.
It’s customary to make a wish for the coming year, and so I’ll make mine known here. In 2012 I would like a bill proposed to make the camera, whether a video camcorder or a cell phone’s tiny sensor an inviolable and untouchable personal possession.
Every time authorities block a camera’s view, or confiscate a recording device, they do so because they are about to do something they don’t want seen by others… they are about to do something wrong. No police officer, national guardsman, agent… -no one funded by my tax dollars has the right to cover their tracks by stopping someone from recording reality.
It would be great if there were a law on the books that protected the right to record, photograph and expose, -in a sense the right to bear a camera (the way many in America insist laws should protect the right to bear arms.)
Just a thought, just a wish I have for 2012.
Happy New Year.
-SJ

"You Can Get Jail Time for Killing a Child Molester."

2011-12-25T14:26:00.011-05:00

File that under the many things I learned this year, -another long year where at certain points I felt stupefied at all the things improbable that were made real. Some things I just learned over again, like making a proper Windsor knot before the Power Considine wedding, or the limitations of lenses in photographing moving subjects and even static ones.

Bin Laden was cornered and shot dead; -so much for ever-present, omnipotent Fu Manchu-like super villains twirling their mustaches. They can get shot in the head just like anyone else. As for the foreign policy and militaristic overreach they inspire or enable,
-that’s harder to kill. That’s our ongoing war to fight as a citizenry if we care to heed President Eisenhower's warnings.

I learned the battle against what we call Fascism will never end. Tomorrow’s "Dick Cheney" is out there, -he’s probably in college right now, learning how to be this century’s great offstage dictator, although like all his predecessors he’ll be missing some fundamental thing that’ll tip us off. He’ll have some inhuman reflex, -like the inability to not shoot his friends in the face while on vacation, -or that curious inability to smile without letting you know he’s the devil’s own.

I found out that American administrations can actually end wars and occupations, if that’s what they suddenly decide they want to do. The desire to "do" can uncomplicate things mighty fast. The Iraq war Xmas 2011 deadline was nice to be sure, but how about two Xmases ago? -Or three, or four.... I don’t know that there’s been any satisfactory explanation as to why now as opposed to earlier times other than vague statements about "stability."
Is it ever to early or too late to end a war that was started on a lie?
-No. Never.
Remember to say "Welcome home."

Currently News Corp. is embroiled in a phone hacking scandal centered on its disregard for privacy and civil rights, and Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are still referred to as people who work in the business of journalism? I found that the word "news"can be thrown at any enterprise; -kind of the way you can found a religion on the premise of a flying spaghetti monster, (or a dead Jewish rabbi-carpenter on a cross.) People can try and de-legitimize the legacy for the New York Times for its support of the Iraq War (The Left) or its relentless backtrack on the war and reportage on the Yellow Cake claims (The Right) but there is nothing as destructive to the concept of journalism as the fact the FCC will do nothing about the fact that Fox "News" Channel, includes the term "news" in its name and product description.
They are an opinion and disinformation network whose focus is Right wing, wealth-protecting elitist propaganda.
All they can do is deny it, as they deny so many other things on a 24 hour cycle.

Having a Black president and a Black Attorney general doesn’t mean the Constitution is any safer. The Patriot Act provisions were extended... And there’s that business of guns going to Mexico.

There are still a lot of stupid people loose in the world emboldened by the "me-too" culture of the early 1980s that continues today, bigger than ever. Misinformed people aren’t ever confronted if they are angry enough. Opinions are given the weight of fact. A lie can be given the same authority of a fact when no one has the guts to point it out. People’s stated beliefs are accepted as counter arguments to reason in America, -and around the world, religious fundamentalism continues to spread like a wildfire of cancers. People still focus and get fired up about stupid and inconsequential things. -Case in point, this blog, founded by MyCue 23 where we have discussed every subject under the sun, for better or for worse and drawn some heavy arguments from self-perceived adversaries, and people who just out-and-out don’t like what we have to say, has had one post that stands above all in terms of total numbers of visitors and vitriolic reaction:

This one from a while back you can access by clicking here.

You’ll note I didn’t bother responding to a single one of those replies because frankly, they speak for and refute themselves quite adequately. I was going to post a follow up to that post on his birthday called, "Michael Jackson: Baby Fucker." but whatever people may think about me or MyCue 23, we don’t post on here to upset or antagonize readers, even the people we don’t agree with. The fact that a post about Michael Jackson that points out the obvious problems with how his celebrity immunized him from due process of allegations (that for example recently ended the tenure of coaches at Penn State and Syracuse) drew such emotion and passion (and typographical errors) but not a single cogent argument against my notion that Jackson would likely have ended up in jail had he not been so talented, so famous and so wealthy (like many other celebrities and artists) really says it all, and frankly proves my point. I saw no need to write "Michael Jackson: Baby Fucker" this year.

Well, there’s always 2012...

But the greatest thing I learned this year, a small, precious thing I had long forgotten since I last marched on Washington DC in 1989, was the simple fact that the people have the power. For better or for worse. This year, in Wisconsin, in Cairo, in Athens, in downtown Manhattan, people defied every mechanism of control that manages our daily oppression and started a new era of defiance, freedom, visibility and citizenship that cannot be rolled back. I learned that the words I read in a comic book more than twenty years ago, were more than just an empty, theatrical threat, -but a suggestion as to what our responsibilities to each other really are as a society, and as a world.

A merry Christmas day, and happiest of holidays to you all.

-SJ

Over.

2011-12-21T11:57:00.003-05:00

Many will be home by Christmas. Iraq will begin a long drawn out process of assembling itself, possibly for the first time in the modern era as a centralized state and not a conglomeration of fiefdoms... -or not. They have a lot of dead to bury and account for.

I hope most of the armed services personnel can get on with life after being put in the service of an American administration’s opportunistic power grab disguised as preemptive foreign policy. The whole of government and the nation still owes these men and women an apology for risking their lives on a strange bet made by the Bush administration. The 9 year war in Iraq has now ended. It has ended after the spending of many more billions of dollars and after many more lives than were promised by President Bush in his stilted, laconic, bragging forecasts. No will hold him or the conflict’s true architects, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, accountable. They all got away with this crime free and clear. -That this war made millions for Dick Cheney’s friends in industry is never directly discussed, as if his refusal to answer any questions he doesn’t like could somehow operate as reasoning, justification, or policy.

The war is finally over Mr. Cheney. Thankfully, you and your Nixon-era cadre are finished too. I don’t think the country could survive another bout of what you call “keeping us safe,” incompetent, lying thieves that you are.

Merry Christmas.

-SJ

THEM.

2011-11-29T14:05:00.010-05:00

They’re Still at It. They’re not going home.

…Occupying this and that, over here and over there. OWS participants are annoying and scaring everyone from formerly unconcerned stock traders who “don’t know what everybody’s so mad about,” to minimum-wage janitors who work at corporate banks and wish that the great unwashed sitting at Zuccotti Park would just all go get a job and take a bath.

Even the cops’ frustrations are hitting an existential boiling point as they aggressively defend the dignity and peace of mind of a transnational financial community that has no empathy and less in common with their own way of life than people in their own economic strata, like those girls they are cowardly pepper spraying on occasion. Cops aren’t as stupid as everybody likes to pretend. They know what happened to their 401Ks while the banks returned to profitability on their own dutifully paid individual income tax funded bailout since 2008. Cops know that not a single institution on Wall Street will ever stand with them when it’s time to fight for the raises and pensions of policemen... Yet they continue to follow orders that amount to open and violent transgressions against the right to assemble and the right to dissent in our republic, conveniently forgetting that even the police have to occasionally take to the streets to fight for their own rights and be heard. Even cops are “labor” in the end. It’s an odd wrinkle of hypocrisy in America that persists generation after generation.
For all the calculated misinformation about what this, now nationwide, action is about (It’s been called “unfocused,” “aimless,” “infantile,” “disingenuous,” by the Right and by the Left) it seems pretty obvious that among the several things the OWS participants want are: the elimination of corporate and banking institutions from our political and electoral processes, and law enforcement and criminal prosecution (as opposed to negotiated fines paid with money illegally gained in the first place) every time transnational banks break the law.

-The fact that there are so many things that are wrong and frankly criminal about the way transnational and high finance (and the Wealthy 1% they serve) do business was somehow presented as a failing on the part of their critics by the media, the New York Times in particular is the very height of protectionist denial on the part of the American ruling class. It is intentionally disingenuous and broken reasoning: Citing that an argument is unfocused or groundless because it isn’t “concise”… The problems that OWS’s argument addresses are composed of too many crimes to lay down in convenient sound bites for our collective idiot mind. OWS’s target and their focus on its abuses cannot be processed by CNN in its current form, and it will never be reported honestly by Fox “News” or any other corporate news outlet.

Amid the media’s own aimless story-hungry opportunism, it’s important to assert that this is no “let’s-pretend-the-60s-never-ended exercise.” The counter culture of the 1960s and the goals of the civil rights era have long been absorbed into the mainstream in everything from our systems of daycare, anti-discrimination laws, to the way we teach history, to recycling laws, to HR policy in the workplace. OWS isn’t a rehash; it isn’t leftie or progressive nostalgia or make-believe. OWS is a direct and public assault on institutionalized financial oppression. It is an assault led by the people directly affected, past, present and future.

As much as the GOP’s branded mouthpieces for the wealthy want to pretend that OWS is just a long running prank, they know it’s not. It makes them scared. It scares them because this isn’t the fake populism of the Tea Party, which at its heart is codified by concerns and policy arcs that were never important to its members until a Black man suddenly became president. The elite, the 1% are now names that are gaining permanent traction. We used to just call them the Rich. We used see through nonsense like the Bush (43) and Clinton era series of tax cuts for the wealthiest in America. We used to have a middle class. We used to have a manufacturing economy stateside, -not an offshore community of international vendors whose disregard for workers’ rights would make Upton Sinclair draw a gun.

Who didn’t know it would go this way after the deregulation policies of the Reagan, Clinton, Bush (43) years? –There’s not a single man, woman or child alive who knows the value of a dollar, or more importantly, -the horror of its absence, who didn’t see something like this coming. Flint Michigan’s collapse in the 1980s was the first of many to fall to an industry that used its Reagan era tax breaks and subsidies to automate -not hire. Reagan’s successor raised taxes to stem the tide in an act of sober politically imperiling responsibility we’ll probably never see again. Clinton signed the erosion of media ownership restrictions into law, thereby laying waste to local news as we knew it, allowing a damaging consolidation of jobs and establishments we’re only now assessing in its proper horrific scale after the move to online finished what the corporate takeovers didn’t. If Clinton thought we could afford the tax breaks he signed over to the %1, he should have looked further beyond the great budget surplus his administration successfully wrought in the 1990s to what was happening on Wall Street: the rise of wildly conditional instruments like derivatives that combined with the tech speculation bubble collapse of 2000 would bring in one of the toughest periods of my adult life here in New York.

We’ve seen these OCCUPY park encampments in history books and soon, with a generation of vets returning to at best a jobless recovery, the OCCUPY camps will be less of a political statement and more of an inarguable consequence of 30 years of policy. Once upon a time these encampments, these occupations were called “Hoovervilles.” They were consequences of the Great Depression.

It’s interesting that whenever we are under threat by the rich, elite, ruling class of old money monsters who engineer misery in America, whenever some big scam is about to be perpetrated that will cost many lives, like the Iraq War Dick Cheney concocted with the political inertia appropriated from 9/11, our theatrical hatred for the French is always dragged back out of the steamboat trunk, dusted off and resurrected at fever pitch. It’s a wonderful distraction and it works every time. I’m waiting for it to come up again, now that legitimate people movements are being completely dismissed again as simply “socialist” and “un-American” agitation. Our very notions of Right and Left politics come out of the ashes of the French Revolution. I hope this time people pause and give some thought to the image of Marie Antoinette’s head sailing into a basket as crowds cheered.

At the heart of it all, the banks protected themselves with our tax money, used every politician in government they had bought outright to engineer interest free loans to protect themselves and safeguard their way of business. No Bank EVP’s job will ever be off-shored, -no- that’s for the rest of the suckers at the bottom of the food chain in America who have interest rates imposed on them from on high… you know: me and you and everyone we know.

-They, the occupiers, students, the protesters, the children of the now eroded and all but imaginary middle class -and let’s face it, despite the New York Post’s campaign of lies, -the actual poor, are still at it. They are still assembling in my downtown right near the old house of Morgan. They are still at it in Boston, LA, Oakland and by the way, “they” have never stopped where it all started, in Wisconsin. “They” are not stopping anytime soon, because they have a lot of outrage to dish out, a little over two hundred years’ worth.

“Only in New York” they used to say about anything crazy or uncommon… but remember this current wave started in the mid-west when THE people decided to remind Governor Walker that he and the state legislature were only guests in the capitol. They came with sleeping bags and showed them.

They showed them that “they” are us.
-SJ

Rest in Peace Champ

2011-11-08T12:37:00.000-05:00

In honor of the great Joe Frazier, who passed away yesterday, I'm reprinting something I wrote back in 2006.

Ali-Frazier III. The Thrilla in Manila. The final meeting of boxing titans. Ali had christened the fight in his then famous "poetry". He said, "It's gonna be a killer, and a chiller and a thrilla when I get the gorilla in Manila." As if the fight needed any more buildup, Ali decided to dub Frazier the gorilla, which did nothing to lessen the already substantial animosity from the Frazier camp. On October 30, 1975 Ali and Frazier would wage the greatest heavyweight fight of all time. The battle was so monumental that neither man would ever be the same again. They left not only their blood and guts in the ring that night, they left whatever was left of their youth as well.Ali and Frazier fought for the first time on March 8, 1971. The fight that was billed as the fight of the century and lived up to that billing. It was quite possibly the greatest sports spectacle of the century. It featured the first meeting of undefeated heavyweight champions. Ali was coming back from a three year layoff after having his title stripped and being prohibited from boxing due to his refusal to enter the armed services. Frazier had stepped into the void created by Ali's absence and had won the title in the heavyweight championship tournament. Ali had a couple of tune up fights and declared himself ready to reclaim his rightful place atop the heavyweight division. Ali and Frazier were friendly during Ali's boxing exile, with Frazier even giving Ali money during a particularly rough stretch. Once the contracts were signed however, Ali began to taunt Frazier in public. He called him ugly and an Uncle Tom. He painted Frazier as the "white man's champion". He claimed to be the people's champion. He turned the fight into a battle between the status quo and the voices for change, between the old and young, between black and white, between rich and poor. Frazier didn't want any of it and he grew to hate Ali because of the taunting. The fight itself was an epic battle. Ali dominated the early rounds with his speed and his jab. Frazier, a notoriously slow starter came back in the middle rounds. The fight was fairly even as they entered the last five rounds of the fight. The years away from boxing had robbed Ali of his ability to dance around the ring for 15 rounds. As the latter rounds became more of a flat footed slugfest, the fight swung in Frazier's direction. Frazier knocked Ali to the canvas in the 15th and final round with a thunderous trademark left hook. Ali somehow managed to pull himself up at that count of 4, but the decision was never in doubt. Frazier had defeated him and could now lay rightful claim to the true undisputed heavyweight championship of the world.The second fight in the trilogy took place in January of 1974. Neither man was champion at that point. Frazier had been knocked senseless by George Foreman in Jamaica a year earlier and Ali had lost to a previously unknown boxer named Ken Norton. Both were at the crossroads of their careers. The fight was held at Madison Square Garden in New York, which was the same venue as their first fight, it had none of the majesty of that fight however. Ali continued to taunt Frazier and Frazier continued to build animosity toward Ali. They even tussled on Wide World of Sports while doing an interview with Howard Cosell. Ali was probably just acting, but Frazier was dead serious. The fight in the ring was neither as interesting nor as close as their first fight had been. Ali won easily, although Frazier did score with a number of punches. The fight was really the beginning of the end for Frazier. He would fight only four more times before retiring. Ali went on to fight 15 more times after the second Frazier fight.The third fight was supposed to be easy for Ali. He had just recently regained the heavyweight title from George Foreman in Zaire and Frazier was perceived to be at the end of the line. Ali didn't train heavily for the fight but Frazier threw everything he had into preparation. He wanted to shut Ali up once and for all. The fight took place at an indoor arena that had no air conditioning. Under the TV lights the temperature soared well above 100 degrees in the ring. The humidity was stifling. The only ventilation in the building was in the form of fans that were ineffective in battling the heat and only served to circulate the already searing air. Ali was confident as he entered the ring. He felt that he would be able to take Joe out in the early rounds. Joe had another thought in mind. The fight started in the familiar pattern of Ali - Frazier fights. Ali dominated the early rounds. He peppered Frazier with jabs and power punches that Frazier seemed unable to stop or dodge. The fight began to turn once again in the middle rounds. Frazier pinned Ali to the ropes and began to pound at Ali's midsection and score left hooks to the head. Ali tried his rope-a-dope technique which had been so successful against Foreman, but Frazier proved too smart an opponent to simply punch himself out. He was much more economical and precise in his attack than the outclassed Foreman had been. As the fight wore on Ali knew that he was in for a battle. In one of the clinches he said, "Joe, they said you were done", "They lied to you champ" was Joe's only response.The later rounds saw Ali's punches begin to take a toll on Frazier's face. His head became a misshapen lump of bruises. His eye were swollen and his vision became compromised. Ali seized the advantage. He produced pinpoint power shots to Frazier's head and started to build a lead. Frazier did not stop punching however. He hurt Ali on numerous occasions as the fight wore on. Ali was later quoted as saying that those later rounds were as close to death as he as ever felt. The heat and Frazier's relentless attack pushed him to the brink of quitting. His corner pushed him out for each round and he continued his attack on Frazier's face. A series of shots in the 13th round sent Frazier's mouthpiece flying into the crowd, but he never stopped coming forward, absorbing punishment, but also dishing it out. Frazier's corner wanted to stop the fight after the 13th round but he convinced them to give him one more round. In the 14th round a nearly blinded Frazier absorbed a vicious beating from Ali and his corner did indeed call it quits before the start of the 15th. In the tape from the fight, you can see Frazier arguing with his corner about stopping the fight, but in the end his trainer, Eddie Futch, had the final say. Frazier was so upset by that decision that he never spoke to Futch again. Ali, upon seeing that the fight was being stopped, got off his stool, raised his hand and then collapsed onto the canvas.Both men had absorbed a tremendous amount of damage in the fight. And while Frazier's face looked the worse for wear, it was Ali's body that had suffered the most in the fight. Ali always gave up his body in order to protect his face and Frazier exacted an enormous toll during the fight. Ali was under a doctors care for several days after the fight, while Frazier was able to walk away in generally good condition. Joe Frazier would once again lose by knockout to George Foreman in his next fight after which he retired. Frazier had a short lived comeback a few years later in which he fought only once, but basically his career ended that night in Manila. Ali said after the fight that he was going to quit and most people believe that he should have. Of course he wouldn't. He would go on to lose and then win the title one more time and he would suffer ignominious defeat at the hands of Larry Holmes in an ill advised comeback. Ali is now afflicted with Parkinson's Syndrome, which means that although he doesn't have Parkinson's he has all the symptoms of a sufferer of the disease. It's a more scientific term for what used to labeled "punch drunk". His speech has been affected to the point that he doesn't speak in public anymore. His limbs shake uncontrollably and his movement is limited. His continued boxing activity after that night in Manila is probably the main reason for his condition today.The thrilla in Manila was an epic struggle between two extraordinary fighters. Both men were past their primes, both had already secured their places in boxing history, both had nothing left to prove, but on that night they showed the world something more than just a championship bout. They were no longer fighting for the heavyweight championship, they were fighting for the championship of each other. They had split the first two fights and the winner of this fight could forever claim victory over the other. Neither of them was willing to give up that fight. They both fought to the edge of death to prove something, not to the world, but to each other. Ali won that night, but paid a heavy cost by continuing his boxing career. The effects of his decision to continue to fight have made him a shadow of the person he used to be. Frazier is still relatively healthy today and while he says that he harbors no ill will toward Ali today, there has to be a lingering thought in his head that perhaps by losing, he was the ultimate victor that October night in Manila. +

Really Pedro? Really?

2011-10-10T17:43:00.006-04:00

It was the emperor Servius Tullius, (6th king of Rome, technically an Estruscan) who invented the first census we know of. His reasoning, we are told, is that once you knew what you had in the way of families, males of a certain age, women, children etc. you could ascertain your potential as a nation, and also identify your limits and needs; As a ruler he could tell if he would have a shortfall of men to supply his armies with soldiers, or whether a growing population of aged, or infant classes demanded a need for food surplus to be generated or procured from foreign trade sources.

The Census is one of the great gifts (among many) that the Roman civilization’s ancient governments have given the modern world: The ability to know the size and characteristics of your nation’s population through tallies and demography.

But as John Madden once famously said; you can use statistics to prove anything.

As self-conflictingly Berra-esque as that statement of Madden’s playfully makes its curved point, its relevance to the science and practice of demography can’t be overstated in America. We are a Republic of districts, boroughs, counties, hamlets and parishes… it all makes about as much sense as the variegated shape and contours of baseball fields as equivalent platforms for playing the same game in principle.

Recently some surprising statistics leapt out of the National Census’s recent efforts.
“Whites” were seen as growing in the tallies accrued in 2010. Nothing shocking about that in and of itself except that it suddenly trended against the last several decades of demography. Upon further investigation, it turned out the increase was due to a nuance in classification; or more specifically an option in classification. Hispanics and Latinos are not recognized as a “race” by the Census. The Census forms explicitly say so. This of course flies in the face of centuries of institutional racism and conflict in the Americas, because anyone familiar with the word “Spic” would tell you it’s not a synonym for Yankee. There’s a wall being proposed to keep out Mexicans, -not Canadians.
The Census forms only allow for identifications of Hispanic Black, or Hispanic White, or Non-Hispanic White, or “some other race” where Hispanics are concerned. It seems Hispanics, filling out forms in the secrecy and anonymity of the enclosed world of their minds, were marking themselves down as Hispanic White, or White altogether.

