Raping Our Earth Mountaintop By Mountaintop

Among the 100 people arrested outside the White House last Monday was climate scientist James Hansen, who issued a statement saying mountaintop removal "destroys historic mountain ranges, poisons water supplies and pollutes the air with coal and rock dust." The devastation it causes to the environment, the towns and the people is immeasurable and cannot be repaired. It is nothing short of earth rape and domestic terrorism. It is man made. You know, the coal mining corporations that are people.

Hansen joined environmentalists, miners and Appalachian activists to call attention to mountaintop coal mining, which literally means blowing mountains to smithereens to reach coal reserves. The rally, called "Appalachia Rising," was organized by protesters from West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.

In an article first published in Orion Magazine and found on grist (HERE), Erik Reece writes, "Central Appalachia provides much of the country's coal, second only to Wyoming's Powder River Basin. In the United States, 100 tons of coal are extracted every two seconds."

In the name of corporate expedience, coal companies have turned from excavation to simply blasting away the tops of the mountains. To achieve this, they use the same mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel that Timothy McVeigh employed to level the Murrow Building in Oklahoma City -- except each detonation is 10 times as powerful, and thousands of blasts go off each day across central Appalachia. Hundreds of feet of forest, topsoil, and sandstone -- the coal industry calls all of this "overburden" -- are unearthed so bulldozers and front-end loaders can more easily extract the thin seams of rich, bituminous coal that stretch in horizontal layers throughout these mountains.

Mother Jones reports:

While topless mountains serve as shocking visual evidence of environmental devastation in Appalachia, it's the waste issue that creates real problems for communities in the region. After the tops of the mountains are blown off, the waste debris dumped in nearby valleys often blocks waterways and causes flooding. The debris includes a number of toxic heavy metals that end up in the water, causing a litany of health problems. Areas close to the blast sites have lower birth weights and higher rates of mortality, lung cancer, and chronic heart, lung, and kidney disease. A study released earlier this year found an average of 11,000 more premature deaths per 100,000 residents in the counties with the heaviest mining.

Not only does mountaintop mining destroy the earth for all eternity, it's devastating impact on humans is even more ominous, says Reece.

. . . an Eastern Kentucky University study found that children in Letcher County, Ky., suffer from an alarmingly high rate of nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath -- symptoms of something called blue baby syndrome -- that can all be traced back to sedimentation and dissolved minerals that have drained from mine sites into nearby streams. Long-term effects may include liver, kidney, and spleen failure, bone damage, and cancers of the digestive tract.

There's suicide:

Consider the story of Debra and Granville Burke. First the blasting above their house wrecked its foundation. Then the floods came. Four times, they wiped out the Burkes' garden, which the family depended on to get through the winter. Finally, on Christmas morning 2002, Debra Burke took her life. In a letter published in a local paper, her husband wrote: "She left eight letters describing how she loved us all but that our burdens were just getting too much to bear. She had begged for TECO to at least replace our garden, but they just turned their back on her. I look back now and think of all the things I wish I had done differently so that she might still be with us, but mostly I wish that TECO had never started mining above our home."

And murder:

The specific injustice that had drawn together a group of activists calling themselves the Mountain Justice Summer movement was the violent death of 3-year-old Jeremy Davidson. At 2:30 in the morning on Aug. 30, 2004, a bulldozer, operating without a permit above the Davidsons' home, dislodged a thousand-pound boulder from a mountaintop-removal site in the town of Appalachia, Va. The boulder rolled 200 feet down the mountain before it crushed to death the sleeping child.

But Davidson's death is hardly an isolated incident. In West Virginia, 14 people drowned in the last three years because of floods and mudslides caused by mountaintop removal, and in Kentucky, 50 people have been killed and over 500 injured in the last five years by coal trucks, almost all of which were illegally overloaded.

And activists:

Larry Gibson has lived on Kayford Mountain in W. Va. for over 200 years.

Forty seams of coal lie beneath his 50 acres. Gibson could be a millionaire many times over, but because he refuses to sell, he has been shot at and run off his own road. One of his dogs was shot and another hanged. A month after my visit, someone sabotaged his solar panels. In 2000, Gibson walked out onto his porch one day to find two men dressed in camouflage, approaching with gas cans. They backed away and drove off, but not before they set fire to an empty cabin that belongs to one of Gibson's cousins. This much at least can be said for the West Virginia coal industry: it has perfected the art of intimidation.

Gibson knows he isn't safe. "This land is worth $450 million," he told me, "so what kind of chances do I have?" But he hasn't backed down. He travels the country telling his story and has been arrested repeatedly for various acts of civil disobedience. When Gibson talks to student groups, he asks them, "What do you hold so dear that you don't have a price on it? And when somebody comes to take it, what will you do? For me, it's this mountain and the memories I had here as a kid. It was a hard life, but here I was equal to everybody. I didn't know I was poor until I went to the city and people told me I was. Here I was rich."

And Granny:

At a 2006 rally against Massey Energy which was organized by Mountain Justice, gray-haired Julia Bonds told the crowd:

"I'm honored to be here with you. We're an endangered species, we hillbillies. Massey Energy is terrorizing us in Appalachia. Little old ladies in their 70s can't even sit on their porches. They have to cut their grass wearing respirators. That's how these people have to live. The coal companies are the real terrorists in America. And we're going to expose them for the murdering, lying thieves that they are."

And children:

In 2005, Mountain Justice volunteers went door-to-door in Rock Creek, W. Va. in an "effort to identify citizens' concerns and possibly locate cancer clusters."

The school, a small brick building, sits almost directly beneath a Massey Energy subsidiary's processing plant where coal is washed and stored. Coal dust settles like pollen over the playground. Nearly 3 billion gallons of coal slurry, which contains extremely high levels of mercury, cadmium, and nickel, are stored behind a 385-foot-high earthen dam right above the school.

In 1972, a similar coal impoundment damn collapsed in W. Va., killing 125 people, writes Reece."

And history:

The history of resource exploitation in Appalachia, like the history of racial oppression in the South, follows a sinister logic -- keep people poor and scared so that they remain powerless. In the 19th century, mountain families were actually doing fairly well farming rich bottomlands. But populations grew, farms were subdivided, and then northern coal and steel companies started buying up much of the land, hungry for the resources that lay below. By the time the railroads reached headwater hollows like McRoberts, Ky., men had little choice but to sell their labor cheaply, live in company towns, and shop in overpriced company stores. "Though he might revert on occasion to his ancestral agriculture," wrote coal field historian Harry Caudill, "he would never again free himself from dependence upon his new overlords." In nearly every county across central Appalachia, King Coal had gained control of the economy, the local government, and the land.

Death and destruction are not factored into the price of coal.

Last year (2005), American power plants burned over a billion tons of coal, accounting for over 50 percent of this country's electricity use. In Kentucky, 80 percent of the harvested coal is sold and shipped to 22 other states. Yet it is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy -- through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks. Why should large cities like Phoenix and Detroit get the coal but be held accountable for none of the environmental consequences of its extraction? And why is a Tampa-based energy company -- or Peabody Coal in St. Louis, or Massey Energy in Richmond, Va. -- allowed to destroy communities throughout Appalachia? As my friend and teacher the late Guy Davenport once wrote, "Distance negates responsibility."

