A Hippin' and a Hoppin' (Good Golly Miss Molly?)…. Or, "You the Cutest Little Jailbird I Ever Did See." (Elvis)

Was going to post this as a comment, but it seems a bit too long for that, so here goes, in reply to Squid's "ethics of words" posts and comments.

On the hippity hoppity genre, yes I've long had a Jurassic dislike of most of it. Wouldn't condemn the entirety since it's possible for people to do intelligent and creative things in any artistic form. That said, what I hear a lot of – usually at supersonic jet decibels (which seems to me a deliberately hostile gesture: don't like my music? eff all y'all!) – is racial animosity, gender-based hate and degradation, praising of a vicious, depraved lifestyle centered on impenetrability ("hardness") and violence that few listeners would dare to practice (or, one may hope, would even want to practice). A lot of them probably just enjoy the beat and think it makes them seem cool, or something like that. Are they even listening to the words? Best send-up of hip-hop culture I've seen lately: that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm in which Larry advises the "it" rapper Crazee-Eyez Killa on his lyrics. It's priceless watching these two huddle over a string of ridiculous boasts, obscenities, and threats.

Some who defend certain kinds of rap are buying into a time-honored – and very flawed – theory of art that responds to any and all criticism with the inane utterance, "Don't blame me; I'm just telling it like it is." These people haven't read the utterly utter Oscar Wilde, evidently, because his put-downs of realism as a method in art are decisive: everyone knows the critical dictum "life imitates art far more than art imitates life." Wilde also said in defiance of Matthew Arnold that the critic's task is "to see the object as in itself it really is not." Bravo, Oscar! But best of all is his observation that Hamlet's insistence that dramatic players "hold the mirror up to nature" merely proves the man was afflicted with "absolute insanity on all matters pertaining to art." Speak the speech, Oscar! But seriously, the point here is that perhaps artists, while their first responsibility is simply to do what they must because they are creative people, might also do well to consider that art hath a shaping power over the mind and perhaps even regarding our conduct. I'm starting to sound like a neoclassical moralist, but I've long said that those who deny the power of art to shape and influence us are telling us it is among life's "trifles, light as air." Strip art of its danger altogether, tell us it's just entertainment or adornment, and we trivialize it. This is not to say that politicians and priggish religious fanatics should be allowed to censor artistic expression at will. It's up to il popolo to patronize or not to patronise what we like and don't like. È la cosa nostra, non è vero?

As for the popularity of prison life and lingo …. I've noticed that there are even television shows devoted to this lurid and, finally, sad theme. I can hardly think of anything more vulgar and degrading, or more revealing of the sickening crudity and moral imbecility of an entire culture, than this fad. It is as if a bunch of domestic puppies (may I use the word "bourgeoisie" here?) get a thrill from watching the doings of their wild cousins, the wolves. The role this piffle plays in the cultural imaginary is obvious: nearly every time you hear a joke about (or indeed any reference whatsoever to) prison, out comes the obligatory sneering mention of homosexual rape. First, that practice is almost certainly much less common than the commenters imply, and second, it betrays the depraved sexual aggressivity of the unincarcerated commenter. We rightly denounce the political and "military" use of rape against women in places like Bosnia or Darfur, but then we tout what we imagine to be male-on-male rape camps as normal manifestations of our sense of justice. No wonder there was so little outcry here about Abu-Ghraib, or, as our learned former president of blessed memory might call it, Aboogaroogah (thanks to David Corn, if memory serves, for that silly pronunciation). There would be more to say about this had I time. Perhaps some will pick it up as a thread? What I'm addressing is not surprising at all. With her usual acumen, Squid delineates the issue well: placing males as females and then insulting them is the oldest trick in the book: indeed, the worst insult men can think of to put down other men describes what half of them seem to believe a female should do for them on a first date. Preferably before they've said hello….

The Ethics of Words and Language

If you are Caucasian like me - Imagine, if you will, being so angry with an African American person that you hollered “NIGGER!” at them? Go on – imagine that? Can you? Does it make you cringe at the thought? Does it fill you with horror that you are uttering a word – angrily and hatefully and publicly used by many whites during and before the civil rights movement? Does it conjure up horrific images of lynching in your mind?

If you are like me – you never could and never would EVER so insult an African American person – no matter how angry you were. No matter how justified you felt in your anger. If we white folk were to all allow this word to begin to permeate our discourse again, how do you think it would make the African American community feel? That perhaps all of their efforts at striving for equality – in the face of many hurdles – were all for nothing? Were slipping away?

Yes – some African Americans use this term towards each other – I don’t understand this – but then again – I am not African American. But I do know and respect that they do NOT consider it acceptable for we white folk to do so.

Fair enough.

Well – now that we’ve imagined this horrific scenario – a society that started hatefully and angrily hurling the word NIGGER around again – imagine this – a society in which the word BITCH began to be used again widely and publicly in all circles of society.

Guess what – it’s not that hard to imagine because that is precisely the society within which we live.

Now to speak from my heart as a middle-agish woman who has been striving for respect and equality within a patriarchal world most of her life - whenever I hear a woman – ANY woman called a bitch I am saddened to the core of my being. I get angry. I feel PERSONALLY insulted. Any society that accepts the calling of one woman a BITCH is only one breath away from hurling the SLUR in my face. I begin to despair, to wonder what I have been struggling for. What have so many women struggled for? Why is BITCH gaining – again – in PUBLIC popularity but NIGGER is not – or any other racial/ethnic slur that we no longer dare publicly condone? Why are women not allowed the same amount of respect? Women of ANY race or ethnicity?

And when I hear a woman call another woman a bitch the pain in my soul is beyond expressible words. I think to myself – she just doesn’t get it. But why doesn’t she get it? Increasingly I hear my college students – young women – angrily call each other bitches. Where did they get the message that this is ok? The answer is – they never got the message that it ISN’T. I am increasingly appalled by the lack of knowledge of my students and even of women my own age about the history of women - of all racial and ethnic backgrounds - and their struggles. A history that deserves respect. A history that - if it were properly taught and appreciated - might make us more respectful of the use of language with respect to women. With respect to gender.

Last semester I had to explain to my class what the Women's Lib movement was and when it was - they hadn't a blessed clue.

One of the leading feminist journals for years has been BITCH MAGAZINE. I have never been terribly comfortable with the title but I do recognize what this literary champion of feminism is trying to do within ITS OWN community – to reclaim the word positively. To neutralize it. While I confess I think this to be a naïve venture, they absolutely do NOT advocate allowing the word to be used by men or women as part of everyday discourse, angry or otherwise. In fact – quite the opposite.

Now lest anyone think this particular journal is responsible for the continual, pervasive, hateful use of this term – hardly – it is a little-read journal read almost exclusively by ardent feminists.

I am also appalled at the use of this word in liberal circles – the political faction most associated – rightly or wrongly – with human rights. The blind hypocrisy simply boggles the mind.