It’s an ironic development in so far as one of the Census’ objectives is to allocate resources to communities at risk, or with special needs, such as English as Second Language classes for children of immigrants in hopes of assimilating them into the workforce and society more functionally, -more comprehensively. If it suddenly looks like there’s only “White” people in Spanish Harlem, the funds for that kind of schooling may never come to that district, to name one possible consequence.

I’ve always marked down “some other race.” I’m Hispanic: The cops and all the gatekeepers of all the places I wasn’t welcome in as a youth never let me forget it, so there I will spitefully stay on the Census form, if only out of respect for my younger self and all of his hassles. I can understand the allure of wanting to pass as a member of a dominant class, it’s an obvious one, with obvious benefits, and with some dark, nasty drawbacks because at the heart of this all is a capitulation to the old-world idea that race is biologically consequential or “real.” At the heart of all this is the belief that skin color itself and not the social reality that stigmatizes it that determines one’s future.
I know someday, we’ll all just insist on being human counted as “human.” Although I’ve somehow managed to see the election of an African American president, I suspect that other day is a much longer way off, when so many of us are willing to mark down a color as if it were some portent of winning some crazy game in which we know everybody loses eventually.
-SJ

Remember Those Orders, Officer.

2011-09-27T16:51:00.005-04:00

Officer, the next time the mayor tells you to go shove it, the next time they threaten to negotiate your contracts by firing masses of you and your fellow cops, remember all the kids you beat, remember all the girls you clubbed and shoved to the ground this past weekend. Remember all the people who you maced in the name of “order.” Remember all of the people you committed acts of violence against. Remember those people you hit in the face for exercising their right to assemble.

I don’t think you’ll so easily forget: it’s the people you are beating up.

Exactly who is it that you serve and protect, officer?
Who are you going to beat up over the nagging voices in your head?
Who are you going to beat up when you realize what end of the leash you are on?
-SJ

New Post.

2011-09-05T16:04:00.007-04:00

It's been months.

But I'm back and I'll try to remain as long as it's sane to do so or as long as I'm able, which will be hard to do any case. I'm lucky enough to be working full time in this America.

Times are bad, times are hard; not as bad or as hard as they've ever been for our scurrying clawing species, nor as bad or as difficult as they will ever be... but when the king and pope of the Nixon-era goons, Dick Cheney, walks about freely, talking about himself in whatever fictional set of reappraisals he thinks most flattering and exculpatory, and it passes for fact in the minds of the many dimwits who oppose only the things that don't make them feel good about themselves and their country...

You and I had better do something, because an entire generation of people in our armed services are either maimed or dying daily. It's happening right now, right this second. They are our best and our brightest by sheer numbers alone, and they are being sacrificed to secure the fortunes of the elite rich in this country and the various industries those elites control: industries that do not even make it a priority to create jobs for this nation. Haliburton's name never comes up on the subject of job creation, but they sure have gotten rich off of these wars by exploiting the manpower and lives of the world's most powerful and capable military. Never forget that military is made up of single, individual human beings who have forsaken their rights as individuals in trusting that the Pentagon, and the Congress it answers to will never send them into lethal conflict unless it is absolutely necessary to protect their nation.

The 2000s were not that long ago, friends. I'm not entirely convinced they ended, not in any way that really counts; Not with two wars, a bank-ruled economy and a new squad of candidates talking about God and protecting the interests of the Rich... not with Rupert Murdoch's vile corporation beaming its lies and propaganda to the gullible and the willing, while it's been making a mockery of those most basic of its readers' rights: privacy.

I'm just a writer living in the 21st century, and that's what I can do: write. I can point out problems, I can point out the criminals masquerading as administrators and politicians from my own subjective corner of the fray. Maybe the best I can do is point out one single problem over and over again.

This is a problem I first noted at the age of six, when I overheard at the dinner table that my mother was being exploited, not by some company or global corporation, but by another immigrant with a different vision, a fucktard eden of their very own in the suburban hinterlands, a cul de sac in Massapequah perhaps, all dreams fueled by theft. For this vision of a better life of their own, they (these contractors who approached unemployed single women at labor offices and the port authority) skimmed thousands of dollars from workers, paying them below their government mandated minimum wage, and pocketing the difference. When a RICO-justified raid shut down the factory that my mother had worked at, she had by then already put herself through college and was working as an office assistant for a non-profit public defense fund in lower Manhattan. I can tell you as her only child, that a single dollar would have made a difference in those early days, and those thieving motherfuckers took much more than that from her wages, a lot more.

Back to that single problem of ours... The problem is simple as are most problems that we really, (in our hearts if not our minds) actually want to solve. The problem is that we are always ready to exploit people far ahead of just leaving them alone. We're always ready and eager to make something off somebody, well ahead of just letting them be.

-SJ

USA! USA!

2011-07-16T11:20:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced that the US government has decided to recognize the rebel council of Libya as the official government body of that country. This will, in theory, lead to that body being able to get access to some of the funds of the Libyan government assets that have been frozen in foreign banks. I can't tell you how thrilled I am that our government is finally taking steps to recognize the legally elected representatives of the Libyan people...(oh, what's that you say, they haven't been elected by anybody). I'm sure that's just an oversight. At least when they get the money they will be able to provide the people of Libya with the resources I'm sure they so desperately need... (oh, what's that you say, they only want the money so that they can buy weapons to continue their civil war). Well at least the US government is setting a fine example for the Libyan people of supporting freedom movements all over the region... (oh, what's that you say, the US government has seen fit to ignore similar uprisings in neighboring countries like Syria where thousands have already been killed or imprisoned). Well at least the unfreezing of the assets can be viewed as humanitarian aid because it's not like we're at war...(oh, what's that you say, our drones sometimes fire rockets at targets). But since there has been no formal declaration of war and our President says that they have no real ability to harm our personnel that it doesn't qualify as war...(oh, what's that you say, just ask the family members of those that have been killed or injured by our rockets if they think we're at war).

Well, in conclusion, I'd just like to say that this move by the US to recognize the Libyan rebels is a wonderful example of how we seek to promote and strengthen democracy around the world. I couldn't be prouder (oh, and by proud I mean absolutely disgusted).

E Pluribus.

2011-07-08T14:10:00.009-04:00

The words, “People shouldn’t fear their governments. Governments should fear their people.” were a small cast off remark by the imaginary terrorist “V” in Alan Moore’s (we can hardly call it “dystopian” anymore, much of it has come true in ‘90s London and ‘00s New York) “V for Vendetta.” The first time I was enlightened by the glare of those ten simple words I was riding a subway train, reading them in a serialized British comic book. I shut the pages, afraid someone might be reading over my shoulder. That was in 1988, -but to quote the words of singer songwriter Jello Biaffra, “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem, Now.”

I had planned this post for the fourth of July, but my heart isn’t in it for theatrics or corny symbolism I used to employ on this blog.

All of the mid 20th century Orwellian projections of republics and “democratic” super states waging perpetual wars in order to enable governments to rule their people from above have come true in full measure. President Eisenhower tried his best to warn us about the confluence of our economy and our military. “Fear itself” as FDR rightly pronounced, is the thing to be afraid of… but not for the reasons he implied at the time. President Roosevelt was talking of the kind of fear that paralyzes a nation in the face of war; in the face of an expansionist adversary. On the contrary, we need to concern ourselves with “fear” of death that enables governments to justify any action allegedly committed in the name of national security… -because young people the world over are dying.

I’m seeing more and more homeless vets in my neighborhood park, some strung out, others harmed beyond any physical measure, unable it seems, to stand each other’s company. These soldiers came back “home” to extreme joblessness and in some cases absent families that had moved on without telling them. On one of my morning jogs, a 29 year old named Henry D*******z told me that he had joined the military in the fervor of his own personal patriotism, wanting to protect the nation he had immigrated to at five. But when he got to Afghanistan, and subsequently Iraq, he understood that his patriotism, his love of country couldn’t be applied in a conflict that had no front, no visually verifiable enemy. He told me that whatever his orders on patrol, it was tacitly understood by his platoon that anyone could be the enemy, and therefore everyone was. His experiences in wars, the attitudes he was forced to adopt in combat, went against everything he had believed in his whole life. His time in combat challenged all that the Catholic Church and the Constitution had taught him about the sanctity of life, and the inherent wrong of killing. Strangely, I’d never thought of the United States’ Constitution that way: as a thing that “teaches” us. All of my life, until Henry offhandedly described it as such the other morning, I thought of the Constitution as law, as blueprints for living fairly, rationally. It was humbling. It is as humbling as hearing Henry talk about his eight some odd years in uniform. At 43, I can never serve my country’s armed forces in any respect, and for the first time in my life, I’m wondering just what kind of citizen that makes me. I have no illusions about the glory of war, but I have to ask myself why I have been satisfied to let my peers, and now my younger counterparts risk their lives in military service, at the pleasure of various administrations, -both the corrupt and the impractically idealist, while I have gone about my life in a distinctly separate society.
It’s not a fear of death, because although I am as afraid of dying as anyone walking the earth, I would not hesitate to participate as a fireman, if my local government deemed it necessary to the safety of the community.
It is the subjugation of my will to the larger vision of a given administration’s plans for the nation and the world that I cannot abide. This is the great sacrifice every enlisted person makes for love of country, short of the ultimate sacrifice in combat, beyond which nothing more can be given.

I would never make a good soldier.
But someone has to.

I haven’t seen Henry since the Second of July. It worries me a lot. I found myself looking all around for him this morning as I went through my exercises. I worry, even though I know people disappear all the time in New York City. People move on, or are forced to relocate. But often times it’s something far more tragic.

This morning, one of the more vocal, volatile veterans, a pale young kid I’ve always avoided, who has tattoos creeping up his neck, was asked to leave the park by the rangers. These transient ex-soldiers are beginning to scare the shit out of the yuppies who have overrun the formerly Irish, Dominican, and African-American neighborhoods of upper Manhattan these particular soldiers emerged from. Truth be told, the remaining native holdouts of those ethnic neighborhoods, don’t want them either. The mere sight of them congregating by the GWB Port Authority bus location draws a lot of complaints. These are bums, addicts, homeless people everyone says: -The fact that they are veterans of still raging wars is irrelevant during rush hour. I hear some white collar worker complain of having to step over their sleeping bodies on their way to the token booth and I know that more than their stink, more than their unseemliness, it is the wars they represent that offend people who want to just “get on with their lives.”

This is wrong. What happened at Walter Reade was a disgrace, but what is happening under this administration dwarfs that negligence in a scale nobody is contemplating.

As with the Clinton administration, the Obama administration seems to ostensibly wear a cloak of beneficence. These administrations represent politicians and policymakers that at least care to say the “right” things to the country’s people. But aren’t we past the point of calling certain problematic things, -things they are not? The rationalization that the last administration started these wars is holding less and less weight, and the excuse that President Obama didn’t promise an exit, but an escalation of commitments in Afghanistan is unconstructive to the point of meaninglessness.

What’s so benevolent about an administration that is waging two, maybe three wars at once? -Nothing. It’s the persistent myth surrounding Democrats, to their detriment and at times to their benefit, depending on a given election cycle’s place in world history. Democrats are no less likely to let loose the military on any target compared to GOP-topped administrations. Democrats certainly seem to resist pulling out of conflicts, hopeful that they can bridge enough time until another succeeding administration ends up holding the bag.

There is no Anti-War movement in America anymore. While I could never be a part of it, because I don’t believe in pacifism, the Anti-War movement is an important perspective. The Anti-War movement has been successfully neutralized, diffused and rendered impotent by the media, and the calculated obfuscation of pundits on TV and Radio, who represent the rich elites who benefit or profit from the making of wars.

E Pluribus Unum, roughly translates to “Out of the many: one.” from Latin. It’s only recently, now that I have to see the people who have fought the current wars, and see them every day (I live across the Harlem river from the VA hospital in the Bronx) that I’m realizing that there’s something wrong with that ideal. Unity, is always a murderously selective enterprise for our human species. Historically, unity is always proposed in advance of some conflict, some enemy real, imagined, or as yet unidentified. Dividing and conquering is an ages old strategy, proven time and time again… but what of the collectivizing of humans into this aggregate body we call a nation? Doesn’t that makes conquest of a whole other kind equally possible? Equally inevitable?
What about this blind unity that gives us, (We the people) as much direct say in world affairs and the future of the world, as much freedom as a roaming blood cell has to determine its fate and purpose?

I wish the journalists would do their jobs and tell people what’s really going on. I wish someone would devote a single headline pronouncing the end of our Republic, and the birth of our new Protectorate now that, without much noise at all, the Patriot Act has been extended.

Somebody with the ability to make us listen and the skill to make us pay attention has to point out that our young people are still dying because of ongoing wars, even after they return “home.”
-SJ

Keep It Coming

2011-06-24T23:06:00.002-04:00

In recognition of the NY State Legislature taking a historic step toward equality today, I'm reposting something I wrote a few years ago. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.

The most disappointing moment of the 2008 campaign for me came when Joe Biden said that he and Barack Obama did not support the right of homosexuals to marry (it was even more disappointing than Obama's vote on the FISA bill). It can only be seen as ironic that in an election when the American people decided to elect an African-American to the highest office in the land, the voters in four states decided to deny homosexuals the right to get married. In California, even more ironically, African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for the ban. I am positive that neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden are opposed to homosexual marriage, but in order not to ruffle the feathers of the country, they took the more popular public stance.

This battle is very reminiscent of the bans against interracial marriage which were eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. In the case of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court stated:

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State." (Just as a side note, Alabama had retained their law against interracial marriage on the books until 2000)

According to the Supreme Court, marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man". However the bans against homosexuals marrying have been upheld in various court challenges. The highest court in New York basically said that the homosexuals cannot be given the same protection under the law because discrimination against them hasn't been recognized until the recent past.

The New York Court of Appeals held in 2006:

"[T]he historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. Racism has been recognized for centuries...This country fought a civil war to eliminate racism's worst manifestation, slavery, and passed three constitutional amendments to eliminate that curse and its vestiges. Loving was part of the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s... It is true that there has been serious injustice in the treatment of homosexuals also, a wrong that has been widely recognized only in the relatively recent past, and one our Legislature tried to address when it enacted the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act four years ago (L 2002, ch 2). But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind. The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude."

I do believe that in time this will become a non-issue. It's just a shame that the American people always seem to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into giving oppressed minorities equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court has usually has had to take the first step and I do have hopes that over the next 8 years, the Court will address this issue and lay it to rest once and for all. Here is what Barack Obama said in his now famous Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic convention:

"For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work."

And I would add that if there is one person or group who are having their "fundamental" rights denied, then we are all oppressed, even if my rights are not being infringed upon. Denying the fundamental rights of citizens to marry is separate from the fight for Civil Rights of African-Americans (and clearly less violent), but the right to vote, the right to live where you want and the right to marry who you want are unalienable rights that are essential to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, that according to the Declaration of Independence, we were all endowed with by the Creator. Eventually we, as a country, realized that denying basic rights to an entire group of citizens based on something as arbitrary as skin color was wrong. I hope for the day when we as a country will realize that denying the fundamental rights of any minority group makes us smaller and uglier in the eyes of history. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was implemented to protect the rights of former slaves, but it should be applicable to every citizen regardless of their race, color, creed or sexual preference. The 14th Amendment, Section 1:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Let's See Some ID

2011-05-25T23:54:00.000-04:00

Image via WikipediaI wrote a piece back during the first month of President Obama's term that laid out the four things that I wanted him to accomplish. I was under no allusion that the administration was paying attention to my blog, but I figured it was worth the effort at the time. Of the four issues I mentioned, only one (health care) has been addressed in any significant way. Just as a refresher to all those who weren't followers of this blog at the time, the other three issues were Afghanistan, education and restoration of the Constitutional rights that were taken away under the previous administration.

I understand that logistics have gotten in the way of any significant change in Afghanistan, so I'm willing to give the President a pass on that one. I still don't believe that we have a real exit strategy or that our troops are doing any good, but I understand the difficulty in removing an army that is propping up a puppet regime. However, the fact that education hasn't even gotten so much as a passing mention does not make me particularly happy. And the rolling back of rights that are guaranteed under the Constitution, well let's just say that this administration has apparently decided that it likes being able to eavesdrop on our conversations, detain us without due process and ship us off to other countries for "questioning" if it feels it's necessary. This is from the same President who said during his inauguration speech that the choice between safety and our ideals is a false one. Apparently he changed his mind.

All that being said, I am totally on board with the President's mission of changing the tone of Washington. He has tried time and time again to reach out to the opposition. He has made so many concessions that some of his supporters have doubted his conviction to progressive ideals. I never have (okay, I may have wavered a bit during the health care debate). Despite all of the in fighting and political horse trading that has gone on during this administration, I always felt that the President was at least speaking truthfully or as truthfully as he could, to the American people. This week, however, I believe that he has crossed the line. In speaking about the continued NATO action in Libya, he said that US would always intervene when it saw the leader of a country harming it's own citizens (I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the general sentiment). I know, he knows and the American people know that is a crock of shit. There are multiple regimes that we support (particularly those with oil), who do great harm to their own citizens and we don't so much as bat an eye in protest. In fact we support those countries with our dollars and our weapons. We did the same for Qaddafi only a few short months ago, until he apparently turned into the worst person in the world.

This is by no means a renunciation of my support for this President or his administration. I am very satisfied with the many things that he has been able to accomplish in the face of historic opposition. He has survived unsubstantiated attacks against his family, his citizenship, his academic record, his patriotism, his religious beliefs, etc. to forge a very impressive record of accomplishments. I stand by him and stand ready to support him in the next election. What I am saying is that I'm disappointed. Not by the lack of action on my pet issues, but that this President who I hold in such high regard, would speak to us, would speak to me as if I were a child with no understanding of the world.

I always thought that President Obama did us the courtesy of speaking to us as if we were adults. I appreciated that after having to listen to the jingoistic patriotism that was spewed out at us by the previous administration. It didn't always come across as exciting or sound bite worthy, but it was the truth (or as much truth as could be shared). We all know that we are not the world's morality police. We can't afford to be and frankly we are no position to foist our views of morality on anyone. But when we decide to target a particular leader for removal based on strategic considerations, I would appreciate it if the President would show us the courtesy of being upfront about it. We have no moral basis for intervening in Libya. There was no genocide going on. What we did was get in the middle of civil war because it served the strategic goals of us and our allies. I know politicians think that we are pretty stupid (and given our willingness to be convinced of almost anything I can understand why). However, part of the change message that I bought into was that we were now going to be treated like adults. Stupid adults maybe, but adults nonetheless. Up until now I thought the President was doing a pretty good job of that. I can only hope that this is just a misstep and not a sign of things to come.

The Human Condition

2011-05-19T21:30:00.002-04:00

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

"Can't we all just get along?" Those famous words were uttered by Rodney King during the height of the LA riots. And the answer to that is, of course, no. We are not designed to live in peaceful coexistence. From the time we are able to reason, we look for ways to separate ourselves from others. We, individually, or in a group start labeling those around us. We start looking for ways to make ourselves feel superior as soon as we become self aware.

Often the question is asked, how did the holocaust happen? The answer is as easy and as predictable as every time it has happened since then. The pattern goes something like this, our innate feeling of superiority leads to a feeling of entitlement which leads to frustration which leads to resentment which leads finally to anger. Once we reach the point of anger all that we need is a target to focus that anger. It has happened time and time again. Whether it was the Armenians or the Jews or the Japanese or the Chinese or the Blacks or the Tutsi or the Mayans or the Muslims or any other group that has faced genocide in human history. It happens time and time again. It leads one to the inescapable conclusion that we, as a race of beings, are born with the ability to commit the most haneous of crimes against each other.

The only question to how far we are willing to go is how much the "target" has been dehumanized or devalued. In the case of the victims of genocide, the target has been so devalued that they are no longer viewed as worthy of the same right to life as the perpetrators. The victims are viewed as "monkeys" or "innately evil" or "sub human" or "dirty" or something less than <.I would ask those on the left whether they feel "superior" to those on the right? Do you think that you are better because you care more about the preservation of our planet? Or because of your more tolerant attitude toward people who are different? Or because you are against war? Those on the right may feel superior because of their religious beliefs, or because of their greater sense of patriotism or because the color of their skin. Are you superior to your neighbor because you have a higher IQ than they do? Are you superior to your neighbor because you have more money than they do? Are you superior because your kids go to better schools? Are you superior because you shop at better department stores than do? The fact is that doesn't matter what the reason is, we are always looking for a reason.

Our ability for cruelty, hatred and disdain toward our fellow human beings is seemingly limitless. Our current political discourse is just an example of our seemingly congenital need to feel superior to someone or some group. Those on the right see Godless, unpatriotic hippies on the other side and they feel superior to them. Those on the left see racist, hypocritical rednecks on the other side they feel superior to them. It is just a continuation of our need to subjugate someone to make us feel better about ourselves. The thing is that there are lots of shared views on both sides of the debate. I'm fairly sure that at church on Sunday, there are representatives from both sides of the isle. I'm pretty sure that both sides pray to the same God. I'm fairly sure that both sides have their fair share of patriots, rednecks and hippies. There are Gays, Blacks, Jews, Asians, Mexicans, etc, who vote Republican at every turn. And there are Whites from Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, etc, who are dedicated Democrats.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, there is much more that unites us than separates us. But as we use terms that devalue others based on something as insignificant as political views, we are fulfilling a basic tenant of the human condition. Does it matter what we issue we use to separate ourselves? Does it matter whether we open a boiled egg from the big end or small end? Not really. We will find what makes us different and someone will always be there to exploit our need to feel superior. Whether for political gain or monetary gain or a power grab, those looking to gain something will always be able to manipulate some portion of the masses to go along with them as long as they appeal to one of our most basic needs. The Human Condition allows us to commit the most horrible of acts without a second thought. I guess we can be grateful that our current political discourse has not yet devolved to the point of an armed conflict. Yet we are only a few short steps from taking up arms under the guise of protecting ourselves against an as yet unnamed enemy. If history has shown us anything, it is that every society (regardless of how supposedly enlightened it may be) is cable of turning against itself. That is the Human Condition.