Other reading:

AppalachiaRising.org

MountainJustice.org

AppalachianVoices.org

ilovemountains.org

EarthJustice - Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining

Lists of coal impoundment dams:  coalimpoundment.org  and  EPA

Natural Resources Defence Counsel (NRDC) has campaigned vigorously against mountaintop mining. This link is to their list of articles on the travesty I've only touched on. HERE

WHAT WE CAN DO:

WE can write letters to the editors of our local papers.

WE can bring attention to it on our blogs.

WE can sign petitions sponsored by NRDC and other organizations.

WE can donate to NRDC and AppalachiaRising.

WE can write and email our congressional representatives on a regular basis.

WE can write and email the White House.

WHAT WE CANNOT DO:

Nothing.

What we know

So you're religious? That's a shame because I like to talk about the subject I've been interested in and have studied for at least 50 years -- but not with people of "faith." Scholars, linguists, archaeologists with and without faith are another matter entirely, but mentioning even the most elementary things about the Bible that one would learn on the first day of your first college class usually produces a reaction similar to Bela Lugosi encountering a cross, or a resounding and peremptory NO!

I've given up mentioning obvious facts like the separate and interleaved Genesis stories; one talking about Yahweh and the other, in a different voice, talking about the Elohim. The details differ remarkably. Ask your Sunday School teacher about the 100 days and nights of rain and Noah loading animals 6 by 6 and watch the reaction.

I'm talking about minutia, of course and I'm staying away from the conclusions to be made from them, but the level of ignorance amongst the most faithful is as astounding as the refusal to actually read the approved source documents much less the banned and earlier documents archaeology has provided us. It requires more than most can or will apply to the task -- and takes all the fun out of it, of course.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life took a poll earlier this year and the results didn't surprise me at all. It appears that Americans are a pretty ignorant lot in terms of how much they know about the Bible, the other religions of the world and things related to the status of religious life in the US, the urge to make public displays notwithstanding. Atheists and agnostics seem to know a good deal more than the general run of the faithful, although you're welcome to ignore the question of whether it's knowledge itself that produces doubt in the places certainty likes to dwell. It does seem that the more educated are -- well, more educated about these things.

Jews seem to do best of all in terms of broad spectrum religious knowledge, but that's not too surprising as religious education in that group is a much different sort of thing and educators may be less shy of difficult questions. They're less likely to get their theology solely from the polyester preachers on TV whose continued existence defies claims of divine forces at work in the world.

The most important lack, in my opinion, is that shown by American Protestants and Catholics who know very little about other religions compared Jews and Mormons and Atheists and that's something I can't explain easily. Less than half of us know that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist or that most people in Indonesia are Muslim. A tiny 8% 0f us know that Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) was Jewish and I'm sure most of those were Jewish as well.

Apparently the one fact we're most likely to know, is that teachers in public schools may not lead students in prayer and one of the things we're least likely to know is that it is indeed constitutionally permissible to study the Bible and other texts in a comparative religion course. The answer to that opens a whole new perspective in strategic public anger management, but I won't go there either.

Of course all of us seem to know that Islam is inherently and unavoidably evil and some can supply all sorts of reasons to substantiate it and even more reasons to be angry with you if you don't quite agree with it all, but ask what Ramadan is about and only half can tell you it's an Islamic holiday.

So what does all of this mean? Beats me. I do know that too much speculation about these things is likely to get my neighbors and associates to beat me too. After all, as a people we're quite possessive of what we don't know and have good reasons for not knowing it: and of course we are, as always, number one.

BLOGGERS TERRORIZING BLOGGERS: A PUBLIC SERVICE WARNING FROM OCTOPUS

Recently, AlterNet writer oleoleolson uncovered a right wing scheme to game a popular social media site and suppress content submitted by liberal contributors, story here.  Digg is not the only target of the so-called culture warriors.  There is a pervasive and pernicious pattern of harassment and censorship in other corners of cyberspace.   In case you have not followed events in our 'extended' communities, our own Shaw Kenawe, from Progressive Eruptions, and Pamela Hart, a conservative blogger from The Oracular Opinion, have joined forces to expose a number of cyber scams and shams. You can read Pamela’s post here and Shaw’s post here.

For years, I have tried to encourage a cooperative and mutually respectful bipartisanship, and I am gratified that Pamela and Shaw have joined forces in this venture. However, I am also appalled at what our investigators have uncovered: Fraud, Identity Theft, Plagiarism, MALware attached to hotlinks, and other acts of cyber-mischief bordering on criminal behavior.

Within days after Pamela and Shaw exposed these scams, twenty-seven (27) of the most virulent right wing sites ceased operations or went underground. Within days, a mysterious avatar called Fearthedragon appeared on the followers lists of everyone in our community. Warning: Fearthedragon contains Malware links. Do not open!  If you find a mysterious and unwelcome avatar on your followers list, go to your Google Reader and block using the trashcan icon. For more tips on how to protect your weblogs, please read the comment threads under Pamela’s and Shaw’s posts.

From the beginning, the blogosphere has been a free and open medium ripe for abuse. Sooner or later, malicious persons would inevitably hide behind cloaks of anonymity and violate community standards with impunity. Most of this activity is the work of partisan extremists, either self-appointed freelancers or organized Psy-Ops cells. Their mission and purpose is to harass and demoralize liberal bloggers, sabotage discussion forums, and interrupt the free and democratic exchange of ideas and viewpoints.

Surveillance seems to be another motive. Yesterday, one of my blogging colleagues, a prominent and highly visible progressive voice in cyberspace, reported a breach of privacy.  A right wing troll entered his business email account and website.   Why?  Perhaps to find dirt, to discredit him; or perhaps a far more sinister motive.

For years, far right wing bloggers have pushed standards of civility and decorum further into the wasteland … invoking free speech rights to mask improper conduct while hiding, assassin-like, behind anonymous monikers.  Now, it seems, they have crossed another threshold.  Abusive trolls and cyber-thugs have turned criminal.  Let us NOT be naïve.  Rabid right wingers have declared cyber-war against all opposing viewpoints … including liberals, centrists, and moderate conservatives.  Bloggers beware!

News To Me

I have a little notebook in which I keep information, links, ideas and names of books or articles I want to explore and, perhaps, write about. Lots of the entries in my notebook never make it onto the blog, especially these days when the big news comes in so hot and fast, even the pros can't catch it.  My reflexes ain't what they used to be, anyway, and I deliberately try to avoid sipping from the fire hydrant of televised and daily paper news. Lots of things the rest of the nation knew last week are news to me right this minute. This post is a small collection of things I learned about just this week. Take pity. Pretend to be surprised.

1)  We can date the demise of Wall Street as an integral part of the American economy to a 1981 decision made by one man, once known as The King Of Wall Street, John Gutfreund.

I didn't know that. I didn't realize that, according to Michael Lewis in The Big Short, on the day Gutfreund took Salomon Brothers from a private partnership to Wall Street's first publicly traded corporation, Salomon Brothers stopped serving investors and started serving themselves. Of Gutfreund and the subsequent remake of The Street, Lewis writes,

He lifted a giant middle finger in the direction of the moral disapproval of his fellow Wall Street CEO's. And he'd seized the day. He and the other partners not only made a quick killing; they transferred the ultimate financial risk from themselves to their shareholders.

...from that moment, the Wall Street firm became a black box. The shareholders who financed the risk taking had no real understanding of what the risk takers were doing, and, as the risk taking grew ever more complex, their understanding diminished....The customers became, oddly, beside the point.

The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had from turning an investment bank into a public corporation and leveraging its balance sheet with exotic risks, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted, from trust to blind faith.