So – I am begging anyone - man, woman, white, black, purple or green - who reads this post – PLEASE! – if you ever feel compelled to hurl this foul word at a woman of any race, any ethnic background or any political or spiritual belief – stop & imagine calling an African American person that you were angry at nigger. To my ears – it’s the same thing. Just as nigger will be forever associated with racial hatred and injustice – so bitch continues to be heavy ladened with sexism, if not outright misogyny. Insults that target a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, religion – need to go the way of the dinosaurs if we are ever to live in a society of civil discourse that truly respects its members for both their differences & their similarities.

Language is and always has been part of human evolution – both in spoken and written form. How we express ourselves as individuals and as a society defines us to our very core. Language is an expression of personal values, societal values and concerns. Language matters and words – the essential component of language – matter.

Gloria Steinem, Susan B. Anthony, bell hooks - and all my living & dead foremothers deserve a better legacy. Please help me pass it on to our children. Because if we don’t – then CUNT – yes, CUNT – will be the next word to become part of our everyday vernacular. And yet another slur aimed at our daughters. Our mothers. Wives. Girl-friends.

Oh - But wait – it already IS.

Raping for Freedom

Somebody must be running a little bit scared since the Commander Guy has put away his toys and has entered the stage, making excuses about torture. It's legal and I did it to protect you he said in Michigan last night and perhaps many of those people who decide they're "conservatives" and therefore trust whatever the Republican government says, will buy the story despite their pretended anti-government stance. "I'm from the government and I'm here to inspect your hamburger meat" scares the hell out of them, but "I'm from the government and I rape and murder women and children to protect you" slides down the throat as easily as the Flavor-Aid in Jonestown.

To be up-front about it, I think the experiment is over and democracy lost, but as a cynical observer of our national hypocrisy I'm anticipating a great deal of entertainment if and when the statements of General Taguba and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are graphically depicted to the public as irrefutable proof. I truly want to see the Decider reduced to justifying the sodomy of little boys to "protect" us. I want to see him justify his love of war and conquest with unscrupulous cowardice. I want to hear Cheney justify shoving light sticks and batons up the rectums of crying and screaming teenagers as "saving lives." Of course they've already done that, but they've portrayed it only as making horned and bearded terrorist devils "uncomfortable" and the man who delights in shooting tame birds laughs at our squeamishness.

I want to hear Rush and Ann tell us that American prison guards were justified in forcing oral sex on captured Muslim women "because they might know something" and we all know they wanted it. I want to hear the lot of them giggle at these pictures. I want to hear them tell us that Iraq was not justified at rising up against us for these acts alone, costing us thousands of lives.

No, we didn't torture anyone, but when we did, it was legal because we make the law and the Geneva convention doesn't apply because old women and boys don't wear uniforms and besides Geneva is in a foreign country when the men are all girly Liberals and Festus, Missouri would long since have become a Taliban stronghold if we hadn't. You may laugh or cry or sputter like a Republican, but that's been the argument.

Did Bush and his henchmen actually save my life in his chambers of horror? If so, my life is worth nothing and your life and your honor is worth less than nothing if you defend it.

Citizens United against democracy

Some days it doesn't feel like it's worth getting up. I was hoping to sleep late this morning, but I was awakened at 8:01 by the phone and being too groggy to check the caller ID which would have told me it wasn't anything I should answer, I picked up.

Of course it was yet another seditious Republican hate group calling itself Citizens United trying once again to vilify the president by conducting a "brief poll" which of course consisted of a minute's hysterical rant by David Bossie ( who brags about having investigated the Clinton Administration and has written vituperative and not too factual books on Al Gore and John Kerry) about how Obama is destroying America and heaps praise on Limbaugh and Fox News. A fulsomely perky female voice returned and asked me which is more damaging for America:

1. Obama's massive tax and spending increases,
2. or his inexperienced, naive and weak foreign policy agenda?

Well, I won't mention my reaction to the cheerful little twit . I was not my usual kind self, and there were questionable expletives amongst my lecture about forced choice questions and dishonest polls and dishonest politicians attacking Democracy, I must say, but I'm sure she had me down as choosing one of the above despite my tirade about Bossie being a seditious enemy of all I hold dear.

Like everything else about the Republican sleaze machine, it's based on deception anyway and their "polls" have no actual validity. Of course I wasn't my usual kind self to the folks representing Newt Gingrich or his "poll" of leading questions last week either. Fake polls seem to be the way to get us, exhausted by the 18 months of hysterical telephone opinion shouting, to participate. Everyone wants his opinion heard: not everyone is smart enough to realize he's being used.

Newt, surprisingly, is no friend of Bossie. According to the Washington Post, when he was fired from his job as an investigator working for Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in 1998, Speaker Gingrich said to Burton of Bossie's behavior:

"I'm embarrassed for you, I'm embarrassed for myself, and I'm embarrassed for the [House Republican] conference at the circus that went on at your committee."

Indeed, even George H. W. Bush said of Bossie:

"We will do whatever we can to stop any filthy campaign tactics"

and W, himself no stranger to sleazy campaign tactics and not known for his sense of shame, asked his supporters not to support him as well.

But such is the fever of Obama Derangement Syndrome that this turd has again floated to the surface of the cesspool and who knows, perhaps will emerge from your telephone while you're trying to catch up on your sleep or eat your dinner or watch TV of an evening. But why wait?

If you have time on your hands today, try calling 866-635-8661 and ask Citizens United about their opinion of people who try to undermine our government "in time of war" or perhaps throw any of their other nauseous accusations back at them. Tell 'em Fogg sent ya. Tell them you're taking a poll.

Torture, Cheney, and Spineless Democrats

First, the good news. Chicago-based conservative radio host Eric "Mancow" Muller underwent waterboarding in an effort to silence critics of the procedure by showing, once and for all, that it is not torture (no, that's not the good part). But, as it turned out, Muller decided waterboarding is torture. I'm thrilled for Mancow's revelation; hopefully his words rang true in the ears of torture excusers across the land.

Here's the video:



Now some more good news. A former 14-year interrogator thoroughly rebuked last week's remarks by former Vice President Cheney on torture. The interrogator has overseen more than 1,000 interrogations and conducted over 300 himself in Iraq, including the interrogation of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And guess what? He did it all using traditional methods - no torture. Here's the video (a quadruple-level, immediate must-watch):



And now even more good news (we're on a roll). General Petraeus has endorsed Obama's close Gitmo/no more torture decisions.

I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.

With respect to Guantanamo. I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice -- I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary -- again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.

That's pretty staunch support from a very prominent military leader (and one who has been praised up and down by all manner of conservatives).

And now the bad, yet unsurprising, news. The Democrats are wimps. I know, I know. It's a shock. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in particular, is a wimp. The Nevada senator reportedly led the charge against the bill to provide funding to close Gitmo out of a concern of appearing too "liberal". Reid is, justifiably, afraid of losing his senate seat. But maybe, instead of trying to play politics with issues as important as national security and torture, he should do his job. Just a thought. It is nothing short of astounding that even though the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House and have at their helm the most charismatic, pragmatic leader in a generation (that being Obama) they are still bowing to Republican ideology at every turn. Furthermore Obama has already paved the road for them by taking very early stands on torture and closing Gitmo. All they have to do is follow. Yet they are completely inept at doing even that. Someone mentioned to me the other day that the Democrats are still acting like their in the minority (and the Republicans, unfortunately, think they're still in the majority). Mr. Reid, grow a pair or get out.