No Choice. Again.

2011-05-17T17:00:00.005-04:00

We’re reading it everywhere aren’t we?

President Obama’s formerly shifting political fortune, born aloft by an improving if not stabilizing economy (the numbers are largely horseshit, just look at how many of your own friends are still out of work, the point is things aren’t getting worse which is a huge accomplishment) has now gone stratospheric with the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. No Republican is eager to run against this Black President now, whereas just weeks ago, buffoons like Donald Trump were emboldened to ridicule, insult and even run against the first Democrat to hold the highest office in the land since William Jefferson Clinton. (Trump is not a Republican by the way, let’s get serious. Even I think too much of the party of Lincoln to honor Trump’s attention hungry brand of opportunism as some sort of platform.)
The thinking amongst Republicans and analysts attempting to foresee the near future is that the President is now, suddenly invulnerable to the kinds of groundless criticism and arbitrary policy opposition that the GOP has been breathlessly supplying since 2008. President Obama’s important, historic operational victory against Al Qaeda, has had many Right wing strategists wondering aloud: what can take the place of the facile catchy nonsense that people like Michelle Baachman were serving up every day? I agree. It’s hard to keep pushing tired bullshit like “the President’s a Kenyan,” or “The President’s a Muslim” when he brings the most wanted man on Earth back in a body bag (-You can complain about him dumping the body in the ocean and not showing you pictures, I guess.)

The Republicans have always more or less claimed that they owned the homogeneous Caucasian voting blocs (in the South, in the MidWest etc.,) foreign policy, defense, war and in general –patriotism, as issues/strongholds of their own. They have shown the raw power of repetition in the political imagination by repeating it over and over again and getting large swathes of the electorate to buy it. So what do they do now that the President of the United States is African American (disproving the old Nixonian era premise that Democrats only supported civil rights to get votes?) What do they do now that the President might be leading the most bank-friendly (which pisses me off ) administration in history? What do they do now that the President has shown himself willing to do (an violent incursion into Pakistan without Pakistani sanction or knowledge apparently) what his Republican predecessor could not?

The Republican panic amongst formerly bold-talking candidates like Pawlenty, Romney and others seems to be the realization that they cannot take a political opponent like the President to task on the resolution of issues or enacting of policies so similar to their own -if not in letter, then in consequence. Healthcare Reform might have been a nice wedge issue to resurrect in 2012, but it’s the law of the land now (as little as it actually is and actually does,) and nobody is excited to argue for the repeal of legislation that outlaws quasi-criminal consumer fraud like rescission that literally kills Americans when Insurance companies decide it’s cheaper to let a citizen die (you know, those real “death panels” that are called accounting departments at HMOs.) Romney in particular won’t have a credible thing to say in opposition of Healthcare Reform, -his strategists could tell him to accuse President Obama and Nancy Pelosi of copying his idea and success… but where does that get Romney in the larger GOP picture? The Right has opposed the very process of Health Care Reform. Expanding healthcare coverage has never come up as a goal during a Republican administration, only on the agendas of certain Republican Governors.

There are other troubling issues about this President that will never be raised (at least not by his opposition) such as the fact that he hasn’t overturned any of the expansions in Presidential powers the Republicans (in office) insist are still necessary (I’ll be writing more about this on July 4th) and that render the whole of the Constitution, optional at best for a sitting President. This is, for all the legitimate and all the disingenuous criticism levied against this administration, the absolute worst thing the Obama administration has done: Every day that secret laws and powers stay on the books, or the provisos allowing for secrecy sit unaddressed, the Republic exists in name only.
I stupidly expected a Republican, or at least a Libertarian to lead the charge on this issue. Naive, I know. Even the American Left has refused to point out the irony behind our current state of affairs: The President needs a warrant to search my house, but he has the power to have me, an American citizen assassinated, legally, without anyone knowing. It’s true, look it up.

Damn Dick Cheney and his servile asshole shadow government. Damn John Yoo and his sycophantic devotion to the presidency: The next time he wants to overcompensate for his ethnicity, I hope he has the decency to leave the rule of law out of it. Damn President Obama for not overturning these secret monarchial instruments immediately. (…More on July 4th)

…Back to the President’s apparent rising fortune due to his assassination of Osama Bin Laden: The trouble with this sort of thinking by Republican strategists and candidates is that Democrats rarely seem to be able to win on wars or foreign policy alone (unless you’re FDR in which case you were able to leverage the war against unemployment to a positive degree,) regardless of their actual record, just as Republicans never see to be able to capitalize on sound fiscal policy in practice: Case in point, Ross Perot or not, at some point, somebody, some journalist or pundit is going to have to concede that President George Herbert Walker Bush raised taxes, -something anathemic to a lifelong, big business Republican and he thereby lost his reelection bid. Bush 41 raised taxes because it was necessary, and he knew it was political suicide when he did it. Republicans should be proud of that. It’s never acknowledged, but the economic recovery (in some sectors not all) and subsequent record setting expansion (in some sectors not all) under the Clinton administration was due in some large part to Bush 41 essentially capitulating to reality, and most importantly, putting the country’s future ahead of his own political fortunes.

-and here’s a revelation. I voted for the man in 1988. I, a poor kid from the South Bronx, registered to vote by ACORN… Me, a far Left Liberal, Progressive from a Democratic household, whose mother was a Kennedy and Civil Rights-era immigrant voted for a Republican.
Why?
It was a throwaway term I remembered from sixth grade, a silly but catchy two word aphorism I remembered from a class report I had to write for school on the Republican candidates in the 1980 primaries. “Voodoo Economics.”
With that, I knew that later catchphrases like “Read my lips, no new taxes!” were just campaign talk. There was an intellect there, in the mind of that ex CIA head, that former ambassador, and former WWII pilot that let me understand Bush was not a reductivist like Reagan, but also that he was not Michael Dukakis. Dukakis, who for all his ideological strengths and commonality with me, just did not convince me that he had the managerial capacity to get the country through the next four years, a horrible time post Reaganomics for youth, -my remaining time in college and what would be my first two years out of school.
I didn’t see the Gulf War coming, but even in this; he chose the stability of a living known threat in Saddam Hussein, to the upheaval and interminable conflict and bloodshed the U.S. is ironically embroiled in now thanks to the policies of his son’s administration. Bush 41 fought a war for oil and called it a war for Kuwati freedom, -I’ll never forgive him for that lie and the bombing campaign, -neither will the Iraqi people.
But Republicans will never forgive him for raising taxes.
Democrats, and many close friends on the Left have always expressed shock and even disgust when I tell them that I voted for the elder Bush, citing Panama, citing Iraq. When I point out President Bill Clinton’s unrestricted use of our armed forces, and his bombing of Iraq they look at me as if I took some cheap shot at them: -All I’m shooting down is a misperception that still persists along party lines, sometimes furthered by the parties themselves. Democratic Presidents may run as sober advocates of peace and diplomacy, but they are no less likely to set our formidable military loose on foreign countries.
It was a Democratic President that dropped the atomic bomb, -twice.
Bush 41 exerted an intellect barely masked by the shucksy/folksy pretensions recommended by his PR men. The man was a nerd, and I respected him for that. I always side with the smartest guy in the room who makes his point with facts, -not the guy who says he’s the smartest guy. All we can hope for after election day, is that a President makes policy decisions that put the nation first with our collective futures and wellbeing in mind.

“Better dead than Red” may as well be a rallying cry among Democrats and the sane in America today. It’s what things have come to. You can thank the activity around Sarah Palin for a lot of it. She was a calculated and cynical choice for a VP candidate that frankly endangered the nation, I don’t care how nice, feisty, down-to-earth anyone thinks she is. As many people as she energizes, she appears to motivate far many more to ridicule and stand against her, and by extension the GOP. She is the latest avatar of an anti-intellectualism on the Right that is disgusting to Americans like me: It’s a gambit I want to see disappear from American politics. Nobody should be proud of their ignorance or simplicity if they are running for any office, and none of us, on the Right or the Left should stand for it.
Many of us on the Left have been reduced to not so much as consider the “opposition.” There shouldn’t be an opposition ultimately. We shouldn’t be able to make up our minds so far in advance, with so little thought or examination of the candidates. The bottom line is Democrats should have to work for my votes too. They shouldn’t be able to count on their opposition being so uniformly outside the center that I have to vote for whatever alternative presents itself, and I tell you that in the case of a Sarah Palin, I’d make sure I was there bright and early to vote for another candidate.

Certainly there are issues that are deal breakers for many citizens, but the Right has become so recklessly puritanical that they will at times attack their own, robbing us of potentially strong legislators and leaders. There are no moderates left, no dissenters, at least none that are welcome in the GOP. When you consider the irresponsible and issueless campaigning strategies like the “Swift Boat” promotion, the GOP encounters opposition from voters like me even after they “win” an election.

A Republican figured out how to make healthcare reform actually work in his state, another managed, (for a time) to get blanket medical coverage for children in hers. Why don’t they and their concerns, and more importantly their abilities have an open home in their own party?

The country is not as divided as special interests and the elites (--The real elites, not some chatterbox who drives a Prius or a Hummer and reads The New Yorker or the Economist, I’m talking about really Rich people) would have us believe.

You and I are not so far apart that a label or party brand should stop us from voting for the same candidate. We want to live, and find happiness and be safe. There’s so much more to running this country than politicians would have us believe. No party should be so far from the center of our hearts and minds; so ideologically doctrinaire that it cannot create policy that serves nothing other than pronouncements and supports nothing but internecine party divisions.

I’m not a contrarian, not where it’s important anyway. I am a Liberal, I am a Progressive, and I vote Democrat most of the time out of a dearth of choice. –Why isn’t there someone other than Lincoln Chaffee or Christine Todd Whitman in the red column who could get my vote today?
It’s ridiculous.

When I write long screeds like this, I like to remember Jack Kemp. I doubt he and I could have agreed on much, -except jobs and civil rights. He may have gotten my vote in the ’88 if I had been able to vote in a Republican primary, (another stupid wrinkle in our system.) When he ran with Dole in ‘96, I wondered openly how they could have gotten that year’s ticket “upside down.”

Maybe for once, it shouldn’t be about winning arguments in America, but really presenting the people with ideas instead of emotions and targets. After all, you can win an argument and be absolutely, fundamentally wrong. We’ve all done it. People who are married do it all the time: Make the issue in question emotional, or about something else altogether and you can shut another person down and walk away leaving nothing resolved except the echo of your own voice drowning out the facts.
While we’re trying to win arguments with each other, the clock is running down, our problems are getting worse and nothing is getting done.
I’m asking everyone in this country to wonder aloud and with their neighbors and the people on the street, and out on the road, “What good is a two party system, when there isn’t any real choice to make?”
Picking your party as a first resort or a last resort is not a decision.
That’s not choosing.
That’s going along with the herd.

We’re not donkeys. We’re not elephants.
We’re Americans.
We’re human beings.

-SJ

Buried at Sea.

2011-05-02T07:35:00.008-04:00

Knowing that you were about to be taken out of this world must have been real tough, as Navy SEALs closed in on your mansion Mr. Bin Laden. The fear you felt must have been unimaginably terrible and for that I have no sympathy, only a kind of grim glee. I long ago reserved my tears for the human beings who jumped to their deaths on September 11th, -martyred as unwilling participants in your attempts at global symbolism. You saw great value in killing people on their way to work around the world.

You had marshalled your considerable wealth to kill as many people as you could around the world to make a point to governments you formerly collaborated with for the last twenty five years. You killed people working at embassies.

Now, you're dead.

The world will not be thrust back into the 15th century, or whatever it is you were trying to bring about with your sad, repressive brand of religious fundamentalism.

The United States Armed Forces, in its great wisdom, denied you the moral high ground of having your body desecrated, and instead condescended to your own traditions.

Your chapter is closed.

-SJ

Show Us Your Papers Mr. Trump.

2011-04-28T10:25:00.008-04:00

“To be insulted by these fascists, is so degrading,” goes a song by David Bowie off of his Scary Monsters LP in 1980. A noted socialite millionaire and let’s be honest, Reality TV buffoon has been grabbing the mic a lot recently: New York’s own Donald Trump. We couldn’t get straight answers on anything the last administration did behind closed doors, but now a sitting President, duly elected, has had to produce papers for the first time in history to prove his right to be called an American citizen at all, -and consequently prove he is the President we all know he was elected to be in 2008. It’s no coincidence that this also happens to be the first African-American Commander-in-Chief. A coincidence ceases to be such, when it is in fact the reason behind an event.

Emily at The Vigil blog, posted a humbling outrage at this ongoing nonsense, along with a video that shows how far we’ve come as a republic, and how far many of our fellow citizens have to go in order to catch up with the simple promises of our Constitution. Emily’s post explains, once again, why this whole birther nonsense is just another tired instance of people camouflaging racism as “procedure” or “due diligence:”
http://sozadee.blogspot.com/2011/04/we-have-come-to-this.html?showComment=1303998494321#c7226072947515300810
Sadly, it’s nothing new is it? Just the same old tired racist crap.

I’ve got a request of my own, since I, like French writer Balzac long before me, suspect that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. My request is simple: Show us your papers Mr. Trump.

It shouldn’t be much of a hardship at all since Donald Trump recently said he would divulge all of his finances once the long form birth certificate (read “papers”) were produced by the President when he was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos.

Show us your papers, Mr. Trump.

Show us how you make and hide all that money from the public, the IRS, your debtors and let, as you yourself have suggested, “the experts decide.”

-SJ

A Victory for ‘No Nonsense’ in Arizona… for Now.

2011-04-19T13:15:00.004-04:00

I have always said that I’ll support Conservatives when they act like Conservatives (as long as it’s not in contradiction of my core philosophical beliefs.) Even as a pro-union, pretty-far-Left Liberal, who tends to vote for Democratic candidates fairly consistently, I still see a dire need in this country for Constitution-minded, small government, pro-small business, pro-individual politicians interested in making the Republic work for the people by enabling competition on the fairest, most level field achievable under law. Someone has to promote those perspectives with muscular clarity, because the Liberals and Progressives will forever be focused elsewhere necessarily, so that the poor aren’t legislated into slavery at the very least.

Teddy Roosevelt has been dead a long, long time.

Voting for Democratic candidates shouldn’t be a no-brainer for me, or for anyone. We’re Americans. We should have to make a well thought out choice between at least two distinct visions for policy and legislation. Sadly, the Republican Party, which has been the self-identified center of Conservative policy in America for several decades, only seems to stand against bureaucracy, subsidies, and expansion of government powers when its candidates and its tiny minority of super wealthy constituents can’t benefit from said bureaucracy, subsidies, and expansion of government powers. The same relativity is consistently applied to Conservative support for deregulation.
That leaves me with no choice at all as a citizen. Democrats should have to work hard for my votes and not rest assured simply because New York State always goes blue come election time. Hopefully, someday people like Lincoln Chaffee won’t get run out of the Grand Old Party simply for standing on principle. …Which brings me to Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona.
Yesterday Governor Brewer vetoed two bills that seemed all-but-law-before-the-fact as they sailed toward her desk from the Conservatives in the Arizona state legislature. The "birther bill," which theatrically and ceremoniously mandated various proofs of U.S. citizenship for candidates running for President, had never been anything but a sad embarrassing ploy to keep the very idea of Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship a live subject for discussion among people looking to neutralize him politically. The bill insists upon, among other things, that long-form birth certificates, baptismal certificates, proofs of circumcision, all be put on the state ballot. The birther bill was a puerile attempt by Arizona legislators to put an asterisk on the Obama Presidency: -this from politicians who claim to oppose unnecessary bureaucracy at every turn?.. -except apparently when it enables harassment of their political opposition.
In what I considered to be one of the most surprising recent moves by any Governor, Brewer, (who made national headlines last year for signing a draconian state law cracking down on illegal immigrants,) vetoed the birther bill. The governor’s reasoning? "(it) could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions." -Applause please.
The other bill before Governor Brewer had nothing to do with ongoing partisan silliness and the predictably racist nativism that had accompanied the historic election of an African-American President in 2008. This bill was a proposed gun law that would have allowed firearms on college campuses. This was such a staggeringly idiotic policy move on the part of the Arizona legislature that it almost merits no comment at all, and yet it would have flown in Arizona. Governor Brewer, in a moment of admirable sobriety and decency, vetoed that bill also.

The second veto was more surprising than the first, because surely by saying “no” once, Brewer understood she had bought herself some political capital to say “yes” to any remaining proposal in a form of disingenuous compromise between two controversial bills: a type of compromise that is often little more than a calculated “Coke or Pepsi” ruse when it comes to lawmaking in America.

I thank you Governor Jan Brewer, as a citizen of your country. I thank you because although I don’t live in Arizona, I may have to visit it again one day. I’d like to think that there is no place in the United States whereupon the laws are so alien, so opposed to what we all know are our common notions of decency that there may as well be walled borders to separate the irrational from the sane along the interstate.

Now about all that anti-immigration legislation Madame Governor...

-SJ

Can’t Say I Told You So-

2011-04-13T16:36:00.003-04:00

-because I didn’t. I thought Glenn Beck was going to be with us for much, much longer.I have aggressively opposed this man’s brand of news entertainment since the start of his tenure on CNN Headline News. I thought he was dangerous then. I’ve written (So has this blog’s founder Mycue23) at length about the lies, race baiting, conspiracy promoting and calculatingly paranoid philosophies that Glenn Beck tried to pass off as information under the cover of a “news” network. If you’ve seen his show and still need further convincing, you may require the services of a psychiatric professional or may need to take a good look in the mirror: You’ll have to be honest with yourself about why you chose to believe the hazardous nonsense this man created for the fearful, suppliant masses who just wanted somebody to tell them it’s entirely legitimate to be childishly scared and to act crazy because a black man is president.

This isn’t new. Google the name “Father Coughlin” and you can read about another allegedly devout religious man who capitalized on the fear and uncertainty of an economic downturn in America to go after “enemies.”

Fox “News” deserves no pats on the back for letting Beck go. I suspect they love this theatrically teary-eyed hateful little man.

It took angry Americans by the thousands harassing marketers with emails and phone calls so that 100 or more advertisers would leave Fox “News” Channel. It took several consecutive months of the the jobless rate easing. It took two years or more of enough people realizing that anti-Semitism is still racism, no matter how you dress it up with stories, myths, convenient villains and conspiracy theories.

…What it finally took ladies and gentlemen, was a decline in ratings.

Now that there is nothing more they can squeeze from this dangerous clown, they’ve decided enough is enough and taken Beck off the air. Fox claims in press releases that they will continue collaboration with Beck in other media. I suspect this will go as far as the rumored movie deal that Mel Gibson was going to strike with Bill O’Reilly, -until Mr. O’Reilly was accused of sexually harassing Andrea Mackris of course. The mere accusation alone was enough to make Gibson run away fast, and stop returning O’Reilly’s calls. -This from a movie star whose own increasing, festering bigotry made him inconvenient in turn?

Beck is likewise being ostracized for reasons that are not central to his abuse of the public square.

Ultimately, it still qualifies as good news. One less liar on the air. One less maniac making up conflicts and challenging science as if he had any other point or purpose other than manipulation. For my part, I look forward to the day when I am writing a blog posting about the closing down of Fox “News” Channel itself.

-SJ

Equifax, Experian and Transunion Are Crooks.

2011-03-18T12:48:00.006-04:00

It’s been a long time since we’ve written about personal finance on Random Thoughts, a long time since I’ve personally written about much of anything on here. I don’t rail and complain about much these days. Part of the reason it is that I may just have gotten smarter than I used to be about managing my anger and expectations. -Not in some great general sense; just those two areas. I’ve spent the better part of the last six months trying to take stock of what annoys me and eliminating it from my horizon, avoidance being a better solution for me nowadays than mutual harmful conflicts, verbal and otherwise. Eliminating mendacity and distress from one’s daily life is easier said than done with a lot of things in America, and I’m no Buddhist or pacifist.

One of the most pernicious of stacked decks against the American citizen is an institution called the credit bureau.

The claim that Equifax, Experian and Transunion are there to monitor consumers so they may build a transparent historical record of their borrowing -and thereby improve said consumers’ ability to borrow -and borrow at rates that reflect their trustworthiness is one of the biggest scams in banking and finance, which is saying plenty when you think of all the variants on the pyramid scheme concept that are allowed by the Wall Street deregulation of the 2000s, and conversely also by actual laws passed for the last 50 years.

Think about this:
The three credit bureaus report increases in debt almost immediately, but not the paying down of debt. They can take months, if not years to correct a credit report. Equifax has a ridiculously incomplete survey of financial institutions compared to the other two, in some cases skewing a person’s debt load in a negative direction because of its incomplete reporting.
The three credit bureaus report also account for any and all inquiries negatively, so the very act of requesting a correction (which they uniformly call a “dispute”) affects your credit report negatively: Really focus in on that for a moment dear reader, the very act of correcting their oversights or mistakes affects your credit score negatively. This used to be called “getting took coming and going.”

Bottom line, these credit bureaus simply exist to make it easier for lenders to charge higher interest rates on individuals, and nothing more.

This is what is called a scam, pure and simple. These are rackets, and they engage in predatory practices. Among all of the unfair things that the credit card industry does, like changing the APR applied to something already purchased (think about that real hard, you buy a TV, and your credit card company changes the rate on that old purchase, effectively changing the price you paid on it, nowhere else in business does that happen,) the operations of these credit bureaus are among the worst things preying on American families… well that and the fact that they are now also doing big business getting people to pay for access to their credit scores and credit reports.

From my own personal experience, I’ve never missed a payment in my life and I’m now 43. My 3 credit scores only average about 760. The reasoning the credit bureaus gave for disregarding years of my timely and often times early repayment of debt?