From there on out, it was all about the CEO's, for whom short-term gain so far outweighed the value of long-term loss that a culture of growing bonuses each year was fostered even when the customers and the stockholders lost money. Even when the government bailed them out of bankruptcy! Without that one little piece, the private-to-public piece, none of it hung together for me.

2) On October 6th, the SCOTUS is scheduled to hear the case of Snyder vs. Phelps, perhaps better known as the case of a grieving father's right to a private funeral for his military son vs. Westboro Baptist Church's right to picket that funeral with signs saying, "Thank God For Dead Soldiers."

I tackled this subject in the spring in "You! What Planet Is This?" and The Wedding Bends. The synopsis is that 20 year old Marine Matthew Snyder died in March, '06, and Fred Phelps' church group picketed his funeral. Matthew's father Albert sued Phelps and his church in '07 for willfully causing emotional distress and invading his privacy. A jury awarded Snyder approximately $11 million, but, in 2009, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, VA, overturned the verdict and ordered Snyder to pay over $16,500 to Phelps for court costs. Snyder refused to pay.


The 1988 case of Hustler Magazine v. Jerry Falwell, " in which the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous 8-0 decision held the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them," is cited as precedent.  Phelps' daughter, Margie, will represent the family and the church. For Military.com, Craig Trebilcock, one of Snyder's attorneys, was interviewed by Andrew Lubin:

"People want to make this out as free speech," Trebilcock said Monday, "but actually it's about harassment and who is or is not a public figure." He continued "Lance Corporal Snyder was a 20 year-old Marine from Maryland who died in Iraq; how does a church group from Kansas declare him a ‘public figure? Because they're claiming that since the Snyder family ran an obituary in the local newspaper that makes him fair game.

This is a verdict to watch for in October. And, if you ever doubted that it is the exception that proves the rule, here's a chance to watch the exception create the precedent for decades to come. Who ever, in their wildest and most horrible nightmares, could have dreamed up Fred Phelps? If this becomes a First Amendment ruling, then we are powerless in the face of insane and aggressive hatefulness. And there's plenty of that to go around these days. Fred Phelps is not the only demon capable of hiring or siring an attorney.

3) Something good--quick and quickly! There IS a place to listen to both sides in an entirely rational debate format.


Go to Intelligence Squared, where you can watch, download podcasts, and even buy tickets. Foremost authorities gather for classic debates of the most important issues we face. Their motto: Think Twice. This is exactly what I've been looking for.


In the most recent debate, the topic was, "Treat terrorists like enemy combatants, not criminals; for and against." The audience is polled prior to the debate and the outcome charted; after the debate, a re-polling shows the winner. I was naturally gratified to find that the audience agreed with me and with my own previously held position. (I'm so easily naturally gratified, in my opinion it just can't happen too frequently. Ahem.)

Outcome, Sept. 14, 2010

There's a Research In Depth link that provides titles, snippets, and articles used by each side in developing positions. I may disappear into this site, never to be seen again.


Who in the world knew?!

Progressives Made This Country Great!

The right would have you believe that everything which ails this country is due to big government, taxes, and too much government spending....oh, and then you have the bunch that believes we need more religion in our lives.

The reality is that it is the lack of a PROGRESSIVE Movement that is the reason we find ourselves so overwhelmed by all that is wrong with our society.

As a society we no longer have the ideas and the people who believe in these ideas to drive us forward. We are a generation without radicals. Or as Peter Dreier states in a recent The Nation article:

The radical ideas of one generation are often the common sense of the next. When that happens, give credit to the activists and movements that fought to take those ideas from the margins to the mainstream. We all stand on the shoulders of earlier generations of radicals and reformers who challenged the status quo of their day.

Lets not forget that it was not all that long ago, when blacks were second class citizens, women were to be homemakers (YES, Sarah Palin, you can thank a PROGRESSIVE for all that you have thus achieved in your life!) and workers did not enjoy 8 hour work days or 5 day work weeks.

These were all utopian and radical ideals. The ideals that were expressed in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and The Bill Of Rights were also very utopian and radical at their time too! The right does not even realize that Thomas Jefferson LOST the battle over a strong central government while Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison argued for a stronger federal government.

But, like Peter Dreier continues on to say:

Unfortunately, most Americans know little of this progressive history. It isn't taught in most high schools. You can't find it on the major television networks or even on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege. In popular media, the most persistent interpreter of America's radical past is Glenn Beck, who teaches viewers a wildly inaccurate history of unions, civil rights and the American left. Beck argues, for example, that the civil rights movement "has been perverted and distorted" by people claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. supported "redistribution of wealth." In fact, King did call for a "radical redistribution of economic power." Using his famous chalkboard, Beck draws connections between various people and organizations, and defines them as radicals, Marxists, socialists, revolutionaries, leftists, progressives or social justice activists—all of which leads inexorably to Barack Obama. Drawing on writings by conspiracy theorists and white supremacists, Beck presents a misleading version of America's radical family tree.

If you believe that you, "....want your country back" or if you truly fear for the future of this country and want to leave your children and grandchildren a better country and world, then understand that what you so desire from the past, what you want to rekindle, that greatness that once was AMERICA, then you have to seek out the radicals...you have to seek out the Progressives!
Then educate yourself and review the following slide shows and reflect on how each one of these Progressives changed YOUR life and allowed you to enjoy some of the most important aspects of your life that YOU now take for granted!

The Fifty Most Influential Progressives Of The 20th Century - Part 1

The Fifty Most Influential Progressives Of The 20th Century - Part 2

The Fifty Most Influential Progressives Of The 20th Century - Part 3

The future belongs to those who seek out the new and untested, it does not belong to those who keep looking back. If we are truly to overcome the problems we face as a nation today, then we must become radicals not patriots! Greatness never comes from reliving the past but from thinking outside the box.

MIKE HUCKABEE TO AMERICANS WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: JUST GO SOMEWHERE AND DIE!

William Rivers Pitt of TRUTHOUT.org wrote this piece that provides more information on the pre-existing conditions issue. This time the argument is made by a Christian pastor and politician and concerns adult Americans. I blogged about the insurance companies throwing off their rolls babies and children with pre-existing conditions yesterday over at PE. 

Read what Mike Huckabee thinks about Americans with pre-existing conditions. BTW, what Huckabee says is personal to me as well as to Pitt. I am among the millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.




WILLIAM RIVERS PITT:

Huckabee took the podium at the Values Voters Summit to attack and denounce the Obama administration's health care reform legislation, which was par for the course as far as the event went. But Huckabee was not content merely to repeat the "It's a government takeover, let's repeal it" rhetoric, choosing instead to carve a bold new path into the annals of infamy:


When Republicans attack health care reform, Democrats like to counter by accusing Republicans of wanting to repeal a law that requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. According to Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, that's exactly right. People with pre-existing conditions, he explains, are like houses that have already burned down.

"It sounds so good, and it's such a warm message to say we're not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition," Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. "Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, "I'd like to buy some insurance for my house." He'd say, "Tell me about your house." "Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I'd like to insure it today." And he'll say, "I'm sorry, but we can't insure it after it's already burned." Well, no pre-existing conditions."

Let's look at some numbers, shall we?


