Happy Deepavali!

by expatbrian (cross posted from World Gone Mad)

I've never been so remiss before about posting to this blog. But alas, my excuse is a good one as I have been blogging elsewhere. That link will take you to the blog I set up at the school for foreign students where I teach.

Anyway, since I already heard the fat lady singing, there hasn't been that much to talk about. Sure, the campaigns have continued. McBush is down double digits and like the ignoramous he is, he says he's happy with that. Palin has "gone rogue" in the words of some inside staffers. In other words, as could have been easily predicted, the dingbat is out of control, gone completely batshit with the media frenzy that surrounds her, and will certainly do something so incredibly stupid that her political career will implode if it hasn't already.

I've been especially amused by the various opinions expoused lately on what a "real American" is. It seems to be anyone who falls between Walter Brennen's "Old Rivers" and Andy of Maybury. Somehow, those of us who are educated, professional, thinking adults have been excluded from the definition. I mean, is anyone else as utterly offended as I am at the idea that, in order to be viewed as a "real American" we have to be the sort that drinks a six-pack at night after showing our butt crack all day?

Bloggingdino was right in his (her?) critique of one of my earlier comments over at The Swash Zone. The American voter is not mind numbingly stupid as I overgeneralized. It is only approximately half of them that are. Well, in the case of this election, less than half and that number is deteriorating rapidly. In any case, the moronic ones are quite simply the Republicans, who, with all of their failures so blatantly exposed, continue to support not only their ridiculous "team" of McCain/Palin, but continue to preach - to an emptying room - that their way works the best! They are apparently absolutely blind to their own recent history!

Like so many others, I feel like I have been politically brutalized by the Republicans for so long that I find it nearly, if not completely impossible to be in any way optomistic of the future. Yet, with Obama in charge and a 60+% in congress, who knows. Maybe, like Michelle, I'll get a renewed sense of pride and hope.

NOT FUNNY

I was just getting ready for bed to nurse a bug when this caught my attention (a H/T to Echidne for posting this earlier):



The interviewer, Barbara West, must be a Freeper for the McCain campaign, and her questions are so obviously hostile they border on parody.  Here are some background statistics before I continue this rant:

Federal deficit (Carter years):   $54.5 billion annual average
Federal deficit (Reagan years):   $210.6 billion annual average

Federal budget (Carter administration):  $590.9 billion (1980)
Federal budget (Reagan administration):  $1.14 trillion (1988-89)

National debt as a percentage of GNP (Carter years):  31.5%
National debt as a percentage of GNP (Reagan years):   70%

Furthermore, it should be noted that the federal bureaucracy grew by 5% during the Reagan administration despite campaign promises and years of rhetoric about shrinking the size of government. But wait, there’s more:

Personal savings rate (Post WW-II to 1979):  8 to 10% of disposable income

Personal savings rate (1985):  Zero.

(Since Bush #43, household debt now exceeds household income.)

My point:  The current economic meltdown has roots going back to the Reagan administration, and the Republican mantra for almost 30 years has been “smaller government” and “fiscal responsibility” that, hypocritically, was never put into practice until ... you guessed it … Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who was the first president to actually balance the federal books. 

Now the Republicans are trying to demonize Obama as a socialist.  It is an outrageous lie when one considers that 20 years of Republican mismanagement set the stage for the current meltdown.  Wish the kids a Happy Halloween for me.

On The Road With the Dead-Heads - Still

I offer up this post as a respite from all of our political angst these days - though it occurs to me that this post champions a group of people that Palin & co. would absolutely loathe - so - happy days!!

Today I am wearing a tie-dyed T-Shirt of turquoise blue & purple. An authentic Dead Head t-shirt. Made for me by a true D-head. It is a prized possession.

Why? You ask? Am I a fanatical fan of The Dead? No. Have I ever been to a D-head concert? No.

