Three Questions For Octopus

1) Why would you infringe on a diver's free speech rights? Or was it the spear gun you were after?

2) Why didn't you turn the camera around and get video of the diver instead of trying to eat it?

3) It was brave of you to mess with an armed diver, but do you really think it was the wisest choice?

Menace from the Right: The John Birch Society - Part 1

This series of articles is based on a research paper I wrote in 1964 during the heyday of the John Birch Society (JBS). I dug it up and dusted it off to see what, if any, resemblances there might be between it and the modern day Tea Party (TP).

Enough similarities exist to make the two organizations appear to be mirror images of one another but sometimes one reflection is a little distorted or a little off. Much depends on the silver backing – or the foundation.

The JBS was founded at the end of 1958 when candy manufacturer Robert Welch secretly gathered together 11 unidentified men in Indianapolis.* For two days they listened to Welch explain his deep-seated belief that the Communists were infiltrating all segments of the United States, threatening to destroy our schools, our churches, our government, and virtually, our entire way of life.

In time, most Americans would come to believe that such threats did not come from the Communists but from the very organization that was supposed to be championing the cause of freedom.

JBS Attacks on the Government

Robert Welch was firmly convinced that the U. S. government had been corrupted and infiltrated by Communist agents. He argued that they dominated the presidency, the legislative branches and the U. S. Supreme Court.

He began writting a letter in 1954 which nine years and 305 pages later was turned into a book called The Politician. Welch claimed the Communists captured the presidency in three stages beginning with Franklin Roosevelt and continuing on through the Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower administrations.

R. B. Cooney, in his article, “John Birchers On the March – the Politics of Fear,” quoted the following passages which had been recorded in the Congressional Record :

In my opinion, the chances are very strong that Milton Eisenhower is actually Dwight Eisenhower’s superior and boss within the Communist Party . . . .

I personally believe (John Foster) Dulles to be a Communist agent who has had one clearly defined role to play: namely, always to say the right things and to always do the wrong ones. (1)

Welch wrote in another private letter that quickly became public, “the Communists have one of their own actually in the Presidency - Eisenhower. That word is ‘treason.” He went on to accuse the president of being "a dedicated conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."

Conservative writer William F. Buckley, an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the JBS.

At Houston’s American Opinion Library, the JBS store and reading room, I purchased a postcard inscribed, “Save Our Republic – Impeach Earl Warren.” On the back it read:

Chief Justice Warren has taken the lead in both the decisions and the attitudes of the Supreme Court, aimed at doing away with those safeguards of law which maintain this nation as a constitutional republic, and at converting it into a democracy – in which all individual rights would be completely subject to the whims and views of demagogues temporarily in power. The logical and traditional redress in our governmental system for such violations of the oath of office is impeachment.

JBS Attacks on Schools
Education was the field in which the JBS was most active and where they had the greatest impact. Welch continuously urged members to join PTA groups and school boards. If they could subvert the educational system, they would win a major battle against their war on Communism.

In  Amarillo, Texas – a town known for its far right groups – the JBS began a campaign to rid the school libraries of reading materials they deemed unfit. Such books as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Oliver La Farge’s Laughing Boy, Mackinley Kantor’s Andersonville, and A. B. Guthrie’s The Way West were forced from the shelves.

George Orwell’s 1984 was also purged – rather ironical since it is generally regarded as a critique of life under Communism. (2) Even more interesting was the fact that the Houston American Opinion Library carried copies of Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Even high school students were encouraged to rat on their teachers. Instructors who had been idolized for years were suddenly disloyal and treasonous. It wasn’t long before paranoid parents jumped on the bandwagon. Neighbors who used to be bridge partners began playingWar. (3)

At a Wichita, Kansas high school, JBS members tried, but failed, to have courses altered and  the teachers fired. Again students were urged to report anything their teachers said that, in their opinions, smacked of Communist propaganda. (4)

Some University of Wichita faculty members were accused of being traitors and attempts were made to have them fired. According to an assistant economics professor at the time, the charges of treason made the faculty insecure enough that they were afraid to teach anything that dealt with Communist theory in politics and economics. (5)

By obtaining control of local PTA and school board groups, Welch believed the Society would be able to influence the choice of courses, teachers and textbooks. If they succeeded, social science courses would be altered to such an extent that history and government as most of the country knows it would be unrecognizable.

