Smoke Screens in Providence, Rhode Island

I recently returned to Philadelphia from a visit with my daughter and son-in-law in Rhode Island. I heard about the folly of Providence's mayor and school board who believe that the answer to all the academic failures and to all the financial deficits of the Providence School District can be solved by firing every single school teacher.

Considering a parallel in medicine might present the following scenario: People notice that the mortality rate at the local cancer hospital is higher than that of the local general hospital. To resolve the problem, physicians feel more money is needed for research and patient care. But, no one wants to pay more in taxes to support proper care for the cancer patients, and politicians are hard pressed to look as though they are doing something. So, they fire all of the professionals at the hospital, doctors and nurses alike. What sense does that make?

None. Nor does firing the professionals who dedicate their lives to work with inner city children, often from families with financial and linguistic challenges. Politicians can pretend they are doing something when in reality they are blowing out a smoke screen that will only pollute the lives of disadvantaged children while solving nothing. Shame on the mayor, the school board, and all of the voters who allowed this to happen.

Passion play

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

___________

If you managed to get through grade school, you've read this many times, but it never seems to influence the way Americans act or feel: a syndrome which seems more influenced by mob psychology and sectarian chauvinism than anything else. Of course it's long been this way and we've long been a xenophobic and gullible nation, but with the advent of round-the-clock swineherds like Fox, the grunting and squealing of feral hog America is drowning out the voice of our founding fathers and of decent men and women everywhere.

"even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." (Ben Franklin)

The same folks who want to persecute Muslims for their religion and prohibit the free exercise thereof will assert, without twitching their nostrils at the smell of hypocrisy, that this is a Christian nation and that Christian laws, whatever they might be, supersede our national laws about abortion, birth control, spending government funds on Christian activities and browbeating children into theological submission. It's not OK that a Muslim man doesn't want to drink alcohol or a Jew doesn't want to eat pork, but it's fine that a Christian pharmacist refuses to dispense condoms. Damn the constitution, we're a Christian nation. The laws of other religions need not apply and in fact, although there is no chance whatever that the United States will adopt the Quir'an as a replacement to the Constitution and body of laws, it's not enough for the grunting pigs of God who would like to make the free exercise of Islam illegal.

He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. (Isaiah 53:3)

The latest crusade seems to be about portraying every comment by every Muslim as an example of Sharia, from a cabby in Detroit asking that he not be forced to transport alcohol to someone praying in Arabic in front of the white house. According to one witness, he was asking for a blessing on those "Christians" who seemed oblivious to the staggering irony of a mob mocking and cursing a bearded man, bent in prayer, forgiving them for persecuting him. None of this has anything to do with any effort to replace our laws and courts with Islamic laws or Islamic judges nor can it since no effort exists. As to the rules of private observance - let's let only Christians do that! The only credible attempt or theocratic pretenders to the throne of course is by self-styled Christians, as the porcine squeals of the glossolalians Palin and Huckabee would prove.

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen. . ." (George Washington)

Perhaps it's fortunate that such people are stupid enough to hoist themselves with their own petty petards. You'll recall and perhaps with a smile, Oklahoma's attempt to thwart the non-existent Islamic take-over by attempting a tin foil hat law banning all religious commands -- which in effect banned the Jewish commandments they had been trying to insert into American life, but we can't afford to depend on their congenital stupidity when so much is at stake. And yes, it takes a stupid man to think that somehow Americans would decide to write Sharia or Islamic tribal practices into American law in open defiance of the Constitution or that the tiny percentage of Muslim Americans would somehow magically or accidentally do it by themselves.

The courts have decisively ruled that the establishment and free exercise clauses forbid the Federal and State to prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion or atheism. The Torah, the Bible, the Quir'an, the Gita, the works of Nietzsche: state or Federal government may not adopt any of them as preferable, much less mandatory. But we're a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel people if I might borrow from T.E. Lawrence -- and a cowardly, ignorant and hateful people as well. "Conservative" legislators continue and will persist in thriving on our traditional sins by inventing threats which must be countered by measures to accelerate our inexorable descent into looserhood. They'll continue to demonize the way their predecessors demonized German, Irish, Italian, Mexican, African, Catholic, Jewish, Chinese and Indian immigrants and history will continue to prove them wrong.