So then why is the t-shirt so prized? Because a friend made it & the t-shirt reminds me of him. Now this man was never a close friend. I never got the chance to know him that well. He was working as a temp for a company I was working for eons ago. He was a temp by life-style choice. He would work for a short time – just long enough to save enough money to go on the road with The Dead – again. He was rootless – by choice. His community was made up of his fellow dead-heads whom he would hook up with for months at a time on the road. During his brief stints in the “real” world he would connect with others – such as me.

My memory of him is that he was a smart man. I always enjoyed talking to him - he had such a clever, dry sense of humor. His view of the world was hazed over with a heaping helping of liberal hippyness. He was also a gentle soul. Kind & unassuming. He embraced his deadheadedness with an idealistic fervor that I often found myself envying. Oddly so. For the short time that our paths crossed – he changed my view of the world in his own humble way. In fact – he still does. Bless him.

Then the making of the t-shirts. His personal fund-raising drive to go on the road with The Dead. My purchasing of this t-shirt from him meant that I was enabling his return to the road. For better or worse.

Months after he left – without a trace – Jerry died. Immediately we all thought of our friend. How his world, his sense of belonging & purpose must have shattered like bits of glass. My ex-husband & others tried to track him down – but the trail was cold. We all worried about him though we knew we would never see him again.

I think of him still from time to time – especially when I wear this t-shirt – which I adore. I wonder what became of him & his fellow idealistic types - living in an unforgiving & increasingly conservative society - without their center - Jerry.

I realize I may seem to be over-sentimentalizing a simple, now worn, article of clothing. And, well, yeah, I guess I am. But the reason is this – there is much about this lost friend & this t-shirt that symbolizes my path through life as well. In my adult life I have moved so so so so so many times (in the early days by choice, now - not so much), I have said goodbye to more friends than most people make in a life time. I have learned to be philosophical about friendships – to value them in the here & now because tomorrow . . . Unlike my old dead-head friend, I have less of a sense of community. His wandering gave him a sense of purpose & a sense of shared community with his fellow Jerry worshipers. And this is perhaps the part of his story that I have always somewhat envied. My less purposeful sense of community comes from phone calls & emails with friends scattered around the country. Friends I love & value more than they can know.

What brought on this personal reverie of a post? Whilst going about my business today sporting my D-head t-shirt I have been going over in my mind all that I must do in the weeks to come. Including - wading into the job market – again – full force. Mine is a temporary position. Still a transient in search of a permanent home, I know that I must eventually leave where I am currently landed.

BUT – thanks to a kind d-head, a fellow transient, who once crossed my path – I will not be alone when I move on – because I will have his awesome t-shirt in tow. So let's hear for friendships - past, present & future (ok - now I'm being sentimental!). They are the positive fabric of my life (even when not tie-dyed blue & purple . . . )

[Ah yes - only a true LIBERAL could have written this post!]

Palin in Iowa

If you've taken Economics 101, you've heard of Adam Smith and the "invisible hand," the principle that causes markets to be self regulating. It's usually considered to be a least a vertebrum in the backbone of conservative philosophy, but people (if we use the term loosely) like Sarah Palin apparently aren't aware of Smith or of principles of any kind even if she can see a library from her window.

Adam Smith, whom some consider to be the father of capitalism, thought it fair, right and proper that the wealthy should pay proportionately more in taxes than the less wealthy. By Sarah's dim light however, the father of Capitalism would be a socialist. In the crepuscular gloom of her perky little mind, any kind of tax is socialism: It's spreading the wealth around.

Handing out government checks as a stimulus isn't socialism, but to reduce taxes is the same as to increase taxes because it is socialism if it's taxes. Ok, so you're not from a small town and probably not a real American, so to make it perfectly clear, Obama's proposed tax cut for 95% of Americans is:

"the philosophy of government taking more, which is a misuse of the power to tax."

Got that? Less is more and more is less and together it's socialism. Spreading $600 checks around isn't socialism, because it's just giving (real) people back the money wealthier people paid in, but lowering taxes on nearly everybody is socialism because not only is it spreading money around, but a "massive tax increase."

"It leads to government moving into the role of taking care of you, and government and politicians and, kind of moving in as the other half of your family to make decisions for you."