* Since this paper was written,the names of the founding members have become known.
1. R. B. Cooney, “John Birchers On the March – the Politics of Fear,” American Federalist, v. 68, (June, 1961), p. 13.
2. Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein, Danger on the Right, 1966, p.4.
3. Ibid.
4. Donald Janson, The Far Right, 1963, p. 169.
5. Ibid. p. 169-170.

YIDDISH LANGUAGE IN DECLINE? OY-YOY-YOY!

I came across this little throw away article and thought about what impact losing Yiddish would have to the English language.

Can an English word give us the same sense of meaning to a concept such as having to “schlep” around or to be annoyed by a real “putz” or someone being a "mensch”?

Yiddish is not an ancient language but is made up of elements of German, Hebrew and a few Slavic languages. It was developed in the 10th century by Jews living in the Rhineland region.

By the 19th century, Jews and their language were under fire by the ruling classes who were suspicious that the Jews were trying to hide something. In spite of the pressure, or maybe because of it, Yiddish would flourish and gain huge popularity right up to 1945, producing some great literature and theater productions, including the play on which “Fiddler On The Roof” is based.

The Holocaust would forever change the Jewish people and their communal structure. As the survivors of this dark time in modern history struggled to regroup and moved to different countries, the use of Yiddish in daily language began to decline.

But those European Jews who came to America and settled in large cities like New York kept the old language of their youth alive and it would eventually become integrated in our uniquely American English.

Can you imagine a Broadway that never produced Fiddler On The Roof or Hello Dolly? And a bagel by any other name? Just wouldn’t be the same, would it? And how else could you describe the art of schmoozing without the word schmooze?

To lose this most enlivened language with its rich history would be a crime. Thankfully, as long as there is an American English, there will be Yiddish spoken here.

Mir gefelt Yidish. Mir gefelt es zeyer gut! Un dir?
( I like Yiddish. I really like it! And you?)

(Disclaimer: While I gamely tried my hand at this bit of Yiddish, I am by no means a scholar of this language or German for that matter. So if you answer in kind, I will probably have no idea what you said.)

EVERYONE WANTS FREE MONEY!

Marlene Griffith, the widow of one the 29 coalminers killed in a West Virginia mine explosion earlier this month, has filed suit against Massey Energy, the same operator cited for over 3,000 safety violations (background story here).

The lawsuit accuses Massey Energy of aggravated conduct above and beyond the level of ordinary negligence, citing unlawful working conditions and a history of safety violations.

Yesterday, Nathan Coffey, a spokesperson for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), ridiculed Marlene Griffith’s lawsuit with this Twitter message:

Everyone wants free money! // Widow

of miner killed in explosion in WV sues

owner Massey Energy alleging

negligence http://bit.ly/b7naoQ

Who the heck is ALEC?  It is a non-profit front group representing major U.S. corporations whose mission and purpose is to influence state legislatures and push corporate interests.  It advocates the end of consumer safety enforcement, equal rights for women in the workplace, worker safety regulations, and environmental protection, as examples.  It's hidden agenda is to influence legislation without risking criticism by keeping its membership safely outside the public eye. These are some of ALEC’s benefactors and members (complete list here):

American Express, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Amway, AT&T, Bank of America, Baxter Healthcare, Boeing, Cargill, Cendant, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Coors Brewing Company, Exxon Mobil, Ford, General Motors, Heritage Foundation, Koch Industries, Kraft Foods, McDonalds, Microsoft, Shell, Texaco, National Rifle Association, PhRMA (Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer), Olin Foundation, Peabody Coal (subsidiary of Massey Energy), Philip Morris, Reynolds Tobacco, State Farm, Verizon, Union Pacific Railroad, United Airlines, UPS, Wal-Mart Stores.

I find it especially offensive that this front group, shilling for America’s best known corporations, can demonstrate such a callous disregard for widows.  Marlene Griffith lost her husband just shy of their 33rd wedding anniversary.  How does a wrongful death lawsuit constitute free money?  Please join me in a boycott of ALEC's members.

H/T to Lee Fang of Think Progress.

TEA PARTIERS, ALIENS, AND GNOCCHI

That ball of fire that was seen over the midwest last week was not part of a meteor shower.

It was an Alien spacecraft come to Earth from somewhere in the constellation Coma Berenices , and I had the pleasure of talking to one of their Commanders (she is very intelligent and was able to convert her Alien language, which sounded like this "x#&werf 0110110" to English!) And as near as I could determine, her name sounded something like this: "Haitch Commander Cube Ere En En Qi," but please don't quote me on it.