According to the American Heart Association, more than 81,000,000 Americans suffer from one or more forms of cardiovascular disease. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 11,000,000 people in America currently suffer from some form of cancer. According to the American Diabetes Association, 23.6 million Americans currently suffer from diabetes, and the Center for Disease Control has estimated as many as half of all Americans will suffer from the disease by the year 2050, thanks to our deplorable dietary habits. According to the National Parkinson's Foundation, between 50,000 and 60,000 new cases of Parkinson's Disease are diagnosed in America each year. According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, some 400,000 Americans currently suffer from MS.


That's a pretty substantial portion of the population, with more being diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's and MS every day.


All of them, every single one of them, are like a house that has already burned down, according to Mike Huckabee and the sick bastards who cheered his comments. All of them, every single one of them, are not worthy of health insurance because they had the misfortune of getting sick before they got insurance. All of them, every single one of them, therefore, are not worthy of health care in any real form, unless, of course, they are wealthy and able to afford the staggering cost of ill health in America.


All of them, in short, every single one of them, can basically just go die in Mike Huckabee's world. They are not worthy of coverage, treatment or consideration. The five diseases I listed account for well over a third of the American population, and if Mike Huckabee or someone who agrees with him somehow becomes president someday, those millions of people should just dig their own graves and lie down in them.


Yeah, that's why I'm not polite to these people. My wife has multiple sclerosis, and Mr. Huckabee this weekend compared her to a burned-down house. My wife is a vibrant, active woman who deals with a terrible, terrifying disease that costs upwards of $50,000 a year to treat. Thankfully, my wife was already insured through work when she was diagnosed, but there are many thousands of people out there with MS who have no insurance, or who won't have insurance when they get diagnosed. If Huckabee has his way, people with pre-existing conditions will be treated as burned-down houses and essentially left to die."

N Y Times Slams Koch Brothers

In 2006, in a bipartisan vote unheard of today, the California Legislature passed AB 32, a "landmark clean energy bill that many hoped would serve as a template for a national effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil and mitigate the threat of climate change."



Striking terror in their moneyed hearts, a "well-financed coalition of right-wing ideologues, out-of-state oil and gas companies and climate-change skeptics is seeking to effectively kill that law." They are contributing big bucks to ensure the passage of Prop 23 which would kill AB 32 and California's dreams for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses by 80 percent by the middle of the century.

Among the contributors to the $8.2 million Prop 23 lobbying effort are Charles and David Koch, who have forked over the obscene amount of $1 million, and two Texas based oil giants, Tesoro and Valcero. The Koch brothers are worried, "partly about damage to the bottom line at Koch Industries, and also because they believe that climate change is a left-wing hoax."

They have argued that the law will lead to higher energy costs and job losses, arguments that resonate with many voters in a state with a 12.4 percent unemployment rate. But this overlooks the enormous increase in investments in clean energy technologies — and the jobs associated with them — since the law was passed.

-----

The Kochs and their allies are disastrously wrong about the science, which shows that man-made emissions are largely responsible for global warming, and wrong about the economics. AB 32’s many friends — led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California — have therefore mounted a spirited counterattack in defense of the law.

-----

Who wins if this law is repudiated? The Koch brothers, maybe, but the biggest winners will be the Chinese, who are already moving briskly ahead in the clean technology race. And the losers? The people of California, surely. But the biggest loser will be the planet. (emphasis mine)

The American people who fear big government should be far more afraid of these giant oil industries and mega corporations. They do not care one stitch for the welfare of the United States or for the American citizens or, for that matter, the planet. Their only loyalty is to unlimited amounts of green but not the kind you find in clean energy.

Koch Industries, Inc.: "A Kansas-based conglomerate that operates oil refineries in several states and is the company behind brands including Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Lycra fibers and Stainmaster carpet. Forbes ranks Koch Industries as the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. — and the Koch brothers themselves? They're worth billions." (NPR)

The following information is provided by Hoovers.

Valero Energy Corporation: Named after the Alamo (the Mission San Antonio de Valero), the company is the largest independent oil refiner in the US. Valero refines low-cost residual oil and heavy crude into cleaner-burning, higher-margin products, including low-sulfur diesels. Ranks # 26 by Fortune 500. 2009 Sales (Mil): $68,144.0

Tesoro Corporations: Produces gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, fuel oil, liquid asphalt, and other fuel products. Ranks # 139 by Fortune 500. 2009 Sales (mil) : $16,872.0

Death in Virginia

What do China, Saudi Arabia and Iran have in common? The practice of executing prisoners; and both China and the US have extraordinary numbers of them. It's a condition we oft times associate with tyrannies, police states and governments at odds with the will of the governed. I can't say much as to whether support for the practice owes religious fervor for the passion with which it's defended against all evidence of the inefficacy of 'deterrent' and certainly China has far less of that than do countries without a state religion or those, like the US, that have an unhealthy yearning for one. I can be quite curious when that support stretches the boundaries of what is usually called civilized behavior to the point at which one perceives fangs and claws on the representation of Justice as well as the traditional scales and blindfold.

Virginia once was an important source for the sentiments and values that represented the best of the American revolution although the worst remained an institution there for a long lifetime after the Declaration of Independence. Slavery, witch hunting, the power of religion to make law, define the moral -- and the power to kill people have been subdued in practice if not in spirit. Yet, of late, I think we can see another effort to bring it all back, like buried ancient demons in some H.P Lovecraft tale. I think the so-called Tea Party is but another manifestation of the restlessness of our resident evil and so is the plain but cold blooded lust to kill Teresa Lewis for her complicity in the murder of her husband and stepson.

It's not just that the two accomplices who carried out the crime were spared being strapped to a cross and having corrosive chemicals pumped into their veins while she has been sentenced to death: it's also that she has an IQ of between 70 and 72. If she dies in Virginia's house of death on the day after tomorrow, she will be the first woman since 1912, when Ms Virginia Christian, a black teenager was broiled to death in the electric chair -- if we can call a 17 year old girl a woman. In that enlightened state, the entity with the motto "thus ever with tyrants," the tyrannical ability to kill human beings is tempered by things like age and mental capacity, and an IQ of 70 is considered to be the borderline between incompetence and fit fodder for the sacrificial altar.

In our day of major candidates for high office rattling about witches, masturbation and the wrath of god and even little mice with human brains, is it surprising that a one or two point difference (well within the statistical noise level) can be like a bank vault door sealing off mercy, decency and respect for human life? For those eager from the lofty vantage point of a 20 or 30 point difference it may seem so, leaving those with an additional 60 or 90 to wonder about the moral quotient of those who presume to educate the public and to pass judgment upon us.

Whether or not Mrs. Lewis spends the 40 years she has left in jail or ends her existence in Virginia's sanitized charnel house, the question will arise repeatedly and inevitably, as long as we continue to confuse justice with a system of accounting and allow it to be driven by public anger and prosecutorial polemics. The mad, the imbecilic and even the innocent will continue to die and the beast will continue to rage in the heart of America and our vaunted respect for life will stink of the grave.

THE STORY OF VALERIE

Once again I am writing a post about another bright, shining star of North Carolina that has gone out. Valerie Hamilton was brutally murdered last week in Charlotte, NC. A senseless, callous act, a beautiful life lost, a family and community left in the shambles of unrelenting grief.

Valerie was at a local watering hole to help a friend celebrate her 21st birthday. The friend said Valerie was training for a triathlon, had very little to drink, never did drugs and was NOT a “party animal.” By all accounts she was a bright, loving, effervescent spirit.

On the night of Sept 14th Valerie would make a judgment call that would unfortunately prove fatal; she met a man and left the bar with him, under what pretense no one knows. It would later be learned, too late for Valerie, that the man was a convicted sex offender. Valerie was found dead three days later.