It's really impossible to make any sense of this gibberish, other than to infer from it that she's opposed to funding anything the government does, opposed to having the government do anything but pay for her husband's basketball tickets and her feloniously padded expense account - opposed to government itself.

Who knows if it makes sense to her or to her audience or whether either of them care? It's a hate session. It would be less effective if it made sense. It's the kind of mockery that used to precede pogroms and purges and witch hunts and various slaughters of various innocents in the more primitive dream world Mad Sarah looks backward to as a guide. As pure chant-and-response shamanism, it seems to be as effective at eliciting shrill cries of "kill him" and "socialism" from the howling jackals as it is at scaring hell out of anyone rational. Indeed is anyone rational not terrified of allowing this simple minded sociopath anywhere near Washington?

Six degrees of suppuration

No, that's not a typo. Although it's fascinating to see how easy it is arbitrarily to relate one person to another and one person's principles to another person's totally unrelated opinions, it's disgusting to witness the misuse of that effect to slime, smear, slander and misrepresent without scruple.

The Gateway Pundit, for instance: a website that still as of this morning still blares the lurid, inflammatory but absolutely fake story about an Obama supporter beating and robbing a McCain supporter, is insisting on a very important "link" between Barak Obama, "Jew-hater" Rashid Khalidi, and "terrorist" Bill Ayers. A film clip exists, they say. The existence of a film clip is "confirmed" says the Blog; a clip that shows Obama engaged in Jew-bashing at a dinner in Khalidi's honor in 2003.

It must be true, right? Obama must hate Jews if someone at that dinner read a poem criticizing Israel. Indeed all the Israeli Jews must hate themselves if they oppose their government's policies - and of course all Jews are Israelis, right?

Well forgive me if I automatically discount the kind of article that is designed to be bantered back and forth between people trying hard to maintain a belief; the kind of article that insists a major newspaper is sitting on a scoop of monstrous proportions because they're "Liberal."

"Khalidi and the Obamas were great friends in Chicago and often shared meals together." The quote oozes like pus from a chancre. "By the way, Khalidi was also best friends with Bill Ayers."

continues the writer, suppurating like a bedsore.

It's tempting to correct the flawed grammar and very tempting to note that the entire diatribe hinges upon the crapulous credibility of the writer, but I really don't care about who Obama knows, about who may have said what at some dinner he attended, and I'm certainly not going to inflate this pastiche of fragments to the level of "confirmation" of anything but the desperate need to demonize the Democrat in order to disguise the failure of the Republican. It's the kind of need that prompts a writer to make a jewelled elephant out of a fake police report made by a mentally deranged young woman, painting it up like a cheap whore, decked out with gems of outrage, smug condemnations of the perfidy of Democrats in general and stepping in its own excrement.

That the people who write for this blog really care about whether someone hates Jews is remarkable, but then of course, Obama, by associating with Jew haters, partying with Jew haters, eating dinner with Jew haters, is also part of a great conspiracy against the US and everything this country holds dear - why should I disbelieve? It's all "confirmed!"

Editing Feminism To Suit

This is incredibly disturbing. Apparently Conservapedia is not enough to keep certain extremist (misogynistic) elements happy.

I read this post - Wikipedia & Feminism at Feminist Law Professors in dismay & utter disbelief. DISMAY that the "free & open" sharing philosophy of Wikipedia is being so callously abused in the name of misogyny. UTTER DISBELIEF that our court system thinks Wikipedia is a citable, verifiable source. WHAT!? For god's sake! I lecture my students every semester about the fact that Wikipedia is NOT a verifiable source. A helpful easy reference tool at times, yes, but completely unadjudicated.

Do I need to personally lecture the US Court system every Fall & Spring as well?!

As an educator I struggle continuously to try to get the plugged-in generation to appreciate & understand that they can not google the world, that libraries exist, that "copyright" is still a legal concept, etc etc etc. The problem is that there is so much "open sharing" of easily accessible info that I honestly don't think they stop to think about the ethics & reliability of how they use info they find online. These are tricky times in this regard in academia. Plagiarism is on the rise because it is almost so easy (so they think) that they don't realize how wrong it is. There is an ethical disconnect that is very real. Not their fault sometimes. They are responding to the cues they are receiving from their plugged-in world.