Haitch Commander Cube Ere En En Qi stopped by the Boston Common on Wednesday (we're approaching Patriots' Day here in Beantown, so she wanted to know more about our history) and then went on to Washington DC and back to Boston on Friday, hoping to return to Deep Space on Sunday, volcano permitting. (I'm taking her out for some gnocchi con succo di pomodoro and melanzana parmigiano [she's a vegan] tonight and later to listen to some fabulous Cole Porter played by the talented pianist, Jon Jarvis appearing at Ristorante Fiore. ) But I digress.

H.C. CEEEQi had a lot of questions for me after having witnessed the demonstrations on Boston Common and in Washington DC over this past week. She wanted to know why those particular Americans were carrying signs and making loud, angry speeches. She was especially curious about the woman wearing a bright red leather jacket whose high pitched voice caused H.C. CEEEQi to momentarily lose consciousness. A small adjustment to her iTransponder allowed the Haitch Commander to endure the rest of the lady in the red leather jacket's speech.

I told her the Tea Party movement started up last year, basing its name on the famous Boston Tea Party, where Boston colonists protested England's tax on tea, because Bostonians had no representation in the English Parliament. Today's Tea Party people enjoy representation in the US government and have the option of voting out those people whom they feel do not properly represent their values.

The first large Tea Party demonstrations were on Tax Day 2009, three months into the term of our first bi-racial president, who had inherited one of the worst economies in US history, as well as two unfinished wars. The Tea Partiers, I told H.C. CEEEQi, were very angry after having had to endure three whole months of Mr. Obama's infant presidency, and they were going to make their anger known to the rest of the country with the help of something that's called a cable news station, but really isn't, a Dick Armey (here the Haitch Commander sniggered--as I noted, she is quite intelligent, and immediately understood the double entendre). The Tea Party movement, I told her, is also backed by Freedom Works, and Dick Armey is the chairman of the group. I also told the Haitch Commander that the lady in the red leather jacket, who caused her sensitive Berenicean ears to shut down and for her to momentarily lose consciousness, is also part of the Tea Party movement. I explained how she makes tons of money flying around the country in private jets telling the people she talks to that they're the "real Americans, just like her!"

H.C. CEEEQi: Why are all those people with tea bags dangling from their hats so angry? Did your president increase their taxes?

SK: No. Unless they made over $250,000, their taxes actually went down. Our president, Barack Hussein Obama, gave 95% of the American people tax cuts.

H.C. CEEEQi: But didn't I hear that you Americans had to work until April 9 this year to pay your Federal Government taxes?

SK: That's true, but it is also true that that date is the earliest it has been in EIGHT years! (Last year, 2009, it was April 8.) And we are just about the lowest worldwide!

H.C. CEEEQi: How often did the Tea Party demonstrate when they had to work longer to pay the federal government taxes?

SK: They didn't. They're angry with this president for lowering their taxes, for instituting 25 separate tax cuts, and for shortening the time that they have to work to pay the federal government taxes.

H.C. CEEEQi:   "@#%uHQxx 010101010!" *    (*loosely translates as "a shtuken nisht in hartz!")

SK:   :-(

H.C. CEEEQi: Sorry. What do the Tea Party people think about the taxes they pay?

SK: 62% of the American people believe the taxes they pay are fair, and 52% of the people in the Tea Party movement believe the taxes they pay are fair. The Tea Party people are also angry over the fact that 47% of the American people don't pay any federal taxes (but they do pay taxes through payroll taxes, state and local.) And probably the same percentage of Tea Party people don't pay taxes, since they self-identified in a recent poll as making undeer $50,000 a year, the same as the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes.

H.C. CEEEQi: The Tea Party Earthlings are angry over high taxes but also angry that some of them don't qualify to pay federal taxes at all?

SK: Yes.

H.C. CEEEQi: None of this makes sense.

SK: But it does make good teevee for that entity that calls itself a cable news station but really isn't, and it is very profitable for that lady in the red leather jacket who quit her job as a governor to spend more time with her money.

H.C. CEEEQi: So let me try to understand. This Tea Party movement, which was, in your Colonial history, about taxation without representation, actually has representation. A majority of the people in the Tea Party movement believe their taxes are fair. The president of your country gave a tax cut to 95% of the people. A majority of Americans believe their taxes are fair. The people of your country have worked fewer days for the federal government taxes than they have over the last eight years under a different president. Why is everyone demonstrating?

SK: Beats me.

H.C. CEEEQi: Don't the people who are invloved in this tax demonstration business like their president?

