CLOWNFISH OF THE WEEK: GOVERNOR MARK SANFORD

Photoshop credit: AZrainman

He disappeared from plain sight. When asked of his whereabouts, his cohorts refused to answer. Security, they said. His wife knew nothing. Reporters spotted his car at the airport. Rumors swirled. Something about taking a hike in the Appalachians. Finally, an admission, a clandestine trip … Yeee Haah … to Argentina!

Can’t you hear me, baby, rappin’ on your door?

Can’t you hear me, baby, rappin’ on your door?

Now you hear me tappin’, tappin’ across your floor.

For seven days and seven nights days, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina was missing. This is the same Governor Mark Sanford who refused to accept federal economic stimulus funds ... for the State of South Carolina that has among the worst unemployment stats in the nation … and failing grades in education.

Feel like a broke-down engine, ain’t got no drive at all,

Feel like a broke-down engine, ain’t got no drive at all.

This is the same Governor Sanford whose own legislature voted to accept the stimulus money and override his veto, whose own State Supreme Court upheld the state legislature that demanded the governor take the stimulus money; the same Governor Sanford from the same great state of South Carolina, rumors say, who wants to run for president of these even greater United States of Aye!

Lordy, Lord, Lordy, Lord, Lordy, Lord.

After seven days and seven nights, we discover Governor Mark Sanford had secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he had been having … an affair! "I've let down a lot of people," said the governor at a news conference where he choked up as he ruminated on God's law, moral absolutes and following one's heart. His family did not attend.

Feel like a broke-down engine,

ain’t got no whistle or bell,

If you’re a real hot momma,

drive away Daddy’s weeping spell.

At The Swash Zone today, the temperature is 87 degrees and sunny. Visibility is 10 miles, and the surf is calm. All resident clownfish have left our shores … bound for South Carolina.

Maybe Something About Foreign Policy, Too...

"Whether you golf or not, go to a driving range and hit a bucket of golf balls. Begin by hitting everything as hard as you can; gradually decrease your power until near the end, you're barely swinging. Notice that as you decrease the power of your swing, your accuracy improves. There's a lesson about life, here." - The Check Book - Nicholaus & Lowrie

(X-post @ Wingnuts & Moonbats)

Off with the habit, sister!

Some Republicans have been speaking up and saying they wish Barak Obama would be more like French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Considering the Republican obsession with French cowardice and perfidy, it's remarkable in itself, but Sarko made a rather more blustery statement about Iran and tyranny than did Obama and bluster is what Republican foreign policy has come to be.

I have no doubt that some Republicans, including those who fill my mail box with serial hoaxes about foreign leaders railing and howling about throwing out the Muslims, would be quite happy with such a president and his support of a ban on religious attire in France - at least as it pertains to Islamic attire.

France has launched a parliamentary inquiry into whether women should be allowed to wear the burqa in public. Sarkozy is on record as saying it's "not welcome" in France. Consistency requires, at least in a land of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, banning other forms of sartorial identification, such as Sikh turbans, large Christian crucifixes and Jewish yarmulkes as well and so it is proposed. I'm unable to discern their attitude toward the Roman Catholic burqa as worn by nuns, but I'm sure some accommodation could be reached.

Because we are a secular government, not a Christian one, our US constitution protects the freedom to practice our various religions as we choose and it's hard to see any such legislation being proposed here, but it must be of comfort to our resident bigots to know their favorite "surrender monkeys" are considering the surrender of another increment of freedom in service of bigotry and xenophobia.

If Joe McCarthy were a Democrat

"this new report is proof positive that known and suspected terrorists are exploiting a major loophole in our law, threatening our families and our communities. This 'terror gap' has been open too long, and our national security demands that we shut it down."

says Sen. Frank Lautenberg, (D-NJ.) No one my age can fail to be reminded of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy and his fake list of names. Frank, of course, is also a damn liar.

As might be expected, we're really not talking about "known" terrorists, but about people who have been put on a watch list, but against whom there is no evidence. The Justice Department tells us says CNN, that the FBI had thousands of names on its watch list based on outdated information and should have removed them. The GAO notes properly that being on a terrorist watch list does not mean that someone is involved in any terrorist activity, so as I said, we're not talking about "known terrorists" at all. Neither are we talking about a "loophole" here; we're talking about punishment without due process.

We should all be concerned when there's a proposal to make an accusation, an opinion, a conjecture or a suspicion reason to take away someones constitutional rights, but of course there are those so frightened of coming to harm that they just don't care, which makes them unfit to be participants in a democracy such as ours: a government of laws, not of fear. Sad to say, they're not all Republicans.