SO!! I am thoroughly annoyed to find out that I am being undermined by the US Court system which is apparently now validating Wikipedia - & who only knows what next.

As for the misogynists trolling Wikipedia and "informationally" preying on feminism - I am beyond words. Aghast. Though sadly I am not surprised. I try so hard to NOT be cynical - but in the face of such behavior - it is very hard.

It rattles my world to think that a student of mine might naively believe something misrepresented ON PURPOSE on Wikipedia about feminism. My mind just can't go there.

Blogging Dino Speaketh of What It Knoweth Naught

I resist sweeping denunciations of folk these dwindling days of the election season because we have arrived at a place in American democracy at which we really could elect some S.O.B. who will—almost casually, I might add—either get us all killed or unleash unspeakable horror on an entire region of the earth. What I've seen described aptly as the Republicans' "addiction to misinformation" has infected the larger political discourse, and there's risk of a meltdown of the representative system here and a huge catastrophe being visited on others. Democracies are born, and they die—Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural are an excellent reminders of that. (Democracies and republics are perpetual experiments: we can at least try to keep renewing the original energy, optmism, and relative right-mindedness that made it possible to establish ourselves as we did.) Ours has long borne the risk of going out like a star turning supernova and taking out everything anywhere near it. Ignorance and worse—and an assist from bad actors like UBL—have brought us to this frightful pass. That more than 40% of the country thinks John McCain, who is running about as vacuous a campaign as any I've come across in my lifetime, deserves the nod is proof of how bad many people's powers of discernment currently are.

Many, but not all: progress or decline is a matter of small percentages with us. At present it really seems as if something very fine is happening right under our eeyorish Democratic snouts: a clear majority of The American People™ is looking and listening and deciding that this time around, the Republicans are running on noxious fumes. I mean really, the EPA would ban the smokestack-filth they're spewing—if, that is, the Republicans hadn't gutted the EPA. Self-parodist Rep. Michelle Bachmann and her macaca-peddling ilk aren't going over too well in 2008, are they! Their robocalls alleging that Barack is a moozlum-socialist-terrorist-dope-smoking-radical are earning them hoots of incredulous derision, and even provoking thoughtful defenses of the right to be "other" (from American orthodoxy, that is) on the part of luminaries like General Powell. We should be very pleased about this development. In some cases it may be no more than "the rage of Caliban seeing himself in a glass," but it's something to work with, anyhow.

I agree somewhat with Fogg that if/when the Republicans return to the halls of congress as a humiliated minority party, they'll be in an ugly mood and will do whatever they can to tear down the shiny new Demo-Prez, just as they did with William Jeffuhsun back in the nineties. But for a while, too, their powers will be limited—the thumping they're fixin' to take is Texas-sized, from all appearances. With some Lyndon-Johnson style arm-twisting and drawling, we might get a few good things done: perhaps some measure of improvement in health-care access, for instance, and a saner foreign policy should be achievable—one that won't continue to bankrupt us even as it sows hatred and division around the world. Much that we have achieved over the years has been achieved in the teeth of our most childish, violent, hateful citizens, and usually when we are in difficult circumstances at home and abroad. The country's demographics are shifting decisively, and the right-wingers are going to have to come up with something more sophisticated than race-baiting and Soviet-era commie bashing to keep them going. That will probably take them a while because in truth, many of them aren't very bright.