I didn’t buy a home.

The absolute gall of these liars in citing that most depreciated investment in America: a unit of purchase that has destroyed the lives of millions of people as a criteria in these hard times. The reason the bureaus claim they have effectively ignored my proven record and frozen my identity as a borrower from further “improvement” in their scoring system is simple. They did it in order to allow my creditors to keep charging me rates they know I don’t deserve. This is disgusting. It should be criminal. But the credit bureaus are a largely self-regulated group of institutions, and what laws govern their behavior were practically authored by their own lobbyists and lawyers.

I suppose they’d tell someone who did buy a house that their credit ratings and scores won’t ever go up regardless of their spotless record because they did buy a home.

“Coming and going” my friends, “coming and going.”
-SJ

An Ordinary Man

2011-03-13T15:39:00.002-04:00

As we approach the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I can't help but think of the sacrifice of those who fought to bring the potential of the American dream to all people. I'm not talking about the people who made headlines, I'm talking about the people who made sacrifices small and great and who are for the most part forgotten by history. The leaders of the civil rights struggle are rightfully venerated by the masses, but I think we overlook the majority of those who made it possible for civil rights to become a reality. From the housewife who donated her time and energy to the cause to the bus driver who spent all his free time handing out pamphlets to the student who put his education on hold so that he take part in a march to the bus boy who risked not only his job, but his life as well as he took part in a sit in at a segregated restaurant. I hope that at this time when we remember the ultimate sacrifice that MLK made that we also remember the faceless nameless masses who also contributed mightily to the ultimately successful attempt to fulfill the promise that was made in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal".

The reason that I think of those regular people who made those sacrifices is that I'm not sure that the debt that is owed to those individuals can ever be repaid. How does one pay back what so many suffered to gain with their blood, sweat and tears?The election of Barack Obama and the elevation of many African Americans to positions of power and influence has led some to declare the battle for equality at an end. It is said that if we can elect a black president then blacks have certainly achieved all that they set out to accomplish during the civil rights struggle. In my view, that is certainly not the case, but I can understand how some could have that opinion. However, my question is, was the only goal of the civil rights struggle to create a climate so that a few could reach exalted heights. Did those factory workers, maids, students, housewives, sacrifice all so much in order to elevate the few?

I ask the question because I have struggled often with the thought of living an ordinary life. I have had all the advantages that a middle class life could offer. I went to good schools, graduated from college, got a scholarship to go to graduate school, graduated and became a working member of society. The problem with an ordinary life is that I feel the pressure to be extraordinary. Having lived an "ordinary" life, I can't help but feel that I have somehow failed the generation who suffered so much in order to give me the opportunity to be more than "ordinary".

American society seems to only pay attention to either the best or the worst of black society. Criminals, welfare cheats, drug addicts, prison inmates who happen to be black are consistently highlighted on the news and in popular culture. There are those who would ascribe the negative qualities of the worst of those individuals to all African-Americans. I could offer many real life examples of this, but suffice it say that this is not limited to only those narrow minded individuals that we call bigots.

American society will also heap inordinate praise on those who have been able to reach the heights of popularity or power. Athletes, entertainers, politicians, business leaders. Of course if one of those who reach those heights were to commit a transgression of some type, then all the negative stereotypes are immediately brought to bear. They are no longer one of the "good ones", they immediately become "just like the rest of them".

Given our "post racial" society, the question remains, what is required of the descendants of the greatest generation. Is being ordinary, enough? Does being ordinary fulfill the desire of those who made so many sacrifices given the almost schizophrenic attitude that society has toward African Americans? It is easy to argue that the goal of the ordinary people who were the engine of the civil rights movement was that they and their descendants be allowed the same opportunity to fail or succeed as the rest of the America. The fought for the right to be treated as individuals. They fought for the right for their fortunes to be tied to their own strengths and weaknesses.

So do I honor that generation with the life I lead? I'm not sure. I suppose on one level I do, I suppose on one level America does as well. They just happen to be different levels. We as a country have advanced enough to elect a black man as our president and yet we still manage to vilify people because of the color of their skin. Those ordinary people who suffered might say that they did it so that I could live the as I do, but I'm sure they would also be disappointed in the attitudes that still exist. The promised land is not having a black person reach the presidency, on the contrary, the promised land is being treated as an equal regardless of your level of achievement. The battle for that ultimate goal rages on. It rages on even though some would like to put the ugliest of episodes behind us.

I can honor those bravest of Americans by talking and writing about how much they sacrificed. I am not sure that I can honor them by the life I lead. The battle for Civil Rights continues today as it probably will for the foreseeable future. The battle continues throughout the country and it continues inside me as I'm sure it does inside many who happen to share my pigmentation. Is being ordinary a fulfillment of the legacy of all of those who came before me or a betrayal of it? I wish I had the answer to that.

The Long and Winding Road

2011-03-10T20:38:00.001-05:00

I haven't found the energy or motivation to write much lately, and I'm not sure that I'll be writing much more in the future, but I do have a few things to get off my chest. First I'd like to address the critics of this administration. The politics of absolutism are bound to result in disappointment. Citizen Barack Obama would surely be on the side of those calling for this administration to take more aggressive stance toward the Republicans and to push a more progressive agenda. Perhaps even Senator Obama would be a voice of agitation for this administration. However President Obama does not have the luxury of dealing with absolutes. There is no black and white in politics, only shades of gray. The politics of absolutism, on the right or the left, demand everything and criticize anything short of that goal. There is no middle ground or compromise in the politics of the absolute. And while the need to push our elected officials from safe and entrenched positions is necessary, there is a point at which reason and some understanding of reality should kick in. However in the politics of absolutism, that point is never reached. Nothing is ever good enough or quick enough or comprehensive enough. If a goal is accomplished, there are numerous criticisms that are leveled because in the eyes of absolutism, the finish line is a constant moving target. Perfection, especially in something as imperfect as politics, can almost never be attained. The absolutist would have railed against the Emancipation Proclamation because in reality it freed no one. The Civil Rights Act would have been considered too little, too late. These are extreme examples, but I think they are valid. I have been reticent to express my opinion of late because I simply have no patience for the politics of absolutism. There is simply no politician who given the weight, responsibilities and limitations of the presidency would act they way they would want him or her to. In our fractured political system, the best that we can hope for is some kind of fragile consensus. That consensus cannot be built without compromise and reasoned debate. As soon as an intractable position is taken, any attempt at moving forward is doomed to failure. So please exercise your right to criticize this President and this administration all you want, but remember that if by some miracle your desired candidate were to hold the position, they would be subject to the same problems, limitations and complexities of the office that this President is subject to.

Next I want to talk about the "revolutions" in the Middle East. The successful removal of the Egyptian president has led to copycat movements all over that most explosive of regions. The Libyan situation has provoked the most response from the people and from politicians all over the world. NATO and the UN are considering what they can do in response to the uprising in Libya. People in the country are calling for us to help those who would try and get rid of their dictator. I would like to ask the question of when the last "revolution" in the Middle East led to a better life for the people in that country. Do the families of the upwards of a million dead in Iraq feel their lives are better after their dictator was overthrown? Did the Egyptians feel like their lives were better after their previous President was assassinated? Do the Iranians feel that their lives are better after they got rid of the Shah? Egypt is now run by a military commission. Does that sound like an improvement to you? Frankly I don't care about liberating the countries of the Middle East from their dictators and neither does NATO, the UN or the US government. The only issue at stake is oil. A month ago, Qaddafi was tolerated and supported with arms and money from the same governments who are now trying to figure out ways to help remove him. Those governments don't care about the "liberty" of the people, they only care about stability in the region and keeping the oil flowing. There are calculations being made now about what is most likely to happen in Libya, so that the correct side can be supported. It's all about which side will get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Qaddafi's latest offensive push is without a doubt causing quite a bit of consternation in the rooms of power. Also isn't it amazing how quickly the world rallied to the aid of those poor citizens of Libya who were being killed by their own government. How long did that take before everyone was freezing assets and threatening "no fly" zones and possible military intervention? A week? Maybe less. Isn't it amazing that just a few miles to the south in Africa where there is no oil, the systematic murder of tens of thousands can go on for years without an international outcry. It takes George Clooney and other celebrities to bring attention to genocide in Africa after hundreds of thousands have been killed and yet we have one week of civil unrest in a major oil producing country and our politicians and people are up in arms and willing to consider the severest of actions. Apparently the world doesn't really value the lives of Africans without oil or who happen to have a little darker skin pigmentation. So really, I don't want to hear about how worried we are about humanitarian violations, because a month ago no one cared and the world still doesn't care about what goes on below the oil line in deepest, darkest Africa.

My last point in this probably pointless rant is probably the biggest reason why my output has basically come to halt (I'm sure some are probably not particularly broken up about that). It comes down to the futility of the effort. We all know (even the most optimistic among us), that this country is run by and for a very privileged few. We haven't experienced the disparity in wealth that now exists in this country since before the depression. It seems (certainly with the Wisconsin example, and many states ready to follow suit) that we are rushing headlong into a time when the working people of this country will be once again be at the mercy of the whims and whimsy of their bosses. The scary thing is that this time we're gonna get there with the approval of a large vocal minority. The Republicans and their town criers at Fox News have managed to convince a large percentage of the people that the reason we are in such economic straights isn't the unbridled greed on Wall St., but the hard fought gains of those lazy civil servants. The teachers, the fire fighters, the cops, the sanitation workers, those bastards are the ones to blame. The fact that unions helped to create the middle class in this country is lost on those people whose grandparents probably built their legacy on the backs of those hard fought gains of the very unions that they are now demonizing. Outside of a full scale revolt by the people, there is nothing that can stop the current wave from becoming a tsunami. The problem as I've stated before is that half of the people who are being adversely affected have been convinced to fight on the side of their masters. A slave revolt doesn't get very far if the slaves fight each other.

I think I've always tried to be a voice of reason in any political debate I've taken part in. Occasionally I've let my temper get the better of me (sorry, Tim). The problem is that reason doesn't get you very far in today's climate. To an absolutist, I look like a sellout (or from the right, a commie or worse) and to the ruling class, I'm a non entity. I can't say that this going to be last foray into politics, but it probably will be for a while. So to all of you still fighting the good fight, I wish you good luck and God speed.

Nights over Egypt

2011-02-12T11:28:00.011-05:00

It's pretty breathtaking. To see thousands of people crowd an area in continuing opposition, just hours after they fired, not a President, -but a dictator. Clearly the people's issues with President Hosni Mubarek were not deeply philosophical or abstract, -but concrete. It's hard to stay in power if there's no bread on the table, but Mr. Mubarek somehow got by for 3 decades.

So it was a bloodless revolution that ended a dictator's turn. The Kalashnikovs, Uzis, M-16s and bayonets were left home next to umbrellas, or perhaps brought along ceremoniously and kept holstered for the most part, awaiting a storm that never materialized among the crowds, clouds and thunder.

Only time will tell if this is the way the rest of it will go in a region that the world culture owes so much to.

Let's remember Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman who stepped out on to the pavement to exercise the same right that Egyptians exuberantly applied for 18 days, only to meet with a different end on a street in Iran. Let's remember a young woman who died bleeding on the pavement, her life taken by a short-sighted coward with a gun.

Let's think of Neda today, before all the worry of what happens next and how, overtakes us.
-SJ

Teacher, Teacher

2011-02-02T01:40:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure if anyone has ever noticed that we actually have three contributors to this blog. I know you've only ever seen posts from SJ and me, but we do in fact have a third. Our silent partner is a school teacher who is definitely not shy about sharing opinions (except on this site, apparently). Anyway, I've gotten permission to post this piece about the problems of teacher evaluations. Enjoy and please let us know your thoughts.

Image via WikipediaLast in, First out. In a time of such budget cuts and many failing schools, which teachers are the most valuable to retain in schools? Many keep hollering, "Evaluation!" But what does that mean?

Very controversial. Fraught with problems. A tremendous quantity of questions arise.

How does one genuinely evaluate a teacher?

Test scores? That leaves a great deal out including issues the student might experience, such as constantly moving in and out of homeless shelters or becoming pregnant. What is or is not the teachers' responsibility when it comes to low test scores? What are the parents' and students' responsibilities and how will they be held accountable?

Lack of good teacher training? Do we lose people who could be an excellent teacher with continued help? Will there be backing to help them or will they be summarily dumped?

By their bulletin boards? How much should a principal who does not get along with something, say the teaching style of a pedagogue, have to say with about retaining and/or rating the teacher?

The budget? What of a school who can afford two new teachers for the price of one more experienced one? What of someone who has loyally worked for the Board/Department of Education for 30+ years? Have we "priced" them out of being worthwhile due to continued budget cuts and hard choices the schools have to make?

Truly, no one in a school wants a lazy or poor teacher. It makes it more difficult on the teachers, students, administration. The one predicament that frightens me most is the budgetary issues schools face. I knew an excellent teacher who taught middle school children for 36 years. The principal, though she was good friends with that teacher, outright told her when she retired that she was happy to be able to have the money from her salary since she could now hire several teachers and an aide for the price of all that experience and education. How does one offer security for such years of genuinely good service when, for a school, it becomes a matter of budgeting (and don't think that there are tons of administrators are so altruistic toward student and teacher that they ignore their budgets, especially when their administrative careers often depend on being able to lessen class size to up test scores, by hiring more inexperienced teachers versus fewer experienced teachers)?

We need to stop thinking that the issue of sorting out "good" teachers in the nation's largest public school system, is a problem, which suggests a simple solution, and begin to understand that it is a dilemma, laden with controversy.

-Kersting

The Dream Lives On

2011-01-17T17:23:00.002-05:00

In honor of MLK Jr. day, I am reposting a couple of pieces that we've done in the past. Hopefully You'll forgive us for reusing old material. SJ has been extremely busy of late and I don't think I'm capable of writing anything better at this point.

A Dream Unrealized, But Worth Revisiting For All

In 1968, the very year that would mark the end of his life, Martin Luther King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign." Dr. King traveled across the nation to assemble a "multi-racial army of the poor" to demand the Congress create a “bill of rights for poor Americans.” Dr. King demanded nothing less than the "reconstruction of society itself.”

This is a dream as yet unrealized, as I, an American born the year of Dr. King’s assassination will turn 42: soon to be three years his senior this year.

The current recession, as terrible as it may be for my contemporaries, is wreaking havoc on the lives of an entire generation of children living in poverty. Rarely do we talk about the jobless rates’ effects on the youngest of us in America. Dr. King wanted to bring that conversation to the fore as the Vietnam War raged on.

Anyone can be mired in poverty’s cycle. Too many of us are.

It’s important to insist that Dr. king’s legacy is everyone’s. His significance should not be lost on anyone who has ever struggled against unfairness. For anyone to let the color of their skin to preclude them from celebrating Dr. King’s legacy is to deny its central aspirations: unity, fairness, equality for all.

I wish a happy and hopeful Martin Luther King Day to you all, everywhere around the world.

-SJ

Dream a Little Dream

"...in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope". Those are the words that Barack Obama used in his now famous speech after the New Hampshire primary and it illustrates perfectly his connection with the man whose birthday we celebrate as a nation today. Hope is the tie that binds Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. The hope and the belief that America can do and must do better. Obama's speech not only made the point that the destinies of all Americans are intertwined, but that people must have hope in order to make a better world. MLK's most famous speech was all about hope. It spoke of a nation that didn't exist. It spoke of the dreams of an America where someone like Barack Obama can reach the highest position in the land. They share the dream of a better America. Whether it is an America where people are judged by the "content of their character", or an America where we strive to build "a more perfect union", their goals were the same.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Obama's election is the culmination of MLK's dream. It is clearly a part of what he hoped for, but it is not the end of what he hoped for. Before his death, he was working on organizing another march on Washington. This one was going to be a poverty march. He looked across the country and realized that the underclass had no one to speak for them. He realized that the poor had no voice and no power to change their situation. His dream had expanded to include the poor of all colors. Whites in Appalachia, Hispanics in California, Native Americans in Oklahoma, they all became part of the dream. Injustice will always exist, that is why the dream will never be fulfilled. It is a moving target, as is Barack Obama's dream to build a more perfect union. Obama's words imply that the union can never be perfected, but we must always strive to make it better.

MLK led the greatest moral campaign that this country has ever known. He led a generation of people who were willing to put their lives on the line to make this country a better place. Tom Brokaw wrote a book about the WWII generation entitled "The Greatest Generation", however I think that designation should go to those who worked and fought and died so that the dream of America could be shared by all Americans. It is somewhat easier to make those sacrifices when the entire country agrees with you, but when you are faced with the opposition of the majority of the citizens of this country, it takes an extraordinary type of intestinal fortitude to persevere. Barack Obama is not the successor to MLK. As President, his moral compass will not be as consistent as MLK's was. His goals will not be as single minded as MLK's were. They can't be. The job of President is much more complicated and Obama is not just the representative of some of us, he is the representative of all of us. Those who have expectations that Obama will lead a moral revolution on the scale of MLK will be disappointed.

MLK was the leader of a movement that changed this nation forever. Barack Obama is about to become the leader of the country and his election has changed this nation forever. They will always be inexorably linked. The fact that Obama will be inaugurated on the day after this nation celebrates the birthday of MLK would lead many to invoke the term, poetic justice. MLK's dream is alive in Barack Obama as it is in every person who strives to make this world a better place. The Dream and the Perfect Union remain out of reach, but it is in the striving for those things that we tap into the better angels of our nature. It is our willingness to try, regardless of the obstacles in our way, that keeps the Dream alive. MLK would most likely be very proud of Barack Obama, not only because of what he represents, but because Obama is still challenging the nation to be better. Indeed that is ultimately what links them. We can be better, we just need someone to show us the way.

- Mycue23

In the Crosshairs

2011-01-11T09:48:00.004-05:00

I have written before about the deplorable state of political discourse in this country. In fact I'd like to start out with a paragraph from a piece I wrote a couple of months ago:

"The real problem with this open animosity is that it allows the actual issues of the day to be pushed to the side in an all out attempt to win. You see the idea that the end of the world is nigh becomes the driving force behind all political action. Politicians use the most extreme language to describe the opposition in order to evoke a visceral reaction from their followers. The actual policies are not the important thing, the most important thing that voters take away from these demagogues is that if the opposition wins, their lives as they know it will be over. I could get into more complicated explanations about the backlash of white males and the similarities to the strategies employed by Nixon in '68 and even more forcefully in '72, but there really is no need. Both parties are guilty of overuse of hyperbole in describing the repercussions to America should their opponents be victorious in the next election."

The tragedy in Arizona over the weekend has given us all another chance to sharpen our collective rhetorical knives and start attacking the other side. The problem, once again, is that the issue, the real issue is being lost. The issue that should be at the forefront is how was this nut was able to 1) legally buy a gun and 2) buy one that held a 30 bullet clip. His attack was finally stopped when he had to reload that gun. What exactly are the gun laws in Arizona? Isn't it time to revisit the laws pertaining to what exactly is needed by a civilian in order to go hunting or to protect their home? When are we going to get serious about enforcing the assault weapons ban?

I know the gun lobby was already painting the President as someone who would take their guns away when he got into office and so this issue has received no attention from this administration or this Congress. I would hope that this horrible incident will allow those in government the opportunity to discuss this problem with slightly less rhetoric than usual. The people who died and were injured should not be used as fodder for a new round of political name calling and finger pointing. There is a real issue here and while the political discourse needs to find a new level of civility, that is not the main point that we should be discussing. There are literally people's lives at stake here. You can't stop insane people from thinking insane thoughts and committing insane deeds, but perhaps our government can try a little harder to keep the instruments of mass mayhem out of their hands.

And They're Off...

2011-01-05T19:53:00.003-05:00

Michelle Bachman has made it known that she is looking into running for President in 2012. She is the first of the Republican candidates to make any public declaration of her intentions at this point. I provide for your amusement and horror some of the most infamous quotes of this woman who would be our leader:

1. "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

2. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?"

3. "Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps."

4. "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas."

5. "There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design."

6. "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country."

7. "I don't know where they're going to get all this money because we're running out of rich people in this country."

That, my friends, is just a small sample of the lunacy that has come out of Michelle Bachman's mouth. This is just one example of the caliber of candidate that the Republican party has to offer this country. Some may dismiss her out of hand, but keep in mind that she raised more money than any other Congressional candidate in the last election. Out of state money flowed in buckets into her campaign coffers. While some on the left seem to make a habit of bashing our current President, I would hope that they always keep in mind what's waiting for them on the other side. And if you think it can't happen, just remember that we currently have a black man sitting in the White House and try and remember how impossible that seemed just a couple of years ago. We, as a country, are literally one big crisis away from making a monumental mistake at the ballot box.

Merry and Happy To All

2010-12-23T18:59:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to wish a Merry Christmas to all the folks who have taken the time to drop by our little blog. I'm sure I speak for SJ as well when I say that we appreciate you all taking the time to read our sometimes rambling (in my case) and sometimes intelligent (in SJ's case) posts. Hopefully you will all have a happy and safe holiday season.

Affirmative Action

2010-12-22T17:52:00.001-05:00

Image via WikipediaIn the past two weeks this President, whom so many within his own party have chosen to label a weakling, or gutless or ineffective or worse than Bush, has guaranteed an extension in unemployment benefits, extended the tax cut to the middle class for two years, signed the most comprehensive overhaul of food inspection in more than a generation, got the START treaty through Congress, got the aid for 9/11 first responders approved and this afternoon put his signature on a bill to end DADT. And that is all I have to say about that.

Take the Money and Run

2010-12-11T15:55:00.007-05:00

I have disagreed with the President on many occasions and I continue to be disappointed by some of his decisions. I am all for standing on principle as an outsider. However I also realize that politics is a different game. Politics is a game of give and take. From what I can see, the President is playing this game to the best of his abilities. He has limited support from his own party (the left and right both attack his policies), he has absolutely no support from the Republicans and very little support from the coalition that elected him.