As with other posts like this one that I have done in the past, I don’t want to dwell on Valerie’s death or name the gruesome monster accused but rather pay tribute to this beautiful young woman’s short but fruitful life.

Valerie was 23 years old and living on her own. She had a dog she loved and was athletic. Her ambition was to follow her mother into the teaching profession and she was a special education intern. Valerie was on her high school swim team and turned that experience into a position teaching children to swim at the Little Otter Swim School.

Valerie was an ambitious, generous and loving young woman, happily moving forward on her life path. Her father, the Concord NC Chief of Police called her, “the perfect daughter.” Her friends describe her as having an infectious personality and a beautiful person.

I have no pithy commentary, no analysis to present, just a story that brings me sadness and anguish over the callous brutality of this life. How I wish it was not so.

Valerie’s ringtone was the song, “Time After Time.”

“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me, time after time
If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting, time after time…”

Valerie Grace Hamilton, July 3, 1987 – Sept 15, 2010

Where's the rum gone?

Avast, ye dogs! Listen up or it's the lash fer ye!

While a warship from those dogs what broke away from the accursed British East Inja Company dishonorably prevented a poor pirate ship from defendin' hisself against attacks, we don' hardly care fer that, now, do we? The Bay of Aden is halfway around the world, an' almost where the map tells us there be dragons. So enough of those scurvy wretches, then. We has more important things ta speak of.

There be rum wars afoot!

Aye, it seems that Puerto Rico is screaming like a midshipman getting his barnacles crushed because the Virgin Islands has stolen their rum. O' course, instead o' weighing anchor and hoisting the Jolly Roger, they be whinging about it like a cabin boy told it's his turn in the dress, saying that the Virgin Islands did some nefarious deal, when really, they just made Captain Morgan a better offer.

O'course, ye can trust me on this much; since Captain Morgan is going there, we'll just be calling them "the Islands" from now on.

First, the obligatory old joke...

Awwk!!! Polly want a cracker!

...Oh, sorry. Thought you said "Talk Like a PARROT Day"...

IMO: What's Right On What's Wrong

No pictures today. No jokes. There'll be plenty more to come, I imagine. Today, I want to spell out what I think is happening in our country, what I think it means, and where I believe true morality lies. This is for me. And for JMartin.

I had a couple of comments on a recent post( on my individual blog) from JMartin who made it clear that he or she did not agree with me, but was not swayed by demagogues like Beck and Palin. This commentor was interested in what others, who did not share his or her opinions, had to say. I realized that I read so many progressive blogs--from writers who are dead serious, to writers who use sharp-honed humor beautifully, to writers who wax obscene to make their point--I just assumed that everyone knows all the arguments, all the issues, all the stances available on the left. And that anyone can instantly recognize all of my positions by extrapolating logically from a joke here and a jab there. Or, else, I assume that no one gives a damn what I think. Well, maybe someone might.

So, here's what I think (and I'm not taking time to justify or explain these positions on this post):

1. The War In Afghanistan: The President could not have gotten elected if he had run on pulling us out of both wars at once, so he chose the one on which public opinion had most obviously soured. The Afghanistan surge was a waste of men and money, an expedient that just stirs the hornet's nest. Continuing to back Karzai was wrong. We can't afford to stay on in Afghanistan. The task now is to get out with some balance between saving global face (which ain't what it used to be, if it ever was) and minimizing further loss of life. And that's a balance that cannot be struck. It will be ugly for the Afghans; it will be publicized; we will be vilified; we will have deserved it. Bite that bullet, Mr. President. Fight terrorism as a police action, because terrorists are criminals; proceed accordingly. If there'd been a draft, neither war would have happened; we'd have cared enough to pay attention.

2.The Koch Party: At the bottom of the pile is the duped herd that actually thinks it is part of a grass-roots movement. This mass thinks it's been had, but it is confused about who the enemy is. It's members follow pied pipers, demagogues, and fools (Beck, Palin, Limbaugh) who are blinded by their own celebrity; they are delusional narcissists. Behind the mass and driving it are politicos who are determined to regain power at all costs (Gingrich, Boehner) and who believe that the end justifies the means. And, above the dust of this cattle drive are the Kochs, Murdoch, Cheney and corporate Robber Barons who believe that they belong to an entirely different species from the rest of us...and that works for them as long as we agree with their assumption that they deserve to be in control.

3. The Fundamentalists:  These are often so braided into The Koch Party and the Republican Party, they can be fooled into thinking they have a vital role in both--even a leadership role. Their primary cause is opposition to abortion and to anything that legitimatizes the LGBT citizenry. In fact, they provide a smokescreen that permits the Robber Barons to operate freely to ensure their financial monopoly. As long as the Fundamentalists are willing to beat the morality drum, Big Money will finance their cause. It's about the money. Corporate interests could not care less who gets an abortion, who marries whom.

The Republican party is hoping to let Reverend Beck and Spokesmodel Palin hold the moral hot potatoes for them, leaving the Repubs free to go after independents who have been scared into believing that only unfettered free markets can save us. We tried that already; they didn't and they won't.

4. Wall Street, Big Bank, and Capitalism: Investing is a game of chance largely played by computers now. We've applied our creativity and our energy to designing more and more complex financial products with which to rip off  the working class. Capitalism is a fine thing, but it is a cancer if it goes unregulated. The function of markets is amoral. Greenspan should be prosecuted. Elizabeth Warren should chair Consumer Protection, not advise it...unless there's a Cabinet position for her, even better.  Free markets will NOT operate indefinitely on their own to benefit individuals and the society, as the Bush years proved. In a society that worships The Free Market, money operates as a test of right and wrong--the good make it and the bad fail. And that's not right; hell, it's not even wrong.

5. The Economy, Taxes and Jobs: Mr. President, dump Geithner and Summers. Repeal tax cuts for the wealthiest echelon and save the endangered middle class. But do incentivize banks to loan to small businesses, which are more inclined to grow and hire. (Huge corporations are primarily motivated to perpetuate themselves and continue to grow profits by laying off, dropping benefits, and going off-shore for cheap labor; they do not turn tax cuts into jobs for Americans. They haven't in the last eight years and they won't, period.)  And, Mr. President, push those infrastructure jobs now. Not later; now. They won't put enough of America back to work to turn the economy around, but they might prevent another man-made disaster. We are already becoming a Second World country, with our potholes, our failed levees, our crumbling bridges and rupturing gas lines.

6. Healthcare: Change had to begin, but, no matter how many times I read about the palatable separate ingredients included, I fear that too many crooks cooks spoiled this broth. Glad we did it. Worried about it.

7. The Democrat's task: The real moral message is that the Koch Party, the Party of Wall Street, the Party of Big Oil, the Party of Big Insurance does not care one iota about those of us who earn less than that proverbial $250,00 a year. They sure as hell don't care about those of us who earn less than $100,00 a year. What's truly immoral is that our earnings are stagnant or reduced, our retirement funds were raped and left to die, we all know someone who was laid off and can't find work. We were seduced by predatory lending and our hopes, our credit, our very country, was destroyed when Wall Street bet that we couldn't pay off those loans. Small businesses cannot get loans now; they'd hire us if they could.

8. The Deficit Reduction Commission: Alan Simpson is demented. Social Security is not the problem; years and years of war is a much bigger problem. If Soc.Sec. is privatized, Wall St. will get that, too. At which point, every state might as well legalize assisted suicide.

