Paint it black.

By Captain Fogg

It amazes me how my fellow Floridians, so many of whose lives revolve around the rivers. lakes and coastline of the Sunshine State, so many of whom are actively concerned with keeping the natural environment natural, can still side with the polluters and despoilers when it comes to voting for Republicans who work for and ofter are developers, sugar producers and cattlemen with no vision that goes beyond this month's P&L. Will that change when the Gulf becomes a smelly dead sea, when the white sand turns to black and the drinking water runs out or will Florublicans continue the self-destructive doublethink?

It may be a week or more before the gushing well head in the Gulf is capped. The optimists say it may be months before the Gulf recovers, others say any return to life may take far longer since the oil cloud runs very deep and the dispersants used to break up the oil are toxic to the entire food chain and what settles to the bottom may leave it as hostile to life as a newly tarred section of the Interstate. Certainly the business food chains that begin with fishing and tourism will be devastated, but if you expect the Party of Business and Free Enterprise to give an oily damn, think again.

Palin and Kristol are flapping their jaws like sock puppets covering the hands of Exxon and BP trying to keep up the enthusiasm for more drilling and closer to the shore. It's about "energy security" says the big hair Runaway Governor without addressing the cost of this cleanup and the cost to all those who buy food that may now have to come from Asia and the Southern hemisphere and the cost to those who depend on non-toxic oceans.

“We believe that God shed his grace on thee. We still believe that America is exceptional.” she said while non sequitur alarms were set off around the world.

Indeed it is: exceptional in it's ability to justify being raped, cheated, pillaged and looted by the people for whom she speaks. Our security and the price of oil have little to do with the matter, it's about increased profits for companies whose profits have more than doubled in the last year, who get tax subsidies despite paying little or no US taxes. By the grace of God and Palin they'll do even better next year and it's not because the price of oil will go down or that there's enough offshore oil to make a difference or that the oil that's brought up will not be sold abroad. Far from making us more independent, it will makes us more dependent on multinational corporations with no motivation not to sell to the highest bidder; with no motivation but their own welfare.

The accident was the result of too much regulation said the more erudite but less credible Bill Kristol and we ought to do more of it and much closer to shore.

"Look, it was a bad accident but the fact is I think we get one-third of our domestic oil from the Gulf, from offshore drilling in the Gulf. We need it. We can't cut back on it,"

said Kristol as though the solution to a bad habit was increased indulgence, as though the best way to treat a dwindling resource was to use it faster. In fact saving it until later when the demand is higher may be the policy behind the fact that there is as little drilling going on as there is on leases they already have. No, we need ever riskier drilling in ever more sensitive areas because nothing is as important as using oil faster and faster. Not even honesty. Not even conservative handling of a precious asset. Just suck up more, suck it up faster and get it out there where we can burn it ever more extravagantly before the market forces of supply and demand can make us come to our senses and sell the Hummer.

Yes we can cut back on it and it has little to do with how wonderful we are or how much God loves us and Sarah Palin waves the flag, but no, it's the environmentalists who made us drill so far away from shore where it's harder to fix the blowout, says Bill. But don't look for logic in the words of either or from even oilier Rush who thinks environmentalist hippies poisoned the Gulf. Look for buck passing, shape shifting, gratuitous Obama bashing and justification for ever bigger control over our lives by the global oil cartel and the politicians and governments who work for them.

Times square terrorism

By Captain Fogg

The big question today is: how long will it take the media to patch together a reason to blame the car bomb that didn't go off in Times Square today on President Obama? I've already had e-mails to the effect that, because the Coast Guard chose, as a cost cutting method, to turn off the obsolete LORAN-C coastal navigation system last February, our "enemies" are now sure to attack us.

The rural right is going to blame it on Obama, who as they know favors the use of the police and FBI to capture terrorists instead of the Armed forces using lots of 9 billion dollar bombers -- just like the unmanly socialist wimp he is. Never mind that it works.