--

Originally posted at The Political Panorama.

THE CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT DECISION ON PROPOSITION 8: COWARDICE, STUPIDITY, OR CLEVERNESS?

California’s highest court hath spoken (perhaps “stammered” might be a better word choice). Here is the background. Last year (May 15, 2008), the same high court struck down a law passed by the legislature that banned gay marriage. In the language of the decision, the court raised sexual orientation to the same level as race and gender in weighing discrimination claims. Within months, the empire struck back with Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to amend the California Constitution and neutralize the court’s earlier decision. Prop 8 passed by 52% of the popular vote.

This time, California’s highest court caved to voters in a ruling that raises more questions and contradictions than before.  Here are excerpts of the ruling:

Regardless of our views as individuals on this question of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to confine our consideration to a determination of the constitutional validity and legal effect of the measure in question (…) setting aside our own personal beliefs and values [p. 3].

Contrary to petitioners’ assertion, Proposition 8 does not entirely repeal or abrogate the aspect of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right of privacy and due process that was analyzed in the majority opinion in the Marriage Cases — that is, the constitutional right of same-sex couples to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage” (...) Nor does Proposition 8 fundamentally alter the meaning and substance of state constitutional equal protection principles as articulated in that opinion [p. 7].

Finally, we consider whether Proposition 8 affects the validity of the marriages of same-sex couples that were performed prior to the adoption of Proposition 8. Applying well-established legal principles pertinent to the question whether a constitutional provision should be interpreted to apply prospectively or retroactively, we conclude that the new section cannot properly be interpreted to apply retroactively. Accordingly, the marriages of same-sex couples performed prior to the effective date of Proposition 8 remain valid and must continue to be recognized in this state [p.13].

If I understand this ruling correctly, 18,000 gay couples get to keep their marriages but no future marriages will be recognized in California unless the State Constitution is amended yet again or the decision is struck down by a Federal court. In other words, some gay couples end up more privileged than others, but, somehow, the ruling does not violate equal protections under the State Constitution or the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. What an amazing feat of twisted logic!

If one fully appreciates the internal contradiction of the ruling, perhaps the California high court has cleverly inserted self-destruct language that will eventually deconstruct the ruling. Cowardice, stupidity, or cleverness? How do you see it?

Sotomayor

The Jeffrey Toobin article at CNN was only 55 seconds old when I read the comment claiming she

"is just the person to carry this administration’s water when it comes to re-writing laws from the bench."

Gentlemen, launch your swift boats, fire up the all-purpose pejoratives, let the sleazewars begin. Why look for real-world examples when we can invent them and have them now?

Her resume is impressive and she was appointed to the Federal Bench by George H.W. Bush, but any Obama appointee will be treated as an opportunity for the reactionary turkey coop to air the same old "farleftliberal" gobble.

Whether she is indeed a far left Liberal, whatever that means, or a moderate Liberal, if you can sum up anyone that easily: even if she is "carrying water" for the administration, if you'll pardon their cliche', she isn't likely to be carrying all those sacks of reeking fascist shit that have been piling up in the halls of justice during the Republican Dark Ages and that, to me, means far more than gender, ethnicity or any label the pinhead Republicans can pin on her.

This Just In!

Fox has announced their verdict. Sonya Sotomayor is the “most liberal” of any of his candidates and was chosen to “appease the far left.”

Still no word on why the "most Liberal Senator in American History" has yet to prove he isn't a conservative, but hey - it's Fox, how wrong can they be?

Kiss our American asses, world!

I haven't posted in a while, having been preparing for and then recovering from a rather ill-conceived and harrowing nautical excursion over the weekend. I was hoping to be far away and in another country and thus to avoid what has become, like the War on Christmas, another contrived anti-American battle. But the sea pays no attention to our ambitions and acts of arrogance and there was no escape for the old captain this time.

The war on Memorial Day is a bit different, but no less insidious than our religious wars. We're long since used to being chastised for our lack of piety in not spending the event in self flagellation and the worship of the American messianic mission that some would pass off as appreciation for those who have died in Military service. We've never been asked however, at least not to my knowledge, to express our ritualized regret for the premature deaths of the 60 to 70 million who died in WW II alone, but only for the US soldiers who won it without assistance from the unappreciative world -- and I've long suspected that the War on Memorial Day has become the sole reason for the holiday itself.

If it were an expression of the wish that no more people would die in wars, it would be more likely to please the dead, could they be aware of it, but what it is supposed to be about has been, at least to those who write viral e-mails, a celebration of soldiering; the glory, the rituals and all the self worship and vainglorious bluster America can muster. It's the day of unmitigated, unalloyed arrogance, unrestrained by fact or reason and often not even by sanity or decency.

Of course in these latter days, when we have a President whose rationality and lack of shamanistic display require that we simply make shit up in order to preserve our military/religious complex, the War on Memorial Day is become the war that is Memorial day. It's now a war against Obama and Obama's honest assessment of what we have done, what we are doing and what we should do beyond waving flags, setting ourselves up as the world's sole and only begotten savior, puking up beer and burgers and getting discounts on foreign made goods at the big box stores.

Apologize for what? asks the e-mail. What follows is a sequence of pictures of US military cemeteries in Europe all entitled "We apologize." It ends with

"Apologize to no one. Remind those of our sacrifice and don't confuse arrogance with leadership. And we have to watch an American elected leader who apologizes to Europe and the Middle East that our country is "arrogant"! HOW MANY FRENCH, DUTCH, ITALIANS, BELGIANS AND BRITS ARE BURIED ON OUR SOIL, DEFENDING US AGAINST OUR ENEMIES?? WE DON'T ASK FOR PRAISE ... BUT WE HAVE ABSOULUTELY [sic] NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE!!"

No, it's not just the typical American arrogance about the world needing to kiss our feet every day. It's not just an illustration of our stunning ignorance of history, it's just another rabble rousing attack on a president who had the honesty to say that we have often of late been perceived as arrogant and we've often been unfair to those who disagree and that others have likewise been unfair to us. It's actually one of the best things Obama has said, in my opinion, and they're not going to let him get way with such heresy; not while there remains one pitchfork wielding and furiously ignorant psycho-patriot to arouse.

American Patriotism is a large and dense forest in which more scoundrels than we can count have taken refuge. I'm afraid there isn't enough Agent Orange and enough napalm to force them out or do away with them. I'm afraid that soon enough, Memorial Day will be the day some of use remember that there used to be an America that stood for something; something that contained a lot of good before the bastards flushed it down the toilet.

A Tree Offensive

I've had. I am fit to be tied.

I would like to propose (insist upon) new federal legislation. Against JUNK MAIL. I would like to insist (propose) that all purveyors of junk mail must plant a tree for every pound of junk mail that they inflict upon our mailboxes. The worst offenders are credit card companies, cable companies & phone companies. This past month I received the same soliciting junk mail from the same phone company THREE TIMES! Each of the three pieces of mail was exactly the same. Loathing junk mail I put it aside & cull the pile about once a month. Yesterday I found the THREE duplicate SPECIAL OFFERS from the same phone company. Enclosed in a white envelope was a GLOSSY (i.e. not terribly recyclable) advert. AND!! The real kicker is that it's my phone company! I am already a customer!