Lautenberg refers to a GAO report released yesterday, which reveals that about 90% of people who have sought to buy firearms and who had their names on a "watch list" were allowed to buy them because there was no evidence that they actually were involved in illegal acts. Perhaps they had opinions that were scary, beliefs that troubled the list makers and somehow knew other scary people: perhaps they were falsely accused or, as is often the case, had a name similar to that of a convicted felon. But of course our thoughts are supposed to be free and our associations as well. Should we start putting people who oppose abortion on a terrorism watch list because others with similar beliefs have committed crimes? What about people who have attended "Tea bag" parties? People with an 'unauthorized' religion? Why isn't thought crime abhorrent to us any more?

From his perch in the grandstand, Lautenberg claims to be introducing legislation that would give the U.S. attorney general "authority to stop the sale of guns or explosives to terrorists." That's something the law already addresses and of course it's deceptive since one is not a terrorist without some evidence of illegal activity and indeed without due process to determine guilt or innocence. So what Frank is saying here is that suspicion is guilt and suspicion trumps a fair trial and if you're different or someone doesn't like you, you have no rights. How long have we been fighting monsters that we're starting not to notice what we've become?

We're so vain, we probably think Iran is about us

Back in the day -- the 60's that is -- conservatives fostered and circulated the idea that the people who were opposed to continued armed interference in Vietnam were all but on the payroll of Chairman Mao. Mumblings about "front" organizations and accusations of treason were commonplace even without anything resembling the internet to make it easy. One of the planned results of the strategy was to make it easier to continue the war indefinitely, violate the civil rights of objectors and easier to get conservatives to support the violation. Suggestions that Ho Chi Min preferred the Democratic candidate was heavy ammunition against him.

Now of course the Mullahs of Iran are far smarter than the average American -- who isn't? -- and if Barak Obama were to take on the traditional Republican role of moral bloviator and condemn the crackdown in Iran, they would be delighted to have the excuse that the thousands in the streets are foreign agents, motivated and backed and perhaps even paid by the United States. Any kind of violence could then be justified against these "enemy combatants" on religious and political grounds. Our open support of the protests in Tehran would effectively taint the movement which could be discussed as a Western incursion and not an Iranian movement by Iranians to take back control of Iran from a corrupt government.

Our Average American however, never can seem to resist a chance proudly to display anger and even more so when he can pretend it's moral outrage. CNN's current poll shows 76% in favor of having the President "condemn" the government of Iran as though he were himself an Ayatollah pronouncing a fatwah. Of course he has expressed sympathy for those seeking democracy and there is no one in the world who would think that we would support Khamenei anyway, but the contest between statecraft and soul satisfying, but counterproductive, rage has a predictable outcome.

I have severe misgivings and doubts about the way in which our economic predicament is being addressed, but when it comes to handling touchy and dangerous world affairs, Obama seems almost a genius compared to the man the Republicans would have had as president, strutting about a stage like an overweight, underpowered Mick Jagger, singing "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

HAPPY FATHERS' DAY

Dear Dad,
$chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of anything I need, $o if you would like, you can ju$t $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you.
Your loving $on

Dear Son,
I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep an hoNOr student very busy.  Do NOt forget that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can never study eNOugh.
Love, Dad

On Studying a Language

This is just a muse about my return to the intensive study of several languages, for whatever the thoughts be worth.

The desire to study languages not one's own may come from any number of directions – from practical ones like wanting to become a professional translator to ones the source of which is lost in the "dark backward and abysm" of childhood and, as with so much we value most, not available to our waking selves. So put it down to whimsy if you will, but the currents of our interests – indeed of whimsy itself – surely run deep.

The study of languages might be thought a sign of shallowness, since a person may know ten languages and yet be a villain or a fool. Still, it seems better to say that the pursuit of language competence is the mother of studies. And in spite of all the memorization and grammar-conning involved, it's also a fine proof of Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon's assertion that learning itself is not a matter of aggregation, of permanent acquisition, but rather a series of insights that seem to come from nowhere and that are gone as soon as they have come, leaving us again in darkness, under the sway of various necessities. It induces humility as well since whatever of wisdom and knowledge is gained, whatever unlooked-for advances in comprehension come as if from the workings of a power akin to Coleridge's silent, secret "ministry of frost," will most likely be lost along with all else when we die. In the shadow of the Preacher's injunction, the study of a language, too, is vanity.