All I hear from the progressives at this point is how the president isn't living up to the legacy of FDR. Well FDR had a chance to put health care for all in place and he bargained it away. He got nothing( I'm assuming those on the left would have been happy to do away with social security as well because getting only that would have been seen as a "compromise"). . Ted Kennedy had a chance to champion Jimmy Carter's deal for health care for all working Americans and he decided to go for it all we ended up with nothing. Kennedy did it because he wanted to run for President and didn't want to rubber stamp the Carter agenda. No one talks about that either. (But according to the left, that decision should be applauded because he stood on principle. Never mind the fact that he later in life said it was the biggest mistake he ever made in his political life.)

I have no idea what the standard is for this President. If he had stood on principle in the health care debate (meaning single payer), we would now have nothing. If he would have stood on principle during the fight for financial reform, we would have nothing. This president doesn't need to grow a set, he has a set. He has decided to set a course of attainable progress. It doesn't help him with the left (who want some progressive superman to take down the Republicans without so much as a nod to the procedural rules of Congress that wouldn't allow such a thing), the right continues to call the President a socialist, a communist, a traitor, a Muslim terrorist, etc. How much bravery do you think it takes for someone to act even though they know it will curry no favor with either supporters or detractors?

Frankly I'm of the mind that the President should just finish out his term and go on to become extremely rich as the foremost citizen of the world. Because even if those in the US don't appreciate him, he is without a doubt the most admired leader in the world today. If the US doesn't want him, then I guess we don't deserve him. I'm not defending his decisions. I've been just as disappointed in some of them as some of his most vocal critics have been. But I do understand political reality. And after the next election, when those on the left will be, I assume based on their current rhetoric, celebrating the end of the term of the great appeaser, we'll all get a dose of political reality, Republican style. And that, my friends, is all I have to say about that.

The Zero Sum Game.

2010-12-10T15:50:00.011-05:00

This post started off as a response and affirmation of the sentiments in the previous post by MyCue23, but it dragged on too long in the comments box and got cut off, probably because I’ve been holding my tongue/thoughts for too long and now there’s too much to say with any concision…

I ‘ve thought long and hard about whether to keep writing on politics because once again the American Left, the only alternative for sane people in the United States living outside of the community of the top 1% of wealth holders, are fighting with themselves again.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again, the Left, Progressives, Liberals, Pro Union workers, Socialists argue with each other, and the Right unifies in response to the turmoil. You don’t hear anyone on the Right saying, “We didn’t defeat healthcare reform passage, we need a ‘real’ Republican running the Party.” No. They patted themselves on the back for aborting the Single Payer Option and concentrated on what to sabotage next like Financial Reform.

Democrats, Progressives and Liberals who take an “all or nothing” approach to legislative progress for our society’s evolution, are only working toward the goals of their intended adversary: The Establishment and their self-approved Status Quo.

I’ve said it before: I’m not happy.

But I’m not willing to cede the reigns back to the craven, thieving enemies of this Republic, who rob every working man, woman and innocent child daily, just because we haven’t gotten as far as we wanted to go by last Wednesday. I’m certainly not going to handover control by hanging my hopes on some unnamed, principled, but ineffective articulator of my hopes who can’t get elected, and has no hope of nudging a swing state or hurdling any of the concrete barriers that destroy candidates in presidential races. This as yet unnamed, and somewhat imaginary ‘real’ Progressive (Liberal, Demorcat et al.) that my disenchanted fellow travelers on the Left are proposing is the respective gambit that the Republicans are trying to avoid on their very own side of the fence: Sarah Palin. Palin might be what their people want, but they know those people aren’t looking squarely at election night, and the way Palin would energize every person with an IQ higher than 90 to vote against her is the reason they openly express their opposition to her candidacy and influence.
It doesn’t feel particularly good to argue practicality, -ever. Especially when the future is on the line, and in politics it always is. But I’m arguing for it here at the risk of being called a sell out by my contemporaries. I’m taking the long view, further down the field, possibly as far down the line as the end of my life. I’ll stand with this President and his administration, and all the Democrats in office in the House and the Senate (even somebody I think has proven themselves to have been bought outright by lobbyists like Sen. Max Baucus), just as I criticize them for not going far enough, or not being tough enough. I remain a supporter of Democrats because resetting the clock and the score on Healthcare Reform (limited as it is), Financial Reform (weak as it is) is exactly what the Establishment’s political arm: the GOP and the Conservative base have always wanted.

Rolling back what little has been done is exactly what the GOP will do if they get into power. Taking everything back to a starting point, because you didn’t reach your goal in the time you wanted -- in the exact way that you wanted, still means you are further away from those goals, only with exhausted resources. You are back to the starting line as if nothing ever happened. The Obama Administration and the current crop of Democrats in office the last few years have moved the ball forward: on the environment; on consumer issues; on financial reform; on healthcare; on enforcing the Constitution. E.g. once you have passed a law making an activity, like rescission, or denial of covergae based upon pre-existing medical conditions illegal you can move forward and try to do other, harder things, like getting medical coverage for all college students, or lowering the Medicare entry point to age 50; or eventually a Single Payer Option, -unless...
unless you have to go back and fight issues like rescission all over again, -every single time-, every 20 years or so, as has been done since President Truman’s initial efforts to nationalize the healthcare industry (They defeated him by calling him a Socialist.)

Proffering a “real” Progressive as a presidential candidate, (which really is code for someone who is functionally, inflexibly uncompromising on principles central to 20th century Progressivism,) is unrealistic in proposed inception and possible practice in a country where Senator Russ Feingold was defeated by a Tea Party (Read rebranded Republican) candidate who publicly and unashamedly calls the assertion that climate change is a man-made problem, "crazy."

The best that could be done, somehow happened in 2008. Two men, who on paper scare the shit out of the duped reactionary masses and their wealthy and powerful masters made their way into the White House on the backs of a voting block that coagulated and solidified long enough to overturn the costly (and some will maintain illegitimate) election outcomes of 2004 and 2000.

As I write this, few are taking up FDR’s challenge to Labor leaders after his election in 1932: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." I don’t have a single friend who complains about this administration calling their Representatives or their Senators on any issues. They voted, and they figured that their job is done; ignoring the fact that it’s the house and the legislature that write and enact bills into laws, the White House ultimately only has a direct power to say “no” and propose Supreme Court judges. To those who say there is no difference between what this administration has done, and what Republicans would have done in their place for the last two years, I say: Marshal your imagination to consider what the Supreme Court would look like for a different perspective. I ask that all of us think of Healthcare Reform and Financial Reform and whether they would have come up even, solely, simply, as proposed subjects for theoretical discussion under a Republican administration. -I doubt they would have even gotten a mention from the podium judging from the last 8 years of a Republican White House. But in our living reality, -they were proposed, and heavily promoted by this White House, and the overwhelming majority of the people who voted President Obama and Vice President Biden into office, immediately forgot they had a Senate and House of Representatives to bring into line if they wanted to get anything done, ever. That’s never going to change no matter who gets into office. Having the President you supported elected is never enough, he needs direction, he needs post election support. Replacing a Moderate, Liberal or Progressive President every cycle simply forestalls the ongoing problems and sustains the dysfunction between the Executive branch and the Legislative branch in our government; a dysfunction that benefits the Establishment, the wealthy, the powerful.

It’s not too late too late to make them do it. …Unless we want to just erase all this meagre progress and start over from scratch, just like the GOP keeps asking everybody to do.
-SJ

Armageddon

2010-12-09T17:21:00.002-05:00

The so called "progressives" seemed to have decided that the President deserves to have a primary challenger in 2012. His capitulation on the Bush tax cuts was seen as the final straw. I personally think that the President made a mistake in negotiating as if he were at a disadvantage when clearly he had the support of a majority of Americans. He also went back on one of his biggest promises of his Presidential campaign. Those are reasons to be angry with the President, but to call for a primary challenge is political suicide.

The last sitting President to face a primary challenge was Jimmy Carter and before that it was LBJ. In both instances the fissures in the Democratic party led to narrow victories by the Republicans which was then followed by overwhelming electoral victories in the following Presidential election. This situation is unique however. In this case, the first African American to ever be elected to the office would be the one facing a challenge from within his own party. Intra-party fights are incredibly messy affairs and this one would be even more divisive than the anti-war effort that caused LBJ to quit the race before he was even officially a candidate.

The is no doubt that African Americans are the most loyal of the parts that make up the democratic party base. In the last election the percentage of black Americans who voted for President Obama topped 90%. There is no other group that can be counted on to vote democratic as consistently as blacks. Now this group, that has been so loyal to the party, finally and almost unbelievably got to vote for someone who looks like they do. They came out in record numbers and enthusiastically cast their vote for Barack Obama. Some felt as if they had lived to see a miracle. Some, who had lived through the hell that was Jim Crow, cried at just the thought of being able to cast their vote for a black presidential candidate. Some were so filled with pride that they were almost overwhelmed by the opportunity to cast their vote.

Now less than two years into his presidency, those same people are being told by the progressives that this President, their President, is unfit to lead the party. They are being told that even though he has faced unprecedented opposition from the Republicans, an onslaught of negative press from the right , and questions about his religion and place of birth from his first day in office, he has failed to live up to the legacy of FDR. who had historically large majorities in the house and senate to work with They are being told that even though his own party controlled both houses of Congress, and were too weak to pass a stronger version of health care reform, that ultimately it is his fault. They are being told that despite the fact that the coalition that elected him quickly became as quiet as a church mouse that it was his fault that those on the right were overwhelming the political conversation. They are being told that even though his term is less than 1/2 over, there is nothing that he can do to salvage it. They are being told that this President, their President, is being held to a standard that it would be impossible for anyone to live up to.

I would ask each and every person who thinks of themselves as a progressive and who thinks that the President should face a challenger in the primaries and indeed should be replaced at the top of the ticket, what they think will happen to those most loyal of democratic voters when they see this President, their President, attacked openly by the party that they have given so much of their political energy to? Who do you think they will choose? What side do you think they will choose to be on? Do you think that a group of people who have been historically abused, neglected and subjugated will suddenly decide to turn against one of their own?

The truth of the matter is that if the progressives really want Obama out as the standard bearer for the democratic party in the next election, they can probably make it happen. As we know, it is only the most highly motivated who vote in primaries. If the progressives were to get behind one candidate, they stand a good chance of making a primary challenger into a serious threat to the President. And if the President were to lose to a primary challenger, I will ask again, what would happen to the most loyal and consistent of democratic voters? How do you think their reaction would impact senate races and congressional races? I'm not saying that African Americans would turn to the Republican party, but if this President, their President, was somehow removed from the ticket for 2012, the repercussions would be far reaching indeed and would reverberate for years to come. The Republicans would hold an unassailable majority in the house and senate. The Supreme court would be lost for the next 30 years. The Republican agenda would become the only agenda. That is what we face if this insanity of a primary challenger is carried out.

Are the progressives willing to put this bullet into the head of the democratic party for a generation? You bet your sweet ass they are. Because what is better than fighting the good fight? What is better than going down in flames? What is better than being the angry young man beating your head against the wall? What is better than winning a battle that you know in the long run will lose you the war? After all, it's all about the fight.

This President is far from perfect. In fact there are many, many decisions of this administration that I disagree with. However disagreeing with the President and actively seeking his dismissal are completely distinct activities. I can hope that those on the left will come to their senses in time to mount a unified effort to reelect President Obama, but somehow I think that the progressives would rather win a battle, than fight a war. In the euphoria after Barack Obama was elected there were those pundits who were proclaiming the end of the Republicans as a national party. Less than two years later we can see how wrong they were. However, if the progressives chose to go down this road, they will condemn the Democrats to a permanent place on the sideline of national political debate. I can assure that if Black Americans see this President, their President, being attacked, belittled and battered by the party that they have given so much to, they will consider it a personal attack and the democratic party will never be the same again.

Progressive No More

2010-11-14T20:31:00.006-05:00

I've decided that it's time (for me at least) to shed the label of "Progressive". First of all I never really understood what that meant. I always thought that people came up with it when Liberal became a dirty word in politics. I am unabashedly a liberal. I believe that the government should do more for those of us who can't do for themselves. I believe that health care should be a right and not a privilege. I believe that gays should be allowed to marry and be as miserable as the rest of us. I believe that all our children deserve the same quality of education. I believe that affirmative action will be necessary until we no longer exist as a species on this planet. I also believe that having a President in the White House who belongs to the Democratic party is a good thing.

The so called progressives in this country are climbing over each other to see which one can express more disappointment in what Barack Obama has been able to achieve as President. You see when Obama was elected, he was singlehandedly supposed to take down the Washington DC machine. He alone was going to expose the corporate underbelly. He was going to make the sun shine every day and bring an end to all war and hunger. He was also going to get universal health coverage for all, end hunger, make our schools the best in the world, turn our economy green overnight by ending our dependence of foreign oil, end all discrimination, bring down the corrupt banking system and make sure the Yankees won the World Series every year. Okay, that last one was just what I was hoping.

The progressives who had worked so hard to get Obama elected, now feel betrayed because all those things haven't come to pass. They point to FDR and LBJ as examples of what can be done by a true "progressive" leader. They seem to forget that FDR came to power with over 70% of both houses of Congress from his party. We were also at the start of Great Depression (which magically did not end over night, regardless of the re writing of history that some would like to do) and people were desperate for an answer, any answer. What those who are so enamored of FDR fail to note is that after his first 100 days in office and even with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, he was never again able to pass anything like the sweeping changes he made initially. He also wanted universal health care, but couldn't get enough support for it, even from his own party. Perhaps the progressives of the day were also lamenting the ineffectiveness of FDR. LBJ swept into his second term on a wave of emotion over the slaying of his predecessor. The country rejected the seemingly knee jerk conservatism of Barry Goldwater (all except the deep south states which have remained a Republican stronghold ever since) and gave him a mandate to govern. The Great Society was supposed to bring an end to all discrimination, hunger and suffering. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights act, the Medicare act were all part of plan. Of course less than 2 years later the same country that had so overwhelmingly voted for LBJ were ready to tear his head off. And his main opposition came from within his own party.

I don't think it's a bad thing to dream big. In fact big dreams create big results. In Washington DC however, those dreams must be tempered by political reality. All those people who donated money to the Obama campaign have to understand that even though it was a record haul for a candidate, he still got more money from corporate entities than he did from private citizens. That is just the reality of politics. The banks and big business pay for our elected officials. Campaign finance reform would be wonderful, but in reality, the forces aligned against it are just too powerful. This President (and the parties they lead), likes those before him in modern times, are beholden to big corporate interests. The five biggest banks in the country have more capital than the US government. Who do you think wins a stare down between the two?

This President is never going to be all things to all people. I reject the notion, however, that there is no difference between him and a generic Republican President. I believe that this President's heart is in the right place. I believe that he really cares about the issues of working people. I believe that he is doing all that he can to make sure that the people get as fair a shake as possible under the current conditions. That is what I believe is the difference. Can he affect all the changes that he'd like? Of course not. He is bound by the limitations of his office. I personally think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are pointless. If it were up to me, I would bring everyone home tomorrow. But it's not up to me and frankly, it's not up to him either. If anyone thinks that managing global military policy is as easy as just ending something that is unpopular, then they are deluding themselves. But apparently that is what "progressives" like to do. I would love America to reject our dependence on foreign oil and create millions of "green" jobs here. But Americans are lazy and cheap. As long as oil is the cheapest way to power our cars, then that is what we are going to use. A "green" economy can't be created overnight. There has to be a demand for it and unfortunately, despite the fact that we are slowly killing our planet, there is none.

Progressives also like to talk of this mythical leader who can turn this all around. Dennis Kucinich has been mentioned by some. Of course he has about as much chance of being elected President as I do and I wasn't even born here. The machine that is Washington DC moves slowly and incrementally. Was health care reform all I had hoped for? Of course not. I mean who would have wanted a money grab for the same insurance companies that have been screwing us for years? Financial reform is fairly toothless, but it is an attempt at trying to control an out of control situation. How would this imagined "progressive" leader have handled a fractured Democratic party and an opposition bent on destroying any agenda he or she set. The Republicans made a calculated gamble that the economy could not be turned around in 18 months and that the people would blame the President for it. So by opposing his policies, even without proposing any of their own, they look like a better option. And amazingly the American people bought it. That's not exactly true, but they did buy the disenchantment with the current administration. They listened to all the naysayers and doomsday prophets and stayed home in droves. Could the mythical progressive prophet have done any better? The people have already shown how quickly they lose faith in their real political "Superman".

I started this by saying I'm not a Progressive anymore. I don't know that I ever was one. I'm just simply a liberal with a firm grip on reality. Perhaps I'm too pragmatic to be a Progressive. Who knows? Those on the left who say that the President should have mobilized his forces to fight for health care or financial reform or gay marriage or whatever, forget the fact that when Barack Obama took the oath of office, he was no longer a candidate of some of the people, he became the President of all of the people. He does not speak only to those of us who supported him or gave him money or voted for him or made phone calls for him or knocked on doors for him, he speaks to all of us. Some may listen, some may not, but he does not have the option to only speak to selected groups. He makes his case to the American people and they decide what their course of action will be. As a liberal, I want more from this administration. I want more from this President. But I know the size of the rock he's trying to push up that hill. I'm a liberal, and I want more. But I also live in the real world.

Chicken Little

2010-11-03T17:07:00.001-04:00

Yesterdays election results were about what people expected. The Republicans won the House and the Democrats managed to maintain a slim lead in the Senate. John Boehner will now be the Speaker of the House and the Republicans can start down the road of investigations and subcommittees and the like. However the simple truth of the matter is that even with the election results, not much is going to change. The sky is not going to fall, the world will not stop spinning on its axis and the majority of people in the US will go an as if nothing of importance happened yesterday. That is the basic truth of politics in this country. After the election of President Obama, some got their hopes so unbelievably inflated that there was no possibility that he could meet their expectations. The hangover from the high of victory in '08 has reverberated all the way to last nights election. Here's what I wrote back in November of '08:

If Barack Obama were actually to become the next President of the United States would the country be transformed overnight? Of course not. We face an economic crisis of untold proportion and there is nothing that will make that go away, least of all the election of a new President. The rich will still be rich, the poor will still be poor, the homeless will still be homeless, hundreds of thousands of our troops will still be deployed in the Middle East and our economy is still going to be in very poor shape. The new President is going to be left with multiple issues to deal with from the current administration. An Obama presidency would not mean that our problems would disappear, in fact, the next President is going to face some monumental challenges that no change in policy is going to be able to overcome in a few months. The country would head in a different direction under an Obama administration, but the issues are and would continue to be very challenging for the country.

Last nights results do not do not change my thoughts in any way. Last nights results show what happens when Republicans are energized and motivated and Democrats are not. The Republicans continue to promise what they've always promised and have always failed to deliver. The energy just happened to be on their side this time. The story of fear and hate will always find an audience, it just so happens that the color of president in combination with the color of those coming from our southern neighbor and bad economic times, made the story an easy sell. Perhaps after two years of non action, the Tea Party (read Republicans) will become disillusioned with their leadership as well.

What does this mean for 2012? It's hard to say. If the economy improves, then Obama wins in a cakewalk. If it doesn't then all bets are off. At this point, if I were a betting man, I would put Sarah Palin as the even money favorite to win the Republican nomination. However don't count out Scott Brown or Marco Rubio following the "Obama method" and running for president in the middle of the their first terms in Senate. The rest of the Republican field is so uninspiring that I wouldn't give the lot of them (Romney, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Barbor, Huckabee) even long shot odds. I personally still think the nomination is sitting out there waiting for Jeb Bush if he wants it.

Anyway,there's no reason to panic over the results from last night. The sky is not falling and thankfully no one person is capable of bringing it down by themselves. That means of course that no one person is capable of making the sun shine all the time either. We would do well to remember that. As we've seen, the wheels turn very slowly in DC, if they ever turn at all.

VOTE.

2010-10-29T15:10:00.006-04:00

Lower turn out always benefits the elites, always bolsters the Establishment and reassures the top 1% of the nation’s Wealthy across the board. Nothing makes lobbyists happier than poor, working-class, middle-class, upper-class non-voters who cite “lack of enthusiasm” as their reason to stay home.

“The powers that be” don’t care if you’re Rich, Poor, Black, White, Brown, Man, Woman, Tranny, or a World of War Craft aficionado, -as long as you stay home on Election Day.

The dollars corporate interests and big business spent in the last presidential election and the last Senate and Congressional races go farther if we just act like nothing matters. This is why the Establishment always fights voter registration efforts, anywhere, from the Mission district in San Francisco, to Beverly Hills, to Compton, to Detroit, to Chicago’s Southside, to Park Avenue, to Harlem and all places in between, the non voter is the Establishment’s favorite kind of American: The defeated kind; The kind they don’t have to spend money distracting with ads or lying to in the newsmedia.

When you don’t vote, you have no say. When you have “no say,” you are no different than a royal subject in days of old… save that you did it to yourself.

GO VOTE.

Vote and vote hard.
Really think about it.
…And, if you do give it some thought, you’ll find there are plenty of reasons to vote for this candidate versus that candidate, or this proposition as opposed that bill… but there is no reason, not a single solitary one not to vote. EVER.

Many people died to set in motion this system, a still evolving one, which was more of an open-ended hope for a future that the founders were humble enough to know they could not imagine for us on parchment in perpetuity. Thomas Jefferson and others understood what they could not bring themselves to pronounce openly; namely that inalienable truth that says “us” means “all” or it just means “some,” and whatsoever was jotted down in the first drafts of our Constitution, -we were never intended to be a nation of “some.”

We’re still working it out. SO VOTE.

We owe them one.
The founders, despite their own criminal flaws, mendacity and self-centered motivations, didn't elect a new king, they laid down the ground work for a system by the people for the people, in an attempt at a “more perfect union.” –Those words were a dare of sorts to be answered by every succeeding generation, and some of our forbears have paid for it in flesh. Too many profited from its loopholes, its abusive legislation, its murderous and exclusionary protections… only to find those abuses and crimes the very reason for changing the Constitution, for the better, for the future.