Of course the Pakistani Taliban has already claimed responsibility, but it's already been proved that Obama's college education was financed by Pakistani agents who knew he'd be president someday. He might just as well admit the whole thing.

Another question that's been on my mind is whether or not the two latest attempts to blow stuff up were intentionally defective. After all the real objective is to bleed us dry and turn us against each other and that's just what is happening. Give the Nigerian kid just enough powder to blow his Nigerian gonads off, park the SUV with propane tanks and a smoke bomb on a New York street and you have us all running around screaming for blood, begging to give our civil rights away and destabilizing the country without the risk of major retaliation and without spending much money. It's just conjecture, of course. I'm just sayin' as the foxy folk say.

If We Could Talk to the Animals – They Would Tell Us We’re Idiots

By Bloggingdino

Woke up this morning to headlines such as “Oil Could Gush for Months.” Now, I may be simple, but even I knew that when oil company executives and politicians were telling people that today’s oil-drilling technology is so sophisticated, we’ll never have to worry about major spills like the ones we had years ago, their words carried about as much weight as a used car salesman’s assurance about some clunker, “this baby’s sound under the hood and will get ya 25 miles to the gallon even in the city.” Do they make “Sounds Like BS to Me” hats big enough to fit a large dinosaur?  ....

Consider the Source

By Captain Fogg

So how long did you think it would take? Actually I'm surprised that Chairman Rush took so long to blame the oil rig disaster on "hardcore environmentalist wackos." He couldn't have been waiting for some evidence before making accusations of murder and terrorism since there hasn't been any and he's never let that bother him before. Besides he isn't actually making any accusations in the first place:

"I'm just, I'm just noting the timing here."

It happened on Earth Day of course. It's always so easy to say "case closed" when there isn't any case so I won't even hint that Halliburton, the recipient of unholy amounts of government subsidies, grants and contracts and with strong ties to Dick Cheney is handling the capping of the well. I'll just note who's getting rich from it.

It didn't take long either, for the "government can't be trusted" set to pledge their trust to the Arizona police never to define their "reasonable suspicion" in a way that lets them stop and harass American citizens of Hispanic origin or Hispanics with legal work papers. They don't have to worry at all, though they should be sure to have witnesses standing by, to never go out of the house without proof of citizenship and to be very, very polite to Sheriff Arpaio when he demands they stand and deliver.

There's simply no reason to worry about abuse except that the recently signed bill seems to have been drafted by Kris Kobach who is a lawyer from the Federation for American Immigration Reform , which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007 and who was former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top immigration adviser. Hey, I'm not suggesting anything, but Ashcroft isn't known for respecting the niceties of Constitutional law in matters concerning the Bill of Rights. So maybe it's constitutional, maybe it's not, maybe it's going to be hell for Hispanics in Arizona, maybe not, but I'll simply consider the source.

"Read More" (i.e. "After the Jump") Links Now Available for Long Posts

Fellow Zoners,

Octo and I have updated the blog's editing panel a bit, so now, for longer posts, you have the option of using the editing panel icon that looks like a page ripped in half (it's the sixth icon from the right) to insert a "Read More >>" link wherever you place the cursor, which makes it possible to post a substantive entry without taking up a lot of space initially.  Here's an example below:

Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here.  Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. Short descriptive text or just your first paragraph goes here. 

Then you insert the "Read More >>" link and below it you can place the rest of your post's text.

Alice Miller 1923-2010

By Elizabeth

Alice Miller, a psychoanalyst who repositioned the family as a locus of dysfunction with her theory that parental power and punishment lay at the root of nearly all human problems, died at her home in Provence on April 14. She was 87. Her death was announced Friday by her German publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag.

Dr. Miller caused a sensation with the English publication in 1981 of her first book, “The Drama of the Gifted Child.” Originally titled “Prisoners of Childhood,” it set forth, in three essays, a simple but harrowing proposition. All children, she wrote, suffer trauma and permanent psychic scarring at the hands of parents, who enforce codes of conduct through psychological pressure or corporal punishment: slaps, spankings or, in extreme cases, sustained physical abuse and even torture.