Then there are the credit card companies with their special needs, i.e. shredding. As we all know, we must open up these stupid offers & shred them - which means using electricity to protect our privacy. More wasted resources. Now granted - one shredding machine doesn't use that much power. But - think about adding up all of the power used in the US to shred all of the privacy invading credit card offers.

An Amendment to my proposed Federal Legislation - 2 trees per pound for credit card companies.

Then their are the cable companies. Same deal as the phone companies. Extra mailing CONSTANTLY from my own provider. They could at least include the junk in their monthly bill. But no - they do EXTRA paper wasting mailings throughout the month.

As for the US postal service's potential howling over business lost (they love largely non-recyclable catalogs as well, I hear tell), let's face it - the USP is facing major restructuring anyway since most of us pay our bills on line & converse through email not snail mail.

And yes - while I've mentioned the catalog sending business - think about all of the dear little saplings that would be planted if THEY were required to plant one per pound. It's truly mind boggling to consider the landfill acreage that is continually expanding to try & swallow up the glossy, usually non-recyclable, catalogs of the world.

No - wait a minute - due to the problematic non-recyclable nature in most of the country of glossy catalogs - THEY have to plant THREE trees per pound.

Tress are good for the earth - this we know. Junk mail isn't.

Enough already.

IT’S BERRY TIME! HOORAY!

Every year my mother-in-law gets strawberries and blueberries from a small grower nearby. Today was our day to pick up the strawberries and, as you can see from the picture, they were luscious!

I put up about half of them in the freezer for later use but picked out the ripest ones for eating fresh with plenty of sampling as I worked. My husband hovered nearby, begging me not to eat them all. “You’re as bad as a little kid!” And when it comes to berries, he’s right, I am.

I have always loved berries; any kind as long as they were ripe, juicy and sweet. When I was maybe nine years old, I used to ride my bike all over, exploring my town and its environs.

There was a place with a fenced pasture and a friendly palomino horse. I frequently visited, bringing him treats of apple or carrot. I liked horses, still do, but that wasn’t the REAL draw. What brought me back again and again was the promise of a bumper crop of black mulberries. That farmhouse had a huge mulberry bush that stood about six feet tall and its thicket of branches draped gracefully to the ground, forming a tent like structure. When the berries were finally ripe, I would crawl inside those branches and eat mulberries until my face and hands were stained purple-black. And, of course, the resulting tummy ache would torture me all night, but it was worth it.

Currently I’m keeping a close eye on my red raspberry tangle that it huge and overgrown on the edge of the woods. Every year I think I will trim back the canes and make a path through it to make it easier to harvest. But, I just can’t bring myself to disturb what nature has so thoughtfully provided. Soon, I’ll put on boots and get scratched and caught up in the briars, but the resulting reward of fresh raspberries will be well worth the few drops of blood, although it’s a bit embarrassing to be a 50+ woman going around all scratched and skinned up like a kid.

And then there will be blueberries! When I hear the lyrics, “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.” It’s not amore I’m thinking about, but sweet little blue orbs like the ones pictured here, providing a burst of heavenly flavor on my tongue.

BERRIES! Imagine the taste! Imagine the desserts!

On Libertarianism

Since some have been discussing the Ron Paul phenomenon, I thought I might add a few thoughts about the general direction from which they are coming. Libertarianism is something I was introduced to as a kid, and since that time I've become much acquainted with this movement's philosophical roots. At base, as I see things, they're supporters of a relatively unhistoricized, idealistic version of capitalism that considers "the free market" pretty much the answer to all problems.

On the one hand, I find it odd that some people think you can apply economic notions from centuries ago (before the Industrial Revolution even got going – Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776) without any significant modification. That is naïve, and it ought to be clear that an amoral system such as "the market" cannot be the answer to all problems, even though it works remarkably well in some areas of life. Most of us, I suspect, would insist that ethics must sometimes supplement pure economics – if capitalism doesn't ensure that everybody has access to good health care, for instance, some other set of values must be invoked to make sure people get access to it. A lot of things can be adequately dealt with by saying that money and property are their measure, but some of the most vital things in life cannot. If you tried to extend the market philosophy and system to everything, I fear, you would end up with something more like a Hobbesian state of nature than a truly civilized society – one in which everybody recognizes that there's something more valuable about human connections than is implied by the transitory "cash-nexus" that makes capitalism go.

As the free-marketeers suggest, charitable concern for our fellows can be monetized or commoditized to some extent, but it probably cannot be sufficiently commoditized so as to ensure genuine civility. That's no doubt an indictment of us all, but the question is "what kinds of social and political forms will encourage people to behave humanely towards one another?" And I'm suggesting that while unmodified capitalist economics may generate wealth for a considerable number of people, it shows little regard for ensuring that everybody has the basics of life. So it needs supplementation from values beyond its own reserves if it is to help us live well.

On the other hand, some of what libertarians believe is worthy of admiration – they are among the few people around, it seems, who believe that except in very extreme cases likely to cause harm to all, it's none of their business what others are up to in the areas of sexuality, drug use, and so forth. What a breath of fresh air in comparison to a certain element (unfortunately, it appears to be just about the only one left at present) within the Republican Party that thinks we can wiretap, torture, render, surveil and moralize our way to nirvana. Such people confound religion and politics to the point where they become indistinguishable, and apparently have no problem supporting even the most extreme "statist" measures. The libertarians oppose such impositions, and for that I think they deserve some regard; perhaps the better side of this philosophy will become a source of regeneration within the Republican Party.

Finally, the problem I see with the libertarian philosophy remains a big one: the good and the bad may be inextricable since libertarian defenses of individual freedom are deeply bound up with their understanding of competition, wealth, and property. Their social philosophy stems from their economic philosophy, and the latter seems unrealistic and very likely to produce unintended consequences of a destructive and destabilizing kind.

Show me the money

Sometimes I think Ron Paul's ideas may be too simplistic. This isn't one of them. In a Forbes editorial last week, Congressman Paul called for an audit of the Federal Reserve Bank. Paul of course, doesn't buy the idea that the Fed is necessary to keep inflation low and to promote growth. Truth be told, I've been of the opinion that it has played a part in all but eliminating the 10 - 15 year cycle of boom, panic and collapse that has plagued our economy since the Washington administration. Maybe it has but maybe, as the Congressman claims, it's been the cause of inflation and a drag on growth. Maybe there's a better way and I'm the first to admit I don't know.

The idea of an independent Fed is a fallacy, says the man from Texas. The allegedly independent Fed has

" far too much authority to make agreements with foreign governments and central banks, or create temporary liquidity facilities"

and of course the Chairman and governors are appointed by the President and will reflect his politics, but the question of whether it is a good solution, a bad solution and more importantly whether we should have a Federal Reserve Bank at all isn't easy to answer and it isn't easy to discuss because of the political passions and partisanship involved. Everyone thinks he's an economist these days. Of course, supporter or detractor, we really don't know exactly what the Fed is doing anyway, not even today with the huge amounts of money being moved around in the dark.