SK: No. They believe he's a Marxist, Socialist, Communist, Muslim, Kenyan, Nazi with big ears.

H.C. CEEEQi: That's not logical. Well maybe the big ears--I've seen his photograph. In our culture, that is a sign of great wisdom and intelligence. But as for the Tea Party people, it appears that they are confused and angry over being angry. And maybe uncomfortable with the fact that this new president of yours doesn't look like one of them. I understand that the majority of Tea Party people are white, male Republicans. And your president is not.

SK: True.

H.C. CEEEQi: Well this has been quite informative. I'm not sure I fully understand the Tea Party movement except as a group of discontented people who don't like their president and resent the fact that he lowered their taxes, that he rescued the economy from total collapse, that they worked fewer days for the federal govenment taxes, and that his wife is trying to get children to eat healthier and exercise more.

Just one more thing, Ms. Kenawe, I notice on your notepad that you refer to me as "Haitch" Commander. That's not correct. The "Haitch" means the letter "H." I should have made that clearer to you when we met.

SK: Thanks for the correction. So. What does the "H" stand for--in Berenicean, I mean.

H.C. CEEEQi: Oh yes. Forgive me. The "H" stands for "hussein." In our Berenicean language, the word/sound "hussein" means "Supreme Patriot." So my title, "Hussein Commander" actually means "Supreme Patriot Commander" Cube Ere En En Qi. I very much look forward to trying those gnocchi!

Stupid lefty me

Hey, I'm a stupid lefty. I must be, since so many obviously intelligent people tell me so. After all, I don't think the health insurance reform bill is any worse than what's already been done by prominent Republican presidential candidates and neither does Mitt Romney so he must be a stupid lefty too.

The Cato Institute, obviously a bunch of lefties as well, has pointed out that Mitsky (let's give him his due as a Trotskyite) enacted a health care plan identical to Obama's while he was Governor of Massachusetts in 2006. Of course that Maoist/Islamofascist radical Romney won't admit to it and he was only trying to hide his Marxist/Maoist sympathies when he called the identical Democratic plan all those nasty names. Hell, he's probably right to do so since 2006 was so long ago we didn't even have Twitter and nobody remembers.

The Cato Institute remembers, stupid lefties that they are.

"As President Obama himself has pointed out, Romney is the guy who created the prototype for ObamaCare. How can he lead the charge against a health care plan that is modeled on his own?" said Cato's executive vice president David Boaz.

Well hell, he's a lefty and lefties do that and the Cato "cel"l is probably a front for North Korea. But the concept of "its only wrong when they do it" really requires more intelligence than I have so I'll just never cut it as a right wing "patriot." I really am not smart enough to get angry at the President for raising taxes when he lowered them or furious at his forcing his predecessor to put us into crushing debt, so the Tea Bag patriots won't accept me either. Who can blame them for suspecting a wealthy investor and fund manager of loving Stalin and longing for the worker's paradise?

So Mea Culpa -- I'm a stupid lefty and I'll go say ten Hail Reagans and pray for understanding.

Take the C train

Climb aboard the Republican crazy train, boys and girls -- we're going to Loonie Land! We're going to the Fox Fun House Hall of Mirrors where everything gets distorted to look Muslim, or Communist, or Fascist. Yes indeed the logo of the Nuclear Security Summit, can, if you squint your eyes and take another deep one from the paper bag of glue, looks like a crescent -- or if you're one of those sane elitist liberals, like an orbiting electron in the classical model of an atom.

But we're not sane are we? We're ConSERvatives and it's fun to be CRAZY! It's fun to sabotage any attempt to make the world a safer, saner place, it's fun to sabotage everything the voters (corrupted by socialism no doubt) do to restore sanity.


Yes, the latest attempt in the Logo Wars, to find crescents in everything Obama does and says started in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post "Now he's a crescent loon" and migrated to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, which showed an array of Islamic national flags on Wednesday with the 2010 Nuclear Summit logo -- not that they're suggesting anything. They're just suggesting that since Obama is suspiciously "reaching out" to Muslims and thus is suspected of being a Muslim and since some Muslims are black -- well you decide for yourselves. We're not going to tell you what's true and what isn't. You decide.