If you’re going to stay home during this election I ask that you look at a portrait of Frederick Douglass while you stay home, wasting a precious chance to be counted, to be heard, to simply exist in the nation you live in. The shame might just kill you, be you Black, White, Hispanic, Fundamentalist or sane.

I won’t tell you who to vote for or why.

I have faith that if every registered voter came out and fulfilled their civic responsibility to the country, government would improve vastly. More would get done, -and more needs to get done because we’ve only started.

SO VOTE ALREADY.

Ignore all the noise, and cast your ballot and think of all the native nations that discovered this country millennia ago, the settlers, the slaves, the exploited, the immigrants and all who gave everything in return for nothing.

Vote because it’s your right, it’s your power and it’s the only way in which this nation can move forward into the light of its proper future.

VOTE.
-SJ

Nobody Says We Were Attacked By Agnostics, White Men, New Yorkers, Republicans or Veterans on 4/19

2010-10-15T17:51:00.009-04:00

If the glibness of this post’s title makes you angry, then read on. There’s actually a very important point to my sarcastic and jingoist-baiting statement above.

On April 19, 1995 the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City was bombed by Timothy McVeigh, a Caucasian, sometime Catholic later Agnostic, decorated Persian Gulf War veteran, American militia movement sympathizing, registered Republican voter who was born in the state of New York.

McVeigh committed what was the single most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. It claimed 168 lives, not counting an unmatched adult human leg that may belong to a possible, unidentified 169th victim who remains anonymous to this day.

The 168 death toll includes 19 children under the age of six.

Tim McVeigh claimed he initially wanted to destroy the Murrah building itself, but that he later came to the conclusion that his “message” would be heard only if there were many deaths. Most of the fatalities were directly caused by the violent collapse of the building’s structure, and not the bomb’s sudden instantaneous blast.

After April 19, nobody focused on any of the groups of which McVeigh was an identified member after his cowardly bombing with the ferocity, venom and prejudiced hate that Muslims have endured in America. Why? Because it would be manifestly stupid to suspect all persons born in the state of New York of terrorism. It would be an act of absolute idiocy to suspect all Persian Gulf War veterans of sedition and treason (And yet I would not blame them for those sentiments after the scandal of Walter Reade hospital during the Bush administration.) It would be irrational to assume that Caucasians want to bring down the government because of Tim McVeigh, and his accomplice Terry Nichol’s racial identity.

Yet this is the reasoning too many of us apply to Muslims in America.

You wouldn’t know that “guilt by association” is actually illegal in America from watching pundits on the Right, or by listening to the screams of protesters opposing the building of a Islamic learning center, (or mosque it doesn’t really matter which it is) in downtown Manhattan.

That’s all prejudice is at its core: the judgment of individuals based upon a belief applied to a group. The individual disappears, and all manner of injustice and violence is allowed. To paraphrase comedian Chris Rock, there’s always a lot of “accepted racism” when people start getting angry or scared or both.

We are angry and we are still scared in America, -and with good reason. Some spoiled fundamentalist asshole billionaire named Osama Bin Laden keeps releasing new tapes faster than the late Tupac Shakur; threatening violence and death against “the west” from all corners, sides and borders. Regardless of what motivations are ascribed to this homicidal thug and his fellow sociopaths, Bin Laden’s reasoning has more to do with perceived affronts to his reputation as a freedom fighter and protector of his culture and religion than the actual religion of Islam itself. When the House of Saud refused his help in pushing Saddam Hussein back across Kuwait, he openly threatened the Royal family. When the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia ran to their old friends the Bush family for support, he openly threatened the United States, leveraging the coming installation of an American military base within miles of Mecca as a rallying insult for Al Qaeda to galvanize around during and after the Persian Gulf War. Underneath all of this, the United States’ motivations had nothing to do with freedom or religion, -just the securing the uninterrupted procurement and distribution of oil at any cost. Nobody remembers that Bin Laden’s former target was the Egyptian government after the Soviet Afghanistan war, a fact conveniently lost in the post 9/11 us-versus-them propaganda deluge that ironically served the purposes of maniacs like Bin Laden himself: Every Muslim made to feel they do not belong gives his self-indulgent war of religion and culture legitimacy; Just ask John Miller, the only western reporter ever to interview Bin Laden face to face in 1998.

Even Bill Maher, another comedian like Chris Rock whose powers of reason and ethical humanist clarity I respect greatly, -actually defended racial profiling to my shock a few short years ago. If you’re looking for someone who looks and sounds like Osama Bin Laden, it still allows everyone who doesn’t look that way free reign to harm. I don’t feel safe around anyone when I’m at the airport, because I know that persons looking a particular way, being of a particular race, creed or color doesn’t make them any particular thing for better of for worse, for good or ill. Maybe old people get a pass, but that might be it.

And this is my point, and the motivation behind the title of this post:

Fox “News” Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said that “Muslims killed us on 9/11” on the TV talk show, The View this week. While that statement in isolation remains a fact, its selectiveness as a statement lends authority to a lie because all Muslims did not attack the United States on September 11, 2001. His statement is as ridiculous and dishonest as positing that “Veterans, Republicans and White men attacked us on April 19, 1995.” No one would uphold that statement or use it as justification for let’s say, denying a permit to an RNC convention in downtown Oklahoma because the GOP’s presence would be “an insult to families of the 4/19 victims.”

I am an American and I am tired of pointing out what is still racism and what still amounts to bigotry and prejudice over the shouting of people like Bill O’Reilly. I am exhausted from pointing out just how hypocritically selective hate is in America. I’m tired of pointing out the obvious to people who would rather act before they think just because they say their anger gives them the right.

Sadly, I am scared too.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon and the failed run at the White House by high jacked flight 93, the United States is one terrorist attack away from a federal lock down that would make the Patriot Act look like a Civil Rights initiative (no matter who is in office.) The cultural and social repression that would emanate at street level is too monstrous to contemplate if we are hit again in sizeable measure. I know we’d lose everything valuable about this Republic because we’re not the nation we used to be. We don’t listen to smart people anymore, we call people who try to think things through “pussies,” and we call people who defend the powerless even worse names.

Just try and remember this:
The casualties on 9/11 included nationals from over 70 countries. That’s one isolated fact that Fox “News” Channel and Osama Bin Laden are glad we have forgotten.

-SJ

The Enemy Within

2010-09-28T01:03:00.001-04:00

The political atmosphere in this country has now become so toxic that it is practically impossible to have a genuine conversation that results in a productive exchange of ideas. We have all become convinced that the other side is in league with the devil. The conversation is not about philosophical ideas of leadership, but about the Armageddon that awaits should the other side either remain in power or regain power. There is no political middle ground anymore. The President is a fairly moderate left leaning politician. What has that gotten him? The right thinks he's an African Manchurian candidate, anti-Christ. The left thinks he's a sell out with no backbone. That is what happens to you in today's climate if you attempt to walk down the middle of the road.

The real problem with this open animosity is that it allows the actual issues of the day to be pushed to the side in an all out attempt to win. You see the idea that the end of the world is nigh becomes the driving force behind all political action. Politicians use the most extreme language to describe the opposition in order to evoke a visceral reaction from their followers. The actual policies are not the important thing, the most important thing that voters take away from these demagogues is that if the opposition wins, their lives as they know it will be over. I could get into more complicated explanations about the backlash of white males and the similarities to the strategies employed by Nixon in '68 and even more forcefully in '72, but there really is no need. Both parties are guilty of overuse of hyperbole in describing the repercussions to America should their opponents be victorious in the next election.

Lost in all the noise is the actual policy. Which politician or political party is simply talking about what would be the most beneficial to the people of America? The political parties are too busy bashing each other over the head to seemingly pay much attention to that. The Good of the people (which has long since taken a back seat to the greed and ambition of politicians), seems to be absolutely missing from our political discussion these days. The sad thing is that the followers of both parties have allowed this to happen. We have all played a part in turning politics into just the next "thing" that we have to win. "Our side won, hurray"!, who cares whether it will actually help "We the People". Republicans were disappointed by George Bush, so what, at least he won 2 elections and God knows it would have been the end of the world if Al Gore had won. Those on the left are disappointed in Obama, but so what, at least we won and God knows it would have been the end of the world if John McCain had won.

The rhetoric and the hyperbole and the scare tactics have come to define political thought in our time. We no longer live in constant fear of nuclear annihilation, but apparently we have replaced that boogey monster with a new one called the OPPOSITION PARTY. It works for politicians because it allows them to whip their supporters into a frenzy without ever addressing any real issues. TV friendly soundbites are so much easier to come up with than actual policies and ideas to address the many real problems that we face. The part that's harder to understand is how WE the PEOPLE have allowed ourselves to become the standard bearers of and town criers for this sideshow. Perhaps it is just the fact that we need a mortal enemy in order to justify our own existence. I'm not sure what the answer is. I've certainly been guilty of it myself. But when I see and hear the noise that is generated by the media and the nonsense that is spewing forth from the mouths of our elected leaders, I just have to wonder if there's any road back from this. Is this it? Is this what our republic has come to? I think the quote "We have met the enemy and he is us" sums up my feelings.

You'll Believe a Man Can Fly!

2010-09-15T17:03:00.001-04:00

"You'll believe a man can fly", that's how the advertising campaign went for the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve. After seeing the movie, I did damn near believed it myself, but I knew that it was just special effects. However, while I was watching the movie, I absolutely believed that Christopher Reeve could fly. That is because of what we call the willing suspension of disbelief. It makes movies, plays, books, etc., really any work of fiction more exciting. If we, as the audience willingly suspend our disbelief then we can go along on the journey of fancy being presented. Most works of fiction have plot holes big enough to drive a truck through and yet we allow them without too many questions because it makes the experience more entertaining. In every horror movie, the cast always splits up, instead of staying together. We all know that they would stand a better chance of surviving if they stayed together, but the characters seem to be oblivious to that fact. We, as the audience play along, because the experience wouldn't be as much fun if the characters acted like their real life counterparts would.

My co-conspirator here at Random Thoughts wrote a wonderful piece about the willingness of the American people to buy into lies and propaganda. My thoughts are very similar, but I think that the American people are more like that audience at the horror movies. They know what the outcome is going to be and yet they still watch the whole movie. They still choose (with their dollars) to go and see something that is filled with inconsistencies and usually extremely predictable. I think Mike Myers (of Halloween fame, not the Canadian comedian) was killed at the end of every one of his movies and yet there he always was, two years later, once again reeking havoc on another unsuspecting group of individuals. The same goes for Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th), or Freddie Kruger (Nightmare on Elm Street). The audiences always came back though.

We are now on the verge of a mid term election that could (and most likely will) return the Republicans to power in the House and Senate. How, you ask, could people who just two years ago resoundingly rejected the Republican agenda, once again think that the GOP is the answer to their problems? It's easy you see, they are engaged in the same type of mental gymnastics that are required to watch and enjoy a movie that makes no logical sense and is entirely predictable. We as a nation are now involved in a willing suspension of disbelief on a massive scale. The claims made by the Republicans and their supporters are entirely predictable. We all know what it leads to and how that story ends and yet it seems we are all going to be a party to a return engagement. We are going to sit down and pay our money and watch this show run it's course one more time. Lowering taxes on the rich will make eventually benefit everyone...loosening regulations on the banks will help to make money more accessible to everyone...Closing our borders will make us a stronger nation...Health care isn't so broke that a little tort reform won't make everything better...etc, etc, etc.

We've heard it all before. There is nothing new on the table and yet we, as a nation are willing to suspend our disbelief in order to see the show play out once again. There is a definition of insanity which is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. I don't believe that we fall under into that category, because deep down, I honestly believe that people know what the end result is going to be, they just don't care. We are willing to suspend our disbelief one more time because this show, the Republican Side Show, is just more fun than the Democratic one. The Republicans will tell you that everyone can be rich, if you just let them back into power. The Republicans will tell you that everyone will be happy, if you just let them back into power. The Democrats on the other hand are always trying to keep everyone grounded in reality. Well, as the people are about to tell them, reality is no fun. Where's the fun in hard work and sacrifice? Where's the fun in continued economic stagnation? Where's the fun in increased taxes?

So as November rolls around and unemployment stays high and disenchantment with the Obama administration continues to grow, get ready for a new horror movie that's going to be opening at a city hall and a state capitol and a Congressional office near you. Our suspension of disbelief will be in full effect as we sit down to enjoy, Halloween 2010: the Revenge of the Republicans. The problem is that we've already seen how this one ends.

Cross posted at Mad Mike's America.

Understanding What’s Really Wrong with Our Country and Our World

2010-09-10T13:17:00.008-04:00

These days, I’ve often heard it said that the problem with too many Americans who vote against their own interests is their stupidity, or their lack of formal education, or their reliance on corporate-engineered news sources.

How else can you explain the popularity of someone as intellectually counterfeit and ethically suspect as Glenn Beck in America?

The problem with those explanations is that there are plenty of constant counter examples that don’t hold out. There are plenty of people that might be considered to be “dumb as posts,” who still vote rationally in line with their own interests and the interests of the country as a whole in mind. I’m talking about some of the poor people in my old South Bronx neighborhood, many of whom never made it past 9th grade, yet still understand the importance of labor unions and the need for regulation in big business no matter what they read in the New York Post every single day on their train ride to work. Most of these folks can’t even explain the structure of our government or its history despite being native born Americans, yet they can still spot opportunistic bullshit when they hear it:

These so-called “stupid” uneducated people still somehow knew that anything coming from the Right against Healthcare Reform was going to be the kind of lying you only see go down when corporate profits are at stake.

Another problem with the explanations of ignorance, or misinformation is that the truth and the facts are being promoted constantly in the media despite what my fellow Liberals charge: Someone who watches Fox “News” exclusively still walks around the same world as everyone else and invariably sees other headlines they have to actively dismiss. The devoted Fox “News” watcher has to walk the Earth in a constant state of denial, preemptively disbelieving anything that doesn’t match up with Murdoch’s brand of propaganda and wait for new Fox “factoids” to counter reality when they get home and can watch Hannity or whomever. There were for example far more years (decades in fact) of information on the dangers of global climate change, pollution, the importance of conservation, the dangers of continued and future oil dependence, than there have been of the relatively recent Right wing and corporate-sponsored anti-Environment movement propaganda. So just how did such obvious lies catch up to and overtake the truth for many in America?
-The way it happened was this: Lies, -the kind of lies that are invented to muddy facts and question truths inconvenient to the powerful, the Rich, the Establishment were created to be appealing to the believer. That’s the only way they could work. These lies gave the listener something in return for “buying in.”

“You can still lose weight and eat everything you want”
is a statement I see every night on TV infomercials in some form or another. This American desire, particularly the willingness of our desperate fat citizens to do absolutely anything in the world to lose weight (except eating right and exercising apparently) is the core of our problem, and it is what is behind the Tea Baggers today, and it is what was behind the Reagan revolution of 1980.

Tea Baggers believe that they can groundlessly oppose the Obama administration with criticisms they should have leveled at its predecessors (Spending, irresponsible economic governance, government intrusion, weak national security) because it makes them feel okay about claiming they’ve somehow lost their country now that a Black man is president.
Reagan’s supporters were told America could spend its way to prosperity; that we could deregulate big business and it would never create adverse consequences, -ever, because it allowed us to finally say what we felt was a long overdue “fuck you” to the poor. We believed it because it made us feel good. We believed it because it was allowing us to eat all we wanted, without any ill effects… that was the promise and that was the lie.

So the problem with America my friends, aside from our new impatience with any administration or any policy that takes more than six months to register a measurable improvement is this infantile desire to be lied to in place of an ugly truth, and the willingness to trade our safety and our future for just the right fantasy. Too many of us will buy into any lie, as long as the reality it promises let’s us get away with something. You can’t discuss policy with people who want to be lied to. You can’t have a conversation with someone who is lying about how they really feel, unless your goal is to waste your time. I don’t argue with Tea Baggers.

And that’s where we’re at today, Friday September 10, 2010, almost ten long years to the day after a homicidal fundamentalist asshole decided to make a point to my government with facile destructive attacks that only showed just how easy it is to murder people in an open society and an open nation and little else. The American Republic and its Constitution almost didn’t survive 9/11 and ten years later, too many of us are still taking the bait, too eager to hear lies that give us something in return for our credulity, like believing the lie that only allowing our government to operate secretly will keep us safe… or that the actions of the few can conveniently condemn all. -But that last bit goes for all of us, -the real “all of us” everywhere on the globe, whether we’re burning books, killing aid workers, denying people’s rights, or waging unending wars supported by some fake, self-inflicted distance from reality.

A lie is a kind of trade between the speaker and the listener.
We must always ask ourselves what someone is getting for our belief, and if it’s actually worth what we are getting in return.
-SJ

UPDATED 9/16/2010:
Jack Jodell has written an excellently researched rundown of lies that should not go uncontested or unremembered going into the fall.

…And the Republic for Which It Stands.

2010-08-31T17:17:00.008-04:00

I am living with a very terrible, nagging feeling these last months. We are in a state of division these days so acute that Republicans and Conservatives cavalierly propose secession and cite states' rights, as if Jefferson Davis were still walking the earth and the Civil War had been but a prelude, and not settled history. These Republicans were the same people who accused the softest critics of the Bush administration of treason in the post 9/11 twilight of the 00s.

As I hear poll after poll indicating that Republicans and the Right likely stand to gain seats, if not a functioning majority in the House, I ask myself:
“Who are these excited fools, and how exactly did they apply their amnesia so selectively?”
“Doesn’t the future of a country matter more to these “patriots” than their declared party’s influence?”

And I am dealing with other terrible, nagging feelings. Among them the suspicion that we may no longer lack the maturity as a nation of citizens to either wait for policies to take effect, or listen to reason of any kind. Emotion and fear consistently trump the facts; and our beliefs, no matter how archaic and unenlightened, drown out news and information. We won’t consider any single simple thing unless it comes to us from someone we want to hear it from at the podium. This is one of the things that is making it so difficult for the population to even agree on a common, concrete, empirical reality.

Not everything is a matter of opinion or belief, and saying so is an act of puerile desperation. But the desperate are outlasting the sane in America today. Voters are insisting on acting like children, citing their refusal of inconvenient facts as philosophical strength and ideological resolve.

The “news,” as it is today, it not helping. The global and national media apparatus is in fact providing the most effective means of disseminating lies, legitimizing contrived inaccuracies and promoting the distractions of the Establishment.

Months ago, I made a list of Republican Senators from around the country and called and emailed each and every one of them about Healthcare reform (some wouldn’t let me email if I didn’t place a zip within their state, so it took some doing.) I started with John Boehner’s office. My feeling was that I had to say something to contradict the lie they kept repeating over and over again, -that the overwhelming percentage of Americans did not want health care reform. I did not want to be unheard by these spectacular liars even if my communications were ticks in the seas of their blind supporters’ screams and yells at town halls.
I asked many writers online to do the same: -not that they call Democrats, but that they specifically call the “opposition” and make reality a thing that much more obvious to disavow. I suspect no one else did this, because I know how long it took me: 3 days.

All I hear is how demoralized, disappointed and unenthusiastic voters are now that the Obama administration has shown it can only pass part of a healthcare reform package, part of a financial reform bill.

Well maybe Obama could have cured cancer in the last year if every single person who ever complained about it called all of their representatives.

Do not forget that "part" of a lazy public is sitting back and saying “Well, I voted” and doing little else since the White House changed hands.

And Now...

...Now those masses who forever want someone to make them feel comfortable, those familiar millions who are always clamoring for some leader to tell them they can have everything they want if they only shut up, if they only listen, if they only follow like supplicants in the presence of God are excited again. The American Right’s goal is enchantment, belief, obedience, uniformity, a homogeneity all in the service of allowing the rich to get richer, and ensure the poor remain raw material for whatever purposes the ruling class see fit.
How could Democrats, Progressives, the Unions, the working class, the poor or the Left, ever have hoped to keep its resolve in the face of that kind of stalwart, idiotic devotion presented as a political movement?
Honestly, I figured it would last longer than a year and a half, but from what I’m reading online, I was dead wrong.

I was as naïve as the armies of suckers who lined up to hear a comedian “restore honor” this past weekend in the nation's capitol.

Somebody save this country from its stupider, short-sighted impulses.
Somebody wake it before this idiotic nightmare runs its toxic course.
-SJ

Nice Try.

2010-08-28T09:46:00.009-04:00

I recycled a photo I created for the last piece I wrote on Glenn Beck, because that’s just how much time and attention this clown deserves this morning.

The most dishonorable and criminal thing that Conservatives, Republicans and all the hordes of Establishment propping shills in the media; like the whole of the Fox "News" Network, Newsmax and other purveyors of right wing fantasy, do is lie. The Right lies so brazenly and openly about their motives and their intentions and they do it with such sustained dedication, that the truth is often obscured by the simple exhaustion of journalists tired of reminding people of the facts.

Glenn Beck wants you to accept his excuse that his event today is just a coincidence in scheduling, but unless you are the kind of fucking fool who actually watches his cable show with the rapt attention more appropriate for actual news, -you can see this is a lie.

Can I or anyone read Beck’s mind and prove otherwise?
Of course not.

But childishly citing the absence of telepathy as the reason to accept this jackass’s excuse that he is trying to organize a “take back” of the Civil rights movement while unknowingly doing it on the anniversary of one of the most important dates in American history and Civil rights history, -is just more lying by Beck, Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and their PR teams.

The result and consequence of this rally is the same, -a desperate attempt at thinning and obscuring an important date in civil rights history with bullshit because there is an African American in the White House.

“Nice try, asshole.”

