LIFE

Sunday Octopus Edition

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Ron Paul and my rights

Non pudet, quia pudendum est;
prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est;
certum est, quia impossibile.*

I really want to like Ron Paul. There have been times when I felt we needed Ron Paul, even if only to keep the others honest. I concur wholeheartedly with many of his ideas about leaving people alone in their homes and private lives; about transparency in financial matters. I share the loathing of surveillance, of being forced to carry papers. I agree about the wars that are useful only to increase government power over domestic affairs. I agree about the importance of the Bill of Rights that neither Party seems to care much about -- and so on, but I am constantly reminded that I really don't know how he can say what he says, nor can I understand his motivations without postulating entities sufficient to send Occam running down the street screaming.

Two years ago he told us that

"Congress refuses to allow reasonable, environmentally sensitive, offshore drilling."

They did, of course allow drilling, but they allowed unreasonable, unsafe and reckless drilling, free of unbiased oversight, which according to Libertarian doctrine should have magically resulted in safe and reasonable results: they allowed the drillers to tell us what was safe enough and what was too expensive to do. They allowed the rig operators to determine what the lives of the workers were worth relative to profits and they allowed them not to give a damn that my grandchildren may never see a clean beach in Florida or eat Gulf shrimp.

It wasn't reasonable, environmentally sensitive drilling that got us into the current mess, now was it? It could have been all that if the laws had been enforced. The blowout might have been prevented if the people in charge of oversight hadn't been on the oil train and had done their jobs; if the regulations themselves hadn't been written by oil men and largely in secret -- if government hadn't been made to look the other way because of a philosophy teaching that government should look the other way. Eleven good men, many of whom saw this coming, would still be alive had we had some very basic oversight -- if we didn't have people insisting that the people who profit write the rules and the people with everything to lose keep silent or be called Communists.

Yet Dr. Paul says it was because of too much government that BP cheated and lied and people died -- that vast tracts of land and sea were destroyed, important industries were ruined, property made worthless -- and old fashioned as it may sound, I think contradictions in logic and fact weaken an argument. Is it a contradiction that oversight in an industry that has the capability of doing unprecedented damage is "too much government" while giving tax breaks and incentives to companies making tens of billions in profits is not?

Yes, it is a contradiction! Are we really so afraid of Communism that we're willing to accept what is by definition, giving state supported irresponsibility to state supported industries while calling it "limited government?" Or is it that the rather insignificant benefit of allowing a foreign corporation to pump American oil and sell it abroad in amounts that really don't matter either in terms of conservation or the price of crude, is a consummation so devoutly to be demanded that risking the end of the world is not worth talking about?

"We still need oil, and a lot of good jobs depend on oil production,"

he advises us. But do we need that oil, from there and do we need it so much we'll gamble our country's future on it, people's lives and livelihoods on grabbing a tiny bit more of it. We should be held hostage so that foreign corporations who pay hardly any taxes yet have a bigger vote than you do can add to their already obscene profits: so that they can play while we pay -- and pay forever.

It's a bad argument, a very, very bad argument, even coming from someone not smart enough to see that -- and Paul certainly is smart enough, so why is adding an insignificant amount to the current supply of oil so desperately important? Why are oil jobs more important than the countless other jobs destroyed by oil spills? Are today's fishing jobs, logging jobs, more important than making sure that there are fish and trees next week? Libertarianism would seem to say so. Libertarianism would seem to promise that passenger pigeons will return now that they were hunted to extinction, that we'd still have the American Bison and the Bald Eagle if we'd been allowed to shoot as many as we liked, but you know -- it's not true.

Look, I don't think I'm channeling Marx when I say that we don't have crime simply because we have too many police, that Enron destroyed lives and fortunes because the Government looked at their books; that people wouldn't rob banks if banks had no guards and robbery weren't illegal. I don't think it's communism to have a government say: no dammit, you can't build a fireworks factory next to that school and if you build it anywhere, you'll install sprinklers and put up no smoking signs, but that's just what people calling themselves libertarians are saying.