'Let's have an audit' is Ron Paul's simple suggestion and one would think that at a time when the government has the power to audit anyone; to investigate, spy on, wire tap, seize assets and records, imprison without charges and even pour water up your nose, the answer would be "why the hell not?"

"What possible arguments exist against this bill? Who opposes an audit of the Fed's activities and why?"

asks Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com. "It would interfere with the Fed's independence" says Forbes in rebuttal and stresses that monetary policy is too complex for simple minded congressmen. Maybe it is, but maybe it's too complex for the Fed too and more than maybe; the lingering appearance of impropriety, if not incompetence, can finally be confirmed or dispelled by a little bit of transparency.

I wouldn't dare pass myself off as an economist and I'm not going to see this along party lines because I don't trust either side, particularly in this atmosphere of secrecy, but if an "independent" Fed means a Fed that operates in the dark, according to its own rules and politics, I'm with Congressman Paul. I want to see the books and you're going to have a lot of 'splainin to do to talk me out of it.

Perhaps I can use the words of surveillance supporters against the government for once: if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.

WHAT’S UNDER THAT KILT?

The AP has put out this story under the headline:

Utah school forces student to change out of kilt

WEST HAVEN, Utah – The principal of a Utah middle school has been asked to apologize for forcing a kilt-wearing student to change his clothes.

Weber School District spokesman Nate Taggart says Craig Jessop has been asked to extend an apology to 14-year-old student Gavin McFarland of Hooper after the school official's comments Wednesday.

Gavin says he wore the kilt twice in the past two weeks to Rocky Mountain Junior High as a prop for an art project. Jessop told the boy that the outfit could be misconstrued as cross-dressing.

Taggart says the district recognizes the kilt as an expression of the boy's Scottish heritage and that the kilt was not inappropriate.
Kilts are traditional Scottish apparel generally worn by men for formal or special occasions.

Now, I have two dear friends from Scotland and they had a very traditional Scottish wedding with him wearing his family tartan following a long historic tradition of all Scotsmen that I suspect even some pinhead in Utah must know about even if he hasn’t seen Braveheart.

More disturbing was the comment by the principal that this could be misconstrued as cross dressing. So what? You know, our young people, by the time they are in high school, are no longer the innocent babes that need our constant vigilance for fear they might be “exposed” to the world around them.

If we want responsible young adults, capable of navigating successfully through a complex and ever changing world, would they not be better served by allowing them to decide what they find acceptable or not?

We can only hope the Jessops of the world will fade away to make room for wiser, more compassionate and more intelligent replacement.

YELLOW STICKY NOTES

By Jeff Chiba Stearns

Yes we can

But no we won't. Really nobody expected Barak Obama to bring about the Kingdom of God, or even a Democracy of justice. That his supporters did, is just another of the straw men ambling down the yellow brick road from GOP headquarters. What we really wanted is somebody not actively trying to destroy our country in every possible way, but from day one we've been giggled at because he hadn't done in 24 hours what Jesus Christ hasn't done, lo these 2000 years and largely because his followers are Christians.

One of the things I have been hoping for is for an end to the persecution of gays in the military. It's a small thing in the greater picture of our corrupt, superstitious and furious country, but had somebody done something to block the summary discharge of Lieutenant Daniel Choi from the US Army because he prefers men to women, it might have been reassuring, at least, to those who hope for something of a saner, more secular America. Alas he has chosen not to "interfere." He has chosen to allow the crusaders one more victory in taking over our military.

It's only one of many stories, but the sad lack of Arabic translators in our service has something to do with the fact that we place such great value on their private sexual thoughts that we are willing to risk the lives of our soldiers and perhaps our nation by firing them and negating their years of study and service and indeed their valuable expertise. Choi was the 54th translator to be discharged for unclean thoughts.

I'm waiting for our allegedly Liberal Press to say something and perhaps for the "traditional values" side to be hypocritical and call them hypocrites, but so far, It's only the bloggers and the ever vigilant Daily Show that are willing to point out that our Christian friends in God's Army are allowing their superstitions to weaken us in yet one more way.

Religious bigotry doesn't require a beard or any kind of headgear to be the enemy of freedom, or does stupidity for that matter. Take Kim Hendron, a member of the Arkansas State Senate, and currently a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who told us recently that he believes in the traditional values of the Andy Griffith Show, not like "that Jew" Chuck Shumer. Now most of us remember that no, John Wayne never really was a soldier and Andy Griffith never really was a sheriff of that non-existent fantasy town that had no Jews or Catholics or Mexicans or folks of African descent, but Hendron isn't going to let any damned New York Jew tell him otherwise any more than the US Army of God is going to let any damned sodomite translate any damned Arabic messages even if we have to have New York blown up all over again. Of course, when his foot was extracted from his Arkanas blow hole, he had to admit that he did actually like maybe a couple of Jews like Jesus and Lieberman, neither of which it's likely he's ever listened to with much understanding.

So maybe if we want to get an idea of what's really going on here, we need to turn off our inner Arkansas and listen to some damned Jew like the one that told us to shut the hell up and be nice to each other a long time ago and the one on Comedy Central who seems brave enough to tell off the Army and Obama and our hate-based community that we've had enough of this. waterboarding may make them talk, said that Jew Jon Stewart, but it won't make them talk in English.

Shame on you Mr. President.

Ugly is as ugly thinks

This is still America, the discomfiture of the Republican Party notwithstanding, and so no triviality, no irrelevant, inconsequential or plainly idiotic dispute is going to go away without the final word being had by our ad hoc committee on the meaning of everything. The current committee heads seem to be Sarah Palin and Charlie, Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher.

As the swells slowly die down on that limitless sea of Who Gives A Shit, we can hear the voice of Mrs. Palin (perhaps all the way to Russia) telling us that:

“Our Constitution protects us all, not just those who agree with the far left.”

Saving the discussion of just what, to her, constitutes the "far left" for another paragraph, it might be worthwhile to wonder just what protection it offers from the superstition and bigotry of those who listen to psychotic monsters like Pastor "death to witches" Muthee. We won't get an answer from her, I'm afraid, but her feelings are clear. The Constitution protects her religious views against the "Liberal" onslaught.

It doesn't, of course -- and I have a hard time seeing the First Amendment as protecting someone's standing in a private, for profit beauty pageant, else we'd be hearing a lot of court cases from ladies with big noses, large bottoms and A cups, but that's the Procrustean bed Palin would like to strap the sad case of Carrie Prejean into, as poor a fit as it may be.

Does Sarah care who wins a contest designed to facilitate the commercial self-objectification of young women? I would guess that she is only interested in portraying her as a noble victim of people so un-American as to assert that the Constitution protects everyones rights, including the right to enter into a contract with another, regardless of race, creed, national origin or gender. That's being a farleftliberal, of course; the catchall term for anything that stands in the way of going back to the days when a real estate broker (we didn't have Realtors back then) could refuse to show you a house in a white neighborhood, a Jew couldn't book a hotel room in Palm Beach, schools, restaurants, public parks, drinking fountains train stations and city buses were segregated, marrying someone of the wrong race could land you in jail and non-missionary position sex was a crime -- and all was well with far right neanderthals like Sarah the moose killer and her Cave Christians. All was right with Sarah's Grizzly God.