Unable to admit the rage they feel toward their tormenters, Dr. Miller contended, these damaged children limp along through life, weighed down by depression and insecurity, and pass the abuse along to the next generation, in an unending cycle. Some, in a pathetic effort to please their parents and serve their needs, distinguish themselves in the arts or professions. The Stalins and the Hitlers, Dr. Miller later wrote, inflict their childhood traumas on millions.

“The Drama of the Gifted Child” struck a chord with mental health professionals. “Clinically, she is almost as influential as R.D. Laing,” the British psychologist Oliver James told The Observer of London in 2005. “Alice Miller changed the way people thought.”

More (via NYT).

====

I would say that Alice Miller was the most influential living psychologist, at least in my estimation. Her insights into childhood, with its joys and miseries (mostly the latter), are unparalleled.

Unfortunately, her work is not as well known as it deserves to be. If you want to read only one book on psychology, consider Miller's For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. And if you don't want to read any psychology books, still read this one. It should be required reading for all prospective parents, teachers, and anyone who spends time with children in any capacity, as well as anyone who ever was a child him/herself.

Our own Octopus referenced Miller's work in his fine post THE SOUL MURDER OF MICHAEL JACKSON AND THE CULTURE OF VICTIM BLAME

Cross-posted from The Middle of Nowhere.

Desert Cross

"the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society"

said Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The Cross may be an affirmation of Christian beliefs but it's also used to "honor and respect heroism." The cross he refers to of course is the one erected 75 years ago in the Mojave Desert to "honor" the dead of the First World War, including those without Christian beliefs; those whose own beliefs were inimitable to and lives diminished by those with Christian beliefs. Yes, Tony, there are and were atheists in foxholes: Jews, Muslims, animists, Unitarians and others -- and no Tony, that cross doesn't salute them be they heroes or clerk-typists: it salutes you and your religion at their expense and mine. It doesn't acknowledge that there are religious people in America, it tells you they're the ones who count most.

"Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten"

continued Kennedy hoping apparently that in the passionate flaunting of murky emotional tropes we will forget that the most moving of war memorials contains nothing but names: hoping apparently that you've never been to one of those cemeteries in Europe and seen the graves marked by the Star of David and memorializing bones than didn't fight for or die to uphold Christianity or an allegedly Christian nation. The Desert Cross isn't designed to help us remember anyone but to remember Jesus of the Gospels. Waving a cross in their dead faces isn't designed to be a memento of them, but a proud rebuke toward others and another bit of puffed-up braggadocio in the same fashion as our traditional bully-boy patriotism. We're number one -- and that's because we're Christian.

What Judge Tony is saying here is that they don't matter, they don't deserve to matter; don't deserve the dignity of being buried without alien iconography. What America is hearing is that we can't spare a dime for Public TV but putting up and maintaining Christian symbols on public property is public duty because the United States of America would really be the Christian States of America God wants it to be if we hadn't allowed those people in.

"The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith"

states Justice Steven's dissenting, and historically correct opinion, an opinion soon to retire from the bench. The symbol does not represent the United States, it does not represent all of us or describe what we're about. It does not remind us of the unnecessary and pointless slaughter of the Great War conducted by the Christian kings of Christian nations asserting Christian values. It does not remind us that we have a secular government and we designed it and maintain it to protect our individual beliefs and our right to practice our creeds and sects and religions without government interference and coercion, be it subtle or overt.

Once again we have been made aware of how precarious is our freedom of conscience, our freedom from interference in our private beliefs and our right to be included as Americans in a state that is under relentless religious pressure to be exclusive. We have a Court willing, it seems, to reevaluate and revisit many things we thought were decided and that would be a great many things indeed if next year's Court leaned more heavily toward giving our government a more religious stance when it comes to matters of morality. We can expect some serious fervor surrounding the next appointment. If you value religious freedom and indeed if you value religion itself, maybe now's the time to pray.