How could anyone vote for the party that designed and engineered those moral crimes? How could anyone vote for the confused Koch Party candidates? How could anyone vote for the Republicans who ignored our streets, our gas lines, our levees? How could anyone vote for the party that was brought to you by Big Oil, and radicalized beyond the point where they are recognizable? How could you vote for any party that doesn't care enough about the unemployed to extend them the pittance of unemployment compensation? How could anyone vote for the party that wants to hold the middle class hostage to tax breaks for the richest 2% of the country?



[Imma turn the mic back over to Slutticia von Heretik, now]

p.s. Well, okay, maybe just this one picture. Big H/T to Tom Degan at The Rant

I AM SOOO PROUD OF MY NEW KENYAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE

Here is proof positive that your cephalopod-in-residence is not an actual Octopoda americanus but an Octopus vulgaris, a pretender, a usurper, an invasive species.  Yup, its true.  I am the dreaded Manchurian mollusk feared by everyone. Even more horrifying, my clammy male chromosome has that annoying terrorist fist-bumping, basketball-dribbling, TV channel-flipping gene that drives newts and salamanders nuts.  Here is my REAL birth certificate:

A special hat tip to Sheria for helping me research my family background.  If you would like to join President Obama, Sheria, and the cephalopod in solidarity and have an authentic Kenyan birth certificate of your own, you can generate one here.

Ground Hog Primary

So we have another source of wisdom and another voice to add to the panel of sages, prophets and certainty sellers we've been inflicted with late and soon. The latest party guest of the Mad Hatter, Christine O’Donnell, told Bill Maher some years ago when the Biblemongers began to suck the blood out of lurid school shooting reportage, that it was all because there wasn't enough Bible study and prayer in our schools. Same old, same old.

It's not that she's the first to link random occurrences with public sin for the purpose of profit. In fact it seems to be the world's oldest profession, but fools that some of us are, we've grown to expect that things like lightening and tornadoes are the inevitable and random results of natural processes and it isn't witches, homosexuals, believers in alternate mythologies and the tolerance of the same who cause them. It was the 90's and nearly every thing possessed of a name could be advanced with the banner "no wonder kids kill kids." It was America where we never make the connection between child molesting, whore humping clerics, Reverend Jones, the Waco whacko, David Koresh and Bible study.

Our world is full of forces enticing kids and adults to kill others as well as being full of tectonic events, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and falling bits of space rock. There simply is no correlation with religious devotion, adherence or piety. It's also worth noticing that holy books are so often cited as a reason and justification for unjust and irrational behavior. The Bible belt is more than roughly congruent with various other belts of things from ignorance and bigotry to bad dental hygiene and Churches are as likely if not more likely to be hit by lightning as houses of prostitution, opium dens, gambling casinos and Mosques.

But candidates Like Palin, O'Donnel and Robertson still win elections, don't they. They still thrive on telling us about witches and heretics and the dreaded libertine liberals as the country slides so far toward the holy right that even Bush and his high father begin to be called liberals. Same old.

Tea Partiers Speak and Scare the Pants Off of Me

It all started with Tom T at Two Seeds On a Blog. If he hadn't written such a lucid article called The Myth of the Founding Fathers (HERE), the wing-nut blood pleasure levels wouldn't have shot up to near catastrophic heights. It's odd how intelligent mild mannered reason from one source can cause such anger and near hysteria from another.

Just a few highlights so you can see how Tom T riled up the know-nothings. What a guy.

Led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Tea Party worshippers of the Founding Fathers want to return to the “good ol’ days” of 1787, when most African-Americans were slaves, many poor whites were indentured servants, and women couldn’t vote. At the time the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Native Americans were being slaughtered for their land, and Mexicans who were indigenous to the Southwest and the West coast of what became the United States were included in the genocide.

----------

Conservatives have trouble seeking sensible solutions to our present-day problems of poverty, violence, and perpetual war that make rich folks richer while poor people suffer and weapons makers and war profiteers make big bucks while killing and injuring innumerable innocent people. The problems are caused by big moneyed interests with the help of simple minded sycophants like Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers. . . . The Tea Partiers believe the mythologized Founding Fathers are more intelligent and moral than anyone today except maybe radical right-wingers like Beck and Palin.

At this point Tom T provides an intriguing analysis of Glenn Beck, including his psyche, Beck's speech at his Come to Jesus rally on August 28, Palin's cliches, and the Tea Party mythology. The comments are just as absorbing so you have to jump over there (HERE). But not before you read what follows.

Judy T, the other seed on their blog, is understandably upset over some of the hate language that has been sent Tom T's way. She tells us to Listen to the Tea Partiers Speak for Themselves. (HERE) She writes:

Tom posted on our blog recently about the Restoring Honor Rally in Washington.  It was a controversial post that elicited a lot of angry comments, on our blog and several other places where it had been published or reposted. He was called some really bad names!  The commentors said over and over that he was an angry man (that was the nicest thing they said about him).

---------

I found a video of a young reporter who had been there, circulating through the crowd, interviewing ordinary people, people who had come with friends and family to be part of the huge event. They were eager to talk to the young man, and very enthusiastic about sharing their views.

Proceed with caution. In fact, you might want to brace yourself with a stiff Jack Daniels with no branch water. Maybe even two.



These paranoid folks need some heavy counseling and anger management classes. More importantly, if our education system doesn't improve, these poor ignorant people are going to pass their handicaps on from one generation to the next. This 13 minutes of ignorance boggles my mind and makes me worry for the future of our country.

Your media narrative is going kill us all (part 2 - updated)

The current media narrative is that the elections in November are going to be a disaster for the Democrats, with massive numbers of Republicans getting elected. (This message is often accompanied by metaphorical battlefield narrative, with the victorious conquerors striding over the bleeding bodies of their fallen foes.)

And this has many people panicked about the fate of America, with teabaggers coming into office and strengthening the obstructionist Republicans who are doing their best to ensure that the first black president's term in office is an abject failure. Because, after all, Americans have notoriously short memories and will always choose instant gratification over long-term gains: it actually sounds plausible that, since Obama did not immediately create untold wealth and prosperity, the small-minded people will decide to give the keys back to the people who drove the car into the lake in the first place.

What they're failing to rememeber, of course, is that the media narrative is usually wrong. For one thing, it's being driven by people who are motivated to tell you that the Republicans will save us all.

While right-wing media chooses stories that serve its political agenda, progressive media increasingly covers the same "news." True, the focus is on disproving right-wing accounts, but from the "death panels" for granny to the alleged "Ground Zero" mosque, the right wing is setting the agenda for the progressive media.

No wonder Americans are unaware of President Obama's many accomplishments, or think that he, rather than President Bush, signed the unpopular bank bailout bill. With progressive media primarily focused on rebutting conservative "news," little time is left to promote stories that build support for progressive policies.
...

And, unlike progressive media, Fox and right-wing radio feel no obligation to cover stories that boost their opponents. The right-wing media avoids news that does not serve their cause, which limits stories from echoing through the broader public.

That's why so few Americans know about the Ensign, Vitter and other Republican political scandals, but everyone knows about Charles Rangel's problems. And why so many are unaware of the jobs created and preserved by the Obama stimulus, or about the many positive actions Obama officials at the EPA have taken to improve the environment.

Many noted how the media never connected former President Bush to the Exxon Valdez spill, but directly associated Obama with BP's reckless conduct. That's because Fox News and others made Obama the issue from the start, and traditional media either parroted this line or joined progressives in noting that the Bush Administration imposed lax oil drilling regulations; either way, Fox's framing of Obama as a central figure in the spill prevailed.