No, “the liberal onslaught of malicious attacks” as Sarah growled from her wilderness den -- or in other words, the disgust with people like Prejean, Palin and the Plumber dude who want to have the law interfere with private and personal relationships and strip us of the right to determine just who our families are: the Liberal assault is what what we should be concerned about, or at least the losers who run and watch and participate in beauty pageants should be. It's a "onslaught!" We shouldn't notice that in fact nobody is censoring anyone and Sarah the Idiot is confusing equal protection under the law for all citizens with some kind of an outrageous affront to her primitive religious beliefs.

So it seems like Sarah's "far left" is actually the core of American values, at least the values the constitution was meant to be a means to facilitate. It seems like Sarah's center lies in a culture that died out with the "onslaught" of the Age of Enlightenment, if not with the disappearance of woolly mammoths. Far Left Liberals like me feel little more than sad, queasiness at the ugly programmed responses of would be beauty queens, and that's about it. Some may be outraged at her, some might hate her, but they are a subgroup as small as Palin's witch hunters. Most of us care more about how our representatives vote and how well our freedom is protected against its atavistic enemies, but ugly words make people ugly, and this is a beauty contest, isn't it?

Say no to drugs!

I guess I've been doing drugs all my life and I'll bet you have too. My thanks to the FDA for letting us all know. Take Oats for example, there's evidence that eating oat cereal helps keep your bad cholesterol low and that's something the health howlers everywhere have been telling us to do 24 hours a day for decades. Cheerios are, of course, made with oats and General Mills is happy to tell you they provide a good way to eat those oats that seem to be good for you. Our friends at the FDA however, you know those guys who always seem to have been looking the other way when the e-coli, melamine and rat turds got into our food supply aren't about to tolerate promoting a healthy diet without their permission.

Cheerios are drugs because they can help treat a medical condition according to the Food and Drug Administration. Of course if nobody told you that broccoli or spinach or exercise or a good night's sleep -- or oats -- were good for you, that would be all right with the Feds. Health benefits, no matter how credible can only be talked about with their approval it seems. So never mind what your mother or Sanjay Gupta or the Surgeon General tells you about a healthy diet and lifestyle, don't listen to those damned drug pushers, listen to the FDA.

Of course you can apparently sell almost any placebo or stimulant as a weight loss drug that has been proven not to work or in some cases to kill you. We can't go half an hour without some machine or pill or diet plan being shoved in our faces on TV, but fruits, grains and vegetables as part of a heart-healthy diet? DRUGS!!!!

Hey, last thing I want to do is be a druggie - so I'll have a double bacon cheeseburger with extra mayonnaise and a big Bucket O Super Sized Fries and a milk shake too of course -- it's all FDA approved!

84 AFGHAN GIRLS POISONED: ASSOCIATED PRESS HINTS AT "HYSTERIA"

Earlier today (Tuesday, May 12, 2009), the Associated Press released this story about an apparent poison gas attack on 84 Afghan school girls:

MUHMUD RAQI, Afghanistan — At least 84 Afghan girls were admitted to a hospital Tuesday for headaches and vomiting in the third apparent poison attack on a girls school in as many weeks, officials and doctors said.

The students were lining up outside their school in northeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday morning when a strange odor filled the yard, and one girl collapsed, said the school's principal, Mossena, who was herself in a hospital bed gasping for breath as she described the event.

(…)

At least 98 patients were admitted from Aftab Bachi school, including the principal, 11 teachers and two cleaners, said Khalid Enayat, the hospital's deputy director. He said about another 30 students were being monitored to see if they developed symptoms, although they were not admitted to the hospital.

Tuesday's apparent attack is the third alleged poisoning at a girls' school in less than three weeks. It comes one day after 61 schoolgirls and one teacher from a school in neighboring Parwan province were admitted to a hospital after complaining of sudden illness. They were irritable, confused and weeping, and several of the girls passed out.

Even more disturbing is how AP and its writers victimize the victims of these attacks with this hypothetical disclaimer:

But with no group claiming responsibility, the sicknesses could be a result of a group hysteria sparked by one student's illness. An education official for Parwan province said they had not found any evidence of an attack in Tuesday's incident. He said one student fell ill before the others and suggested that some of the illnesses could have been psychological.

Get it?  Young women have such delicate constitutions, you know. They subject themselves to flights of hysteria with the slightest provocation. Does the mere thought of having acid thrown in one’s face bring on a case of vapors and tremors? Does every odor followed by headache, nausea, and vomiting evoke The Mad Gasser of Mattoon?

When so-called authorities or experts can find no other explanation, the easiest solution is to blame the victim. Of course we are talking about a country where girls are kidnapped, schools are closed or burned, teachers are beheaded, and fear is rampant.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press wants to cast doubt on the credibility of the victims. Does this press account commit a fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias, or is there more subtext behind this story? Like shades of gender bias, for example?

Update (6:45 pm): The BBC and Deutsche Welle reported the same story without the reference to group hysteria.

He must be wrong -- he's Obama.

It seems to me that if one is dedicated to thwarting president Obama's health care reform before one knows what it is, then one has to admit that either he's out to thwart anything Obama does, or any kind of health care reform.

Multimillionaire Rick Scott is one of those people who can't wait to hear what the plan actually entails before putting on the Drum Major costume and strutting about the streets twirling his baton in ostentatious outrage and ornate opposition. He has put together a group he predictably calls Conservatives for Patient's Rights rather than a more honest "The I've Got Mine and F*ck You Club."

"Before government rushes to overhaul health care, listen to those who already have government-run health care,"

says Scott as quoted in today's Washington Post. Of course since we don't know that Obama is actually talking about Government run health care, at least not in the same sense that Scott would like us to fear he is, the mendacity begins with the first words. Then too, he doesn't want you to ask Americans who have government run health care either. By all accounts our politicians have it pretty good and the VA system was a model of efficiency, at least until the privatization pirates attempted to board that ship. He doesn't want you to listen to countries with successful and popular health care plans, he wants you to listen to a carefully selected and edited group of Canadians and Brits and their anecdotal horror stories and so enter CRC Public Relations and another round of captious TV ads.

Did I mention that Scott made his money as CEO of a private hospital business?

Scott is contributing $5 million from his own piggy bank and has, according to WaPo, got $15 million more from other people who support the status quo most Americans feel is in need of reform. The funds will be put to good use by CRC Public Relations, the same firm that gave us the "swift Boat Veterans" campaign that convinced the weak minded and no-minded that John Kerry was not where he was, didn't do what he did and proved it with testimony from people who didn't know him and were never near him.

Did I mention that CEO Scott was ousted from Columbia/HCA, the largest private U.S. health-care company at the time, that pleaded guilty to fraud? He defends this by telling us that other private hospitals were committing fraud too. Think about that when the argument comes around to the part where private is always better than public.