Menace from the Right: The John Birch Society - Part 3

Structure and Membership

Ironically, the JBS’s structure strongly resembled that of the Communist Party. It was made up of cells of 20 members each. In fact, Welch did not hesitate to state his admiration for Communist methods and felt free to borrow from them because he was on the “right side of the battle.” (14)

The Society was a semi-secret organization, which took orders from a well defined leadership position occupied by none other than Robert Welch. He was authoritarian; those members who ceased to feel total loyalty could either resign or steps would be taken to force them out.

Besides Welch and the original 11 men he met with in Indianapolis,* the leadership included – in descending order of importance – a cabinet of administrative advisors and assistants, Committee Enforcers, and the paid organizers and chapter leaders. There were no elections; Welch appointed each individual to his particular position throughout the entire organization. (15)

Welch had no intentions of forming a representative type organization; he felt that it would lend itself too easily to infiltration, distortion and disruption. He demanded that the Society operate “under complete authoritarian control.” (16)

The membership was composed of dedicated, active, mostly overwrought Rightists from the grass-roots level of our society. There were varying figures suggested for the number of members, but although the Society kept its numerical count a secret, the most frequently quoted estimate was around 50,000. (17)

Members were motivated by the sincere conviction that most of the leaders of our economic, religious, educational and political institutions were conscious or unconscious agents of the Communists. “The activities of the Society, directed largely through the monthly Bulletin, were designed to expose, dramatize, and if possible, thwart what they perceived to be instances of Communist subversion within these major institutions, both locally and nationally.” (18)

The Society was convinced that the Communists had influenced so much of American politics that there was little hope for the existing political system.

Psychological Make-up

The personality of a typical member was authoritarian and aggressive. He was usually frustrated by the vast societal changes that surrounded him, and he had an abiding suspicion of anything or anyone that tended to be intellectual. He had a basic feeling of inferiority, but wasn’t aware of it and would never admit it if he were.

In a setting where alleged defenders of traditional institutions and values looked upon bureaucratic leadership with distrust, where they looked with fear toward Communism, where they saw themselves being bypassed, an organization like the John Birch Society had considerable social-psychological appeal. (19)

In his paper in the American Federalist, R. B. Cooney wrote, “The pseudo-conservative is a man, who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.” (20)

Part 4, will examine the similarities and differences between the John Birch Society and the Tea Party.

14. Mark Sherwin, The Extremists, 1963, p.60.

15. Arnold Foster and Benjamin R. Epstein, Danger On the Right, 1964, p.22.
16. Cooney, “John Birchers on the March,” American Federalists, p.13.
17. Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right, 1964, p.11.
18. J. Allen Broyles, “The John Birch Society: A Movement of Social Protest of the Radical Right,” Journal of Social Issues, xviii, p. 51.
19. Broyles p. 54
20. Cooney, p.16

Drop that Chalupa, Pedro

When those cold war movies I grew up on wanted to let you know the scene was not in the land of the free, we were furnished with Angst ridden scenes where the protagonist was asked for his papers by someone in a leather trench coat on some dark street corner. Maybe his accent was showing, the cut of his clothes -- maybe it was just routine, but we were all grateful that back here, in "freedom" we could go about our business without worry and the government was on our side.

The strangest thing about Arizona's new knee jerk immigration law is that Arizona is the spiritual home of small-government libertarianism and the feeling that Government is a necessary evil; perhaps more evil than necessary. They don't want the government telling them when and where or if they can keep and bear and conceal weapons, what they can eat, smoke or drink or what they can do on their property. They don't trust public education or public radio and they sure as hell don't want to pay for them. I suspect they'd raise holy hell if the police were to stop them at random looking for contraband or illegal weapons or even a drivers license, yet they're apparently quite happy to demand that anyone "suspicious" in that state must keep proof of citizenship on their person at all times, display such proof to any cop that feels like demanding it, or face serious consequences. Of course, if you're white, you're probably all right, so never mind.