While Glenn Beck may have succeeded in fulfilling the wishes of Americans so scared to think for themselves that they’ll watch some unqualified jerkoff like him scribble Conservative paranoia on a black board, the vast majority of the world and Americans remain keenly aware that Glenn Beck’s time on TV, his public appearances, his “books” are all just one big publicity stunt. Like Sarah Palin, no paid hypocrisy, or promise of exposure is too immoral or dishonorable to turn down for Beck. …Otherwise why would Beck try to glom off of Dr. King’s legacy?

What I’ll do today, is what I do with all of the contemporary Right’s recent sad attempts at intellectual legitimacy, and political legacy: I’ll ignore it, just as I ignore the cheesy car dealership ads that pop up on Lincoln’s birthday every year.
-SJ

Can't We All Just Get Along?

2010-08-14T10:18:00.002-04:00

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeIn one word, no. The human condition seems to be predicated on conflict. A few years ago I started this blog to write about whatever came to my mind. It was mostly insignificant stuff. The last presidential election transformed this blog into a political forum for SJ and I to express our thoughts. Recently I have found it more and more difficult to write about political topics. Oh, I slip up every now and then, but I have tried to stay away from strictly political issues. I do realize that no matter what is said on this blog, it won't please all of the people, all of the time. So, just for shits and giggles, here are some random thoughts that have crossed my mind recently.

Abortion: I am pro-choice. However, we need much better sex education and family planning in order to try and limit the number of abortions that are performed.

Guns: The right to bear arms is guaranteed in the Constitution (even though I think the rationale in that document no longer holds much water), so therefore I support it. I do not believe that it is an absolute right and I see no reason at all for the general public to have access to automatic weapons.

Health Care: It should be a right. All citizens should have the right to, at the very least, a basic level of health care. And emergency room care is not nearly enough.

Immigration: We should allow people to work toward citizenship if that is what they desire. Our country is made better by diversity, not worse.

Gay Marriage: Marriage, according to the Supreme Court, is one of the "basic civil rights of man". I think that says it all.

Gays in the military: Gays have always and continue to serve our country proudly in the various branches of the military. Our armed services have not crumbled because of it.

Size and scope of government: The government should be allowed to operate within the powers described in the Constitution. They can raise and lower taxes, regulate or deregulate industries, invade or not invade countries, etc. WE THE PEOPLE can then decide whether to continue lending those politicians our support at the ballot box.
Religion: It's not really for me, but if it provides some people with a level of comfort then I have no issues with that. Of course when it's used like a battering ram, then I feel it's my duty to point out my exact thoughts about the less than factual basis of said religion.

DH: I happen to like the DH. Watching a pitcher hit is not exactly my idea of an interesting at-bat.

Steroids in sports: I honestly don't care what athletes take. I've never heard someone make the argument that they aren't going to watch a movie or a concert because the performers have had plastic surgery. Entertainers do what they feel they have to do to put forth their best performance. No difference with athletes.
Music: I'm not a big fan of most of what's popular today. That is to say that I'm an old fart who thinks things were better when pop music was targeted towards him.
Movies: I think that Lawrence of Arabia and the two Godfathers are the best movies ever made.
Food: I'm partial to Chinese.
Superheroes: I'm partial to Superman. And I personally think that Captain America would kick the shit out of Batman any day of the week.

That's all for today boys and girls. Have a great weekend.

For the Love of Jebus

2010-08-03T22:18:00.001-04:00

Some New Yorkers and others around the country are up in arms about the so called "ground zero Mosque" that is going to be built close to the former world trade centers. I find it somewhat amusing that those who are so adamant about the government staying out of their lives would now clamor for that very same government to step in to block what is essentially a private real estate matter. "Less government interference" they scream (unless it involves Muslims, of course). "Keep the government out of my church" they bellow, (unless that place of worship happens to be a mosque).

I don't remember any religious outrage when a christian blew up the federal building in Oklahoma. That's not exactly true. There were a lot of calls for retribution against Muslims until it was discovered that it was a a couple of white Christian males who carried out the attack. I don't remember a general wave of outrage and hatred against all Christians. Perhaps I'm just (to quote our former President) misremembering.

Islam is just as legitimate a religion as all the others that are based on some all knowing superman who lives in the sky and actually listens to and cares about your problems. The actions of extremists should never be taken to represent the thoughts of the whole. There are Christian extremists who feel it is their right and duty to kill doctors who perform abortions. Should all of Christianity be held accountable for their actions? There are Christian extremists who think that all non whites should leave America. Should all Christianity be held accountable for their thoughts and actions? The constitution guarantees us certain freedoms, among those are freedom of religion and speech. The mosque has a right to exist and people have a right to protest its existence. However the hypocrisy of those who would damn an entire religion over the actions of a few is shameful. There are approximately 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. I'm pretty sure most of them were not involved in the 9/11 plot, just as I'm fairly sure most of the 2.2 billion Christians in the world weren't in on the Oklahoma City bombing either.

I understand that people are very sensitive about the WTC site, but this mosque has nothing to do with the events that took place on 9/11. As far as I'm concerned, all religion is pretty silly, so this debate over who can worship what God seems an incredible waste of time and energy. How far away from ground zero does the mosque have to be before it's okay? 10 blocks? 20 blocks? 1,000 blocks? Just utterly ridiculous.

We Can Only Hope

2010-08-03T17:43:00.001-04:00

I wrote this piece back in May of 2008. I stand by every word. Let's hope he means it this time.

Brett Favre announced his retirement in a tearful press conference yesterday. The press covered as though Lou Gehrig was announcing that he was retiring because he had a terminal disease. Bret Favre has long been one of the most self centered athletes in sports and I will certainly not miss him come the fall. His yearly tease of the Packers with his "will he retire or not" nonsense has cost the Packers a few years of development of their QB of the future. I have no idea whether Aaron Rodgers can lead the Packers to playoff glory and thanks to Brett Favre, neither do the Packers.

Somehow Sports Illustrated saw fit to name this former drug abuser it's sportsman of the year. I haven't seen a less inspiring choice since they picked the steroid twins (Sosa and McGwire) as their co-winners in 1998. Somehow the press seemed to buy that "I'm just a good old boy from Mississippi" line. After all, he didn't know no better. They gave him drugs and he just kept on taking them. Also, his badgering of teammates to sign contracts instead of holdout was pretty easy for someone with one of the richest contracts in NFL history. I never heard him say that he would be willing to donate some of his own contract to help the team sign one of those players.

Brett Favre stayed around until he broke Dan Marino's records for TD's and yardage. The fact that the Packers were very competitive this year was as much a shock to him as it was to everyone else. He could not have thought that his team, which was coming off a losing season and didn't sign any major free agents, would make it to the NFC championship game. He came back to break the records, the rest was just gravy. And now with no more records to break (he could continue to add to his all time record for passes intercepted), the 19th rated QB of all time (behind such legends as Marc Bulger and Jeff Garcia) will quietly retire to his estate in Mississippi. So long Brett, and try to stay away from the Vicodin if you can.

Original Musiquarium

2010-08-03T16:12:00.001-04:00

Random thought for today is to wonder how anyone won a grammy in the seventies in a category that Stevie Wonder was competing in. The aptly named Mr. Wonder put together a string of albums in the seventies that may never be matched by a solo artist ever again. From 1972's "Music of My Mind" through 1980's "Hotter than July", Stevie put out masterpiece after masterpiece. From "Superwoman" through "Lately" it was a period of creativity that frankly boggles the mind. There were some fine singer/songwriters at work during the time from Paul Simon to Bruce Springsteen to James Taylor to Billy Joel, to Elton John but none of them can match what Stevie did for pure artistry and consistency.

Stevie hasn't been quite the same since and doesn't put out music very often and has even produced some downright terrible songs like "Ebony and Ivory" and "I Just called to say I love you" (which was one of his biggest hits and actually won an academy award), but all transgressions can be forgiven for the absolutely stunning body of work that was completed in that ten year, six album span. I'll put that run up against anybody including the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or anyone else who has toiled in the Rock and Roll era.

The Gentleman from New York Is Recognized...

2010-07-30T08:07:00.002-04:00

Sometimes Congressman Weiner leaves me absolutely speechless, as in the footage above from yesterday.

He actually smacks the mic on exit.
-SJ

Emancipation Proclamation

2010-07-23T21:35:00.004-04:00

Random thought for the day: Magic Johnson and Michael Jordon need to shut the fU@K up about LeBron James and his decision to sign with the Miami Heat. First of all Magic Johnson happened to end on a team with two of the fifty greatest players of all time. Of course he wouldn't have tried to play on the same team as Larry Bird. Why should he? He came out of college and went right to a team that was ready to win an NBA championship. In Magic's first year in the league, he played alongside the MVP and eventual all time scorer in the NBA. He was joined by James Worthy two years later. He also had the benefit of a perennial first team all defensive player in Michael Cooper. If Lebron James had the fortune to be drafted on such a well stocked team I think his decision would have been a little different. So Magic STFU!

As far as Michael Jordan goes, he didn't win shit in his first seven years in the league and that was after playing 3 years in college. By his standard, Lebron James still has two more years before he has to produce a championship. Michael Jordon didn't win shit until he got teamed up with another top 50 player in Scottie Pippen. And as MJ showed in his hall of fame speech, he is a classless man. For what reason, I'm not sure, considering he has been given a pass by the public for all of his failings as a husband, father and frankly as a human being. However, he couldn't wait to say that he would never have done what Lebron had done. MJ STFU!

And frankly Charles Barkley needs to STFU too. He unsuccessfully chased a ring at the end of his career by going to Houston and teaming up with fellow top 50 players Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwan. He also had to chime in and say that he wouldn't have done what Lebron had done. Really Charles? Really? You need to STFU!

Last time I checked Lebron James was a FREE AGENT. Do these people not understand what that means? He wanted to go and play with his friends, who just happen to include one of the best 3 players in the league and the best big man available. It's that simple. His decision doesn't diminish the legacy of those who went before him, but some of the greatest players of all time sure did jump in to make sure that they got their two cents in to try and diminish Lebron's legacy. There is nothing worse than an old ballplayer telling you how much better the players and the game were when they played. That's what Magic, MJ and Charles are doing now. They just need to STFU! I haven't heard from Larry Bird yet, but he should remember that he also played alongside Kevin McHale, who just happens to be on that list of the 50 greatest players of all time.

Brief Respite

2010-07-22T15:07:00.006-04:00

The president is still learning on the job. He makes mistakes (sometimes horrendous ones), but I honestly believe that he is as good as it's going to get in this political atmosphere. There is nothing I would like more than a real progressive president, who makes bold moves and helps the people who need help the most. However, we vote for President and not for king. Was health care, financial reform, etc. a lot less than we could have hoped for? Of course, but would it have even been on the agenda for a Republican president? I don't think so. And spare me the, "what we need is a real progressive in the office" language. First of all, a "real progressive" couldn't win the office of President. Anyone with a record of pushing a true left leaning agenda would be destroyed by the right wing press before they even got a chance at the White House. We live in a country where millions of people can be convinced to vote against their own self interest by lies and slogans. And if by some miracle they were elected, they would face a Congress who care more about being re-elected and sucking up to the money men and women who line their pockets than helping those among us who need help the most.

I do not live in the dreamland where this perfect leader exists. I can be disappointed in the President, but I am under no illusion that someone else would be pushing through bolder initiatives. The Congress is ineffective at best and crooked at worst. How exactly would this supposed messiah push through single payer, meaningful wall st. reform and economic stimulus when he's facing a bunch of people who only care about covering their own ass? It's disappointing to have people talk about sitting out the next election. That's perfectly fine, but if you do sit out then you should lose the right to complain about what comes next.

Do I think the President could do a better job? Do I think that the people in the White House should be smarter than allowing themselves to be duped by the noise machine at Fox news? Of course I do, but that doesn't mean that I'm ready to jump ship. I live in the real world. Anyone want to join me?

Happiness

2010-07-21T15:55:00.010-04:00

There has been a lot of death, disappointment and worry in my life and the lives of my friends in recent years. More so than seems fair, all told, and there seems no shortage of challenges up ahead. My friend Tom barely survived being shot by a sniper in Iraq a couple of years ago. My friend Beth was killed in a horrific car accident in 2008.
Friends are out of work. Friends are coming back from wars to a jobless recovery. Personal debt seems to be spiraling out of control as the American taxpayers who saved the financial industry and the world economy look up in horror at the giant banks now driving them to ruin again. Half the country cannot even bring itself to agree on reality, lest it cede some annoying truth that it fears will keep their favored party or leader from power.
These can be called fairly shitty times for a number of reasons in my personal life and the world at large.

However, I would not say that I am unhappy. This is not because I’m a moron, or a deluded optimist. I should point out that this also does not mean that I’m “happy all the time” either.

In the media over the last few days, in radio, on television, and in magazines, I’ve noticed one of those possibly sinister synchronicities.
You know what I mean, -those days when you hear 5 different news stories in one morning about how coffee may help you stay younger because of some report somewhere, by some bunch of dicks you never heard of at some fuck-all institute somewhere… and then the next day you hear 6 more reports that say just the opposite, only to then start noticing an omnipresent ad campaign about some new coffee substitute called “caffeine water” that will give you the bullshit anti-ageing benefits you think you heard about on the drive in to work but with none of the health risks you think you might have seen on the TV late last night…
The synchronicity I think I may be picking up on this time is a confluence of research, studies and findings on “happiness” and the lack thereof in the modern world. The last straw and the thing that led me to write about this slippery theme was this well written, well researched New York magazine article on the conundrum of parenting’s joys and horrors. To read it you would think that no parents, anywhere on Earth (except in Denmark) are happy in direct proportion to how many kids they have had. Raising kids is no fucking picnic, but I’ve seen my friends with their children and when the tantrums die down, -and when the kids aren’t being out of control monsters there is happiness. I know. I’ve seen it despite what this article maintains with its numerous sources and decades old research.

By the way; I’m pretty sure I never want to hear the words “counterparts in the industrialized world” ever again.

In the past days I’ve seen news items about Danish people laughing through their kids terrible twos and the high rate of suicide in Scandinavian countries/ stories on the modern male’s search for identity and the good times their fathers had that now seem to elude them/ many more stories on women in the workplace and the misery they have earned in the place of the comforts they had pre-feminism/ and on, and on: One lousy fucking story about abstract misery in contemporary life after another. I tell you this is the kind of nonsense that made Camus flirt with ideas of suicide before a car accident took him right out of this world in 1960.

How can we continue to have so much handwringing and anxiety about happiness when nobody can agree on what the fuck happiness is?

Is it purely an emotion? Is it a thing you get or achieve and maintain; is it an outlook, a philosophy? Maybe it’s all of these things but I can tell you this:
-regardless of what it means specifically to you, no one is “meant” to be happy all of the time.
That is not reality, it’s not sensible and it’s not even desirable when you really think about it. The only people who are “happy” all of the time are heroin addicts (if they indeed can get heroin all the time) and idiots, -particularly those half wits on earth whose stupidity allows them an escape from deliberation, reflection, nagging regret or conflict.
And if happiness were freedom from pain?
-Doped up hospital patients in intensive care units would be envied the world over for their state of happiness. I don’t think they are envied by anyone.
I think part of the problem is that the word we are actually looking for when we often speak of happiness (which is only a momentary thing) is satisfaction (which is a lasting thing). Somehow we have relegated satisfaction to imply “barely okay,” or “moderately acceptable.” These are not even parts of the meaning of the word: Satisfaction means having your needs met, or arriving at some means to fulfill them. Satisfaction is a kind of “winning.” Satisfaction is defined by the need and want it completes.

Satisfaction is underrated, and people who don’t think so probably don’t have any. That is in fact why they are “unhappy” and not because they cannot find “happiness.”

Happiness is in fact easy to find. Happiness is everywhere.

Just look at the shiny new cars, the tits on some beautiful girl walking down the street, the smell of a brick oven slice of pizza, a favorite TV show, the bright blue waves on a sunny beach, your pet dog, your neighbor's pet dog, or cold beer. Happiness isn’t hard to find, merely hard to keep permanently. Such is its very nature, it would cease to be happiness if it were everywhere all the time.

Happiness is nothing without its novelty, but satisfaction has no such precondition.

If you want to make yourself happy, go get a bucket of ice cream.
If you want satisfaction, make yourself a hearty Italian meal in your own kitchen from a recipe you’ve never tried before with fresh selections from a butcher you can trust and vegetables from a local green grocer.

I can remember the first time I truly experienced a sense of satisfaction, of genuine fulfillment. I can remember when I realized that, craving happiness all the time is for suckers and juveniles.

One night, after just having moved away from home in the winter of 1990, in the early days of that November, I lay awake in the factory space a friend and I were renting in Williamsburg Brooklyn. It was an enormous late 19th industrial building with 25 foot high ceilings. We had a freight elevator the size of my childhood bedroom, we had a woodshop with table saws, band saws and drill presses. It was freezing. It was cold. It was dark. It was my new home. My first night there, we had no heat. Lying in my loft bed, some fifteen feet in the air, I was looking up at the skylight that hung above. It was a dilapidated steel and glass model that was probably held together at critical points with nothing better than years of coagulated roofing tar. Through the odd spots that had no rust spattered panes I could see the night sky, with its dearth of stars thanks to the city’s bright lights. I stared up, my mind growing increasingly blank at its terrifying independence, listening to the deafening pulse of my own temples, and the beating of my own young heart in the dark…
I thought to myself: “I have to remember this feeling.”

That feeling was freedom.

I think I still believe this, and maybe I even know it. That is to say, I know it the only way you can know anything my friends; I know it to be a fact: It is a lack of satisfaction that murders people the world over century after century, and not unhappiness. With no hope or means toward satisfaction, fulfillment or purpose, life is dim, joyless and scary.

Just ask the Rolling Stones.
-SJ

Basterd! That's right with an E!

2010-07-19T15:46:00.004-04:00

I guess my random thoughts aren't all that frequent. Trust me, I'm trying, but apparently my brain is a rocky place where interesting thoughts can find no purchase. Anyway, I recently watched a few of the best picture candidates from last year and came out with the distinct thought that Inglorious Basterds was the best of the bunch. The Hurt Locker didn't strike me as anything particularly new or original and Avatar was "Dances with Smurfs". Up in the Air was quite entertaining, but didn't really have the weight of something that I would consider as best picture material. Tarantino has always been the most original of directors working in the big budget world of Hollywood. His movies are always the sum total of his ideas. If he wants to make a kung fu movie with an homage to every bad 70's Shaw brothers movie, then that's what he does. If he wants to make a movie based on all the bad action drive in movies that he saw growing up, then that's what he does. He has been more successful in converting those ideas to the screen in some of his movies as opposed to others, but he always hits the target that he's aiming at. Inglorious Basterds gives us an alternative view of WWII and while you'll be reminded of movies like "The Dirty Dozen", the actual execution of the movie is something entirely different. I won't give away any plot points, but it was surprising on many levels. It was also fun. And Hollywood definitely needs a little bit more of that.

Remembering Michael Jackson

2010-06-25T13:55:00.006-04:00

I’m just taking this day to remember Michael Jackson, and what an accomplished child molester he was. I’m taking the day to reflect on this and remember his contributions to the long tradition of pederasty and child abuse in Western civilization because everyone seems to want me to forget it today.

–Well, fat chance America.

Just calling Michael Jackson a great entertainer and the ‘King of Pop’ makes about as much sense now as just referring to Charlie Manson as a singer songwriter.

Jackson is dead. He clearly had no easy life despite his wealth and fame, but sorry, none of the counter rationalizations about racism, even his own personal history of mental and physical abuse at the hands of his own father can erase the fact that Michael Jackson was a devoted molester of children. The attempts to soften or obfuscate the magnitude of Jackson’s pedophilia with charges and excuses of pervasive racist persecution or ongoing homophobia suffered by Jackson are just panicked reactionary defenses from fans. Nobody on Earth needs to have Michael Jackson explained to them: he tried to run hard and fast from his ‘blackness’ with every surgical trick he could buy, (and he had a lot of money). Jackson was not Gay, he never had a romantic relationship with any adult that was more than a contrived PR stunt. For the record, Gays engage in relationships with consenting adults, they are not interested in children, therefore Michael Jackson was not Gay. He was a persistent and dedicated predator of children who had to leave the country for a time in order to continue being an out of control weirdo. None of his gold records can erase that fact.

I have no problem saying that Michael Jackson was one of the most talented singer songwriters and entertainers I’ve ever seen. -I also have no problem saying that he was a monster in the same breath.

I have no problem saying Michael Jackson was an unrepentant sexual predator of children who just happened to be a great entertainer anymore than I would have trouble saying:

Robert Blake is a liar who shot his wife to death, who happens to be an actor.
Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 12 year old girl, and happens to have made some really great movies.
OJ Simpson was one of the greatest running backs to ever play in the NFL, and also happens to have murdered two people.
Woody Allen is still married to his daughter, and happens to have made some great movies.
Mel Gibson is a raging anti-Semite and happens to have made a few great movies.
Matthew Broderick killed two people in Ireland.

I don’t know why we have such a tough time as a country accepting that accomplished, talented people can be entirely awful, shitty human beings.
It’s childish.
It’s what’s at the heart of our persecution of politicians for extramarital affairs. Frankly, I couldn’t give a shit if Mark Sanford cheated on his wife with some Argentinean piece of ass, and neither should anyone else who actually cares about their government and country. The issue is that he probably traveled to fuck her with tax payer dollars, -or- hey, how about judging Sanford on his actual record (which is reason enough actually) and not feigning outrage just because he happens to be a Republican (but in this case a hypocrite which is a legitimate reason to pillory any politician who runs on “family values.”)

We can’t separate who someone is, from what wrongs they have done, or use one quality to negate another in considering the character and worth of our elected leaders and cultural icons.

So remember Michael Jackson for who he was: a drug addled, pill popping child molester, and the man who hadn’t made a good record since 1983’s Thriller and not what he died as, -a fondly remembered entertainer excused by all his adoring fans for all his trespasses against the most defenseless among us: children.

-SJ

It Is Alive!

