erked

Vacancy

2010-10-11T18:44:00.002-04:00

Charles, our next-door neighbor of 16 years, is moving. Almost moved, in fact - visiting him tonight, taking 4 pieces of artwork he's not inclined to take to his new apartment, I saw that his house is largely empty. All that remains are large pieces: his Steinway piano, some chairs, his computer, and a few things in the kitchen.

It occurs to me only now that I always used to be able to see him when looking out our kitchen window - not a direct view, but a reflection of him in the corner of his living room, reading, mirrored in the large dining room mirror directly across from us. He would sit there for hours, reading, but his family helped him move the chair to his apartment, so I won't see his reflection there any more.

Melancholy and loss. I am tired today, and my feelings have been wreaking havoc on me all day.

White Screen of Death

2010-07-31T09:05:00.002-04:00

I'm going to try to force myself to write more frequently, and may as well use this woefully-malnourished blog to do so. I miss writing, and while I do some at work, it's not nearly enough. An increasing frequency of typos and grammatical gaffes suggests that I can use the practice if only to improve the basic mechanics of my prose and poesy and whatever else I spew forth.

So. Enough for now. I will leave this tab open forever. I will write something every day. Yes.

Taming the victim

2010-01-04T18:51:00.011-05:00

Reading Nancy Graham Holm's recent article, "Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism", I'm tempted to chalk it up as another case of blaming the victim, but I think this is far worse. Normally when blaming the victim, one traces the victimization directly to the victim's actions, innocent though they may be.

Holm, however, blames outbreaks of Islamofascist violence against one set of victims on the defensible actions of an entirely different set. And the blame isn't on specific actions which may have placed the victim in a worse situation - instead, it's on expression.

She writes:

Muslims failed to see Westergaard's cartoon as satire. Instead, they saw in it a defamatory and humiliating message: Muslims are terrorists. Humiliation is a devastating feeling. But most people who are insulted will accept an apology.

Humiliation (at least of the sort inflicted by seeing a cartoon) isn't even in the spiral arm of the same galaxy as the effects of lethal violence, which can produce not only the aforementioned humiliation but persistent and recurring pain for the victim and his or her family.

Most people who are insulted do not plan and execute violence against the offender or nearby proxies.

Most people are not "humiliated" by images not directly addressed to them. Most of those "humiliated" by an image do not take violent action which conforms to that image. Apparently Islam will continue the assault until we're all convinced it's a religion of peace.

Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act. As a journalist now living in the same town as Westergaard, I thought some at Jyllands-Posten had acted like petulant adolescents.

Intentional humiliation may be "aggressive," but again, aggression nowhere close to the Offended Ones - the aggression of the militant Islam the cartoons parodied.

"Petulant adolescents?"I suppose Holm deems Old Testament punishments suitable for un-spoiling the child - a la Leviticus 20:9? "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him."

Danes fail to perceive the fact that they have developed a society deeply suspicious of religion. This is the real issue between Denmark and Muslim extremists, not freedom of speech.

How does Holm derived that this is "the real issue?" Does such a distinction explain the violent outbursts of Muslims around the world - including those who probably know little of Danish society? Are the imams simply educating Muslims about Denmark, and the violence is merely the natural outgrowth of that knowledge?

Since when is fanatical violence a rational or even permissible response to suspicion?

The free society precept is merely an attempt to give the perpetrators the moral high ground when actually it is a smokescreen for a deeply rooted prejudice, not against Muslims, but against religion per se.

"Free society precept?" Nonsense. If it were a smoke screen for prejudice, what of it? No one is charging Denmark with legal, financial, or any other sort of prejudice against Muslims; this is a fanatical response to cartoons.

Where are the Jewish fanatics? Where are the Christian ones? Hindu? Buddhist? Holm is attempting here to paint Denmark's cartoons as an attack on all religions, when every symptom impugns Islam and its innate violence and fascism.

Muslims are in love with their faith. And many Danes are suspicious of anyone who loves religion.

Love does not generally drive one to violence; it's mostly the angry, hotheaded man who avenges an insult to loved ones with immediate violence. If Islam is a religion which, unlike the others, inspires violent defensiveness, then what good does the love do anyone but the converted?

Holm's headline is a lie: little or nothing is needed to provoke fanatics. The religions centered on the God of the Desert, Yahwah, are about obedience, as always - the cartoons violate some nonsense about the image of their prophet.

Christians and Jews at least have had the good sense and good fortune to secularize themselves. Here's hoping Muslims, with their far more militant "holy book," find a path to the same.

Goodnight, Simon

2009-03-09T06:49:00.007-04:00

It's been two weeks since we had little Simon put to sleep, and I think I can finally write about it. (I say "little Simon" not because that was his nickname, but because the phrase is stuck in my head: our neighbors Charles and Jane used to watch our cats when we went away, and while it was usually Charles who came over to feed and water them, on at least one occasion Jane came over. When we got back she reported that "little Simon came out to see me!", and I can still hear her charming, musical voice saying it. Somewhere we still have her voice on an old answering machine cassette tape - she died while Simon was still a kitten, so I guess he really was little at that time.)

While Kringle has been very friendly in the mornings, I miss the old routine with Simon, however annoying it could be. Once we started feeding him soft food in the morning (to keep his weight up), he made a habit of waking us by scraping at the windowshades, usually around 4:15 AM or so. Doing so involved leaping to a fairly high dresser loaded with much stuff (keys, change, DVD boxes, socks, etc.). If that failed, he'd jump down and start scraping at the corner of the box spring, until one of us finally got up to feed him. It was far less cute at 4:15 AM than it reads now.

Our friend Mary took excellent care of him - she's a cat-lover who's tended many sick animals, both hers and others' - but he didn't eat well for her. He'd been eating less even for us, and I'll feel forever guilty that we went to the film festival at all, but he'd held on for so long that perhaps I didn't accord proper weight to the signs of his decline: reduced appetite, unsteady gait, inability to fend off or run from Kringle's relentless play. At Mary's, he just stayed in a clothes closet rather than joining the other cats; Mary did encourage him to get up on the windowsill to watch birds, but other than that he was inactive.

We'd warned Mary that Simon was a digger, but her initial response to his digging: "OMFG". Apparently he emptied nearly the entire small litter box we left him onto the floor. (He was the main reason we switched to hooded litter boxes; he would dig mindlessly, looking around at other things, in both the litter and the cat food. The texture of granulated gritty-bits between his toes must've been fascinating to him.)

He ate rather poorly the first night back, Monday. We thought some of it might be the adjustment and post-abandonment shock, but he ate very little Tuesday, and by Tuesday night he just wanted to sit around, lifting his head to observe, but clearly too tired to move his body.

Wednesday was worse; he ate almost nothing in the morning, and I went to work but came back early when Charlotte called and said he wasn't doing well. He wouldn't eat, drink, or use the litter box; he laid in his bed, and when we moved him around, trying to think of something he'd like to look at, he would remain wherever we put him. When we finally took him to the vet late that afternoon, he was down below 7 pounds.

I miss him. I truly can't complain, because we had him through the holidays and knowing what was coming gave us the chance to treat him specially, enjoy him, savor the time with him. But it's still a constant dull ache that he's gone. I feel somewhat ashamed not to have written earlier, but have been trying to spend the last two weeks persistently distracted, not really dealing with it.

As I said, we had him longer than we had any right to, given the severity and aggressiveness of his cancer. But it still wasn't enough.

I'm going to miss his tunneling, the way he'd scrape at the sheets until we lifted them, so he could burrow down near our knees and then more often than not decide he didn't like it and come right back out again. But the times he stayed, beneath the sheets between us, oddly content, I slept well indeed. At least until 4:15 AM.

And I'm going to miss all the things I wrote about you when you first got sick, and all the countless things I've forgotten and will be kicking myself for forgetting to write.

Bye, buddy. I'm sorry we couldn't do more for you, but glad you stayed as long as you did.

Sweet Pea

2008-12-09T07:16:00.009-05:00

Charlotte gave our cat Simon the nickname Sweet Pea while he was still a kitten, and it stuck. He's a sweet cat, passive and needy and shy and forgiving. His meow is soft, high-pitched, and thin, almost sad. He's my little buddy, and likes to follow me around, in the morning and at other times when he knows he has me all to himself.

I remember when he was a kitten and could fit comfortably in the palm of my hand, or easily in the crook of my elbow - he'd lay on his back, and when I stroked his belly with my hands, all four of his paws would bicycle as he purred, the incredibly soft, soothing purr that never really changed as he got older.

Simon is sick; renal carcinoma, which has metastatized and spread to surrounding tissue (the aorta and vena cava and the lungs), a fast-moving disease for which he exhibited no obvious symptoms. Finding it was a fluke, as we'd taken him in for weight loss which is probably a result of inflammatory bowel disease, though that doesn't really matter much anymore. We only had him see when we did because of a cancellation; otherwise we'd have been waiting until January, just to get the initial scans.

We'll have him for a little while longer - though the doctor says it's probably a matter of weeks, and we don't want to prolong his life beyond the point where he can possibly enjoy it, he's a tough little cookie and could make it longer. We just don't know, but are grateful to have him with us a little while longer, as we are grateful for his whole life with us.

I love the way he sits with me in the bathroom when I shave, laying behind me on the bathroom rug, and sometimes sprawling out on his side and massaging my feet and ankles with his paws (and sometimes claws). He did that yesterday, and I suspect he'll do it again this morning, the way he's been following me around.

I love the way he'll occasionally get up on the toilet seat, and paw at me while I shave, wanting nothing more than for me to touch him.

I love the trusting way he sprawls out on the dining room table next to the computer, exposing his belly and purring a little more loudly than his normal when I rub him, maybe reminded of being a kitten, but no longer bicycling his paws as he did then.

Although it was sometimes exasperating when I planned to sit right back down, and although I almost crushed him a few times, I love the way he waits for me to get up off the left side of the couch; the moment I stand he jumps up to where my butt was, and by the time I turn around to look, he's already sprawled out on his back for a belly rub.

He loves a full-head rub, one hand on either side of his head, thumbs on top and behind his ears, four fingers scratching his neck and chin. Any other way annoyed him, but in that position, he submits for however long you want him.

Like our other cats, he understands to stay out of the kitchen, but never how to keep his front paws out. His front paws always land on the kitchen linoleum, and his back paws on the wood floor of the dining room.

Simon loves his Santa hat - a red fabric-covered conical spring with a white pom pon on top - and gets his head caught in there when we sprinkle it with catnip. He had a few frantic moments trying to extricate himself while under the influence.

He has a funny running-away trot which looks as if he wants to walk quickly and nonchalantly without admitting he's scared.

When he purrs, soft and gentle, it's as if he means it only for you, and for no one else.

He loves to dig: to tunnel beneath sheets, to dig in his food and throw it out of the bowl, and of course in his litter box.

He has a hard time jumping up onto the table, but does it to be near us. Especially as he's gotten weaker, it's a bit of a daredevil move, and when he lands, he almost seems a little surprised that he made it.

Yesterday he was in front of his food, turned and meowed at me; when I started petting him, he started eating. Little hedonist.

I'm trying to pull it together, so that he has a happy home, not one filled with blubbering, catatonic parent cats (Charlotte and I). It's difficult. Monday, the day we found out the results of the exploratory surgery, was horrible. Tuesday the crying caused less pain in my gut than it did Monday, and my eyes have recovered a bit. I didn't think it was possible for one's tear ducts to ache, but mine did.

But for now, Charlotte and I are at the dining room table on our computers; Simon sits at the edge of the kitchen, looking into it; Kringle meows in the background, trying to stir up some excitement; and Sonja is probably laying on the bed upstairs.

However long we have with him won't be nearly enough, but I'll take it.

The worst children's show on earth

2008-12-01T05:09:00.004-05:00

When I was a kid, I was a semi-regular viewer of what on reflection has to be one of the worst children's shows on earth: Mr. Mustache. This clip should hint at the sort of dystopian nightmare embedded in the upbringing of children in southern Wisconsin in the 70s:

Mr. Mustache's claims to fame were:

He had a big moustache.
He sometimes had a big beard.
He drew things on a flipchart. Things like clowns, and dogs.

That's all obvious from the clip; I've mercifully forgotten most of the other specifics of the program. If I recall, there were a lot of flashing screens. Looking back, I wonder what we were being programmed to do by secret messages embedded in those flashing screens; and I wonder whether I've already done those things, in a waking dream-state, as part of Mr. Mustache's shadow army.

A question which arose while searching for info on Mr. Mustache: why does this unaffiliated children's ministry use the same name? What about moustaches cries out "children will love this"?

Gender analysis

2008-11-23T13:12:00.003-05:00

The Gender Analyzer is an interesting tool trained to identify blogs written by men vs. women. On the first analysis of my blog, I got this result:

We think http://erickaun.blogspot.com is written by a man (86%).

86% isn't good enough. The rest of this page is dedicated to beefing up my parsable masculinity.

baseball football boxing fighting broads dames chicks girls boobs butts fantasy football beer beer beer beer broads chicks dames women boobs tits

I'm going to publish this post and see what happens.

Update: no dice. This page didn't help. However, I created a new page titled "Women", with these contents: hockey football baseball women.

The result?

We think http://erickaun.blogspot.com is written by a man (87%).

Sweet. I just need a few more posts titled "Boobs", "Butts", "Hockey", and "UFC", and I might be all-man.

Big Dogs

2008-11-15T07:35:00.005-05:00

If you want to run with the big dogs, you gotta learn to hike your legs.

That's one of my dad's favorite expressions. I have some notion what it means, but none of its significance. I like the saying though - like when Oz observes the caged zombie cat on the Dead Man's Party episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (best TV series ever, in case you were wondering), and says... well, somewhat anticlimactically, "I like it."

But back to the reason for this: Big Dog Coffee. I work in the Southside Works, and until now, the only coffee choices were Caribou Coffee and Crazy Mocha. While I like the Crazy Mocha in Bloomfield, the one on the South Side doesn't seem to make coffee quite as strong as Bloomfield; and Caribou's coffee is better anyway, so I usually go there.

Big Dog is much, much better. They use Intelligentsia Coffee, and so it has roughly the same excellent taste as the Strip's 21st Street Coffee, although 21st Street uses a Clover to brew a single cup at a time.

Big Dog is very classy - rich wood, vivid but pleasing colors, and a roughly European feel I lack the vocabulary to describe adequately. Its only problem is the location; it's tucked behind the Goodwill, down an alley, so they're far less likely to get shopping traffic.

But as a neighborhood coffee shop, it's outstanding. Not quite as outstanding as Enrico's Tazza D'Oro in my own neighborhood, Highland Park - but hey, that's a very high bar indeed. They'll get their own long posting soon, but I was overjoyed to find a great coffee shop near work.

Obama

2008-11-09T15:04:00.003-05:00

I came late to the Obama parade; while I was absolutely certain I wasn't going to vote Republican, given the outhouse they'd pushed the country into over the last 8 presidential years and 12-14 congressional years, I wasn't thrilled with any of the candidates, and preferred the ones I knew had no shot at all (Kucinich, Richardson).

Obama interested me because of his wide base of support, the fact that while he was raising roughly the same amount of money Hillary was, he was doing it with twice the number of people, each giving half as much. While that proves nothing, it meant his campaign had more longevity (he could tap those donors later), and that it was likely a broader base of less-wealthy people.

His rhetoric doesn't stir, but it does impress me with its solemnity. It's time we had a serious leader. Clinton, infinitely more able and more amiable than W. Bush, was a serious politician and managed the country well, but he lacked the gravitas of Obama. Bush was a ramshackle excuse for either manager or leader, and not the kind of guy I'd want to have a beer with. (See The Onion's Long-Awaited Beer With Bush Really Awkward, Voter Reports for hilarious commentary.)

I don't care whether my president is someone I can have a beer with. I don't care whether my surgeon is a down-to-earth guy. I want expertise. Perhaps I'd need to relate personally to a psychotherapist, but for people with whom I share a professional relationship, I want ability. Being able to lead the nation, and the Congress, and the world; I don't need someone who's necessarily a warm, friendly, or "down-to-earth" guy or gal. At the very least, even if amiability is a necessary condition, it's not a sufficient one; Bush had little else.

So I'm happy - and the happiness hasn't waned. As time goes on, I find myself occasionally smiling, occasionally vaguely misty-eyed. I hope Obama does very well, for all our sakes. He may disappoint, if only because of the inflated level of expectation - but I have to admit finding it difficult to keep my hopes reasonable.

His inaccurate labels, "most liberal senator" and "socialist," were resoundingly rejected by voters. At the very least, this reflects appreciate for his other attributes: intelligence, calm persistence, charisma, and political savvy. But it may also signal an acknowledgment that left of center ain't such a bad place to be.

Hey Napoleon, gimme some of your tots

2008-11-09T08:38:00.004-05:00

Another holiday song - Toys For Tots by the extremely talented Peggy Lee and Nat "King" Cole. This one manages to straddle the crevasse between classy, creepy, and charming. The chipmunk voices and the mention of "innies" and "outies" lend some delightful holiday ambiguity. But solid vocals.

Or perhaps the song is without blemish, and the creepiness only between my ears.

I found this song on these outstanding collections of holiday lounge music - fantastic for all seasons. Part of a great collection of wacky lounge music, which apparently sell very well.

Happy Holidays!

2008-11-09T08:30:00.003-05:00

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas, or X-mas, or Chanukah, or what have you. 'Tis the time of year when supernatural entities sprinkle us with money, decorations, and gifts wrapped in paper or sent as gift certificates via email.

To celebrate the start of the season, a quick little holiday song from the very excellent Blink-182 - the title is Happy Holidays, You Bastard. Warning: explicit lyrics. This is basically a quickie "The Aristocrats" set to music.

Enjoy, and may the spirit of the season be upon you.

The Vast, Suffocating Importance of Being Me

2008-11-02T18:09:00.002-05:00

Having titled this post, I'm uncertain what to write.

Summary: I'm recommitting myself to a blog; a full blog, all about me and my life, integrating personal anecdotes, politics, software, and whatever else I feel like writing about.

Previously I had a software-only blog, and this blog was only politics. Time to integrate the disparate spheres of my existence.

Why? For all of my fans. All one of them. I love me, and me loves I.

pause for effect

sign for applause

*crickets*

Whatever humor this post held is rapidly running out of the holes in the premise. Keep 'em short - that's my new motto. Attention-deficit publishing. Sound-bite mini-essays. Yeah. I'm sure no one on the Internet has ever done that before.

Free as in Human

2008-03-07T20:00:00.007-05:00

As Richard Stallman writes in his definition of free software:

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.

This definition applies to far more than just software. Not every good, service, and asset needs to be privatized - that's not what democracy means. You can't, for example, sell your vote, or your rights. From Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas, here are some more:

Think of music on the radio, which you consume without paying anything. Or the roads that you drive upon, which are paid for independently of their use. Or the history that we hear about without ever paying the researcher. They too cost money to produce. But we organize access to these resources differently from the way we organize access to chewing gum. To get access to these, you don't have to pay up front. Sometimes you don't have to pay at all. And when you do have to pay, the price is set neutrally or without regard to the user, inside or outside the company. And for good reason, too. Access to chewing gum might rightly be controlled all the way down; but access to roads, and history, and control of our government must always, and sensibly, remain "free."

Private ownership is critical to democracy, but not all resources are created equal. Nor were all consumers; how many of us could win a bidding war against a corporation? The ability of large economic entities to pool money and focus it to acquire resources is one reason some must always remain free.

More controversially, think about legal representation. Our justice system is supposd to be blind, yet clearly some lawyers are much more skilled and connected than others. How fair is it that the best lawyers charge high prices, and therefore can only be afforded by the wealthy and the corporations? Why, for example, aren't lawyers assigned randomly, so that you have as much chance of getting F. Lee Bailey as O.J. Simpson did?

"Intellectual Property"

2008-03-02T09:10:00.004-05:00

From the excellent but infuriating book The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig, a nice capsule of the point of the book:

But you can believe in copyright without believing copyright should be perpetual. You can believe in patents without believing that everything under the sun should be patented. You can believe in these tools to inspire innovation without believing these tools should become so bloated as to destroy the opportunity for innovation.

I believe in this balance. So did the framers of our Constitution. This battle is about whose vision of creativity - the balance in our framers' vision or the extremism of modern lobbyists - should control the future of ideas.

For those who are curious (should be everyone) about what our Constitution says about copyright and patent. From Article I (The Legislative Branch), Section 8 (Powers of Congress):

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts. That is the only purpose behind granting this power. Not to protect "property," which ideas are not. The goal is progress, for the people. And the above doesn't even imply that copyright and patent should be transferable to corporations - the right above is granted only to authors and inventors, not publishers and employers.

For limited times. This was intended to be far short of the current copyright term, which extends beyond the life of the holder and can reach 150 years without much effort. And that's if Congress doesn't extend it, which it's done dozens of times in the last 100 years.

From Thomas Jefferson's letter to James Madison dated July 31, 1788, talking about the content of the Bill of Rights:

"... it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression."

Jefferson seems to be implying that even 14 years was a dicey proposition - the most that he would support, because of the doubtful benefits. And I'm not sure he conceived of an era in which most creative works would be owned by large corporations, and in which patent cross-licensing contracts dominated corporate relations with no benefit to the public.

Finally, from Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson in 1831:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

Ideas are not property, and control of them stifles innovation, to the detriment of the world.

Beloit International Film Festival Day 4

2008-02-09T10:21:00.003-05:00

Day 4: Sunday, January 20, 2008

Our last day of films; a sad day, as it was last year. Fortunately, the movies were good today.

Found in China
A very well-done documentary, especially considering it was by a first-time filmmaker. Parents who've adopted children from China head back, with their children, to explore their childrens' origins and original culture. Terrific interviewing and editing made this a well-structured, interesting and informative film.

It's Happiness: A Polka Documentary
Terrific fun about the world of polka, efforts to keep it alive, and the fascinating characters who love and support polka: a blind collector with an astonishing collection of music and a long-running radio show; teenage polka dancers who love the dance and music; and a marketing maven who lobbies continuously for polka, and appeared at the end of the film to talk with us.

Short Slot 3
And as the festival began, so did it end for us: with short films.

Real Men: a guy tries to convince his friend to help convince HIM that he's not gay. Funny.

Moviebonics: Jehovah's Witnesses or some such wander into the home of people who only speak in snippets of famous dialogue from movies.

West Bank Story: a wonderfully well-conceived and -produced musical comedy, as the son of the owner of the Kosher King fast-food restaurant in the West Bank falls in love with the daughter of the rival next-door Hummus Hut. Great fun, well done.

Guide Dog: a wonderful animated short about an aspiring guide dog who just can't seem to keep his blind clients from being horribly injured and killed.

Equal Opportunity: a funny short marred by sound problems, which is unfortunate because it relies on quick verbal exchanges. Coworkers of various ethnic backgrounds greet each other in the lunchroom, using every racial and ethnic stereotypical description they can think of.

How Many Doctors Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb? A woman is having gynecological examination, and the bulb on the exam lamp burns out. The doctor doesn't know how to fix it, so he calls in a colleague, who doesn't know either, so they call in another... and another...

Three-Fifty: a guy attempts to weasel out of paying the $3.50 late fee on his video rental return, only to discover the cosmic ramifications of the lie for his future and his happiness, as determined by the video store's omniscient computer system. A very good short film - the amusing opening premise quickly spirals into surreal panic, deftly and engagingly, and I found myself drawn into imagining what I would do or say in the same circumstance.

Validation: a cute play on words (a parking attendant who validates parking tubs also "validates" the parkers' lives and personalities) blown into a mini-film.

And that was all for films. Sadly, we didn't get to see New Glarus this year, although I did pick up a four-pack of New Glarus "Unplugged" Smoke on the Porter.

Beloit International Film Festival Day 3

2008-02-09T10:21:00.001-05:00

Day 3: Saturday, January 19, 2008

George Washington
A depressing look at poor kids from the wrong side of town, the aspirations and minutiae of their relationships, and how they react to crisis. Excellent performances, surprising plot non-twists, but don't see this if you're in a sad mood.

Forbidden Future
A female skiier, a death-metal guitarist and bandleader, and an artist struggle to create their dreams in repressive Iran. Excellent, thoughtful, and honest.

Movement Revolution Africa
Dance troupes create new styles representing Africa, struggling to break style and content free of the tribal rhythms traditionally associated with the continent. Very good, even though I don't much care for dance.

August-December
A wonderful story about a septuagenarian teenager, an elderly man who spends his days playing elaborate practical jokes with his friend, and trying to escape his wife's obsession with marching responsibly toward death. Hilarious, occasionally touching, and rich.

Short Slot 5 Our disastrous foray into amateur avant garde cinema. I now hate avant garde... and cinema... and amateur film. Well not quite, but these were truly awful beyond description.

Linda Linda: a short film shot by Robert Lee Morris during his student days at Beloit College in the late 60s. In it, you see Morris's obsession, a girl named Linda, and besides Linda, there's some music. Linda is standing and laying down. Who gives a crap.

Agnieszka 2039: futuristic Poland, where menace lurks everywhere, lesbianism is still viewed as avant garde, and an odd device threatens to destroy humanity.

Butterflies Die In Snow: a pointless, self-referential pseudo-comedy in which the filmmakers repeatedly point out how bad they are at filmmaking, apparently in an attempt to convince you that they're not. But oh, they are.

Mad John's Escape: another Robert Lee Morris film that makes Linda Linda look like genius, though that might only be because Linda Linda was much shorter. Some people run away from Beloit College and frolic in a rural part of Beloit, apparently engaging in bisexual trysts of some kind. Who cares.

Glimpse: something about Willem de Kooning. Not bad - the abstract art is pretty neat. Not a film, but decent art, so that's something.

Synthetik: a dull, hackish attempt to say something about love using goth characters in a series of almost-inanimate scenes doing such things as pulling eggs from one anothers' mouths, throwing eggs at one another, and fellating pistols. Awful, beyond contempts, and the director was sitting behind us. We left quickly as he started to answer questions from the audience, and I resisted the urge to ask what we had done to deserve having to watch his film.

Beloit International Film Festival Day 2

2008-02-09T10:18:00.000-05:00

Day 2: Friday, January 18, 2008

Day 2, as far as I remember, probably began with coffee, and was interspersed with visits to the Pleasant Street Coffee Shop.

And now, the films:

Taming Tammy
This was a low-budget relationship comedy, somewhat stiff and telegraphed in places, but overall not bad. This looks, potentially, like the first steps on the road to professional filmmaking. Not bad, and the filmmaker could get better.

Flood Street
An outstanding documentary about a youth boxing program in New Orleans, pre-Katrina (though it of course ends with an epilogue on the aftermath of Katrina). Some of the spotlighted kids are interviewed around age 12, and again around age 17, and the progression and their comments are compelling and insightful. Outstanding black-and-white cinematography too.

Short Slot 1

Coucou Clock: a computer-animated wordless slapstick kitchen romp, a la some of the Pixar shorts that precede their features.

The Job: *SPOILERS* hilarious gag short featuring an Hispanic man driving a pickup truck looking for day laborers... for such jobs as CEO, software engineer, HR director, etc.

Holm Away From Home: a documentarian takes a guy who's never been outside the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the big city, Chicago. Amusing, good but not great.

Carmichael and Shane: outstandingly funny short about a father with twin boys, and his novel approach to parenting with limited resources: choose one as your favorite, throw all your attention on him, and let the other fend for himself.

Diggers: gravediggers speculate on the cause of death of their latest subject. Not nearly as good as it should have been.

Black Rockfordians: a horribly bad documentary that drains every bit of life and interest out of its featured subjects, prominent black citizens in Rockford, Illinois. Even the interviewees seem bored, and there's literally no information conveyed other than a string of names you won't remember.

Small Talk: food items begin to talk to a teenager. Cute, not great.

The Lives of Others
A fantastic movie, probably the best of the festival. The East German police (Stasi) monitor a writer with potential sympathies for the West, and the monitoring agent begins to get personally interested in his life. Stellar performances, writing, and concept. Restrained when it needs to be, and only a small deus ex machina mars the script.

We were shocked to find out the lead actor, Ulrich Muhe, died of cancer in 2007. He did leave a very rich film legacy, one we're going to pursue - he was extremely good.

La Cucina
Three women discuss their relationships. Incredibly talky, even for a film of this type. Flawed by the staggering volume of dialogue, countless too-cute and too-insightful answers, and a flawlessly wise character who gives flawless advice to her flawed friends.

S.B.D.

2008-02-01T22:07:00.000-05:00

From the delightful tome Depraved and Insulting English:

feist: A silent fart.

Thank you, Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea. I knew there had to be a word for it.

However, there's also this, from dictionary.com:

feist: a nervous belligerent little mongrel dog

The combination bodes ill for her: http://www.listentofeist.com/

Beloit International Film Festival Day 1

2008-01-25T05:13:00.000-05:00

Charlotte and I attended this year's Beloit International Film Festival (January 17-21, 2008), and while we experienced organizational and logistical problems we didn't last year, it was still quite a lot of fun. Seeing my hometown as the site of an international film festival is a touch surreal, but encouraging.

To start, here's a list of all of the films we saw. Some will get individual commentary, some not; this probably depends on time.

Day 1: Thursday, January 17, 2008
We arrived on the bus from Chicago too late for the first available slot, at 12 PM, so got settled in and zipped off to the 2 PM.

Short Slot 2
Our first slot was one of our favorite types of venues: a compilation of short films.

The Good Husband: A common story - husband has mistress, wants to kill wife, tries to kill wife, merriment ensues. Decent, but far from great.

Kujira: an abstract illustrated film about a young girl leaving home, and her attendant fears and the shadow of her mother. Perhaps too abstract for the room, or at least for me.

Girls Room: Clever, suspenseful, funny, and touching story of going to the girls' room. Probably the best of these shorts.

Ride of the Mergansers: a short documentary of merganser ducklings about to leave the nest. Cute fun, surprisingly engaging - also maybe the best of these.

Train Town: Two managers of a train / hobby store, one a right-wing control freak and the other a drug-loving ex-hippy, vie for control of the large display train town. Amusing.

The Space Burger: A grim cartoon of patrons at an intergalactic burger joint, and the creatures who police the place. Well-done low-budget mayhem.

Quincy & Althea: Post-Katrina, a squabbling couple tries to break up. Amusing and odd.

Aunt Tigress: Missing children - can they possibly relate to the babysitter who's just dropped by, unannounced, to care for a teenager and her younger brother? OK, but nothing special.

Diva: A man leaves his home, moves to Paris, dresses as a woman, gets robbed, and doesn't enjoy the experience. Pointless yawns.

In Spades: A too-amateurish yarn - woman loves scummy guy, scummy guy owes money, woman card-sharp plays cards to get the money, then an unsurprising "twist," sort of. Yawn.

Planta 4a
Our first feature film, about the pediatric cancer ward at a Spanish hospital. Full of life and engaging characters, this one pulls no punches and succeeds through gutsy performances and a heartfelt script, despite somewhat-obvious scenarios. A very good film.

Away From Her
A woman (Julie Christie) begins to succumb to premature Alzheimer's. Heart-renching, solid, and unexpected in many ways. A very good film.

Let's All Hate Toronto
Despite a great title and premise (do most Canadians hate Toronto, and why?), and our highest expectations, this was a huge disappointment. They had no real clue of where to go with the notion, and it ended up being a pointless collection of set-up interviews driven by "Mr. Toronto," a needless character designed to make it funny. A bad pseudo-documentary.

The day was punctuated by trips to Beloit's year-old and excellent coffee shop, the Pleasant Street Coffee Shop.

Red Statism

2007-06-19T20:57:00.001-04:00

Without actually deserting liberalism, I'm finding more and more to like about libertarianism. This article from the Mises Institute Monthly, Red Statism, nicely sums up what's NOT to like about the Bush administration - especially if you're a fiscal conservative.

Some choice morsels below.

In four years, George W. Bush has nationalized airport security, created the largest bureaucracy in history in the form of Homeland Security, tossed our constitutional protections we used to take for granted, enacted the largest expansion of welfare in three generations with the prescription drug benefit, intruded into local schools as never before with No Child Left Behind, brought many industries under protectionist regulation, hammered corporate upstarts with antitrust law, and undertaken two major wars that have cost hundreds of billions and left only destruction and chaos in their wake. Clinton increased spending 13.4 percent in his first term and 16 percent in his second, but Bush’s first-term spending soared +29.

While I'm also finding less to like about Clinton (he still has far to fall before passing Bush on the scale), this betrayal of the conservative ideal makes it even more bewildering to me that conservatives can support him. Oh, wait - increasingly, they don't. Apparently support for his mindless foreign policy now defines the G.O.P.

This is especially sad because it means the Democrats won't have to do much to win - and like the G.O.P., they need serious reform.

Back to beating the Bush:

The "leave us alone" coalition of the 1990s had been gradually transformed into an anti-Clinton movement by the end of the decade. The right in this country began to define itself not as pro-freedom, as it had in 1994 but simply as anti-leftist, as it does today.

The very people who once proclaimed hatred of government now advocate its use against dissidents of all sorts, especially against those who would dare call for curbs in the totalitarian bureaucracy of the military or suggest that Bush is something less than infallible in his foreign-policy decisions.

The lesson here is that it is always a mistake to advocate government action, for there is no way you can fully anticipate how government will be used. Nor can you ever count on a slice of the population to be moral in its advocacy of the uses of the police power.

I put that last paragraph in to complete their thought; I don't quite agree with it. In any event, Republicans currently seem very comfortable with the notion of Big Government Action, with regard to your freedoms if not your neighborhood capitalists' wallets.

I far prefer someone picking my pocket to locking me up without charges or evidence; one of those is clearly more fundamental to liberty.

If only our Dear Leader didn't have a direct line to the Almighty, he might perhaps be tempted to pick up a book (something he's proud of rarely doing).

There is a clear and present danger to freedom that comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.

And now from The Problem Of Fascism:

It is as important for libertarians to be antisocialist as it is for them to be antifascist. But first we need to recognize that fascism is a reality, not just a smear term. We see it in the economic and political program of the current administration, which seems to be advancing a distinctly right-wing style of central planning: planning in the name of family, faith, and freedom (as versus the left-wing style of planning in the name of equality, liberty, and fraternity).

I don’t think the US has ever had a left-wing president as convinced as the present administration of the ability of government to work miracles.

Perhaps the direct line to god has a 1-800-MIR-ACLE call center?

How did conservative intellectuals and activists go from hating big government in the 1990s to loving it and celebrating it today? There is a bad seed in the ideology of American conservatism that spawns power worship.

Power-worship isn't isolated to Republicans by any means, but the current administration seems intent on projecting that power in all directions, not just in domestic economics.

God Bless Christopher Hitchens

2007-05-17T17:18:00.001-04:00

I don't always agree with Christopher Hitchens, but his writing is always worth reading, and his opinions are worthy of respect. In this one, he's said nothing with which I disagree.

Here are some excerpts from Hitchens's response to the death of non-Doctor Jerry Falwell (his "doctorate" degrees are honorary and 2 of the alleged 3 are from non-accredited institutions - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell for details). You can find the full article at http://www.slate.com/id/2166337/nav/tap2/.

...there is no vileness that cannot be freely uttered by a man whose name is prefaced with the word Reverend.

Or Imam, or Father, or probably Rabbi, although that seems to be much less prevalent. In the case of Islam, the silence of the "moderate" majority has dire and deadly consequences, allowing the worst forms of extremism to spread unchecked, but our Christian majority remains similarly silent most of the time, so long as the speaker of obscenities is "Christian." That this currently has no inspiring effect on violent Christian extremists is due to other factors (below).

Try this: Call a TV station and tell them that you know the Antichrist is already on earth and is an adult Jewish male. See how far you get. Then try the same thing and add that you are the Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin. "Why, Reverend, come right on the show!" What a fool Don Imus was. If he had paid the paltry few bucks to make himself a certified clergyman, he could be jeering and sneering to the present hour.

In the time immediately following the assault by religious fascism on American civil society in September 2001, he [Falwell] used his regular indulgence on the airwaves to commit treason. Entirely exculpating the suicide-murderers, he asserted that their acts were a divine punishment of the United States.

Falwell's fabricated indictment would certainly validate some of the Bush administration's policies and machinations subsequent to 9/11: since our sin is to blame (and not the terrorists'), clearly domestic changes are required to "restore" us to a Christian nation (despite the Founders' work to keep the Constitution secular).

A detail in this ghastly narrative, as adepts of the "Left Behind" series will know, is that the return of the risen Christ will require the mass slaughter or mass conversion of all Jews.

This depraved children's story certainly casts a new light on our relationship with Israel; perhaps our sponsorship is to enable a more efficient "mass conversion" when the time is right.

Men of this type, if they cannot persuade enough foolish people to part with their savings, usually end up raving on the street and waving placards about the coming day of judgment.

Most men of his type aren't quite as successful at financing lavish celebrity and lifestyle through the donations of the ignorant and desperate.

His place on the cable shows will be amply filled by Al Sharpton: another person who can get away with anything under the rubric of Reverend.

Opponents of Sharpton - a group of which any rational person should be proud to be counted a member - typically object on political or racial grounds, sidestepping this moron's religious title.

It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

I'll follow this with a quite from Sam Harris, placing religious moderation in context:

While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all that we have (and have not) learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence. The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God.

Christians are tolerant, nonviolent, and reasonable to the extent that we ignore most of the Bible, and embrace secularism. At least I can't remember the last time I helped execute a witch, homosexual, blasphemer or adulterer - you?

The most pithy and memorable quote from Hitchens's article is this:

All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin.

Amen.

Great Moments in Punditry: 4 Years Later

2007-04-27T22:12:00.000-04:00

From the inimitable Tom Tomorrow:

Hiring Bush

2007-04-26T15:37:00.001-04:00

I thought this was an interesting set of notes on the qualifications for president. Sadly, with every political office I can think of, the skills and requirements to get elected have only some overlap with the qualifications necessary to lead successfully... but that's, apparently, human nature (popularity contests writ large).

The article: Hiring a President. This was obviously written before November 2004, but is still interesting. (Software engineers might be interested in checking out some of the rest of the site, BTW.) Some excerpts:

Bush's campaign is centered around denying reality and choosing actions despite reality.

This campaign ideology of igorance has sustained throughout his presidency; to the shame of the American people, it was present in spades even during his first term.

Bush highlights his "resolve", while Kerry combats charges that he "waffles". It was only in the first debate that Kerry raised the obvious point that "you can be certain and be wrong." Bush, it seems, prefers to be certain, because he can not believe he could be wrong. This is the opposite of adaptive capacity, and it is a dangerous thing to have in a leader at any level, but especially in the president.

Bush's behavior and rhetoric (if it can be called that) will reflect badly on the GOP for some time; however bad a candidate Kerry was, the GOP deserves its shame for having regurgitated forth such a specimen as Bush Jr.

... Bruce Bartlett says that Bush "dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts" because "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence."

No wonder Bush is the darling of the religious right; clearly, examining the positions of the die-hard red states in economic and educational statistics, God continues to bless them with ignorance. To quote Katha Pollitt: "... fundamentalism is exactly the thing to manage decline: It schools the downwardly mobile in making the best of their lot while teaching them to be grateful for the food pantry and daycare over at the church."

In a CNN interview, Bush supporter Pat Robertson described his meeting with Bush on the eve of the Iraq war: "I warned him about the war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, `Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.'" Robertson said that Bush told him "Oh no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Not that I trust Robertson any farther than I can throw Venezuela at him, but this quote isn't difficult to believe.

Similarly (according to the Suskind article), Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) warned Bush about growing problems of winning the peace a few months before the war, but Bush was unconcerned. Biden finally said "How can you be so sure when you don't know the facts?" and Bush replied "My instincts." Suskind describes a White House senior advisor explaining all this by pointing out that relying on facts and an analysis of the world is for the "reality-based community", which the president has gone beyond. He is part of a new reality-creating community: if he doesn't like the facts, he can ignore them, change them, or create a new reality. This is an astonishing way to do politics, but a disastrous approach to leading the world.

Nothing incorrect here; this administration truly has gone "beyond reality." If only that were a good thing.

Now, the cause of all this:

On a wide variety of issues, his supporters hold incorrect views, either because they believe what Bush has told them, or because they would have to give up their support for Bush if they didn't believe them.

This [the table of statistics in the article] shows that Bush supporters are extremely ill-informed, or that Bush has successfully mislead them on these issues.

In each case, Bush supporters tend to agree with Kerry's viewpoint (numbers not shown here) but falsely believe that Bush agrees with them. In each case Kerry supporters are accurate in assessing Kerry.

Some quotes from an American Conservative magazine endorsement of Kerry:

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. ... few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been anti-Americanism. ... But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them...

The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists - indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. ... Making yourself into the world's most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help. ... George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism.

Then again, Bush isn't a conservative. He's not even typically right-wing. Just as he's gone "beyond reality," he's well beyond conservatism. And again, if only that were a good thing. I have disagreements with conservatism, but I have conservative friends whose opinions I respect. Bush isn't conservative - he's a radical of an ilk that defies conventional definitions, even in political spectra richer than the shallow and deceiving liberal-conservative line:

Conservatives tend towards isolationism or at least multilateral policy, as H. W. Bush in the first Gulf War - hardly the sort to institute and act on policies of preemptive war sans allies.
How would you characterize a president who introduced the largest new entitlement program in U.S. history?
How about creating the largest new department ever in the federal government (Homeland Security, a shambling bureaucracy)?
Spending like a gambler, refusing to cut spending while incurring massive deficits and pressing for progressive tax cuts, rather than regressive ones which would benefit the working class.

Nothing conservative there, other than perhaps invoking Jesus periodically for some credibility among some circles.

The astounding thing is how well Bush's "reality-creating" approach has stood up to this criticism. With any president in my lifetime (with the possible exception of Reagan), any one of these thoughtful criticisms would be enough to cause serious questioning of the president's competency. But Bush seems to be skilled at deflecting the criticism by pretending it doesn't exist.

So certainly Bush wouldn't care about any of this, even if he heard it. He would perhaps label it as "criticism," acknowledging existence but none of its particular content. My hope is that we, as a voting body, learn how to identify similar creatures in the future, and send them back to the dustbin of history to which they belong. Sadly, Bush's legacy will be part of our history forever.

For newly anti-Bush converts

2007-04-26T09:27:00.001-04:00

It seems that despite being a year old, this article is even more relevant today, as W. Bush continues to corrode the reputation of the GOP, the hopes of Americans, and the influence of conservatism. And if it seems like I'm kicking a lame duck, I am. If I actually believed that events and consequences in the world affected Bush's mental state in any way, I'd wish for a complete mental breakdown... after leaving office, of course, lest Cheney be left in command. Why so cruel? As an object lesson to every other U.S. politician.

(Side note: I have disagreements with conservatism, but I have conservative friends whose opinions I respect. Bush isn't conservative - he's a radical of an ilk that defies conventional definitions, even in political spectra richer than the traditional liberal-conservative line.

Conservatives tend towards isolationism - hardly the sort to institute and act on policies of preemptive war.
How would you characterize a president who introduced the largest new entitlement program in U.S. history?
How about creating the largest new department ever in the federal government?
Spending like a gambler, refusing to cut spending while incurring massive deficits and pressing for progressive tax cuts, rather than regressive ones which would benefit the working class.

Nothing conservative there, other than perhaps invoking Jesus periodically for knee-jerk credibility in some circles.

Anyway - from Jane Smiley: Notes for Converts. Some notes and comments from the article:

1. Bush doesn't know you disagree with him. Nothing about you makes you of interest to George W. Bush once you no longer agree with and support him.

2. Bush doesn't care whether you disagree with him. As a man who has dispensed with the reality-based world, and is entirely protected by his handlers from feeling the effects of that world, he is indifferent to what you now think is real.

3. Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. ... From his point of view, he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's never had to before this.

5. Tyranny is your creation. What we have today is the natural and inevitable outcome of ideas and policies you have promoted for the last generation. I once knew a guy who was still a Marxist in 1980. Whenever I asked him why Communism had failed in Russia and China, he said "Mistakes were made". He could not believe that Marxism itself was at fault, just as you cannot believe that the ideology of the unregulated free market has created the world we live in today.
...
No successful company in the history of capitalism has ever favored open competition.
...
The US could have become a moderating force in what seems now to be an inevitable battle among the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions, but you have made that impossible by flattering and empowering our own violent and intolerant Christian right.
...
You have created an imperium, heedless of the most basic wisdom of the Founding Fathers - that at the very least, no man is competent enough or far-seeing enough to rule imperially. Checks and balances were instituted by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest of them not because of some abstract distrust of power, but because they had witnessed the screw-ups and idiocies of unchecked power.
...
At one time, our bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into government service or scientific research for altruistic reasons--I knew, because I knew some of them. You have driven them out and replaced them with vindictive ignoramuses.
...
You have increased the powers of corporations at the expense of every other sector in the nation and actively defied any sort of regulation that would require these corporations to treat our world with care and respect. You have made economic growth your deity, and in doing so, you have accelerated the power of the corporations to destroy the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and the climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection or responsibility than George W. Bush.

Iraq and Japan

2007-04-22T20:32:00.001-04:00

Some interesting notes on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, compared with the post-WWII occupation of Japan. Source: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.1/dower.html. Note that this was written in March 9, 2003, more than a week prior to the Coalition invasion.

The problem is that few if any of the ingredients that made this success possible are present—or would be present—in the case of Iraq. The lessons we can draw from the occupation of Japan all become warnings where Iraq is concerned.

It [the postwar occupation of Japan] enjoyed virtually unquestioned legitimacy—moral as well as legal— in the eyes of not merely the victors but all of Japan’s Asian neighbors and most Japanese themselves.

In the case of Iraq, we had the support of none of Iraq's neighbors, and little of the rest of the world (despite the influential support of Micronesia - that might be sarcasm). In fact, Bush's infantile "Axis of Evil" reference to Iran (however apropos) probably did a little to undermine any genuine desires we had for support from the region.

The reforms that were introduced in the opening year and a half or so of the [Japanese] occupation were quite stunning. They amounted to a sweeping commitment to what we now call “nation-building” — the sort of hands-on commitment that George W. Bush explicitly repudiated in his presidential campaign.

The Americans introduced in Japan a major land reform... We introduced labor laws that guaranteed the right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike... We revamped both the content and structure of the educational system...

While the U.S. has done some of this post-invasion, dismantling the entire Iraqi government and starting anew guaranteed a service vacuum, temporary in some areas and possibly permanent in others.

Apart from lacking the moral legitimacy and internal and global support that buttressed its occupation of Japan, the United States is not in the business of nation-building any more—just look at Afghanistan. And we certainly are not in the business of promoting radical democratic reform. Even liberal ideals are anathema in the conservative circles that shape U.S. policy today.

Put simply, one of the reasons the reformist agenda succeeded is that Japan was spared the type of fierce tribal, religious, and political factionalism that exists in countries like Iraq today.

But for all practical purposes the [Japanese] bureaucracy remained intact, top to bottom. And to a far greater extent than anyone really anticipated, bureaucrats and civil servants cooperated in implementing the early reformist agendas. “Democratization” of the structure and content of the educational system, to take but one example, required and received enormous input from bureaucrats and teachers at every level. The skills and education levels of the Iraqi people are substantial, but it is nonetheless difficult to imagine a comparably swift, smooth, and substantial redirection of existing administrative and institutional structures in a post-hostilities Iraq.

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, on the other hand, immediately banned the Ba'ath party and barred its members from participation in the new government; this, despite the fact that under Saddam Hussein's rule, the government was entirely Ba'ath, and therefore even those who may not have supported Hussein were required to join the party to do their jobs.

Japan is notoriously poor in natural resources ... the reformers—Americans and Japanese alike—had a brief breathing space in which to push their ambitious agendas without being hammered by special economic interests. Iraq, of course, with its great oil resources, will not be spared such interference.

And the economic interests are in addition to the multidimensional sectarian reasons that internal and external parties have for interfering in Iraq.

Finally, a tangential but important point from the article - something which, as the world's largest exporter of weapons (including to totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia), we tend to forget:

In the name of curbing weapons of mass destruction we have embarked on a massive program of producing new arsenals of mass destruction and have announced that we may resort to first-use of nuclear weapons. We express moral repulsion and horror at the terror-bombing of civilians, and rightly so; and then an endless stream of politicians and pundits explains how this is peculiar to Islamic fundamentalists who do not value human life as we do. But “terror-bombing” has been everyone’s game since World War II.

Bush: No Bill Clinton

2006-09-14T11:23:00.001-04:00

From Reason magazine, one of my latest favorites... and it's not even a liberal magazine, but a libertarian one! Conservatives, don't let the title of the magazine, or the Numbers below, frighten you. Heres the link: Bush the Budget Buster. If you're still working hard to maintain the illusion of the Republican party as the champion of small government, keep your eyes closed.

Selected kibbles and bits:

During his five years at the helm of the nation's budget, the president has expanded a wide array of "compassionate" welfare-state, defense, and nondefense programs. When it comes to spending, Bush is no Reagan. Alas, he is also no Clinton and not even Nixon. The recent president he most resembles is in fact fellow Texan and legendary spendthrift Lyndon Baines Johnson—except that Bush is in many ways even more profligate with the public till.

Comparing Bush to his predecessors is instructive. Bush and Reagan both substantially increased defense spending (by 44.5 and 34.8 percent respectively). However, Reagan cut real nondefense discretionary outlays by 11.1 percent while Bush increased them by 27.9 percent. Clinton and Nixon both raised nondefense spending (by 1.9 percent and 23.1 respectively), but they both cut defense spending substantially (by 16.8 and 32.2 percent).

Bush and LBJ alone massively increased defense and nondefense spending. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bush and LBJ also shared control of the federal purse with congressional majorities from their own political parties. Which only makes Bush's performance more troubling. Like a lax parent who can't or won't discipline his self-centered toddler, he has exercised virtually no control whatsoever over Congress.

When confronted by its spendthrift ways, the Bush administration argues that much of the increase in nondefense spending stems from higher homeland security spending. It's true that most homeland security spending is tallied under nondefense discretionary spending. Yet when homeland security spending is separated out, the increase in discretionary spending is still huge: 36 percent on Bush's watch.

To be sure, Congress shares the blame for runaway spending in the past five years. Yet Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill during his tenure in office. To the contrary, he has signed every bill crossing his desk, including huge education, farm subsidy, and transportation bills. He has made only the most feeble efforts to rein in pork-barrel spending or offset new programs with cuts in existing ones.

It seems incontestable that we should conclude that the country's purse is worse off when Republicans are in power.

A time for heresy

2006-04-01T14:39:00.001-05:00

From Bill Moyers, always a good read: A Time For Heresy. My attempt at a summary of the main points:

Bill Clinton is a Baptist. So is Pat Robertson. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is Jesse Helms. Al Gore is a Baptist. So is Jerry Falwell. No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeno peppers: one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch together will bring tears to your eyes.
Many Baptists are fundamentalists; they believe in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible and the divine right of preachers to tell you what it means.

The Bible advocates violence like the Quran (burning witches, stoning adulteresses, endless massacres by Joshua and family, etc.), but with a higher illiteracy rate, Muslims hear Islam perverted by local preachers. For the literate, the only excuse for following preachers (and politicians), rather than the facts, is laziness.

They also believe in the separation of church and state only if they cannot control both. The only way to cooperate with fundamentalists, it has been said, is to obey them.
Baptists helped ... America’s great contribution to political science and practical politics – the independence of church and state... No religion was to become the official religion; you couldn’t be taxed to pay for my exercise of faith.
Said James Dunn: "The Supreme Court can’t ban prayer in school. Real prayer is always free." When the fundamentalists and their obliging politicians claimed that God had been expelled from the classroom, Dunn answered: "The god whom I worship and serve has a perfect attendance record and has never been tardy."

Unless your goal is to impress others with the amount of time you spend praying, talking about praying, and otherwise making your relationship with God as visible to your peers as possible. Not quite the goal, as I understand it.

Pain comes with freedom – it’s just the deal. The little gods don’t want you to grow, learn, think for yourself. But you have to test their truth claims against your own life’s experience – against your own faith and reason.
This is a time for heresy. American democracy is threatened by perversions of money, power, and religion. Money has bought our elections right out from under us. Power has turned government "of, by, and for the people" into the patron of privilege. And Christianity and Islam have been hijacked by fundamentalists who have made religion the language of power, the excuse for violence, and the alibi for empire.