If you took logic 101 in college, you probably remember it being called the Slippery Slope Fallacy, but Scott's target audience didn't go and doesn't remember and so Scott can employ the argument that any step toward reform will accelerate down hill without evidence. He can tell us he isn't necessarily opposed to Obama's plan, even before he knows what it is, but that

"The bottom line is that this is happening fast, and there is not much of a debate going on about what will happen if we go down this path"

but what he means by "debate" is to obfuscate -- and that's obvious. We have had decades of debate; decades of millions spent on sleazy ads and slimy lies and distractions and Scott thinks we need to continue the gravy train he's on as long as he can keep it going.

What are we going to do about Newt?

Just for the record, and in case you've forgotten, the forced resignations of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew had nothing to do with burglary, arson, bribery and extortion: it was all political, unlike the $50,000,000 investigation of Bill Clinton's sex life and a real estate deal in which he lost money. That was about law and principle, like ignoring Newt Gingrich's serial affairs and tax frauds while he accuses others was -- a matter of principle.

Welcome to Republican Bizarro World where everything is its opposite. Newt reminds us that calls by some Democrats for investigations into Bush administration torture and secret imprisonment without trial practices amounts to a partisan attack reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

"The degree that they’re putting specific people at risk for prosecution is unprecedented in modern America,”

he said to Chris Wallace, without any foundation in fact of any kind. Of course he hopes you won't remember how unprecedented it was to prosecute a president for a private consensual affair or for testifying falsely about something that wasn't a crime or related to one.

“They haven’t passed a law making water boarding illegal. They haven’t gone into any of these things and changed law,”

although since the US has already prosecuted people for water boarding as a war crime it would seem to indicate they didn't need to make it redundantly illegal. We also have to ask why, if it was legal, and publicizing it terrorizes the terrorists, Bush denied having done it.

No, Virginia, Theater of the Absurd didn't go out of fashion in the 1960's, it simply became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. What else would you call it but absurd if Bush didn't do anything illegal, because it's not illegal if he does it? What else would you call an argument stating that murder wasn't illegal because since the murderer got caught, nobody bothered to make what already was illegal, illegal again? And after all nobody, says Newt, ever put anybody at risk for prosecution like the Democrats are doing, just because they committed a crime -- or didn't which is the same thing you see, depending on whether it was done by a Republican or not.

And then, of course there's the danger of seeming to be "soft on terrorism" which of course nobody actually is unless we make it legal to torture through legislation or through precedent (and according to Ann, far more vicious.) By Newts logic, the US was soft on the Nazis and the Empire of Japan because we didn't torture them. It must have been coincidence that we weren't conquered.

Really, is it that they hope to wear us down or perhaps to erode logic so much that opposites will become the same and judgment will be simply a matter of doing what we can get away with? We have voted them out of office, but they still have the ability to scream endlessly in our ears.
History proves that there are always enough supporters to make any demagogue dangerous if we let it go on too long, so what do we do about them?

The most ____ president in history.

"Be warned - - Obama has started!!!!" screams the e-mail.

The boundary between hyperbole and hysteria may be blurry and undefined, but those who make a career of ferrying the lost souls across that murky river are calm, cool and professional and know just what they are doing: delivering us all to hell.

The smallest and most obscure incident will be elevated to a breathless diatribe against the pandaemon of targets in the Republican shooting gallery and so when, after a series of accidents, one fatal, involving Fort Campbell soldiers owning private firearms and living off-base, approximately 110 out of 29,000 of them were asked by a company commander for information about what kind of weapons they owned, with the objective of providing proper training in their use. The letter was rescinded almost immediately.

With blinding speed the letter was scanned and embedded in a bogus and highly irate letter about how "the most anti-firearm president in history" was trying to disarm our own military.

"The big hush, hush is not only to take away our missile defenses, but Obama is going to disarm the public as well. He is starting with the military and then the public. The country will then be totally defenseless."

How quickly we move from memo to madness. It goes on and on about Liberty and a "Free people" and how "something really nasty is blowing in the wind here." Indeed it is, or at least in the electronic wind and it smells Republican.

"It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days: the most anti-firearm President in history is inaugurated, some of the nastiest anti-firearm laws are put on the table in Washington"

Do I need to point out that to be a coincidence, two events have to be true?

I could almost hear the thud of it arriving in my in-box -- or perhaps the thud was the sonic boom caused by the Commander of Charlie Company transmogrifying into maniacal Barak Obama.

Obama, formerly "the most far-left Liberal" in the Senate is now confounding the Liberal wing of his party with his decidedly not far-left Liberal views on many things, but no matter. Even if he proves not to put further gun control legislation on the table, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Rahm Immanuel are waiting, like cartridges in a magazine and any one of them can be the next "most ____ in history." Like Leggo Blocks, they're interchangeable.

Now I wonder with what blinding speed some troll will decide that I am very angry and therefore demented and from that go on to point out that all Democrats are not only hate filled, but deranged hate mongers; perhaps the most deranged in history. I'm counting the seconds.

SWASH ZONE WEEKEND FEATURE – FATHER AND DAUGHTER

Animator and Writer: Michael Dudok de Wit
Academy Award Winner, Best Short Animated Film, 2001.



For my three cephalopods: Jennifer, Jessica, and Samantha.

Just what it looks like

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

-Sigmund Freud (attributed)-

Sometimes not

"So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate."

said Rush the other day at the President's Club Dinner, to appreciative guests like Justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and other self-satisfied plutocrats who thought it was funny that Clear Channel has had to lay off 12% of its work force while Rush has a $400 million dollar contract with them. Business for Rush has never been better and he's never had a better time either with his 51,000 square foot Palm Beach palace on the ocean, his $54 million dollar private jet and his "populist" radio program where he can tell the boys down at the corner bar why the Liberals are out to get them and then fly off to have dinner with the other plutocrats smoking cigars and laughing their heads off at his jokes about homeless children sleeping under bridges.

That's right Doktor Freud, sometimes it's a cigar, sometimes it's not, but with Rush it's always a way of saying "I've got mine and f*ck you!"

Fox Nation - are you man enough?

Fox Nation -- do you have the stomach for it?

"It's Time to Say NO to Biased Media and Say YES to Fair Play and Free Speech."

is the curtain behind which they spew out biased interpretations as freely as Fox News ever did. Fox Nation is a month old "Conservative opinion" site that is by their own description " for those opposed to intolerance," and of course intolerance means that gagging sound one makes when trying to swallow the allegedly conservative outrages against the misrepresentations they perpetrate -- just like Fox News itself.

"Why aren't white males being considered for the Supreme Court?"

asks this fine publication today. Of course the court always has been and still remains mostly white male, but it's good for readership to get the skinheads and Aryan nation idiots in an uproar about their being persecuted. I really don't have the stomach for it, but I'm sure they're opposing intolerance here in some obscure fashion.

"attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought [and] expression,"

are what they oppose as long as those thoughts don't include any objection to pointing an M1 Garand military rifle at Barak Obama and Jesse Jackson.

Coincidence? Only their psychiatrist knows for sure. Of course I've been thoroughly excoriated on right wing sites for suggesting that "heads should roll" in the hate radio business and it was interpreted in fair and balanced fashion that I was calling for the murder and ritual decapitation of Rush Limbaugh, so I really don't feel any inhibition when asking whether or not this is a subliminal thing, meant to make the bigots giggle and their trigger fingers wiggle -- or pure accident. It could be that, certainly and I'm being fair and balanced about it.