The slant even makes itself apparent in who they choose to tell the narrative. A new study from George Mason University School of Law shows that among the panel guests making up the Sunday Morning talk shows, "diversity" is a myth. The most common panelist is overwhelmingly an older, white, male Republican.

The study, of the five network Sunday shows from February to December 2009, found that while 14.6 percent of members of Congress were minorities, just 2.5 percent of the Congressional TV guests were minorities; and that while 16.9 percent of members were female, 13.5 percent of the guests were female.

A supplement to the study also singled out a group of “30 white, male U.S. senators in office six plus years” who represented 5.6 percent of the Congressional populace, but 61.4 percent of the TV guests.

Other fine examples of media compliance with promoting a false narrative can be found with allowing Republicans to call the act of allowing the Bush tax cuts expire a "tax increase." Or the continual references to a community center as the "Ground Zero Mosque." Despite the fact that it's partly modeled on the 92nd Street Y, which is a Jewish community center, which nobody ever calls "the Upper East Side Temple".

So, where does that leave us? Where should we turn?

Perhaps to the facts.

Flash back with me to February, 2008. Check out the headlines. If you alter the search terms from "Clinton leads" to "McCain can win", you get results like this. I love that first headline, don't you? October 29, 2008, just a couple of days ahead of the election, and the headline from the Seattle Times and others around the country is "McCain can still win..." Just for more fun, look at the news results for August-September 2008 when Palin came onboard -- she was a "game-changer".

We don't know what will happen. But really, we almost never do.

In the end, all we can bring away with us is that things are probably not as cut and dried as the "liberal media" would like us to believe.
___________

Update (9/16): So meanwhile, if you're looking for more reasons to doubt the media's narrative about the unstoppable GOP machine, perhaps you should consider that the Republican party is currently curled up in the corner, trying to gnaw its leg off. And as for the public, well, it turns out that while they don't like the Democrats much, they like the Republicans even less, and they believe the Democrats have a better chance of fixing the mess we're in. So, you know, calm down. And don't forget to vote.

Let it bleed

"What about the Jewish heart and Jewish compassion and Jewish morality?"

asks Elie Wiesel. Perhaps those are no different from anyone elses heart, compassion and morality: just ornaments to wear on parade and to mock when it's not profitable or when we're not comfortable. People who are troubled by plans by the State of Israel to deport people born and educated there; sometimes minors, who speak the language and often no other language because their parents, brought in as 'guest workers,' have overstayed their visas.

In a country offering automatic right of citizenship to any Jew, born there or not, it seems inconsistent, unless we consider that universal human tendency to surround one's self with one's ilk. These native residents are not, of course, Jews and apparently the official design of Israel as a "Jewish State" is threatened by religious diversity -- and who or what country remains moral when threatened? Not the US, not Israel.

Eli Yishai, Minister of the Interior and the man who oversees immigration policy invokes the "bleeding heart Liberal" straw man so well used by right wingers everywhere as though compassion, mercy and indeed, morality had no place in that questionable construct: the Judeo-Christian ethos.

The US doesn't seem to be in a position to offer criticism or guidance, of course. We have our own problems reconciling our facade with what goes on, and like Israel, we cling to the word illegal as though it were a solid refuge against moral condemnation. People; small children who are illegal as a result of no action of their own and who have had no ability to comply with immigration laws rightly make one's heart bleed if one has a heart with blood in it. Indeed it can be said of both nations, that they make a big issue of alleging Biblical origins for their laws while using the law as though morality were too expensive, too inconvenient and too frightening.

It's ethnic cleansing and it's always a dirty business and these days our tendency to continue to make such noble statements as one finds on the Statue of Liberty reek of hypocrisy concerns me more than the admittedly real problems with uncontrolled immigration. Perhaps we should come clean and put an "If you're white, you're all right" in Lady Liberty's hand or at least stop pretending our laws are a salute to Jesus. If we follow through on the assault on the 14th amendment, making people born and raised as Americans, who pay taxes, have jobs and businesses but never knew there parent's weren't citizens, we're going to inherit the same moral dilemma. I have to wonder in fact, as to whether, having had a grandfather who was never a citizen, my mother would retroactively be an alien, making me, after 65 years as a citizen, subject to deportation and constant fear lest there be a midnight knock on the door by a black gloved fist.

If there's no moral problem with sending a kid who speaks only English back "home" to Azerbaijan or Guatemala with no chance of appeal, then it's time we stopped pretending we're any different from anybody else.

TWO OCTOPODES MOMENTS

In another 100,000 years, cephalopods

will be farm-raising human beings.

SHAW EXPOSES IDENTITY THEFT AND RIGHT WING CYBER-TERRORISM RING

Side Show Slam

True confession: I have found further evidence that I am easily distracted from serious matters by loud, fast, shiny irrelevancies. And I do so hate that admission, since it eye-rolls in the face of my self-image--the serious, duty-bound, research-loving, non-fiction reading, television abhorring me. (I blame Slutticia, my alter ego, who sneaks Amy Winehouse's "Amy, Amy, Amy" onto my iPod between my "On Point" podcasts from NPR.) Specifically, I refer to the Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin ado-about-nothing in Anchorage last night. I get it. I was hooked by the hoochy-koochy show at the fair. I bought the snake oil. I'm a dupe for diversion. I got the side show mixed up with the big tent.  For the last time.

Hat tip to Octopus, who warned that we should follow the serious money, the Kochs and Murdoch, if we want to know what's hauling the conservative voting pool toward the ranting right.

So dazzled and distracted was I that I actually went looking this morning for the big announcement Beck promised from the Anchorage...um, performance. I can't call it a rally and it wasn't a political fundraiser, although Beck announced that his speaking fee, an undisclosed amount, would be donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. That's the same organization that lent its name to the Beck/Palin rally on the Mall and that insisted the speakers stick to non-political topics, according to Time Mag.

 Remember that the fundraising efforts for the August 28th rally (which restored an honor that hadn't gone missing except at Fox News) went first to support what Mother Jones calls, "Beck's tribute to himself." Only the remainder, after all costs were paid, went to SOWF. Disingenuous of Beck and Palin.  Because, of course, all of us are clueless about their politics, so we don't assume that they might represent any particular political viewpoint, right children? Anyone? Anyone?

Time Mag thinks there's genius in Beck's plan to link his appearances to SOWF, a non-profit that pays the college tuitions of the children of special operations personnel who died in training or battle after 9/11. Beck would find the job too important to be left up to the US government. But the G.I. bill was expanded by The Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship, which pays in-state tuition for the children of ALL military personnel killed in the line of duty after 9/11, regardless of age or marital status; Public Law 111-32, sponsored by Democratic Congressman John Boccieri of the 16th District of Ohio.

 Beck's announcements in his gatherings would lead his audience to believe that it is by his efforts and his alone that the children of the deceased special ops veterans receive an education, when, in fact, the SOWF organization only supplements the amended G.I. Bill, only for children of deceased special operatives, and only expands it to private colleges...not an unworthy goal, but not critical in a country with outstanding state university systems. Time Mag may think it genius on Beck's part, but I call it disingenuous...again.

So what was Anchorage all about? Nothing...if we still care, and even if we don't.