Finally, what I find most lamentable in humanity (I daily thank the Dinosaur Gods—peace and adulation be unto their celestial green and khaki hides!—that I'm an Allosaurus and therefore not among them, though of course not being among them makes it very hard to type) can be summed up in one word: "fallow." That is, so much capacity so tragically and so consistently wasted. Great art has been created, excellent systems of governance have been opined, science has discovered much, and so forth: and here we have folks like "Crazy McCain Rally Lady" still demonstrating that the first task of ordinary humanity is to make use of NONE of that capacity, and instead give in to the dark primal fear that has always haunted their days on this earth. The other lamentable thing is those pesky humans' failure to transmit in a sustainable way the best insights they've had. Rather than proceeding forwards and upwards, they seem to go round in circles of ignorance and horrid violence; what is realized in one generation is forgotten or denied by the next, saeculum per saeculorum. Still, I think there's not much use in giving in to the force of these Ecclesiastes-like vexations of spirit. I'm going to go have a nice cup of coffee; in multa sapientia multa sit indignatio et qui addit scientiam addat et laborem. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Coffee!

The unbearable Liberalness of Truth

Remember when Sarah Palin asked just what it was that Vice Presidents do? Evidently, she's seen a post card of Washington so now she's qualified to tell us:

"[T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes."

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

According to a spokeswoman for Mrs. Palin, the statement was a reply to a third grader's question; as though the innocence of the listener justified a misstatement of Vice Presidential powers. In a year or so, that child will have to learn What the qualified Mrs. Palin has yet to learn: that the VP is not in charge of the Senate; unless of course the constitution has been by then abandoned in favor of "whatever the Party says."

Of course Palin, like George W. is fond of talking to us as though we were all in the third grade and none too bright. It's easier to do than to appear intelligent and it appeals to those who read and think at that level and it's typical of many cult leaders. Listen to tapes of Jim Jones, for instance: he refers to his wife as "mother" and explains things like the need to drink the poison to his followers as though they were babies not old enough to know that the cyanide in the Flavor-Aid was for their own good because the Liberals were out to ruin them.

Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but I don't think so. The people who will readily believe that Palin can as VP, draft legislation, that she's as competant in world affairs as Zbigniew Brzezinski because she could, if she wanted to, but never has seen an unihabited arctic island; the people who will fight you to the death to defend their position that Obama is an Islamic terrorist: these people are cult members. You and I are the enemy and they are not stupid at all. It's just that the facts have a Liberal Bias.

A CHAIN LETTER

For half of my adult life, I have been victimized by the chain letter curse wrought by a succession of offspring who, in various stages of their adolescence, have subjected me to annoying e-mail forwards, hoaxes, jokes, fake virus warnings, petitions, silly poems, surveys, and every conceivable piece of Internet junk imaginable. The picture you see above was sent to me by the youngest and last of my octopode fries.  Before I continue, a word of caution:

Please send this post to 2,000 people within the next 30 seconds, or else Captain Fogg will sink your boat, your cephalopods will be turned into sushi, the oil lobby will be drilling for Dino, and ExpatBrian will be forced to return to La La Land.  This is serious business, folks!

Monogamy or monotony?  Are you tired, bored, or discontented with your [select one -- mate, partner, relationship]?  Do not despair because hope is on the way.   Unlike most chain letters, this one will cost you nothing.  Just send a copy of this post to five of your best friends who are equally frustrated, then bundle up your [select one -- husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, lover mistress, partner, Swash Zone creature] and send to the first name on your list.

When your name moves to the top of the list, you will receive over 10,000 [select one -- men, women, sheep, goats, gerbils, partners] from which to choose.  One of these will fulfill your every wish and desire.  Do not break the chain or else you are likely to get your old [select one -- deadbeat, dud, SOB] back.

Indeed, this IS truly amazing.  When I received the above picture via e-mail from the last of my octopod fries, I thought to myself:  Hmm, has my charming and much-loved offspring finally seen the light?  Yes, my little 8pus, nothing does happen.  Chain letters don't work.  And they are annoying as hell.  Could this be the end of the curse?  Will my e-mail box finally return to normal after years of patient and silent suffering?  Perhaps I should view this latest e-mail as a coming of age, a sign of maturity … that has finally released me from this curse.

"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and fame..."

by expatbrian

Well, hardly. My thanks to (O)ct(O)pus for inviting me to contribute on The Swash Zone. You can view my details on my profile or find me over at World Gone Mad. Talk soon!