I mean you'll note that Obama has pulled the plug on another mission to the moon and the moon you know, sometimes. . . well you get the picture -- not that we're suggesting anything, but looking at Space Shuttle mission patches you'll notice crescents all over the place and of course the shuttle orbits over Muslim countries constantly. Could be that Obama converted the Space Agency to Islam back in 1990! How sinister is that?
Of course since nuclear arms reduction was a particular dream of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush, Murdoch may have wanted to pull back on the theme that arms control only weakens the nation when Democrats do it, or he may have been embarrassed by Insanity Hannity's being caught in a lie about what Obama's nuclear position actually is -- or perhaps he knows in his wrinkled Australian heart that it's just easier to get away with a totally insane innuendo than to play with dangerous facts. Nobody ever went broke after all, by underestimating the stupidity, gullibility and indeed the raw insanity of the American public.

How Glenn Beck Makes Sh*t Up

A deconstruction: Beck turns two black panthers, a Farrakhan speech, and a step-dance video into "proof" that OBAMA HAS A SECRET NEGRO GOON ARMY!!!

A Word on Statistics

by Wislawa Szymborska

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.

Ready to help,
as long as it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four--well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain,
without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three,
sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred--
a figure that has never varied yet.

trans. from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

Art: Golconda by Rene Magritte

Time To Wake Up

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. -- James Joyce

There are some laws which everyone, no matter how powerful, no matter their nationality, must obey. I’m thinking of the laws of physics: gravity, the laws of thermodynamics and the like. No one gets a pass, at least not for long, not without exacting a price. Yes, we can fly to the moon, but it takes an enormous amount of energy to slip these surly bonds of earth, and we always come back.

There are similar laws which operate on the metaphysical plane--I call them spiritual laws but for the non-religious, how about “Eternal Laws.” Just as no one escapes the laws of gravity and thermodynamics, no one escapes Eternal Laws, either.

Religious texts of all faiths are full of them, and they serve as both a warning and guide to those of us here on earth. They know no nationality or creed but instead are truly universal. Just as the laws of gravity apply equally to a child on a playground or a multibillion-dollar rocket aimed at the moon, so do these Eternal Laws apply to great nations and individuals alike.

One of these is the Law of Karma. In the Judeo-Christian tradition this law is expressed as “the sins of the father.” There are dozens of verses in the Old and New Testament expressing the idea that what goes around, comes around. For example, from Numbers 14:18:

‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

I repeat: No one gets a pass, at least not for long, not without exacting a price.

A related law is the Law of Truth. Nothing remains secret forever. Eventually the truth is revealed, if not today or tomorrow, then in a year, 10 years, 50 years. In the New Testament we see this expressed in Luke 8:17:

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

There are similar ideas in the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other religious texts. In short: Repent ye sinners or pay the price. The longer you wait, the worse it will be.

America has been dodging Eternal Laws. We are wont to do this every now and then, for example our failure to atone for our genocide of native peoples. Little surprise that these chickens came home to roost in 1973. We have a lot of karmic debt which has gone unpaid, and the interest is adding up.

The latest is our reluctance to address the biggest moral failing this nation has faced since the days of slavery. We have swept our rush to war under the rug, ignored our imprisonment and torture of hundreds of innocent people. We have refused to acknowledge the use of ginned up confessions to justify our slaughter in a foreign land. We have chosen to believe that the shredding of civil liberties here at home is necessary in the interest of “national security” because we are emotionally lazy and perhaps still a little shell-shocked.

This week a new revelation popped up and, surprise surprise, we slapped it away. It came in the form of this story:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

These people were tortured. They were labeled “the worst of the worst.” They were in legal limbo, denied contact with their families, lawyers, etc. And did I mention they were tortured?

So far a Google News search of “Wilkerson, Guantanamo, Bush, Cheney” has revealed nothing from our mainstream national media on this story. Lefty blogs, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, foreign media like Arab News and Asian Tribune have covered it. CNN, the Associated Press, New York Times? Not so much.

So it appears our media is reluctant to look under that rock. Our government, of course, has refused to look into the sins of the past administration. And our church leaders? The Catholic Church is too busy dealing with the consequences of its own failure to adhere to the Law of Truth. Lefty evangelical Jim Wallis is doing battle with clown Glenn Beck right now; he has chosen a media circus sideshow over addressing a true moral dilemma.

So here we are.

We need a national accountability moment, a “time of repentance” if you will, where all is revealed once and for all. Will we get it? Yes, of course we will: it’s an Eternal Law that this moment will come. The question is, will that time be of our choosing or the universe’s? The universe is a harsh task mistress. It would be better for us to address this issue ourselves. But if we don’t have the courage, well, there are universal laws at play here. The debt will be paid -- with interest.

Eventually.