I don't understand and I'm quite sure I don't understand because it's not to be understood, it's to be believed. The pieces of the puzzle don't need to fit, the ideas don't need to work. In fact they have a history which proves it so. It's the logic of emotion; the argument from anger and the special pleadings of selfish solipsism: I don't care what happens to my country if oil is a penny a barrel cheaper for two weeks. I don't care if it's a Ponzi scheme because I'm making money. I don't care if I poison the river, my property rights are my property rights. I don't care if your grandmother can't ride my bus -- it's my bus and my right. I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the fact that I don't understand or by the fear that I do understand.

*There is no shame because it is shameful;
it is wholly credible, because it is unsound;
it is certain, because impossible.

(with apologies to Turtullian)

MEET CHARLIE

This poor, skinny little creature stumbled out of the woods and into my life several days ago. He spent two days at the vet’s (I have had so many strays, my vet and I are on a first name basis!) who determined that he doesn’t have any terminal illness. But he did have several ticks embedded around his head, ears impacted with ear mites, hook worms and lung worms. And, as you can see from the photos, Charlie is also severely malnourished.

We have estimated his age at about 8-9 months and suspect Charlie is the victim of casual cruelty, having mostly likely been dumped in the woods or left behind when his people moved out of some house nearby. While he looks pretty pitiful still, this is a great improvement from that first day.

I named him after Charlie from the Willy Wonka movie; two tow headed boys who didn’t have much going for them but still remained sweet and hopeful. Charlie the cat wants only to be with others, cuddled and petted although it is difficult to pet him much for all the exposed bony prominences.

Whoever did this will not pay the price for such cruelty under the newly minted NC Susie’s Law, named after this poor pup who was tortured and burned by her owner. His lenient sentence of probation sparked such outrage, Susie became the poster pup for the law to offer stiffer sentences for this kind of evil. Susie has patches of bare scarred skin and most of her ears are gone but she has new owners who say she remains a sweet, loving animal. You have to ask yourself WTF is wrong with someone that they would do this to a helpless animal?

Charlie on the other hand would not be seen as tortured but merely abandoned. I would cut his former owners some slack except for the fact that there are at least two animal shelters and several veterinary offices in the area where they could have put him in a box with holes and left him on the doorstep.

I have long been of an opinion that with our advanced technology too many people live that shouldn’t. So we have these pus bags walking on the same earth and breathing the same air.

Lock them up in a deep dark hole and throw away the key, please!

Loonies, Moonies and Republicans - oh my!

I remember reading Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon many years ago. It's about an old Soviet apparatchik fallen from grace and thrown into one of Stalin's prisons to await some miserable and sordid fate in the Lublyanka cellars. It came to mind because there's a mention in it of group photos of the Old Guard, the early, idealistic, committed Communists out to make a better world and how one by one, the official photos on the office wall were replaced by newer ones with certain people missing, certain others added.

It was long before digital photography and before it made it so easy for unscrupulous, devious, dishonest, America hating, indecent propagandists to produce photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.

It's far too easy for an American public so insanely desperate, so grossly, childishly irresponsible that they will get into bed with the Moonies just to have one more idiotic piece of dung to fling at the opposition. It's so easy for a public who never reads to miss the parallels between what they do and what the people they claim to hate did. It's so easy for an infantile America to dismiss someone for having Communist cooties because they simply haven't the brains to do much more and certainly can't be expected to discuss her actual qualifications and record.

It's so hard for a person who likes to see people get their just desserts when those people are the country he so wishes to be proud of.

ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS OF THE PLANET

Octopus Edition

Credit Tom Tomorrow.
Click on image to enlarge.

It's Not Personal, Sir

Back in March, in a post entitled "Into The Fog", I requested, "...if any of you can think of a convincing argument in favor of continuing the war in Afghanistan...something other than the reason most of the kids who are there give, which is 'to look out for my buddies here'...by all means, fill me in." Today, I just finished the Rolling Stone  article by Michael Hastings.  You know, the one that will likely cost General McChrystal both his job and his spot in history; hereafter, he'll be known as the general who actually believed that a friendly Rolling Stone journalist would be one of the guys, first, and a journalist, second.  I wasn't buying our chances in Afghanistan in March, before our commanding generals buckled so publicly under the strain, and I'm not buying them now, either...for the same reasons.