Last Mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery

(Click on image to enlarge)

Here is a photo of the Space Shuttle Discovery (designation OV-103), photographed from my 5th floor balcony on February 24, 2011 at a distance of 47 miles from Kennedy Space Center.  If you click on the image to enlarge, you can see a profile of the booster rocket and the space shuttle at the top of the plume trail.

First flown in 1984, Discovery is the oldest orbiter in the fleet and the first to be retired, marking the end of an era. It takes its name from 3 British sailing ships renowned in history: Henry Hudson’s Discovery (1610-1611) which searched for the Northwest Passage, the HMS Discovery (1875-1876) which brought Captain George Nares to the North Pole, and the RRS Discovery (1901-1904) commissioned as a Royal Geographic Society research vessel. This Discovery is the orbiter used to launch the Hubble Space Telescope.  Here are some vital statistics:

Made 38 trips to space

Carried 246 crew members (lifetime)

Spent 352 days in orbit

Circled the Earth 5,628 times

Traveled 143 million miles

There will be one more flight each of the Endeavor (mission #STS-134) and the Atlantis (mission #STS-135) before the Space Shuttle program closes for the last time.

You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

From "Why Man Creates" (1968) by Saul Bass.

I'll be your Huckleberry

Let's see if I've got this straight. Mike Huckabee went on a radio show this week and said that Obama was raised in Kenya. Of course, as his spokesman later explained:

Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia. When the Governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the President, he wasn’t talking about the President’s place of birth - the Governor believes the President was born in Hawaii. The Governor would however like to know more about where President Obama’s liberal policies come from and what else the President plans to do to this country - as do most Americans.

So, he just "misspoke," right? Slip of the tongue. Nothing to see here. Let's just move on.

End of story, right?

Not even close.

Two days later, our boy Huckleberry went on Bryan Fischer's radio show and said once again that he'd made a simple mistake:

And it's really an indication of just how pathetic some of these folks are who claim to be journalists and reporters and have failed to do a decent job. You know, I admitted that I misspoke on that, but I corrected it. But what I have never done is taken to position that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or anywhere other than Hawaii where he claims to have been born.

(Cute, right? "...claims to have been born...")

But that just shows that Huckleberry is, in fact, a lying ball of snot.

First, let's go back to the original "mistake."

I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American.

...if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Now, if you're paying attention, he didn't just say "having grown up in Kenya," he repeated the claim, and then specifically referenced the Mau Mau revolution. Which happened, not in Indonesia, but Kenya, in 1952.

If he had meant to say "Indonesia," why would he talk about Kenyan history?

Mostly because he wanted to talk about Obama's view of the British. If he'd said "Indonesia," he might have had to talk about Obama's view of the Dutch, who the Indonesians overthrew in 1949. (Really? The Dutch? Wooden shoes and tulips? Who wouldn't want to overthrow them? That would be almost as bad as being ruled over by the fucking Belgians...)

Golly, Obama returned the bust of Churchill! Which, you know, wasn't ours to begin with - it was on loan from the British government. But let's not let some pesky facts get in the way of a good narrative, right?

(And you know, really, who gives a crap that Obama lived in Indonesia? For four years - ages six through ten. God knows all my behavior patterns were set in stone by the time I was ten...)

As Capt Fogg already pointed out, Huckabee just wanted to paint Obama as "alien." Foreign. "Different from you and me."

Dark-skinned. Evil.

Huck went on O'Reilly, too. Which made Lawrence O'Donnell a little cranky.

In the interview, O'Reilly and Huckabee agreed that Obama grew up very differently from most people. Huckabee said that, unlike regular Americans, Obama did not grow up "going to Boy Scout meetings and playing Little League baseball in a small town." O'Reilly concurred, saying that Obama is "not a traditional guy," and that he's had a "different experience" from the "mom and apple pie" upbringing of most Americans.

This drew O'Donnell's ire. "Welcome to America, where most of us didn't grow up going to Boy Scout meetings," he said. "In fact, the vast majority of American men never had anything to do with the Boy Scouts."