The Alaska Dispatch reported that Beck didn't seem aware that he was insulting the state when he complained about how long it took to get there and essentially said that he and his wife had thought of vacationing in Alaska, but chose Idaho instead. He made a crude reference to Palin, saying she had just come back from caribou hunting and still had blood under her fingernails. And he said it all made him feel "like a girl again."

Read that last line one more time. Yep, I think going after that, as the Dispatch did, would produce some copy at least as interesting as the stuff I read on Mr. Obama's wedding ring. In fact, I'll let the Dispatch write about Glenn and Glenda a bit:

He was at turns bombastic, self-effacing, philosophical, funny, historical and even tearful as he prowled the stage lamenting the collectives that rule American politics today, stressing the value of the individual and suggesting, without ever actually saying so, that those in the attendance form a new collective. Stand together, he said; take strength from each other; and take back America.

The mostly white crowd loved it. Not that Beck's message wouldn't have had something for any race or nationality. There were, as is often the case with Beck, so many messages scattered through the presentation that there was something for anyone.

He said to find God, but then he stressed it could be any God, even a mountain top. He attacked the bureaucracy, something with which almost [every] American has had a run-in at some point, although he referred to them as the "administrators.''

He said everyone should read their history, though his livelihood is dependent on people watching an electronic box instead of reading. He said he'd already made enough money to be set for life, but that he was carrying forward his message for the good of the country.

It was very good theater. Those leaving had all kinds of reactions to the message, although they seemed mainly to have gotten the theme that they should find the Christian God and fight to shrink government.

Beck's last pitch was to call on them to join his 40 Days/40 Nights campaign of self-awareness, which includes the search for God, after which "our politicians will be replaced." The new ones, he suggested, wouldn't fight so much, which would probably be a first in American's cantankerous political history.

Would that mean that they wouldn't fight each other so much? Those darn democrats just insist on governing when they have the majority and the presidency.  Or does that mean they wouldn't fight other countries so much? Oh, brother; let's don't even go there. And the 40 days and 40 nights? No shame to his name.

So, with their special genius, Beck and Palin managed to co-opt a second significant calendar date--August 28th, the anniversary of Dr. King's death and 9/11/10, the ninth anniversary of the death of America's sense of security and 2,976 innocents--and turn it into another paean to...well, if they are to be believed and it ain't about the politics, it must be just another performance of the Glenn and Sarah Show. Not the main event, after all.

Politico Sinks to New Low in Non-News Reporting

The main stream media has been receiving a lot of harsh criticism over the last couple of years, decades maybe, for using bad news judgement, most of it well deserved. Politico just beat the crap out of them by sinking to the bottom of the cesspool.

Are these non-entities serious? Where is the news worthiness in this banal non-news story? Has all judgement been flushed down the toilet? Another time of the year, I would think it was an April Fools joke or that I had landed at the Onion by mistake - or at Fox News.

In what is undoubtedly the most inane news story I have ever had the misfortune of reading, reporters

Patrick Gavin and Amie Parnes (requires two to write this garbage?) take the president to task for - hold your breath - going ringless at today's "presser." Oh my God! Rates right up there with jobs and medical research don't it?

Sometimes, a White House press conference can be a chance for a president to take some weight off his shoulders ... but weight off his fingers?

Eagle-eyed reporters noticed that President Barack Obama wasn't sporting his wedding ring during Friday's White House press conference.

"big to-do over potus not wearing his wedding ring today," Tweeted The Hill's Sam Youngman, who was at the presser.

Presser? Please, somebody tell me this is a joke. I actually read this piece of shiitake three times to make sure I wasn't missing something. The comments indicated it was meant as an honest-to-God news story.

Jim in Houston:  Which ring, the one for his finger or the one in his nose? Big Meshell leads him around like a dog on a leash.

MAC59: He is probably getting it adapted to fit in his nose. 

maxovrdriv: I just figured he wanted his favorite verse from the Quran put on it.

But this conservative says it best:

zjak10: BFD! I mean who the heck cares, really?

So, why do I care? I don't.

Your media narrative is going to kill us all

In case you've been living in a cave for the past several months, Terry Jones, relatively unknown pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center and Yosemite Sam impersonator, burst onto the world stage by threatening to burn Qu'rans on 9/11. Well, now he's cancelled that event, although he isn't clear on the reason: at first, he said he'd cancel if plans to build Park51 were scrapped, or perhaps if he got a call from the president.

Despite that, it seemed only fair to call it off, since he was told that this was a bad idea by pretty much everybody in the world, from both sides of every political and religious spectrum: from President Barack Obama to professional quitter and loudmouth Sarah Palin, to the Prime Minister of Canada; from every possible Islamic organization, to a major group of atheists and free-thinkers, to the National Association of Evangelicals and even the fucking Vatican.

The thing is, this wasn't something that should ever have been seen in the national news. This self-important pastor was a self-aggrandizing lunatic, known to create potentially newsworthy controversy, simply to increase his own notoriety. There were only fifty people in his congregation! How did he become an international headline?

It was the media who felt that his voice should be amplified, to be heard by the entire world. Terry Jones should have been ignored, except that "news" organizations, desperate for ratings, saw conflict in his story. Had he been simply overlooked, like some random racist screaming "nigger," he would have faded away as nothing more than a blip on the world radar screen.

(In a rational world, you could even ask why the burning of a group of bound pages would make anyone angry. Then again, ask PZ Myers why the "desecration" of the Eucharist would cause death threats and controversy. So we'll just take that argument as a given.)

Of course, as each voice spoke out to tell him he was wrong, Jones gained power. The President of the United States should have had nothing to say about some minor ruckus involving a redneck Florida lunatic with a bad mustache. But, by exaggerating Jones's profile, the media forced Obama's hand. (And god knows Obama seems more than willing to jump in whatever direction the media is pointing this week.)

Really, with every word Jones spewed out onto the public scene, this jumped-up Florida firebrand proved that he didn't even care about his own religion, much less the random mythology of the Middle East.

After all, he'd been denied a permit to burn anything. In order to perform his ignorant display of bigotry, Jones would have to break the law. And, just for giggles, what does the Bible say about that?

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. (Romans 13:1-2 NIV)

Of course, if you're going to be rude enough to go to the Scripture, you should also consider words from earlier in that same book.

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. (Romans 2:1-2 NIV)

But it hardly mattered that Jones was a crappy Christian; he reflected the media's narrative about the "holy war" between Islam and the western world. And even better, this was a new slant - instead of a radical imam screaming "Death to America!" this was a radical priest screaming "Death to Islam!" (Sadly, a philosophy echoed far too often these days).

So the news networks gave Terry Jones his unjustified fifteen minutes.

In the end, the problem is simple. Radical adherents to any religion are dangerous. They don't need to have their voices heard - they need to be ignored. If Terry Jones hadn't been elevated to an international stage, he would have been considered a random lunatic with a minor cult following him. Instead of a flashpoint inciting riots.

But sadly, because of the current, violently partisan political scene, where the most insane people are considered newsworthy, there's a good chance it will happen again.

The best option? A counter-protest. But a relatively peaceful one (emphasis on the "relatively"). Terry Jones wanted headlines for burning the Qu'ran, and he got them.

So, with the news media in full force, you have to wonder what the reaction have been if he was met by a small group of people with no weapons and no combative attitude. Just fire extinguishers.

People willing to spray down everybody in the neighborhood with non-toxic white foam.

Sure. There would have been some danger - these aren't just idiots, they're armed idiots. But sometimes, your only choice is to change the narrative.

It's just a thought.