We will leave Afghanistan because we can't afford to fight that war no matter how many good reasons we find.  It's the economy, sir.  It isn't personal.


 In my opinion, Michael Hastings should not have published that article; that might make me look hopelessly old school, but I don't care; Hastings had to have understood that journalists who are given personal access to war commanders still have some modicum of responsibility to national interests.  Nor, of course, should McChrystal have given Michael Hastings access to his inner circle; that was the failure of judgment that puts all the general's other, possibly better, decisions in a different light.  Once that access was granted, I don't think McChrystal, who's known for his swagger and his hard-ass humor, should have been so trusting of Hasting's judgment--or so lacking in self-restraint or restraint of his staff--because journalism has its priorities; they are well-known and they are not personal.


My husband, who's had some exposure to military hubris, thinks the general must have been really pissed at somebody, that he must have known what he was doing.  I don't have that much faith in hubris.  McChrystal's a four-star; he's got exactly one commanding officer, whether he agrees with that commander or not...whether he agrees with the commander's choice of vice commander or not.  That's the chain of command.  Is this a war, or isn't it?  This isn't about Stanley McChrystal, although he's the guy who now needs to fall on his sword.  It isn't personal. 


While I don't agree with Hasting's choices of what to include and what to exclude from his story, "The Runaway General, " (odd choice of words), I have to agree with his concluding paragraph.

After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge. 

And not even when he's not.

Stanley McChrystal made the mistake of getting personal with the people he disagreed with in front of a journalist who owed him no allegiance. That's the kind of mistake that you and I might make weekly, which is why they don't hand those stars out to just anybody--which is why we expect more from any four-star general. However it goes when the general meets his CinC, it will be about the mission, the war, and the nation's capabilities.  It will absolutely not be personal.

Judge rules against deep water drilling moratorium

Why does this not surprise me?

Today a federal judge in New Orleans blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling that the Obama administration had ordered after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

In a 22-page ruling, Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of Federal District Court issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a May 28 order halting all floating offshore drilling projects in more than 500 feet of water and preventing the government from issuing new permits for such projects.

Citing the economic harm to businesses and workers in the gulf caused by the moratorium, Judge Feldman — a 1983 appointee of President Ronald Reagan — wrote that the Obama administration had failed to justify the need for the sweeping suspension, which he characterized as “generic, indeed punitive.”

He wrote that “the blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”

The White House immediately responded by saying that it would appeal the decision.

Good. But what hope is there with the current and seemingly currupt Supreme Court?

The Obama administration had argued that a six-month suspension of deepwater drilling was necessary so that the government could complete its investigation of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and make sure that other drilling operations on the outer continental shelf were safe.

But the order was challenged by a coalition of businesses that provide services and equipment to offshore drilling platforms. The companies sued, asking the judge to declare the moratorium to be invalid and arguing that there was no evidence that existing operations were unsafe.

If I remember correctly, there was no evidence the Deepwater Horizon drill was unsafe either - until it exploded killing 11 workers and  spewing anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

I'm sure businesses that rely on oil companies to stay afloat are deeply concerned about the welfare of the residents, wildlife and environment in the area. Do I hear the echo of BP in the background?

The State of Louisiana filed a brief supporting the lawsuit, arguing that the moratorium would damage its economy.

I can appreciate the concern of Gulf Coast residents for their livelihood and I wouldn't want to be in their shoes - not for a day, not for a minute. But sometimes short-term sacrifices have to be made to ensure that the future will provide a safer and more secure life style.

Catherine Wannamaker, a lawyer for environmental groups that intervened in the case and supported the moratorium, called the ruling "a step in the wrong direction."

"We think it overlooks the ongoing harm in the Gulf, the devastation it has had on people's lives," she said. "The harm at issue with the Deepwater Horizon spill is bigger than just the Louisiana economy. It affects all of the Gulf."

UPDATE FROM MOTHER JONES: According to the most recently available financial disclosure form for US District Court Judge Martin Feldman, he had holdings of up to $15,000 in Transocean in 2008. He has also recently owned stock in offshore drilling or oilfield service providers Halliburton, Prospect Energy, Hercules Offshore, Parker Drilling Co., and ATP Oil & Gas

Comparative speeches 101

Nonsense and dribble is expected from the right and they deliver on cue. Such pettiness and snarkiness coming from the left is disheartening, disturbing and quite possibly unjustified.

Around the Blogosphere, in articles and comments, President Obama was criticized by progressives for merely giving a pep talk and for not offering a plan to develop alternative energy sources. This speech was about the oil spill; it was not about recycling or growing our own food.

If he were Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, he would have done this or said that, an echo heard throughout cyberspace.

Truth is, most of us have romantic and fanciful notions about the great speeches of Abe, FDR and JFK. We have memorized and recited passages  in school and we have seen the same snippets over and over on David Letterman. But what most of us haven't heard or read are the entire speeches.

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

The last paragraph is what many of us had to memorize in school:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Lincoln offered no plans on how to end the Civil War. The speech was described as "theologically intense." In fact, Lincoln mentioned God six times in this very short speech - four paragraphs in all.

Full text.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Declaration of War, December 8, 1941

In FDR's brief Declaration of War against Japan, most likely it is the first paragraph that people remember the most.

"Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

Roosevelt did not elaborate on how we were going to win the war, or urge people to buy war bonds or plant Victory Gardens. That would come later. His speech was only slightly longer than Lincoln's. But what he did say in the next to last paragraph was:

"With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God."

God: 1

Full text.

John F. Kennedy, Bay of Pigs Invasion, April 20, 1961

I think it's safe to say that the most famous quote from any of Kennedy's speeches was from his inauguration. The words moved the entire nation - well, at least the Democrats and probably a lot of young people.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

God: 3

Kennedy presented his Bay of Pigs address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It is described as a motivational or inspirational speech.

He outlined three lessons that should have been learned from recent events: 1) the forces of communism are not to be underestimated, in Cuba or anywhere else in the world; 2) this Nation, in concert with all the free nations of this hemisphere, must take an ever closer and more realistic look at the menace of external Communist intervention and domination in Cuba; 3) we face a relentless struggle in every corner of the globe that goes far beyond the clash of armies or even nuclear armaments. (His words.)

God: 0

Full text.

John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis, October 22, 1962

Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis speech was a work of art as were most of his speeches. I think it is safe to say that he had a rare gift - and better writers than any president has had before or since.

Just as Roosevelt accused Japan of planning the attack on Pearl Harbor for a long time and lying about it all that while, Kennedy accused the Soviets of planning and preparing a series of offensive missile sites on the island of Cuba and lying.

The president detailed seven major steps: 1)  put a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba; 2) continue and increase close surveillance of Cuba and its military buildup; 3) to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States; 4) reinforce our base at Guantanamo; 5) call for an immediate meeting of the Organization] of Consultation under the Organization of American States; 6) call for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council; 7) to call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.

At the end, Kennedy said:

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

God: 1

Full text.

Barack Obama, Gulf Oil Spill, June 15, 2010

I will be the first to say that this wasn't Obama's finest hour - or fifteen minutes. His speech did not measure up to Kennedy's on the Cuban Missile Crisis but it was better than FDR's Declaration of War and even Lincoln's second Inaugural address.

Our country is an old hand at war but this spill is the worst environmental crisis we've ever faced. I'm not sure there's anyone in the White House, or the science and engineering fields, who really knows what to do. Being an arm chair engineer is always easier than being on the team trying to figure out how to get this monster under control. I doubt if the president ever took an engineering course in his life.

I wonder if people truly understand that, "Because there has never been a leak of this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology."

Obama offered a battle plan consisting of three stages: 1) clean up; 2) recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast region; 3) ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again - "I have established a National Commission to understand the causes of this disaster and offer recommendations on what additional safety and environmental standards we need to put in place."