But in favor of language studies is the prospect that there's something in them of pure love of words – a capacity much derided in this age of virtual bronze, where to lose what Hamlet calls "the name of action" is considered shameful. Even the poorest of paragraphs can sell a product or teach us how to use a software program. But such a paragraph remains a pitiful thing in its own right, and shows little regard for the deep humanity that precision of speech or writing may reveal.

A language is something we have made collectively and over time – something mostly beyond our individual efforts at manipulation, though we may have some small success there, some power of innovation and precision. And to this power we must respond, and within it, to a large degree, work out our felicity or infelicity. To speak a "foreign" language is to speak with the voice of another that beckons us outside ourselves even as it takes us back to our earliest and most intimate experiences, moments when an illusory but nonetheless powerful bond was forged between words, ourselves, and the world around us. In a sense, to return to language is to return to our mother and father, to an experience not unlike what we may surmise to have been our earliest conscious days, months, and years – the ones that made us what we are. The child is father of the man, just as Wordsworth said.

AT NANO SCALE, MAGIC HAPPENS

Thus says Justin Hall-Tipping, senior managing partner of NanoHoldings, LLC. His company is “a mixture of venture fund and operating company.” I was sent an article about this company and it’s partnership with Dr Carroll, a professor of physics at Wake Forest University and the nanotech research center at the university.

I also had the great fortune to see the light board mentioned in the article and pictured at right.

Nanotechnology is the understanding and manipulation of matter at dimensions between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. Just for a comparison, a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick. We are talking MINISCULE! With this technology, science will be able to provide us with “super materials” capable of changing the global environment in a clean, organic way.

The lighted material generates no heat and is at least twice as efficient as fluorescent light. It is a thin-film device that can be custom-tailored to produce light of different color and flexible so that it can be shaped into all sorts of creative lighting applications. (The image in the picture is of the school mascot, The Demon Deacon).

The solar fiber cell is another new innovation mentioned in the same article. The film acts as an absorber and concentrator and can be applied to a variety of surfaces such as the whole roof of a house.

From the FiberCell website: “Each FiberCell subunit within the module can produce the operational voltage, so there is no need to connect the individual devices in series. Loss of a single cell does not dramatically affect the module performance.”

When we talk of a future without oil and other polluting substances, we aren’t talking about a distant future. In fact the future is here, now and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Imagine the possibilities that are just around the corner…

Pete Hoekstra - hero of the revolution

Believe it or not, very few Americans voted for Barak Obama. The 9 million or so difference between the count for McPalin and Obama was the result of election tampering by ACORN. This notion seems to be part of the ever-changing catechism of the Republican faithful because I've been hearing it over and over again and so it's not all that surprising that congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) would feel encouraged to tell us that the internet activity and the massive street protests since the Iranian election was

" similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

He said, referring to last August when the Speaker adjourned the House before an energy vote. Jon Stewart joked last night about the parallels being eerie: "Not parallels, the perpendiculars” but to a party that has tried to compare the governments we've cobbled together in Iraq and Afghanistan to the formation of our own government, the humor will be written off as liberal meanness or deflected by some tale of an unfair joke about the Palins or Joe the Plumber. No, once again they're posing as victims of a corrupt system and a stolen election.

I can imagine the groans of his staff, who quickly told us what Hoekstra would have said if Hoekstra had been as smart as they are:

"The two situations do share the similarity of government leadership attempting to limit debate and deliberation, and the ability of new technologies to bypass their efforts and allow for direct communication. That’s the only point that he was trying to make."

No it wasn't and of course his party had been doing just that for 8 years. The reaction was swift, according to CNN, and one counter-twitter responded with:

"Except the Democrats didn't come after you with clubs and guns, did they?"

No, they did it with the ballot box and will all allowances made for poetic license, the perpendiculars are striking.

Man was made for the law.

At least while the remnants of Republican barbarism still control the court, the law is the law is the law; right or wrong .

Is anyone still so idealistic as to think that our justice system is about justice and not about upholding the authority of. . .well, authority? Well, maybe the latest ruling from the Old Bastard's Club we sometimes call the Supreme Court and the Republicans sometimes accuse of giving a damn, will change your mind. In a ruling today one might have expected from a Texas court or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition, it ruled that once you're convicted, you have no right to obtain evidence that might exonerate you at least in Alaska, one of the six states in which innocence is no defense once the infallible courts have ruled.

"Science alone cannot prove a prisoner innocent,"

read the decision and of course not, but it can prove him not guilty and it often has done just that. But I guess this is a good way to keep from the inevitable embarrassment of killing a few innocent people now and then.

So isn't it nice that at least one branch of Government retains it's contempt for the value of human life once it's had the chance to be baptized?