Charles Krauthammer is…

…you guessed it…an idiot!

I know there has been a lot of discussion of this here lately, but it's so important I wanted to add this. In his Friday column, Charles Krauthammer outlined scenarios under which torture is appropriate.

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb.

[...]

The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great.

[...]

Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding. (To call some of the other “enhanced interrogation” techniques — face slap, sleep interruption, a caterpillar in a small space — torture is to empty the word of any meaning.)

Of course the ticking time bomb scenario never really occurs. We’ve been Jack Bauered into believing torture is occasionally the only means of gathering information needed to save lives. But in reality, effective interrogators can make even the most despicable terrorists sing without raising a fist. Krauthammer raises concerns that this less barbaric approach, while it can be effective, takes too long. But we are never really in a position in which we know of an impending threat and know exactly which captive has the exact information on that threat that we’re missing. We either have enough information to act without resorting to torture or we’re even more in the dark, in which case, unless we relentlessly torture everyone we come across, we can’t possibly get the right information in time anyway. This article from The Progressive a few years ago explains very well why all of Krauthammer’s logic is wrong (it’s a bit long, but a must read).

(And isn’t interesting that Krauthammer reduces prolonged sleep deprivation where captives are kept in a brightly lit room and doused with water any time they start to nod off to “sleep interruption.” It takes a special kind of depravity to turn something that is clearly cruel and inhumane into a mere “interruption.”)

Krauthammer goes on to cite intelligence officials - Tenet, Hayden, and Blair (at most one of which is reliable - Blair) - who said we gathered valuable information from these enhanced interrogation sessions. This of course ignores the fact that 1) we could have gotten the information through less horrendous means (which Krauthammer simply dismisses by saying that KSM wouldn’t have cooperated - but last I checked, Charles Krauthammer wasn’t a trained professional interrogator) and 2) information gathered through torture is unreliable. I ask all defenders of torture to try to put themselves in the shoes of these captives. Your strapped down. You have a towel placed over your face and a jug of water poured over the towel so you literally can’t breath. You feel as though you are drowning. Then you are subjected to that treatment 182 more times. At that point (most likely much sooner) would you not tell your interrogators anything they wanted to hear - true or not? I would. And that’s just the point. False confessions are too likely. And if just one confession is false, that brings into question the reliability of all other information gleaned through torture.

But there is a larger problem with the recent debate over torture - that there even is a debate. Torture is morally wrong, it’s ineffective, it creates an abysmal image of our nation abroad (and at home), and it even puts us on a slippery slope to worse practices (the above linked Progressive article effectively explains how torture policies can lead to extensive extrajudicial executions - the CIA notes that it’s Phoenix program during the Vietnam War resulted in more than 20,000 such executions). In short, torture is un-American. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, even Ronald Reagan, not exactly a bastion of liberal thought, made a strong push against torture - he even helped ratify a treaty against it. Yet many of today’s conservatives argue that torture is justified. I’ll say this plainly: torture is never justified. How low have we sunk?

--

Adapted from a post at The Political Panorama.

A Few Thoughts About Cultural Imperialism and the T-Word

A Few Thoughts About Cultural Imperialism and the T-Word

1. With regard to what a previous commenter on Capt. Fogg's thread wrote, I believe it's safe to assert that nationality doesn't determine the value of a human being's life. The poorest he or she from anywhere whatsoever is no less human than the wealthiest person in the United States or Europe or Japan. This is not to deny that differences in opportunity allow some in so-called post-industrial societies to develop their minds and skills more than some of the least advantaged elsewhere. But to allot a greater degree of humanity on that basis would be to go down a dangerous road indeed, placing cultural and economic sophistication (perhaps a troubled phrase, that) in the service of imperial brutality and just plain arrogant dehumanization of our fellows. People are people, and all have the same potential for good or ill, kindness or cruelty. To posit otherwise is to betray one's own utter moral confusion.

2. That torture is even being debated as if it were a legitimate response to threats (even serious ones) betrays a startling degeneration in the moral status of our country. There are just some things one shouldn't do. Period. That's why I'm not interested in utility-based arguments about such a loathsome subject. I don't say this out of fondness for whichever genuinely guilty terrorists have been dealt this fate. But that isn't the point. And I don't give half a thumbscrew whether torture works or not. It places us beyond the pale of civilization even to entertain using it.

SWASH ZONE MATINEE - THE DANISH POET

A film by Torill Kove
Narrated by Liv Ullmann
Winner of the 2007 Oscar for best short subjects animation.

Let's all torture like it's 1499

I know, I know, you're going to tell me that I'm obsessed with Ann Coulter and I should just ignore her until she goes away. Well, I'm not and she won't of course, but it's just that every time I think I've identified the craziest or most repugnant, evil minded, nasty and dishonest humanoid resident within the US borders, Ann, like one of those sea cucumbers that extrudes its intestines in order to gross out predators, gives us another and bigger load from her oversized colon.

Yes, of course Rush Gassbaugh is already on record as stating that the beatings, the attachment of electrodes to testicles and worse at Abu Ghraib were something only a girly man and liberal would object to, but Abu Ghraib is old news. It's all about Guantanamo and it's Ann's turn to tell us that waterboarding someone 189 times is just like a carnival ride people would actually pay to experience and that "the Muslims" are laughing at our weakness because we don't torture them enough. Only a hundred have died, after all. What we do is to put an "adorable little caterpillar" in someones cell, said adorable Ann to Sean "insanity" Hannity -- kind of like Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition using soft pillows and comfy chairs. We're "Wussies" for having any sense of morality greater than a jackal's says Ann while lounging around her luxury Palm Beach estate drinking a glass of human blood and munching on some child's barbecued leg.

Of course she's referring to our playing on some prisoner's phobias and to some, being trapped and unable to prevent an insect crawling up their leg is worse than pain. We all have some secret fear, after all. Imagine being trapped in an elevator with Coulter and Limbaugh, for instance, on the day you forgot to take your gun with you.

So I guess what the Arm Chair warriors from Palm Beach would like to see, is an America so utterly depraved and devoid of conscience as to make the world shudder in horror as we torture, maim and kill for pleasure -- you know, like real men like Ann and Rush do. Well they don't actually do anything, but they do giggle and laugh and snicker and mock decency while telling us we're "godless" for not torturing more people in more horrific ways and that we're suffering from "derangement syndromes" for criticizing evil.

Anyway, the dishonesty, the depravity, the malignant personality of laughing Ann doesn't need me to criticize it. Someone who makes a living lying, insisting that concerns of right and wrong, good and evil are for weaklings and that only cruel and inhuman leaders who make us safe by terrifying and disgusting the world can be supported -- while ridiculing liberals for being without religion isn't going to listen, and those who support her will simply read inexplicable hostility into my words and claim she's the victim.

We don't burn these people at the stake any more -- perhaps that's the danger of being Godless, but I'm just as happy that he's dead or gone or never was at all, since this is the kind of thing that would provoke any deity into raising the sea level once again.