I wonder if people remembered this statement the next day:
Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.

God: 3 

Full text.

1970s: Helen Reddy - I Am Woman

Women have come a long way, Baby. Since the 1970s when Reddy wrote I Am Woman, my sisters have made huge strides in the political and corporate arenas. Yet many battles continue - the fight for equal pay and reproductive rights, the fight to be treated as the victim in rape and spouse abuse. Minority women have an even larger battle.

Women are still fighting the characterization of our sex as mere pieces of meat. Whole magazines feature illustrations of nude or semi-nude women. TV and billboard ads feature women in suggestive poses with pouty lips and curvaceous bodies.

Maybe this is to be expected in the world of advertising and magazines. After all, boys of all ages will be boys and I suppose playing out their sexual fantasies by looking at girlie pictures should be expected.

But I'm having a hard time accepting this - especially on normally progressive blogs published by supposedly intelligent men who usually write well about the issues of today. Girlie pictures are insulting to most women. You have the right to post such crap. We have the right to change channels - perhaps feeling some disappointment that in this day and age, in this year of 2010, all men seem to be created equal in the world of the meat market.

THE MSM's GUT BRAIN AND OTHER ATROCITIES THAT PASS FOR NEWS ANALYSES

I read Neil Postman's "Entertaining Ourselves to Death" years ago and recommend it to anyone seeking to understand the shallow and the absurd that passes for political punditry on cable and network teevee.

Brian Johnson and Bliss Green write for the blog Postmanisms and have posted a thoughtful and at the same time depressing analysis of how the MSM have shamelessly abandoned any pretense of doing their job of elucidating for the American people the complex issues surrounding the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, we've been given front-row seats to a circus of idiots trying to outdo themselves in irrelevancy and inanity, from Chris Matthews of MSNBC whining about having to hear, more than once, that President Obama's Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, has a Nobel Prize in physics, to the foolish clowns at FOX News repeating GOP talking points, calling BP's $20 billion fund to compensate those who were financially injured by the spill--calling it a "shakedown."


But I'll let these two talented writers explain it in their own words:


"The phylogeny of Immediacy, Nowness, Hysteria, and Contingent Finality came together this week in a mere 24-hour news cycle (more like 12 hours of real time) that saw President Obama described first as wishy-washy, bland, and listless, and then as a bully enforcer demanding corporate accountability, which would make him the most relaxed “bully” in history. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a respected popular historian, practices the craft of history in situ, because her expertise fools you into thinking her snap judgments have depth. Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman is upset that the President–like an eighteenth-century poet–didn’t have the “fingertip feel,” because after all the President is only a performer, like a reality-show contestant, and his “appearance” is therefore more significant than talking about what he is doing, is not doing, could be doing, or cannot do (i.e. swim down to the well and sit on it, as some critics seem to want). Chris Matthews is bothered that President Obama mentions Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu’s Nobel Prize cred because, well, Chris, in his official TV role of “feeling” for the “ordinary American” believes that that fictional category of person feels condescended to when someone who might actually know more than they do renders a thoughtful opinion.


The staff here at Postmanisms don’t, like the “staff” at TMZ, “hang out” in “cubicles” “casually talking” about stuff they “just happened to see.” Would that our Instant Now media felt any obligation to think before speaking. An analyst’s gutbrain, the educated-person’s version of Beavis and Butt-head mocking videos on MTV, is the only thing TV wants. Let’s face it: serious thought is no fun to watch, and most viewers have been well-trained by the medium to have no patience for extended argument or analysis. At least Roger Ebert always had a longish essay of thoughtful critique behind his thumbs-up/-down. The daily reduction of serious issues (i.e. that a terminal addiction to oil is the only reason the Gulf is going to die) to matters of perception and style (a reflection of the shallowness of the medium itself) turns the entire TV-reported world into the equivalent of TMZ: the world exists only to be paraded in front of us and judged, minute by minute, each judgment final, until the next minute."

Watch this.