2010-06-22T21:49:00.006-04:00

Since I have been unable to come up with a topic to post about and I'm pretty sure that no one reads this blog anymore, I think I'll just go back to putting up some random thoughts from time to time. Today's Random Thought is that Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen, is probably the most perfect rock and roll song I've ever heard. It's about desperation, urgency, love, rebellion, and ultimately about escaping the bonds of complacency and reaching for a dream. All are themes that rock and roll are built on, but I think this one does the best of putting them all together. There's a great sax solo and an iconic guitar solo to boot. I know they put Chuck Berry on the disc that they included on the Voyager,(and is now sailing somewhere through the Milky Way)as an example of Rock and roll music, but I would have chosen this one as the best example of the art form. Just my opinion and my random thought for today.

Isn’t It Just Beautiful When Racists Talk about their “Souls?”

2010-05-22T09:02:00.007-04:00

For anyone, (any ‘sane’ anyone that is), not dedicated to self –deception in order to make their own juvenile political views appear to be anything other than race hatred and neo fascism, the author of Arizona's immigration law, State Senator Russell Pearce is the man who boldly says what the fearful bigots are not skillful enough to verbalize, and not empowered to propose. But he’s not alone. Congressman Duncan Hunter of California recently said "We're not being mean. We're just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen… it's what's in our souls." This from a man whose only effort made toward becoming an American was that his parents fucked here, and his mother squeezed him out within American borders. In light of Rand Paul’s “explanations” this past week, we should not kid ourselves about racism’s persistence as a worldview in the minds of the middle class and working classes. I won’t discuss the Tea Baggers’ stance on deportation of American-born children, is too laughably moronic and predictable.

Senator Pearce is now telling constituents that he wants to pass a new measure, to revoke citizenship granted to the children born in the United States unless their parents are already citizens. Pearce is squarely aiming at the removal of Mexicans, a popular and easy population to target historically for the last couple of centuries. Nothing takes people’s minds off of an ineffectual elected official who’s done little, than appearing to “do something about the wetbacks.”

Get used to seeing a lot more of this term: “anchor baby.”

Basically, as I’m sure you are able to easily infer, an “anchor” baby is the child of an “illegal” alien whose child is born here, stateside. -Well infer further: this specifically means Mexicans. This is specifically, centrally, and fundamentally about race. No one is proposing Canadians, Poles, Italians and the Irish (Not since the turn of the century anyway) grab their kids and split. Even East Indians, Chinese, Philippinos and West Africans are spared Senator Pearce’s special attention and that of other race baiters we have carelessly elected as legislators… so far. -But eventually, “they’ll come for everybody.” And we know who “they” always is: it’s the eternal cadre of bigots for whom all is never enough.

Rush Limbaugh is still “a big fat idiot” for lying about this issue, and his listeners are racist assholes for playing along. I’ve written before that this entire issue of legalization is about race. It is not about eliminating a perpetual underclass per se, but keeping that underclass perpetually without any rights. These “laws” by Senator Pearce and others are just scams, ensuring an eternal community of migrant laborers for Arizonans and others in the American South West.

It has never been enough for immigrants in America to do the jobs no one else will do, it’s never been enough for immigrants to be paid criminally less for doing dirty, dangerous work. Immigrants have to be humiliated in America; they have to be miserable and afraid for their lives, or a bunch of cowboy-booted creeps will start to scream, bitch and moan about how unfair life is.

But this isn’t a new development, just last year, ninety-two members of Congress proposed a bill that would further amend the 14th Amendment so that children born in the United States would not be granted citizenship if their parents aren’t already citizens…

So what exactly is in the “souls” of Americans who think it’s just fine to keep exploiting generations of people for centuries and deny them any possibility of benefiting from their own hard work and sacrifice? …Certainly not a hint of irony or shame as Mexican immigrants endure race hatred and legalized persecution in the actual places they named centuries ago, like Texas, Arizona… New Mexico.

-SJ

“What Can Men Do Against Such Reckless Hate?”

2010-04-23T22:05:00.012-04:00

-King Theoden, (from J.R.R Tolkkien’s The Two Towers)

It should be no surprise to me that the works of Tolkien, an author relegated to the plastic bin of adolescent fantasy genres continues to rise above all others in my daytime mind as I look at the shaping of the 21st century. I’m surprised and even a little embarrassed at myself. -It feels like a nerdy impulse. As if nothing profound could exist among the chapters and books of a body of work so widely read, obsessed over and loved, his three most notable books are often ignored and abjured as simple adventures. For all my self-professed independence, maybe, -just maybe- I buy into all of that; my convictions dwarfed, as everyone’s attitudes are, by the opinions and tastes of the masses.

Tolkien himself aggressively dismissed any analyses or critiques that cited possible allegories, however salient and obvious. This may have been the manifest fear Tolkien had and shared with all authors: That their work become dated by too close an association with a specific history or time.

Yet Tolkien’s works, the legendarium he built meticulously across several years, with its invented languages, histories, cultures, plague me when I read headlines today. Beyond his symbolism of bound rings ruling all, as the actual symbol of the nuclear model of the atom haunted the minds of children from Hawaii to Sibera after the bombings of Japan in 1945; beyond his imagining of an undying embodiment of fascism in the caricature named Sauron (The fictionalized Hitler and made-up Stalin of his Middle Earth), beyond his proto Orwellian warning of totalitarian rule in the image of Sauron’s all seeing eye; it is Tolkien’s ideas and conjectured suppositions about race that are the most haunting today.

Yes, race.

As a child, I was aware from the time I was able to speak, that I was an American, but that I was different from “Americans.” This is something that was told to me by the television I saw, the books I read and the world I walked in. It is something that in my darkest personal moments, I even told myself.

I didn’t think of someone who looked like me when I thought of the word American. I thought of African-Americans; the various hyphenated Caucasians: Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, but not brown, tan skinned, or Asian people or anyone who spoke with any accent or had an “ethnic” name. I knew I was born here, but my mother’s coming to the United States of her own will, in a determined against-all-odds struggle for her American dream and her citizenship somehow made me illegitimate in my own mind. I have always felt intrinsically foreign, despite the fact that I think in English, despite the fact I cannot think of any other place as home. My mother’s origin in immigration placed an asterisk next to my skull that I could not outrun. Because of this mediation of my nationality, I have always been sensitive to portrayals of race in fiction and “news.” As long as I can remember, I have always been “looking for the Indians.” In every story about mass struggle, war, national upheaval in any time there is a group of people central to the narrative who are portrayed less as persons and more as a identity-less force to be overcome and destroyed: an inhuman force like a storm or tidal wave. This is the role of the Indian in orthodox American “Western” fiction: Indians “oppose” the movement of “Americans” westward and must be outlasted, defeated, massacred. To me, in Tolkien’s world, “the Indians” are the Orc hordes and the “men of the East.” They only exist to oppose and threaten the peoples of West, and for that reason only. Therefore they can conversely only be defeated and destroyed. This is the essence of racism: the casting of others into a group deemed disposable by virtue of a supposed non-humanity.

How I can think of a book such as Return of the King at times like these, with two wars going on, with fundamentalists claiming that cartoon writers are fair game for murderers, with entire swathes of human beings being convicted by the flimsiest of associations, or by assumptions made of the many based upon the criminal actions of the few? It seems silly. But Tolkien’s work, with all its grandeur, profundity, and sinister contraindications is of utmost relevance at times like these. His trilogy is an attempt at recreating a lost world in compensation for the loss of the Saxon culture and its foundation myths under the Norman conquests. In creating a world, Tolkien intentionally or incidentally shed unflattering light on our own.

The turmoil, massacres, internecine exhaustion of natural resources and corruption threatening to destroy Middle Earth look like every century on our own Earth for which there is reliable history to read and contemplate. And now Middle Earth’s holocaust is again frighteningly applicable to our time. Specifically, what is happening in America -again, this time?

Racial profiling has been made into law in Arizona.
What is next? -Concentration camps to hold “illegals?” (read Mexicans, the Indians of our current narrative/reality) What is happening is this: The measure of our worth as citizens of the world, as human beings will be determined by the extent to which we allow fear, hatred to inform our actions toward one another. Today’s Orcs will not be conveniently swallowed up by a sudden earthquake at the end of the story after the screaming and fighting is done. History is anything but convenient.

We would do well to improve on Tolkien’s story, by recognizing the personhood of the masses of people coming to America to work at the jobs no one wants to do. We would do well to recognize and concede our common humanity.

We must remember, with an appropriate measure of horror that King Theoden’s question in the title of this post was never answered, -not with words in any case.
-SJ

My thanks to Oso, Holte Ender, Lazer's Edge and Mad Mike for inspiring this train of thought.

In the Eye of the Beholder

2010-04-06T11:48:00.008-04:00

The public education system in this country is broken. It is not the fault of the teachers (although mass firings would lead you to believe it is), it is not the fault of the students, it is not the fault of the parents and it is not the fault of the government. The fault lies in the system itself. In a pre Brown V. Board of Education world, the public school system was comprised of two parts, one for white students and one (that was called "equal") for blacks. The schools for the black children were woefully under resourced (and in many cases overcrowded) and had no chance (for the most part) to compete for the best available teaching talent. Flash forward to today, 55 years after the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed the policy of "separate but equal" and we have a public school system that in many ways mirrors the landscape as it stood in the pre Brown days.

The policy of "separate but equal" was kept in place, in part, to not only keep children of different skin colors apart, but in order to perpetuate a permanent underclass in this country. The policy proved incredibly successful in that respect. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, life for those on the wrong side of the "separate" doctrine remained amazingly stagnant. The tidal wave of prosperity that swept the entire country following the end of WWII somehow managed to elude those at the very bottom of the socio-economic chain. In the south, especially, those born with the wrong skin pigmentation could not realistically hope that their lives would be any better than those of their parents. And the law of land saw to it that their opportunities for advancement were very limited indeed.

The changes that were brought about due to Brown and the subsequent Civil Rights acts and voting rights act of the following decade led to a new outlook. The 60's ushered in a new age of enlightenment. LBJ dreamed of a "Great Society" and of the end of discrimination and poverty and for a time, the country, caught up in the age of Aquarius, went along for the ride. Schools were desegregated; For the first time in the history of the nation a thriving black/minority middle class emerged; affirmative action helped to limit the effects of discriminatory hiring practices; And education, which for over a century had provided a barrier to any chance of upward mobility, gave those with less, a chance for more.

Then came the 80's and the attacks on the hopes and goals of the "Great Society" came fast and furious. Our nation became much less concerned with US and much more concerned with ME. White flight to the suburbs became a rushing torrent and our inner cities were left to be, more and more, the last refuge for those with no other choice. One of the major consequences of the flight to the suburbs was the loss of the tax base that helped to support the public school system. Property values dropped and the stream of revenue that helped to support the education of our children began to dry up. With the loss in revenue came a loss in the quality of education that could be provided to those children who happen to be unfortunate enough to be born in a underfunded district..

Funding for public schools comes from a combination of federal, state and local government money. Federal and State money are usually handed out equally based on school populations, but local money is most often kept within the locality. So the upshot of that policy is that, here in NY there are schools that have computer labs that provide every student with a computer, and there are those that require that multiple students to share one. There are schools that have average class sizes of 20 and those that have average class sizes of 40. There are schools that have modern facilities and textbooks, and there are schools that have to convert closets to classroom spaces because they have no more room to fit their expanding population. I know I've taken a long time to get to my point, but here it is: The simple question that should be posed is why, do we as a country, value some children more than others?

The beginning of one the most quoted and repeated lines in all of history says, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal". Let's look past the obvious contradictions of the statement at the time it was written, to the actual meaning of those words. We, as Americans believe as part of our DNA, that everyone in this country should have an equal opportunity to succeed. We believe that we are a meritocracy despite all the evidence to the contrary. Life may not actually work this way, but we, as a people, are not ready to admit that a kind of social Darwinism should reign supreme. Yet as we close our eyes to the absolute inequity of our public school system, that is exactly what we are doing.

"Let's fire all the teachers!", some say. "It's all the parents' fault", still others will claim. Yet as we point fingers at each other, another generation of our children is being lost. Wait, let me rephrase that, another generation of lost souls is being created. As it was before Brown and the Civil Rights Acts, we, as a country are in back in the business of perpetuating a permanent underclass. People can go to the movies and watch a Sandra Bullock movie, where one black kid is "saved" and becomes a success and believe that all is right with the world. Unfortunately, that story is not repeated very often. Most of us do not have an extraordinary skill. Most of us would not stand out on a field or court. Most of us would not stand out against the best or brightest in any of the endeavors that we have chosen to undertake. That has not, however, precluded us from some acquiring some level of achievement or satisfaction in our lives.

I took my education for granted, as I'm sure most of us did. The children who now attend public schools in well funded districts probably take their education for granted as well. They have what they need to satisfy any intellectual curiosity that may be sparked during their typical day. Children who come up on the short end of the birth lottery most typically would not have the resources to satisfy that curiosity. When the intellectual spark is not nurtured into a fire, it eventually disappears. We, as a country, are currently in the business of choosing who gets that opportunity and who does not. And what happens to those kids whose curiosity isn't nurtured? You already know the answer. We all do.

One Giant Leap

2010-03-25T21:43:00.005-04:00

I watched the House of Representatives pass the Senate amendments to the health care bill. It's hard to put into words exactly how I feel. When I think of the fact that FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton tried and failed to get any meaningful health care reform passed, I stand in awe of the Democratic leadership and the current President of the United States. I have, at times, been extremely critical of the Democrats and the President over the past year because of there perceived lack of commitment to reform. I berated them for throwing single payer overboard before the fight had even begun. I berated them for trying to find some compromise with the Republicans. I berated them for giving up the public option when they were only fighting against themselves. I berated my fellow bloggers for losing faith. There have been times when I was sure that nothing was ever going to get done. There have been times when I have lost faith in the White House. There have been times when the thought of health care reform seemed an unreachable goal. I stand humbled today. Government can indeed work for the people. Government can indeed make a positive difference in the lives of its citizens. Sometimes I think we lose sight of that fact. This bill is of course not everything we wanted, but as with Civil Rights, once the ball starts rolling, it is very hard to stop. One step will inevitably lead to another and then another. The first one is always the hardest. And now 75 years after FDR first tried to get universal health coverage for all Americans, we have finally taken our first steps toward that lofty goal.

Thank you Nancy Pelosi. Thank you Harry Reid. And thank you Mr. President. This is what leadership looks like. Let's not forget that the next time the Republicans decide to take up arms against the public good. Let's not forget what it feels like to be able to tell the American people that their government actually works for them. And remember, never stop fighting until the fight is done. Here endeth the lesson.

P.S.

Now let's do something about the absolutely criminal condition of our public schools. I have no idea how this country can perpetuate a system that arms only those children who are fortunate enough to live in wealthy districts with the tools needed to compete in a global economy. How do we allow a de facto "separate but equal" policy in education to exist? Something needs to be done now!

That’s Right. This Is What I Voted for.

2010-03-22T15:02:00.003-04:00

I’m sticking my head out of the water ever so briefly just for today, but plan to be back in action here as usual and on the new, new Mad Mike’s America next Tuesday, God willing.

The GOP politicians are insisting on going down in flames on this issue of Healthcare. Taking comfort in their own immovable and venal opposition to Healthcare reform, it’s akin to shouting, “Deregulation now! Deregulation forever!!!” and not all that bizarre and disingenuous from their opposition to civil rights legislation in the 1960s in the face of its eventual passage.

For all the current bill has wrong with it (and there are a few logistical things that should be fixed, things no Republican has bothered to point out because telling lies about the bill is a far better way to stop it), here are two things that Republicans should have conceded were "good" things while they were shouting that we should “start over from scratch:”

-The outlawing of preexisting conditions as the basis for denial of coverage.
-The removal of coverage caps.

The war the GOP undertook against the sick and infirm isn’t over, but it’s clear Mr. Boehner and his fellow lobbyists in office are going to lose. I’ve been emailing them for the last two months and telling them so, -politely but unequivocally.

You can email the Minority Leader here:
http://republicanleader.house.gov/Contact/

-SJ

Movie Trailer

2010-03-11T13:17:00.001-05:00

Here's the trailer from "The likes of Us". Directed by SJ and written by Mycue23

And the Winner is...

2010-02-25T10:24:00.001-05:00

Here's the only winner in today's health care debate:

Why We Fight

2010-02-20T00:30:00.007-05:00

We fight because "...in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope". We fight because senior citizens should have not have to chose between food and medicine. We fight because American Individualism is not an open invitation to social Darwinism. We fight because Gay and Lesbian are not dirty words. We fight because we believe that all men are created equal. We fight because we believe that people should be judged by the content of their character. We fight because having tens of thousands of people die each year because of a lack of affordable health care is morally unacceptable. We fight because having thousands of children go hungry in the richest nation on the planet is morally reprehensible. We fight because every child deserves access to an education that will prepare them to compete in the global economy. We fight because torture committed in our name is still torture. We fight because everyone should have the right to marry who they chose. We fight because we only have one planet. We fight because the status quo is unacceptable. We fight because a lie repeated often enough must not be permitted to become the truth. We fight because women deserve to paid the same as men. We fight because our veterans deserve to be treated with respect they have earned. We fight because the expenditure for the Iraq war could have paid for health care for every man, woman and child in the country who cannot afford it. We fight because the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We fight because the forces massed against us never take a day off. We fight because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. We fight because as FDR put it, at the height of the Depression,

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of the those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little".

That is why we fight. We fight because we must.

What Will They Say?

2010-02-19T16:14:00.005-05:00

Yesterday’s litany of lies coming from the GOP’s CPAC were not novel in and of themselves, nor was their degree, or their nakedness anything special. It is to be expected that elites out of touch and removed from their professed ideals and goals would also insist on being a safe distance from reality. Reality is not pretty for today’s Republican Party. But that’s fitting, because the rest of the world has had to live with the mess they made for over a decade while they denied it and lied about it.

Apparently, some right wing politicians still don’t accept that nobody’s convinced they don’t bear the blame for country’s woes. Some in the right wing electorate just line up to hear newer, bolder lies with rapt attention, listening for something, some detail or dangling participle they can use to make themselves feel good about just how bad things are. After all, how do you tell an entire voting block that the last eight years were a mistake, -when they voted you in?
It would mean Republicans conceding the truth about deceptions, hypocrisies and ineptitude, -and in a manner of speaking laying the blame squarely at the feet of the unquestioning average Republican voter:
-who never complained about spending when the deficit was sky rocketing under George W. Bush.
-who never seemed to notice that the size of Government was growing under Republican control and influence.
-who trusted the capabilities of an administration that allowed the deadliest, costliest attack on the nation in its entire history.

A bright example of the right’s profound state of denial is a figure like Dick Armey, whose activities in tandem with lobbyists should cost him the price of admission to any association or relationship with an allegedly “grass roots” movement such as the Tea Baggers. Armey delegitimizes any attempt at raising the notions freedom and “rights” to the fore. At CPAC Armey said, as if directly speaking to President Obama: “You're intellectually shallow. You're a romantic. You're self-indulgent. You have no ability…" Armey called President Obama "the most incompetent president perhaps in our lifetime." After only one year in office to go on, Armey's "opinion" would appear highly unlikely, to even an idiot with no memory.

I have an opinion of my own, based upon years of observing Mr. Armey as an avergae citizen:

Dick Armey is nothing but a well practiced liar, playing to a captive audience, spouting nonsense behind closed doors to a friendly crowd eager to hear their worst nightmare, a Black president, called “arrogant,” “self-righteous” and other silly code words that are place holders for uppity nigger.

I have to confess, I am glad this bloated liar has lived to see a Black man in the White House.
To Mr. Armey I say: “Sorry Dick, the bigots and bums in your party lost in 2008. Go cry at Senator Helms’s gravesite you elitist fat cat of a shill.”

We the people, all of us who insist on being told the truth, the facts, and not some cock-and-bull story about our own country's greatness, won that victory in 2008:

Men, Women, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Gay, the middle class, the poor and not so poor, all of us,

-Americans won and Dick Armey lost.

So eat it, Dick.

But my smugness is tempered. Laughing at liars only gets you so far.

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday on the CPAC speeches that all but lent authority to some of the more ludicrous nonsense spoken by Liz Cheney and others, -as if a lie offered as an opinion somehow deserved the same time and respect as a fact.

I wonder what historians, the ultimate arbiters of reality for future generations, will say.
What will the textbooks of the future say?
-That the performance of the Bush Administration is a matter of opinion? That there are different sets of truths? -One reactionary, -one populist, -one skeptical yet others more self professedly “correct?”

Saying something doesn’t make it so. Believing something doesn’t make it so.

Everyone in America knows the GOP’s policies wrecked the country over a period of many years. Some of us in America just don’t want to believe it, -and will believe anything else instead.

Thankfully the facts do not require belief, just acceptance.
…Well that, and a historian principled enough to record them as they happened.
-SJ

May Tomorrow Be a Better Day

2010-02-17T12:53:00.004-05:00

There's comes a time when you have to face that fact that you've come to the end. I have been contemplating this particular thought for the past 6 months or so. I just don't have anything else constructive to add to the political dialogue among the great group of bloggers that we have gotten to know over the past couple of years, so I think it's time for me to call it a day. I feel like I've said all I have to say. I've gone back and read some of the stuff I wrote during the past couple of years and I realize that as time has gone on, I've become less focused and less effective at making a coherent point. As SJ stated in his recent post, the quality of writing among the blogs I regularly read is outstanding. I certainly feel like there's nothing I could say that couldn't be said equally well or better by a whole host of great writers. You guys are all great (and I won't make the mistake of trying to list you all, but you know who you are)and I would just say, keep on doing what you're doing. As for me, I'll probably spend some time over at my long ignored sports blog. The blog will still be here. Hopefully SJ will continue to add articles from time to time but if not, at least the links will point people in the right direction.

So with more of a whimper than a bang, I wish you all a fond farewell and as Kasey Kasem always says, "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars".