CONGRATULATIONS TO MATT OSBORNE

By Tree Octopus

Fellow Swash Zoner and honorary cephalopod, Matt Osborne, has been named one of sixteen winners of a scholarship to attend the 2010 Netroots Nation Convention in Las Vegas (announcement here). The competition and scholarship is sponsored by the Daily Kos.

Leftovering

by Nance

 So fast that my head is still spinning, I discover that we've switched longitudes and are back on the Left Coast for a couple of months. The world usually looks different from here, and I'm sure I'll find that to be the case this time...as soon as my ears stop that zoned out, plane trip hum and my brain catches up with the rest of my space suit. I'll be trying to open the refrigerator door with the wrong hand and pawing the walls fruitlessly for light switches for a week.

Whatever this post contains, I plead Jet Lag Compounded by Old Age. Which reminds me of the obituary my friend, Susan, sent me recently from a small town newspaper: the beloved deceased was known for her collections of Precious Moments and Mickey Mouse figurines and she died of "complications of old age."   I not only want that in my obituary, but I intend to make liberal use of that diagnosis as an excuse to ramble aimlessly on one of my favorite Twenty-First Century subjects.

Airport Econ and Culture Studies

We spend a ridiculous amount of time in Charlotte-Douglas International, the southern hub we prefer to the more crowded Hartsfield Jackson in Atlanta.  Charlotte is still crowded, but you see fewer people running on the moving sidewalk and you can actually walk from one end of the airport to the other in fifteen minutes.

 We also love the USO in Charlotte.  It's big and comfortable and it lets us visit with active duty service members headed for or returning from the Middle East.  There, they can kick back in big recliners, pick up a used book or two, plug into wi-fi, catch the news or sports on a big screen TV, and grab a hot dog.  The volunteer staffers are cheerful retirees who embody a sense of home. I can't understand why, when the news is on at the USO, it's always FOX; do those kindly volunteers assume that, once some mother's child dons the uniform, they automatically become conservatives?  Seems to me, if the POTUS we elected was a Democrat....well, it's just one more of the fascinating puzzles in the field of Airport Anthropology.

Despite the fact that the room is peopled largely by 18 to 25 year-olds and the television is on, it's noticeably, disarmingly quiet there. I always imagine that USO as a way-station for uniformed time travelers in shocked transition between utterly dissimilar universes. We like to say hello softly and  make a donation, because, naturally, we support our troops even when we don't agree with the wars being waged.  You can click on the logo if you'd like to do the same.

In the spring of 2008, we discovered a little-known economic indicator at the airport: the shoe-shine kiosk was empty.  We'd never seen that before, never really paid it much attention; it had always been busy and we'd taken it for granted, but on this trip we were shocked to find that both shiners and shinees had disappeared.  Business travel was in the tank.  That struck us more forcibly at the time than a headline in the Wall Street Journal. Then, in the fall of '09, we noticed that a couple of workers and customers had returned. Yesterday, all five stadium seats were full of garrulous men in crisp, pale blue oxford cloth shirts, red or maroon ties, and creased suit pants, happily exchanging business cards while the workers slapped the toes of ten black wingtips into mirror shine...living testimonials to economic recovery for now.

The people-watching in airports is justifiably famous.  There's always a couple of strange souls at each gate who trigger stories in my head about a Parallel Universe America (apparently, jet lag causes me to channel Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Kurt Vonnegut ).  There were the, now accustomed, piercing competitors who vie for the category of Strangest Self-Mutilation and who look like they fell down the basement stairs with a tackle box.  And the tattoo artists who wear their art from neck to wrist to ankle; they have to wear clothes over their art and it must be hard for them to get their t-shirt logos to compliment their body-art themes, as busy as they've been lately.  It's jarring to see a delicately tinted Pegasus emerging from the short sleeve of a Brotha Lynch Hung t-shirt.

Yesterday's Anomalous Airport Entity was a woman about my age sporting an unusually large nose with heavy black pince nez, bright red-red hair with white roots and a polyester dress printed all over with Chairman Mao images.  She stood up for most of the flight and knitted something bright blue. I was dazzled by her. In the struggle we elders experience between hiding our complications of aging or flaunting them, she opted for the latter.

Premeditated violence

So whether you agree with me or not that Israel's attempt to enforce the blockade of Gaza by boarding a ship which refused normal inspection procedures and the attempt at self defense of the IDF Navy when attacked, was not the outrage it was meant to look like, do you agree that it's all Obama's fault? Sure it was says John Bomb-Bomb McCain. If Obama hadn't insisted that Israel freeze it's West Bank settlement construction, this wouldn't have happened. (insert WTF here!)

Michael Savage tells us that Obama "pressured" Israel into it without offering any of the evidence one would desire to back it up.

"As far as I know, it was Obama's administration that told them how to do this attack. It was probably one of America's peace-loving generals, who knows which one of them did it."

The use of probably by a Fox News member of course is as good as proof to the willfully Foxed, as is "as far as I know." Probably means 'definitively' to the Savage audience. Only a Liberal would question it. Only a Liberal would wonder why "peace loving" should be the equivalent of stupid, duplicitous and incompetent -- if not treasonous.

Of course knees are jerking in the Liberal camp as well, as Dennis Kucinich has written to President Obama suggesting that the country needs to "redefine its relationship with Israel" in the wake of the Gaza flotilla "raid." I'd ask him his opinion on redefining the US Coast Guard's daily practice of stopping and boarding ships with armed gunboats and armed inspectors as "raids." I'd ask him if an attack on the Coast Guard by a vessel refusing to stop and be inspected in wartime or peacetime, would be supported by him or excused by him because we're certainly doing it now in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Caribbean. I'd ask him whether our entire drug interdiction and human smuggling interdiction policies are " reckless, pre-meditated violence waged against innocent people." I'd try to do it without calling him an idiot and a hypocrite, but I doubt I could manage.

So if you still feel this was "premeditated violence" even when the violence occurred only after the "peaceful passengers" tried to kill the inspectors and threw one overboard, ask yourself what the US should do if a flotilla from Iran attempted to enter Iraq with an unspecified, un-inspected cargo, refused to be inspected and brutally attacked our Navy when our Navy attempted to examine that cargo and passenger list.

The outrage machine

As a boater, I'm aware that the Coast Guard has the right to board and inspect my vessel at any time and that I'm required to comply. Upon probable cause and perhaps just suspicion, they have a right to impound and literally disassemble my boat looking for drugs or contraband. Sometimes, as I'm given to understand, they've been known to be rather demanding in their searches, and other completely innocent, law abiding yacht captains I know have complained of dirty footprints on the ivory carpeting or greasy hand prints on the cherry paneling and have suggested that too much protest or grouchiness can earn one an extra careful inspection of safety equipment that might entail a ticket.

Of course we have a real problem in our coastal waters and particularly on the Atlantic coast with illegal immigrants arriving rather often, and then there's always the drug smugglers, so when the Coasties hail you it's best to heave to and not make waves, so to speak. In fact the US has a policy of stopping and boarding vessels anywhere on the high seas and at any time they suspect contraband. For an honest captain or crew, the idea of going after the Coast Guard with a boat hook or marlinespike is pretty much as unthinkable as it is counterproductive.

Yesterday however, when I read about the Israeli raid on the blockade runners attempting to bring supplies to Gaza, I was truly angered at what seemed like a pointless and brutal attack on unarmed civilians, and the video then available seemed to confirm that first impression. The media were making charges of piracy and it seemed less than hyperbolic at the time. Then I saw the rest of the video.

Aside from the question of the embargo itself, it has to be mentioned that the "relief" expedition was required to pass inspection before landing in Gaza, there being good reason for Israel to make sure no weapons or explosives or ammunition were being carried, or fugitives, or any persons wanted for questioning. The word of some Turkish political group that it's a peaceful enterprise is scarcely enough, although reports so far seem to gloss over the obvious with a coat of shiny outrage. Of course the flotilla had no intention of complying or of allowing themselves to be boarded peacefully and inspected, which carries the implication that they had indeed something to hide. The Israeli Navy did what any country would have done and boarded them.

The video that was not shown, of course, was the brutal attack by the passengers, who mobbed the inspectors, threw them to the deck and began beating them with clubs and metal rods. One Israeli was thrown overboard. They were vastly outnumbered. They began to defend themselves. There were casualties. It started to look less and less like piracy or even aggression. It began to look like deliberate provocation. It began to look like assault. It began to look like a mission of strategic martyrdom designed to turn Israel's ally Turkey against them. It looks like a success so far.

As usual, those who have their reasons for hating Israel will not compare the incident to trying to run through passport control at the airport and complaining about being tackled and detained. Those who are quite sure Hamas is justified in any act whatsoever that brings about the total annihilation of all Israelis wouldn't care and might rejoice if the ships had been blown out of the water without warning.

There's not much middle ground, there's not much changing of minds and a fortune is being spent on further polarization. This, in my opinion, is just part of that enterprise. The drums of manufactured outrage will continue to boom about mistreatment of "peaceful" passengers so long as doubt remains as to whether their mission had anything do do with anything but creating provocation against "Zionist Aggression." To some, the passengers will continue to be "tourists" and the haters of Israel will use any opportunity to appear as martyrs, but try this, if you dare: load up a flotilla of ships and announce your destination as Turkey and your cargo as aid for Islamist patriots resisting secularist aggression and when it comes time for customs inspection -- refuse to stop and be boarded. Set your "tourists" on the Turkish coast guard and customs inspectors with fence posts and bits of deck railing and furniture and claim that the secular Turkish government is attacking Islam and peaceful Islamists. Go on -- I dare you.

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The Miranda Ruling of 1966 and Today’s SCOTUS Decision on Berghuis v. Thompkins

I hereby and explicitly invoke my right to remain a simple dino and ask Zoners what they think of the new SCOTUS 5-4 ruling to alter the Miranda v. Arizona 384 U.S. 436 (1966) ruling.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS, 1911-2010

Paulism, Applied

by Nance

Yellow for Paul
Green for Grayson

The Republican Primary victory of Rand Paul forced me to bone up on the man, his father, and Libertarianism.  Heretofore, conventional wisdom among liberals was that the Ron Paul and the Tea Party would not be serious threats in November. Or ever.  I wanted to believe that the portion of America that could be so confused was still small enough to be dismissed. Things might be different now.  I needed a little schooling and some exercises in applied minarchy.  I concluded that, in an arena as complicated and churned as America in 2010, simplistic ideas, rigidly applied , are simultaneously the most irrelevant and the most dangerous things on earth.

 I learned that the Pauls adhere to the Austrian School of economics, which originated in Vienna during the Austrian Empire and was influential in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The core values were decentralization, and laissez faire market operations.  Contractual agreements and commercial transactions were held to be voluntary and only the most fractional government role was tolerated in the marketplace.

Libertarians try to extrapolate these economic policies to apply to all forms of social contract; they imagine a Libertarian Society...and it's right about here that the schisms begin.  The forms of Libertarianism include (this week):  Anarcho-Capitalism, Geolibertarianism,  Left-Libertarianism, Libertarian Conservatism, Libertarian Socialism (really?), Libertarian Transhumanism, Minarchism, and Mutualism. Isms scare me.  And I'd hate to think how many types of Libertarian Presbyterians there might be or what those transhumans look like.

I wonder if the history of the Austrian Empire has anything to teach us about Anarcho-Capitalism, or Minarchism, or...I guess Paulism, really.  The empire that was formed in 1867 collapsed about fifty years later, which makes it one of the briefest classical empires in history.  It essentially collapsed under the weight of trying to accommodate the ethnic individualities of Croats, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Rusyns, Slovaks, Slovenes, Ukrainians, Italians, and Romanians--and started the first World War in the process.

After the war, in 1922, the League of Nations had to bail out the economy, which was bankrupted due to inflation, making Austria a ward of the League. Subsequently, Austria was subsumed by The Third Reich.  It's autonomy was eventually returned to it by the peaceful post-war withdrawal of NATO occupation.  Austria is a very rich nation today, but its wealth is largely due to its neutrality--no need for a standing army--rather than to any magical economic formula.  According to wikipedia.com,

Austria is the 12th richest country in the world in terms of GDP (Gross domestic product) per capita, has a well-developed social market economy, and a high standard of living . Until the 1980s, many of Austria's largest industry firms were nationalised; in recent years, however, privatisation has reduced state holdings to a level comparable to other European economies. Labour movements are particularly strong in Austria and have large influence on labour politics.

So much for the Austrian School of unregulated free market economic theory.

Meanwhile, back here at home, in just one day in the news last week, the need for greater regulation was invoked in response to three separate critical issues.  As an exercise in applied Libertarianism, as each of three issues came up in the news, I tried to imagine how Ron Paul and his Tea Party would handle them.  Keeping in mind that, in a debate setting, if asked how he would handle a given situation if elected, the standard Libertarian's dodge is to cite how the problem never would have developed in a society where government was small and interference in markets was nearly nonexistent.

Never mind that dodge.  Elections are real time, in the midst of the crises we're currently facing.  If Rand Paul wins a Senate seat, the Republican Party will think it has seen the direction of its destiny.  And, in that event, Ron Paul will run in 2012 and he will win many more than the 14 delegates he garnered in 2008.  That's a bid to inherit the kind of problems we've faced in the last week of May, 2010.

Try these exercises yourself, if you're so inclined.  I let the logic of the Libertarians apply as far as my imagination would take me.  You won't need my answers to get the picture.

************

The Gulf Oil Spill:  Given that the Ron Paul has asserted that Louisiana should not have received federal aid after Hurricane Katrina ( this, from a Representative whose 14th District stretches along the Gulf Coast from Galveston to Corpus Christi--are we supposed to believe that his call on Katrina aid is more pure somehow, since it could as easily have been Galveston hit hardest by Katrina?), his position on the Gulf and BP is predictable.  Son, Rand, had the following to say on BP and the spill on May 21st:

On the oil spill, Paul, a libertarian and tea party favorite, said he had heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn't pay for the spill that threatens devastating environmental damage along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Paul said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

"And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen," Paul said.

The senate candidate referred to a Kentucky coal mine accident that killed two men, saying he had met with the families and he admired the coal miners' courage.

"We had a mining accident that was very tragic. ... Then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen," he said. 

From Nov, 2009: HeatingOil.com
"The surge of production from the Gulf of Mexico has led the US
to produce more crude oil than it has since 2004." 

The Exercise:  How would non-interference  and non-regulation in the business of offshore drilling play out ?  Would we, the buying public, make our displeasure with British Petroleum known by cutting up our BP cards?  Libertarians advocate local management of local problems; how would local be defined in this case?

**********

Johnson and Johnson's Recall:   The FDA had to pressure J&J for a massive recall of over forty kinds of children's medications, from Children's Tylenol to Pediacare this month citing bacteria buildup in the laboratories where the medications were produced.  Regulation is being discussed and criminal action is under consideration.  The FDA has been calling for accountability on J&J's OTC products since last September, but the drug manufacturer has been dragging its heels.  In a Congressional Investigation, (May 26, 2010, AP, Chicago Tribune) :

Colleen Goggins, J&J’s president for McNeil consumer products, told lawmakers the company has already taken steps to fix the problems, including shaking up its management structure.

But she had few answers to questions about an alleged “phantom recall” of more than 88,000 packets of Motrin, a pain reliever containing ibuprofen. According to FDA documents, J&J learned about a formulation problem in November 2008 that interfered with the pills’ dissolving action, causing them to lose potency.

J&J then hired an outside contractor to collect samples of the product — mainly sold in gas stations — and determine whether a recall was necessary.

But instead of sampling the product, the contractor began purchasing large quantities of Motrin and instructing its employees not to mention a recall.

A memo titled “Motrin Purchase Project,” distributed during the hearing states: “You should simply ’act’ like a regular customer while making these purchases. There must be no mention of this being a recall of the product!”

The Exercise:  How does this OTC pediatric medicine problem play out at the hands of a Libertarian administration that calls government interference of business "Un-American"?

**********

Facebook's Privacy Policy Problem:  The name is oxymoronic. Facebook isn't actually interested in your privacy; they are interested short-term in advertising income, which relies on your loosening attachment to privacy as a right and as a moral value.  They are also interested, longer-term, in turning their social network into a social utility as vital to your sense of well-being as telephones were, in their day, and as cell phones are, today.  Given how far Facebook has come in user population since its inception in 2004 (over 400 million active users by 2010), they are well on their way to meeting their goal.  In pursuing their own goals, Facebook periodically resets their privacy controls--on your account--to virtual zero, allowing advertisers to gather information with which to market you more effectively.  The only thing that prevents a default setting of No Privacy is the hue and cry of users who notice and complain.  After a couple of legal problems, Facebook  began informing users of changes to privacy controls...as far as we know. However, until recently, their privacy platforms were so complex that users couldn't exercise full privacy controls with confidence.

The Exercise:  Without regulation, what ultimate outcome would you predict for the future of sites like Facebook,  for their users, and for private information?

**********

So, take your pick.  I firmly believe that the apparent increase in the usual rate at which urgent issues arise is unprecedented. The tipping point has been surpassed for manageable population, viable climate, and available resources.  We have entered a maelstrom.  These are the most dangerous of times and such times give birth to the most dangerous of heroes.  A simple idea, desperate times, an angry power base, and a small man: it all sounds ominously familiar to me.

Empathy, Community and the Nature of Evil

I was leaving a comment on a blog post by my friend Nance, Mature Landscaping, when I realized that my comment was getting a bit long. Thanks, Nance for the inspiration for my own post.


I don't recall when it was that I first realized that there was a lot of meanness in the world. I do know that by the time that I read The Diary of Anne Frank, that I suspected that she was wrong, and that people were not really good at heart. I think that I was 12 years old when I first read Anne's diary.

Sometime during my twenties, I became absolutely certain that people are not essentially good at heart. I don't think that I'm a cynic, just a realist, and it's a realism born of experience.

Neither do I believe that we are essentially evil. I think that we are neutral until we choose to act on the specifics of our experiences and/or circumstances. Life is all about choices yet far too many of us consistently make those choices based on misinformation, prejudicial beliefs, and self-interests.

I think that we confuse aging with maturity, and make the fallacious assumption that empathy is an innate quality that develops as we mature. As children, we are all motivated by self-interests, by instant gratification. Small children are adorable but they are also inadvertently cruel in their actions. If you don't believe me, spend some time with a group of two-year-olds. Each wants whatever he or she wants when they want it. There's crying, biting, a blow here and there, and a lot of run by toy snatching. As we age, left unchecked, those desires continue to predominate. Empathy has to be taught and it has to be taught by example.

Empathy--the ability to identify with others, to put yourself in their shoes--is the most powerful force for good in the world; sadly, it is the emotion most lacking in so many of us. We're taught not to hit and to share our toys, but most of those lessons are narrowly applied to our immediate circumstances and we never learn to adopt the empathy model as defining our world view.

Listen to the tea partiers, they are obsessed with making certain that undeserving people do not receive a free ride. Who's undeserving? Anyone whom they deem to be so. Of course, that translates into anyone who doesn't look like them, or who speaks with a foreign accent. A free ride includes basic necessities like medical care. One of the biggest objections to the Health Care Reform Act was the belief that illegal immigrants would receive free health care at taxpayers expense. Even the terminology indicates the distancing from any identification with the perceived "other." Typically, the language refers to illegal "aliens," not people but creatures from another planet, inherently different and dangerous.

The recent anti-immigrant law passed in Arizona is further progeny of the empathy deficit. Angry supporters of the law insist that it is fair, secure in the knowledge that they will not be the ones stopped and challenged as to their legal right to be here. In their minds, the fallout from this law is not their problem.

The slide from disinterest in the well being of others into outright evil is accelerated by the fear mongers that appear in every generation. The Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs who nurture the fear and feed the hate. These people make conscious choices to ramp things up, to stir up a frenzy among the masses. They are not unique; history is full of these depraved folks who for profit and egoism disseminate malicious lies and half-truths designed to fuel the anger of those who believe that they have an entitlement that separates them from those they have designated as other.

I don't believe that there is some essential goodness in humankind that will simply win out. I'm not a total pessimist; to the contrary, I think that we have the ability to teach people to make more humane, informed choices. However, it means that we have to continually reiterate the need for change. We can't simply live locally and hope that the global issues will resolve if we build a sense of local community. Humankind is interconnected and we are global, regardless of what we may want to be. I understand the desire to withdraw from the larger world and to focus on one's community, but we do not live in isolation. There are no walls that can be built that are high enough to keep out the rest of the troubled world. Our local community is global.

An Open Letter To A Young Friend

by Nance

In the responses I received to my last post, The Wedding Bends, my young friend Jeffrey Johnson left one of his thoughtful, gentle comments that opened a heap of reflection for me. Jeffrey is kingcoyote, of Penny Candy & Shady Characters, whom I featured here in Allow Me To Introduce; for a real treat, go visit his most recent post, entitled Rocking Chair.  He writes of his young daughter, Abby, and his new daughter, Olivia, who is one month old.  I found myself writing way too much to Jeffrey. For convenience, I will re-post his comment here and respond to it with an open letter to him and to his generation.


kingcoyote:

About a year ago, I was stuck in traffic, waiting to get onto the highway. In the left lane, people kept going by at a good clip while my land was at a virtual stand-still. As I neared the highway exit ramp, I could see the problem... people were zipping up the left lane to the front of the line, and being let in. I really couldn't decide which one irritated me more, the people cutting in line (holding the rest of us up, as if WE didn't have places to be) or the people letting them in.

I can't help but feel the same way about the Westboro people, and the media. One thing that this interweb community that I've become a part of shows me over and over is that there really ARE many, many good peoples out there. Much more, I think, than the crazy creepers. Unfortunately, it's the crazies that sell papers... if we stopped paying attention to them, maybe they'd lose some of their power.

At any rate, I tend to feel like MFM [My Fellow Men] are (as a general rule) good people, but we tend to get so overwhelmed by the number of GLOBAL needs that it's easy to forget that what matters is an accumulation of LOCAL needs. I read a zen quote(ish) this week about community that went something like "We all see ourselves as waves, but forget that we are part of the ocean."

 Dear  Jeffrey,
You make a very good point, one that always generates some ambivalence for me when I feature Serious Crazy in a blog post:  maybe the Westboros of our world would go away if we ignore them.

I spent most of the last four years of the Bush administration in a news-fallout shelter. I yoga'd and Om'd myself into the present, local moment and stayed there as much as possible--especially after I discovered that New Zealand didn't need any retiring psychotherapists. I poked my nose out in 2007 to see if sanity had made any inroads and became re-engaged enough in '08 to do a little phone work for Hillary Clinton.  And to try to prevent my retirement savings from self-destructing in mutual fund hell.

I've stayed engaged--initially because I hoped that something really good might be happening in my country, something I could support and didn't want to miss. Then, just when I thought I was going to be able to handle the world again, in what seemed like the blink of an eye but was actually March through October of '08, something terrible and unprecedented, something only a few saw coming, began to happen, instead. I had ventured out to enjoy the view and found myself in a bucket brigade.

I think young families like yours, Jeffrey, do well to limit their exposure to the news, at least to some extent; whatever the emotional climate out there, there is a living to be made and there are babies to be rocked--Life demands some self-preservation of its reproductive generation and I'm all for it. For the sake of the species, please learn just enough about the larger world to make the necessary gross adjustments to conditions and then get on with the job at hand. Concentrate on raising children who take solar panels, wind energy, and locally-grown food as much for granted as their parents take cell-phones, gas stations, and strawberries in November.

I sometimes consider dragging out my mats, putting my feet up the wall, spritzing the lavender on my eye pillow, and disappearing into the Yoga Nidra meditation on my iPod. But a funny thing sometimes happens toward the end of our time here: some of us in the aged generation get riveted by imagining the sequel to the movie of Life--the one we won't be here to watch, the one that follows the movie WE found ourselves in and improvised from.  These days, it really is like watching that proverbial train wreck.


We want to do something to make the sequel better.  We do what we do best, naturally.  I'm a professional Warner; just ask my kids.  I've been practicing my entire life to warn you right now about...whatever it is that looms into my view and winds up in my next blog post.  In this case--or, rather, in the next post--it'll be Ron and Rand Paul and the surprising, threatening growth of Libertarianism in America. You're going to need to know about it, if you don't already. 


I like your focus on local needs.  I think it's just right both for managing life with Our Fellow Man and for building a sustainable life, rather than a growth-driven society. I'm probably preaching to the choir or missing the boat or...well, what I meant to say was that I'm convinced that forewarned is forearmed...okay, bad cliche and really AWFUL choice of words!  I'm convinced that the Libertarian movement will grow if it isn't understood and reckoned with. The term LOCAL isn't going to mean the same thing to everyone.


Localism as discussed by Bill McKibben in his book EAARTH is similar to the kind of community I grew up in during the early fifties.  Those were the conditions and the stories that gave rise to my liberalism and they were simpler, more manageable, far more family-friendly times.  And, although we didn't know it, they were the conditions that contained the seeds of the bitter harvest we reap now.  The New Localism will bear similarities to Fifties America, but it will be different in ways that you and I can't imagine yet, beyond some hopes and wishes...a localism that not even McKibben is willing to draw in detail.  It will be a wised-up localism.   It will not be, I feel fairly certain, the kind of laissez-faire localism that the Libertarians imagine.  


McKibben has written on the Libertarians,

I’m not a libertarian, because I think they’ve conflated “human nature”—their sense of the individual über alles—with the effects of the last couple hundred years of consumer society. I think humans are at their best when they’re social creatures; that’s why I’m a Methodist, not a Randian. But I don’t disdain libertarianism, nor conservatism. How could any environmentalist, who at heart is interested in maintaining as much as possible of the world we were born into? But each day that they remain in sly and subtle opposition to scientific fact draws them further into intellectual disrepute. It’s been a tough couple of years for laissez-faire ideology—Alan Greenspan pretty much dumped Ayn Rand overboard when he told Congress earlier this year that his worldview had been “flawed.” But at this rate, it’s going to be a tough geological epoch too—for all of us.

 And, lo!, I am launched on that next blog post before I've even finished this one.  This is not what I thought I'd be doing in retirement. I'm not really politically savvy enough to be weighing in with the heavy hitter blogs. I contribute my mite, and not without a lot of apprehension.  I was all set to gaze deeper into the Lotus, to join the Ocean, to tend my own garden. Instead, I find myself trying to have the courage to keep seeing the whole, ugly parts and all. I'm not very good at it, but, as the yogi would say, I can't stop until I do.

Jeffrey Johnson, Red Herring Illustration

Rock your precious little children with my warmest blessing.  Drop in here from time to time.  Visit the folks in my Blogroll.  Some of us are Warners, some are Scientists, some are Writers, some are scared and most are funny.  All of us want to help you.  Many of us are your web-local elders, and we love you because you are us...as we were and as it shall be.


Peace, honey.

You and whose army?

It's Memorial Day weekend again in the New South. It's nice to know they've finally accepted a holiday they once loathed. Of course it was Decoration Day until 1968 and after I was grown and had a family. It was as you know, about decorating the graves of Union Soldiers and after the next horror of the Great War, the graves of the 117,465 American dead: a day of solemn reflection.

But by the time they changed it to Memorial Day to make it more compatible with our imperialism at the height of the senseless horror in Vietnam, it was about Dad's cremated Hamburgers and Indy; parades and patriotic hoo-ha, but perhaps it's because I now live in the South, it's taken on a new tone. Perhaps too, it's because I live in an area flooded with retired military folks filled with their own importance and those employed by the notorious Military- Industrial Complex -- but my in-box is once again flooded with glorious stories about our glorious military and the glorious things they do. A good part of them are hoaxes and of course there are no mentions of our heroes of My Ly 4 or Abu Ghraib or of the recent glorious heroes who accidentally slaughtered 30 or so civilians using robot planes in air conditioned comfort from halfway around the world.

No, what I get are bogus stories about Marines rescuing babies on 9/11/01 and how it is the Veterans" we owe our freedom of religion, press, speech and the rest of the rights we've had abridged because of the martial spirit of the times -- not the constitution, the courts or the Government of the United States.

Have we forgotten that the biggest enemy of freedom on this continent was the American South? Was anything we can call our own freedom at risk in most of our wars? Andrew Jackson's slaughter and deportation of the Seminoles? the use of Federal troops in slave raids into Florida? The Mexican War? The Spanish American War? The war against Philippine independence? What kind of threat to our freedom of speech necessitated suppressing free elections in Vietnam or the killing of two million civilians? What threat to our freedom of Religion was posed by Iraq? What threat were flower carrying kids in Ohio that they needed to be shot in the back by American troops? Were the troops driving armored vehicles down Chicago's State Street in 1968 there to support our right to assembly or to shut us up?

It' s not that I have any disrespect for veterans, living or dead, but our Constitution wasn't written by the Generals, no foreign power is any threat to it and that we still pay any attention to the Bill of Rights owes as much to the "activist" courts and the ACLU as to anything else. It owes nothing whatever to the Tea Bag flag wavers who hate government power unless it's carrying guns. It owes nothing to Macho flag wavers from John Wayne to Bomb-bomb McCain.

Memorial day has become an encomium not to dead soldiers; an expression not of profound grief. It's not a day when we mourn our losses or of any remembrance of the horror of war and militarism, but to celebrate living veterans, sing praise to the Armed forces and to the glory of war itself. It's a day we now use to decorate ourselves, congratulate ourselves on our military prowess and this in a country that's been fighting all my life but hasn't been on the winning side of a war since 1945. It's a day too often used to obscure the real threats to freedom with red white and blue bunting and it's good to remember that the same folks crowing about military defense of freedom are quite happy to require anyone with tan skin to carry proof of citizenship at all times, quite happy to give the local police the power of Federal Marshals and to forget all about warrants and probable cause. What army is going to protect us against our own smug racism, bigotry and expansionism?

Arizona Draconia

As in most families, mine has a mix of political views. We frequently find ourselves on opposite sides of a debate but because we love each other, we never devolve into shouting or name calling. (Although voices may rise just a little). And so it was that yesterday I had an exchange with a couple of family members about Arizona's newly minted immigration laws.

Their first argument was that why shouldn't everyone have to carry ID? They only need their driver's license to prove their citizens, right? Wrong, the laws do not specify what constitutes proof of citizenship, only that if asked by law enforcement, you must have documentation to prove you are legally in this country. A driver's license does not usually qualify as proof of citizenship.

So then I asked if they routinely carried their birth certificates around and were willing to present them several times a day to anyone in law enforcement who asked for them. Of course, they are too white to have to worry about that, but I did want them to see the irony of this scenario as compared to the laws of communist countries where you used to have to produce your papers on demand.

After this part of the conversation there came this, "Well, they must have a good reason to take this drastic of a step. It must be really bad in Arizona." And I thought, I wonder just how bad it is in Arizona that they felt they needed to trample the constitution in order to stem the tide of criminal activity against bona fide American citizens.

I went HERE to get some information. The link will take you to Arizona Public Safety Dept crime reports for the last several years and here is what I found out.

Using the crime comparison index, with the exception of larceny and rape, crimes as a whole were down in 2009 from 2008.

Bias/hate offenses statistics was interesting; Assaults, intimidation, damage/vandalism were up across the board. The greatest number of bias crime targets were blacks, Hispanics, Jews and homosexuals.

Surprise, surprise...

Looking at drug offenses, specifically committed by Hispanics, there was, overall a 5% increase or about 500 more cases over the course of 2009. These stats include drug sales and drug use.

When you compare statistics of 2005 to 2009 you find that bias crimes against Hispanics and Jews are up, nearly doubled in 2009. Drug offenses by Hispanics overall is down in 2009 by at least 2,000 arrests. Both violent crime and property crimes are down in 2009 from 2005.

With these numbers in mind, what DID prompt the Draconian measures enacted by the Arizona governor and legislature? The argument that they had to "do something" about illegals in order to fight crime sure doesn't stand up in light of Arizon's own numbers.

Dairy Farm's Animal Abuse: Graphic Video and Petition

I've seen some brutal cases of animal abuse but this is without doubt the sickest and most outrageous. I know what I'd like to do with the clamps these bastards are using. The video is graphic and you probably won't be able to watch but a little but please watch some of it. I hope it moves you to sign the petition from change.org.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest write in an open letter to Conklin Dairy Farm:

Mr. Conklin,

Our daughter came to us last night urging us to watch the video of the abuse at your plant. She was overcome with grief that human beings could inflict such cruelty and unconscious hatred at the most benign of creatures and their infants. The shocking images were too much for her father and me but we watched enough to know where it led.

There are moments in all our lives where we face our deepest, darkest truths.

This is your moment.

What will you do?
(snip)
We challenge you to have the courage, as the brave person who filmed this did, to open your doors and your hearts. Become the standard for safety and kindness and actually change -- change your mental state and spend the rest of your lives, and the lives of your descendants, trying to make your farm the leader in humane, clean, loving treatment of the very animals you profit from. You have the opportunity. Certainly one more than those helpless victims of your sick, tortured abuse.

This is your moment. From the ashes of your lives can you re-build yourselves?

We know it is possible, if you have the willingness. But do you?

We are all waiting for your outrage and the outrage of your children and families and friends.

We are all waiting for your next move because we certainly know what ours is....

INCOME TAX INJUSTICE

MoveOn.Org commissioned this cartoon to call attention to one of the worst tax injustices of all time … the infamous Hedge Fund Loophole. It allows a highly privileged group of Wall Street traders to earn over $1 Billion a year, yet pay as little as 15% on the their federal income tax. What does the country get back in return for this extra generous tax break?

The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Hedge fund traders do not create jobs, build factories, extend credit to growing businesses, fund new energy development, or confer any economic benefit to the country whatsoever. They do, however, fight like hell to keep their tax privileges intact.

Consider this: If you are a hedge fund trader earning in excess of $1 billion a year, the difference between a capital gains tax of 15% versus the top ordinary income tax rate of 35% amounts to $200 million a year. With that kind of money at stake, it is easy to buy off an army of politicians … and still have tons of cash left in your pocket. Killing the tax break would add $14.75 billion over five years and $24 billion over 10 years to the federal treasury … and help lift the burden of spending deficits and taxes from the middle class.

Petition your Congressional representatives and demand an end to this tax injustice.

The Oil Disaster -- a Good Site to Visit

The following site (frequented by engineers) has a live video feed of the oil flowing into the Gulf, and an animation of the Top-Kill procedure currently taking place: http://www.theoildrum.com/.  If this works, at least the well will be killed off and the flow halted.  I've been watching the live feed and it looks like the mud is flowing -- here's hoping that's a good sign.

AMERICAN JACKBOOTS ON THE MARCH

It seems our vaunted American news media has turned into the three monkeys that hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. A British news source is covering this story, but not the MSM within these United States of Amerika?

How To Kick The Oil Habit

The conventional wisdom that we must depend on fossil fuels until we “transition to a new energy future” is a favorite of our political and media betters; problem is, they’ve been saying it for the past 30 years while doing absolutely nothing to further said “transition.” Now we face one crisis after another, after another.


Thanks a lot, assholes.

Never mind. I’ve said all along that this piece of conventional wisdom is false, a lie we’ve been told to make us feel better about our lack of action. Don’t worry, be happy. But sorry, peeps. Time to grow up. Time to call bullshit where we see it and demand some action, some leadership and some honesty.

Here’s a great place to start:

The last time lawmakers truly freaked out about the problem of our oil dependence--when gas prices topped $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008--the Senate Energy Committee called in Skip Laitner, director of economic analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The committee asked Laitner what efficiency--the famously unglamorous energy strategy--could do to relieve gas prices. He gave them an astonishing figure: It could save 46 billion barrels of oil. If the U.S. made an all-out investment in energy efficiency-cutting energy waste out of vehicles, buildings, the electrical grid, and elsewhere in the economy--Laitner believes it could save the energy equivalent of 46 billion barrels by 2030.

Domestic offshore drilling produced 537 million barrels a year over the last nine years, according to the Minerals Management Service. A full-bore efficiency plan would save the equivalent of 85 years of offshore drilling.

Let me repeat what I’ve said before: the oil companies are cutting back on refinery production, even shutting some refineries down permanently, in an effort to keep gas prices high. So I don’t believe conservation will lower gas prices significantly. But that’s not my concern. My concern is ecology, safety, and other areas of the economy that depend on our coastal areas. And it looks like conservation will give us that so-called “breathing room” we’ve been told we need offshore drilling to provide to fuel our transition to renewables.

Most of Laitner's “10 solutions” look fairly painless and easy to implement, but they require will, leadership, and commitment. We need to decide that we really do want to transition to renewables, not just use the words to justify our wasteful ways while we steep ourselves in denial.

There are tons more ideas from folks like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, whose commentary Freeing America From Its Addiction To oil provides tons more pro-business, capitalistic solutions. But, as he notes, we need “real carrots, not just sticks painted orange.”

We can do this. It’s not hard. We have the motivation. We have the tecnology. We simply need to demand it of our leadership.

Alabama: Push It!

Mash-ups are not the end of culture, but the final form.

The politics portrayed here are not exclusive to Alabama, but my state is a bellwether for such politics nationally. Indeed, the south generally serves as a great indicator of the national direction. That is because southern Alabama is the epicenter of all wingnuttery -- as you can see by our TV ads.

Tim James has pandered his way to national attention. Young Boozer (real name!) has drawn national mention. So has Dale Peterson, a candidate for Agriculture Commissioner (really!). These ads are aggressive shouts for attention; they are desperate moves (no one in Alabama had ever heard of Dale Peterson).

The time had come for a mash-up -- a complete deconstruction of the right-wing Alabama advertisement:



Alabama's politics can be twisted; ironically, Dale Peterson is the most progressive candidate in the race in the ways that really count for the post. That said, I think Alabama is going to surprise the country this year -- and contribute to a sense of disappointment among the right.

For if the election were held today, the man at the beginning of that video -- Artur Davis -- would probably be elected Governor. The heart of Dixie...might just be turning blue again.

Fundamentals of the Social Contract: Why Rand Paul Is Wrong

According to aspiring legislator, Rand Paul, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far in prohibiting racial discrimination by private businesses. All the while asserting that he would have voted yes for the Civil Rights Act, Rand nonetheless believes that private businesses should be allowed to refuse goods or services to black people, at least that's what he told Rachel Maddow in an interview. His words have thrown the GOP into something of a frenzy as they try to distance themselves from his remarks and yet reap the benefits of his popularity with the tea party contingency.

I have a very personal reaction to Paul's observations. I grew up in the era of Jim Crow when segregation was the norm. White Only and No Colored Allowed signs were as common as traffic signs. All businesses were legally allowed to discriminate, to deny goods and/or services based on the color of the consumer's skin. I don't have any desire to return to the good ole days. I also don't hold with the thinking that given time to evolve, Jim Crow would have died a natural death. Jim Crow wasn't born. The system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow was artificially and intentionally created as a response to the post civil war efforts of black people to claim their rightful place in the social, economic, and political hierarchy of this country. There was nothing natural about it. It couldn't die; it had to be executed. I have no doubt that without government action legal segregation would still be a part of the fabric of this nation.

Rand Paul's position is seriously flawed; however, based on the comments littering the Internet on this topic, there are a lot of folks out there who have succumbed to the same flawed thinking. Much of it stems from worship of the cult of individuality. A characteristic of this cult is a belief that my individual rights supercede all other rights. Of course this is totally irrational. If my rights are more important than your rights, then aren't your rights more important than mine? What about Mary Sue next door, where do her rights fit in this hierarchy? Although said much more eloquently by such diverse thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Hobbes, it's this tension regarding individual rights balanced against the needs of the whole that necessitates the formation of governments. (My listing of only western philosophers is not intended to suggest that only white males have wrestled with these issues. It's just that as a product of a limited American public education, I am most familiar with the works of Eurocentric writers, which is an entirely separate topic to be addressed someday.)

Society is the whole, individuals are the parts. Societies were formed by the individuals to create a system in which the individuals could agree to live governed by rules to protect the common good. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson and many others have defined this concept as it relates to the purposes of goverment. Those who do not wish to agree to the social contract are free to live outside of it but cannot then also benefit from it. (i.e. you don't have to own a business) This is the basic flaw of Rand Paul's argument that a private business has the right to engage in discrimination. Businesses are by definition public enterprises. Its goods and services are sold to the public and as such the business is part of our system of commerce. The regulation of commerce is constitutionally assigned to Congress. If the businessman wishes to engage in discrimination, he may do so but not via his public enterprise. It's up to him to figure out how to run a profitable business enterprise without engaging in public commerce, if he wishes to engage in discrimination as to whom may partake of his goods and/or servces.

The most extreme example of those who place individual liberties tantamount to the society as a whole are those who commit crimes. The thief believes that his/her needs are superior to the needs of all others thereby justifying their right to take what they need. Indeed, if we follow the argument of the superiority of individual rights to its logical conclusion, then those who commit criminal acts are merely choosing to place their individual needs above the needs of the whole. Under this logic, our prisons are populated by true libertarians.

However, in a society, we all agree to subvert our individual liberties to the benefit of the function of the whole. To not do so results in anarchy and a society in which no one has any security. Whatever property that I may have secured would constantly be at risk of being taken by someone who had the strength to do so in a world governed by the supreme right of the individual. Instead, we have laws, enforcers, and systems of punishment to maintain order so that property rights, mine and yours, are not subject to the arbitrary will of might makes right. Which brings me to the final element of the social contract, governments are not instituted to protect the rights of the strong but rather to ensure that even the weak have protections. Otherwise, in the words of Hobbes,we would be in a constant state of war, and man would be a solitary being living an existence that is nasty, brutish and short.

P.S. A good friend, Mark Olmsted, writes for the Huffington Post. In his most recent piece, People and Property: What Rand Really Wants, he presents an astute assessment of Rand Paul's disturbing views which suggest that civil rights should be optional. Check it out.

Baffling Bedfellows

by Nance

At dinner the other night, my son asked me why I continue to study the history and evolution of Christianity, among other religions, since he's pretty sure I took a position on Christian beliefs many years ago. Do I study Christianity in order to validate my position?  To argue better with those who don't agree with me?

I explained that I started this study in high school, and continue it to this day, because Christianity has so powerfully influenced our culture. I've long since given up trying to convert or convince anyone to my way of thinking.  I was raised in Protestant churches and chose a women's college that allowed me to make an historical-critical study of the Christian Bible and of other religions.  I stay fascinated because Christianity plays such a huge role in the conflicts of our time, and because scholars continue to present new perspectives and deeper understandings.  I want to understand what philosophies drive American actions and inform America's short history. If I seek to understand, rather than to be understood, then I have to seriously ask, "What the hell are those people thinking?!"

As luck would have it, I found Mike Lux's article, Why Are So Many Christians Conservative?, on AlterNet. Lux does a really good job of explaining, with Biblical references, why the philosophy Jesus taught as revealed in the gospels is at odds with the stated philosophy of Conservatives.  To give a taste:

Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government's job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us -- the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.

And,

The Jesus of the New Testament spent his public career preaching about the nature of God and our relationship to God, but also about how we should deal with each other. He repeatedly blessed mercy, gentleness, peacemaking, community, and taking care of each other. He lifted up the poor and oppressed, and spoke poorly of the wealthy and powerful. If anyone in modern society talked like he did, you can bet your bottom dollar that conservatives would condemn that person as a class warrior, a socialist.

The article is too long to have tattooed on my arm, although I briefly considered trying.  You'll have to read it for yourself and get back to me.

When you've done with that, perhaps you can help me understand another mongrel miscreation that keeps me awake at night:  The Feminist Conservative.

Addendum:  I should add that my own leanings are toward a mix of Reform Evangelical Druidism and Free Range Addlism.