O'Donnell then played a clip of Huckabee on a radio show, saying, "our communities were filled with Rotary clubs, not madrassas." That comment caused him to say that Huckabee was not telling the truth:

"If Huckabee and O'Reilly can stop lying about Barack Obama long enough to actually do some research...what they will soon discover to their utter astonishment, is that Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii, where there are Rotary clubs everywhere, but where I, for one, have never seen a madrassa,"

Other people have pointed out a few other problems with this view of Obama, too.

But in their attempts to portray Obama as devoid of traditionally American experiences, Huckabee and O'Reilly are pretending as if everyone else is growing up in fifties suburbia. In reality, we have a diverse country, and American upbringings are similarly varied. It's no less American to play basketball instead of baseball, or to spend your time at the beach instead of the Boy Scouts. As for O'Reilly's "mom-and-apple-pie upbringing," we're pretty sure Obama had a mom.

If the absence of Little League or Scout meetings is really so disconcerting to Huckabee, we wonder what he would say about Ronald Reagan, who also never participated in either of those things ("I never cared for baseball ... because I was ball-shy at batting," he once said). In fact, out of all our presidents, only George W. Bush is a former Little Leaguer, and only John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Bush were in the Boy Scouts. All of our other presidents, we guess, had an exotic, un-American upbringing, and a skewed worldview.

Of course, this is Huckleberry, who wants to establish a theocracy in America... (OK, maybe that's not fair. He just wants to amend the Constitution "to be in line with the Bible.")

He probably shouldn't have brought up scouting, either. After all, his son David was kicked out of the Boy Scouts for torturing and killing a dog. (Yup, that's the same son who was arrested a few years ago trying to smuggle a gun onto a plane.)

I'd say there's something wrong with how that boy was raised, for sure.

Oh, yeah. And by the way. Obama "probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather"? You know what other country had to throw off the yoke of British imperialism?

The United States.

CLINTON GETS CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Isn’t it heartening to see Democrats finally finding their backbone and standing up to the GOP/Giant Corporate Machine's attempt at the complete the takeover of America?

The news today focuses on a jarring statement by Hillary Clinton on, well, The News. HERE is the non-partisan article reported by the AP. Clinton criticized American news venues for their lack of content on world events. She went on to say that the English version of Al Jazeera was doing a better job of covering events in the Middle East than any US network and the American news is "celebrity obsessed."

Show of hands, how many of you turn on the news just so you can watch Charlie Sheen’s meltdown into madness or the woohoo of the lastest Hollywood slut du jour peeking out from under her miniskirt?

Of course, in true partisan circus fashion, various news outlets are either praising her comments or berating her with more inflammatory sensationalism in their lead lines such as, “Hillary pimps Al Jazeera” and “Hillary has a crush on Al Jazeera.”

Thankfully there are also qualified people without a political ax to grind who agree with her assessment. Like Former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno:

"She's right," said Sesno, who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. "Cable news has become cable noise. It was intended to be an opportunity to inform people, and instead it has become an opportunity to inflame people."

Only one media outlet has jumped in with both feet to make an inane statement.

Fox News Channel's Michael Clemente said he was "surprised and kind of curious" by Clinton's remarks. "We've got leadership issues there, the safety of people, the safety of our own people," said Clemente, senior vice president for news. "Some big issues. All of a sudden there are headlines about Al-Jazeera versus the news in this country? It's just surprising. Curious more than surprising."

Not sure what leadership or safety issues Clemente is referring to because in typical FOX fashion he is throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. Tonight they will be beating the “socialist, Marxist, Kenyan” drum – of that you can be sure.

I DO hope the momentum of movement started by the Wisconsin 14 and our Secretary Of State will continue to be added to by other progressive Americans taking a stand and adding their voices. If we are going to save this country, the time for action is now!

The Wisconsin Fourteen Honor Roll

For weeks, we have known them collectively as the "Wisconsin Fourteen," those 14 State Senators who left their homes and families, and left the state to deprive a proto-fascist governor of a quorum. Harassed, bullied, and threatened as no public servants in living memory, they have become true heroes in the struggle to preserve hard-won union rights.  Here are their names and faces:

Senator Tim Carpenter

Senator Spencer Coggs

Senator Timothy Cullen

Senator Jon Erpenbach

Senator Dave Hansen

Senator Jim Holperin

Senator Robert Jauch

Senator Chris Larson

Senator Julie Lassa

Senator Mark Miller

Senator Fred Risser

Senator Lena Taylor

Senator Kathleen Vinehout

Senator Robert Wirch

Joey the Rat was late

Just for giggles, because I've found a similarly twisted soul at work, I established "Blasphemy Wednesday" last week, as an opportunity to tell jokes that... well, that my boss probably wouldn't appreciate.

So, today, on Thursday, I find out that "irony" has been, once again, defined. This time, the pope has written a book where, it turns out, he's determined that the Jews aren't responsible for the death of Jesus.

Now, to begin with, the former Hitler Youth declared that Jews are innocent after all? And I learn this on a Thursday? Where the hell was this info on Wednesday when I needed it?

Past this, let me just point out the words of Max Canning over on Inebriated Discourse. Having pointed out that, in order for Christianity to exist, Jesus pretty much had to die, he throws in a little logic (always a mistake with religion, but still...):

Given the terms of this odious quid pro quo, the Jews—far from being villains in this sordid story—were crucially necessary players in god’s Divine Plan of human sacrifice and vicarious salvation. Without the Jewish elders’ entreaties to Pilate to persecute Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion does not happen, the sacrifice does not happen, and the salvation does not happen. Without this atrocious occurrence, there is no everlasting life, only darkness. The Jews are therefore heroes, deemed by god as such, who carried out this dastardly deed as foreordained by god himself. They were merely acting as the instruments of god, who knew damn well what was going to happen when he impregnated Mary, while poor Joseph was left to wonder whether his wife had been sleeping around on him.

Huckabee on the carpet

British comedian Ricky Gervais recently put together a short TV comedy series, Idiots Abroad; seven episodes indulging his obvious schadenfreude by making his "friend" and reputed moron Carl Pilkington miserable despite having been being sent to visit some wonderful places. It had the effect of annoying me since Pilkington, who isn't quite the idiot Gervais says he is, seems rather to be a nice and decent sort of fellow and deserved better treatment, even if that would undermine the premise of the show.

I don't feel quite the same way about Likable Mike Huckabee, affable and avuncular and sincere though he may seem. It's as hard to feel sympathy for one whose idiocy seems more purposeful and politically founded than genetic, although that may be a factor too. I'm not just talking about his shameless promotion of Bronze age ignorance and mythology and the snickering denigration of science. I'm not just talking about promoting the invasion of Libya and thus cementing the authority of Qaddafi, making us appear imperialistic and escalating the debt and putting a strain on our military capability. I'm talking abut his attempt to enlist a far more scurrilous bit of political mythology than "creation science" to promote his grotesque candidacy by telling us our president grew up in Africa and so really doesn't either understand us or have our interests at heart.

It's not just the racism. I'm used to racism. It's that the possibility of his candidacy rests on building and arming an insurgency of idiots who neither know or care about reality. It's like inviting the Klan to use your back yard for a rally and claiming you're above that sort of thing yourself.

It's not that he's black, you see -- it's just that you can't trust someone with the troubling attribute of being dark skinned. Smiling Mike surely knows that Barack Obama lived in Indonesia as a small boy but wasn't born in and didn't live in any part of Africa. He knows he was born in the USA as surely as Bruce Springsteen was and Mike Huckabee was and grew up in the American Midwest and was raised by his white relatives. So if he does know that and chooses none the less to have you believe otherwise, he's a liar willing to use lies to get elected. If he doesn't know that, he's an idiot to the degree that he shouldn't be given a more responsible or well paid position than a men's room attendant.

Huckabee shouldn't be trusted with leading a Boy Scout troop, much less the United States. He represents, despite his smiling, self-effacing sincerity, the lower skirt of the intellectual as well as the moral decency bell curve, no matter how you measure it.

Yes, professional fixer and HuckPAC Executive Director J. Hogan Gidley says Huckabee "simply misspoke" during his book tour, which is as convincing as saying the dog didn't crap on the carpet, but simply misshit. It only means he's not toilet trained, can't be trusted and we surely don't want him on the expensive rug in the oval office.

Class Warfare

Number of teachers in New Jersey:

112,933

Number of millionaires in New Jersey:

228,442

NJ governor thinks the NJEA

(teachers' union) leeches off taxpayers.

Meanwhile, corporate tax revenues are at historic lows.

Declining union membership, shrinking middle class.