To any unbiased observer this alone would more than hint of a police state and unconstitutional government interference in private life.

Sure, if the Arizona police were perfect human beings there would be little concern, but they're far from that. Still, those self-styled Libertarians seem quite happy to give unprecedented and perhaps unconstitutional power to Law enforcement to stop people and demand papers. It's pretty hard to maintain the pose of strict constitutional limits on government when the power reserved for the judicial branch is given to a cop on the beat. The various issues surrounding protecting citizens from government powers of search and seizure were a cornerstone of our rebellion against British rule -- as I shouldn't have to remind anyone.

Dare I speculate that the Libertarian label might, for a great many people, sometimes be only the phony ID that authoritarianism carries?

Evidently fear of aliens overrides high principle and what Arizona really wants is a government that cuts a swath through the law to root out what they want rooted out -- and the Constitution be damned. What they want is a government that lays it's fingers heavily on people they don't like and lays completely off anything that stands between them and whatever they please. Sorry cowboy; when you add in the racist element, this situational Libertarianism is too much like Fascism to make it worth trying to find a difference.

Graham Crackers

Life is strange. Franklin Graham got himself into trouble by bragging about how moral we Christian Americans are as opposed to "these other countries."

"you can't beat your wife, you cannot murder your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries."

Of course there's some truth to it. Such practices do go on, but that they don't go on too often in the US, is hard for me to attribute to the ennobling influence of fundamentalist fire and brimstone Christianity of the Franklin sort. You've seen the statistics about the so-called Bible Belt and I think they show that such crimes are bred by ignorance and poverty and alcohol not by Sunday Sermons. I would challenge anyone to show that Atheists for instance, are more likely to murder their daughters - or anyone for that matter.

None the Less Franklin missed the opportunity to teach about the brotherhood of man and our universal failings and frailties as well, and chose instead the traditional tribal posture of moral superiority in an attempt to rally the Christian faithful by riling the Muslim faithful. He also missed the opportunity to speak at the Pentagon on the National Day of Prayer - when the Bill of Rights goes into hiding and we pretend we're back in George II's Merry Old Christian England, being told when, how and to whom to pray -- just like old Tom Jefferson wanted.

Some might find that puzzling since Billy Graham, famous for agreeing in a taped conversation with Richard Nixon, about how "the Jews" were ruining the country, that "the Jews" had a stranglehold on the American media, seems still to be in favor amongst presidents needing to show how Christian they are, including Mr. Obama and the randy Mr. Clinton. The Elder Graham did of course do a great deal of grovelling and talking about his record of not trying to convert Jews and being a friend of Israel and it seems to have worked. I'd have to take exception to the former claim, however, since I've met him and still have vivid memories of one of his associates pummeling me on the chest and insisting most sincerely that what I felt was Jesus trying to enter my heart. I'm not sure either that his "friendship" with Israel means anything but a thirst for the actualization of ancient political propaganda and I'm not sure he doesn't approve of the kind of theocratic Israeli politics I despise.

Anyway, this is the USA where things are felt first and rationalized later and Billy is still one of the most admired men in the country and Mr. Obama apparently seems to feel the need to be seen praying with the wealthy country gentleman. Maybe they make needles with camel-size eyes these days.

Perhaps that need is real since the viral, Republican generated e-mail hoax insisting that he's canceled the National Day of Prayer has achieved orbital velocity and doesn't seem to be slowing down even after colliding with the facts. We can't forget just how many Republicans and takers of tea insist he's a Muslim Fundamentalist either. I guess he needs to be seen on his knees with the right someone, grovelling to no one and not bending over too far to shake hands with non-Christian foreign dignitaries half his height. Frankly Mr. Franklin, I hate to see a president on his knees for any reason.