In all countries, religious symbolism and rhetoric is power over those too lazy or igorant to try to understand the religion on their own, and to follow its implications. And as in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, patriotism (or "nationalism" if you're referring to any country but your own) can be inflated to religious proportions and distortions.

We were not supposed to be a country where the winners take all. The great progressive struggles in our history were waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich, share in the benefits of a free society. Today, however, the majority of Americans may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a good education for every child, and clean air and water, but there’s no government "of, by, and for the people" to deliver on those aspirations.
How did this happen? By design. For a quarter of a century now a ferocious campaign has been conducted to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual, cultural, and religious frameworks that sustained America’s social contract.

For more details, use your favorite search engine on any of the organizations referenced in this article: Funding the Right.

Their economic strategy was to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe for even cheaper labor, and relieve investors of any responsibility for the cost of society.

And companies, of course: recent legislation on lawsuit "reform" restricts the options for American citizens, but not those of corporations, which file 75% of civil lawsuits.

Their political strategy was to neutralize the independent media, create their own propaganda machine with a partisan press, and flood their coffers with rivers of money from those who stand to benefit from the transfer of public resources to elite control. Along the way they would burden the nation with structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready to retire, systematically stripping government of its capacity, over time, to do little more than wage war and reward privilege.

This strategy is known as "starving the beast": cut taxes and raise national debt, all the while refusing to reduce spending. As debt increases, the only politically viable solution is to cut social programs (since money thrown at defense budgets is beyond criticism) - the goal all along.

Their religious strategy was to fuse ideology and theology into a worldview freed of the impurities of compromise, claim for America the status of God’s favored among nations (and therefore beyond political critique or challenge), and demonize their opponents as ungodly and immoral.
At the intersection of these three strategies was money: Big Money.
That money isn’t going to come from regular folks – less than one half of one percent of all Americans made a contribution of $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2004. No, the men and women who have mastered the money game have taken advantage of this fundamental weakness in our system – the high cost of campaigns – to sell democracy to the highest bidder.
The number of lobbyists registered to do business in Washington has more than doubled in the last five years. That’s 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 to 34,785 last year. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of Congress.
The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.

While the lobbyists are privately employed, it's a hard to take "small government" seriously when industry is spending such money sending more and more people to Washington. Given the span of their influence, this is evidently the situation Republicans want.

But it’s a small investment on the return. Just look at the most important legislation passed by Congress in the last decade.
There was the energy bill that gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobil just posted $36 billion in profits in 2005, while our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high.
There was the bankruptcy “reform” bill written by credit card companies to make it harder for poor debtors to escape the burdens of divorce or medical catastrophe.

Note that the bill places no additional restrictions on corporate bankruptcies - only the much smaller bankruptcies of private citizens.

There was the deregulation of the banking, securities, and insurance sectors, which led to rampant corporate malfeasance and greed and the destruction of the retirement plans of millions of small investors.
There was the deregulation of the telecommunications sector which led to cable industry price-gouging and the abandonment of news coverage by the big media companies.
There was the blocking of even the mildest attempt to prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in annual taxes by opening a P.O. box in an off-shore tax haven like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.
And in every case, the religious right was cheering for the winners.
There are no victimless crimes in politics. The cost of corruption is passed on to the people.
These charlatans and demagogues know that by controlling a society’s most emotionally-laden symbols, they can control America, too. Davidson Loehr reminds us that holding preachers and politicians to a higher standard than they want to serve has marked the entire history of both religion and politics. It is the conflict between the religion of the priests – ancient and modern – and the religion of the prophets.
It is the vast difference between the religion about Jesus and the religion of Jesus.
For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy.

Faith-based security

2006-03-20T18:14:00.001-05:00

From the "what the f***?" department, for your (in)digestion: Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. No, this is not a joke, at least not an intentional one. Some of the lowlights of this directive:

The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) shall establish within the Department of Homeland Security (Department) a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (Center).

The purpose of the Center shall be to coordinate agency efforts to eliminate regulatory, contracting, and other programmatic obstacles to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the provision of social and community services.

... coordinate a comprehensive departmental effort to incorporate faith-based and other community organizations in Department programs and initiatives to the greatest extent possible...

That's right - faith-based homeland security! Good for the entire family! If I were more cynical I'd take this as the administration finally admitting that prayer is about the only option left, in lieu of smart policies and fiscal decisions which could fund reasonable security recommendations.

Nuclear par

2006-03-10T09:10:00.001-05:00

From George Monbiot's A Self-Vindicating Policy.

Israel, citing the threat from Iran, insists on retaining its nuclear missiles. Threatened by them (and prompted, among other reasons, by his anti-semitism), the Iranian president says he wants to wipe Israel off the map, and appears to be developing a means of doing so. Israel sees his response as vindicating its nuclear programme. It threatens an air strike, which grants retrospective validity to Ahmadinejad’s designs. And so it goes on. Everyone turns out to be right in the end.

Some leadership from the U.S. on this issue, some relatively trivial embrace of nonproliferation in practice (not just in words), could possibly help here, and at little real risk. But the banner of terrorism has given us, apparently, justification for redesign of the nuclear payload, as well as development of new weapons. How these would have prevented 9/11 or even helped defend the homeland is a matter for those with expansive imaginations.

The defence secretary [of the UK] explains that a new missile system is necessary because “some countries” have not been “complying with their obligations under the non-proliferation treaty”(5). In response, therefore, the UK will refuse to comply with its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty. This provides other countries with their justification for … well, you’ve got the general idea.

When Iran is referred to the UN Security Council, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be able to turn every accusation it makes back on his accusers. He will insist that the council’s members are asserting a monopoly of ultimate violence; that while there is as yet no definitive evidence that he is in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, no one can doubt that they are. He will point to America’s tacit endorsement of Israel’s nuclear status and its overt endorsement of India’s. He will assert that the enforcement of the global nuclear regime discriminates against Muslim states. And though he is wrong about many things, he will be right about all that.

While no one pretends all states are even remotely the same with regard to aggression, our schizophrenic policy supports only self-interest while waving the banner of diplomacy. Our

... the US Congress ... has bravely sought to block a new nuclear weapons programme. For two years in a row it has refused to approve the money for George Bush’s “robust nuclear earth penetrator”, a mini-nuke which could have reduced the threshold for first use. But now it seems to have been duped.

Last year it approved initial funding for something called the “reliable replacement warhead” programme. The administration maintained that this was nothing more than the refurbishment of existing nuclear weapons. The legislators chose to believe it.

They seemed naïve then and they seem more naïve today. The US has already spent about $60 billion maintaining and refurbishing its weapons under a separate programme, called “stockpile stewardship”. It wasn’t easy to see why it needed a new scheme. Even before the reliable replacement warhead programme had been approved, the outgoing deputy head of the Nuclear National Security Administration (NNSA) had let slip that a new generation of weapons was “not the primary objective, but [it] would be a fortuitous associated event.”

Not much to comment on here; this continues the current administration's behavioral pattern of secrecy and duplicity to implement its whims, regardless of the opinions of the pesky elected officials composing the legislative branch, the one which is only now gathering the chutzpah to check and balance as was its mandate. While such actions are hardly unique to this administration, their mastery of the domain certainly is.

This is not to say that the horripilation Iran’s nuclear programme inspires is unjustified. Nor is it to claim that no other state would seek to develop or maintain nuclear weapons if the official nuclear powers gave theirs up. But the refusal of the members of the security council to make any moves towards disarmament, their threats of pre-emptive bombing and their quiet development of new weapons systems guarantees the failure of both the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nothing could make us less secure than the billions we are spending in the name of security.

The only possible justification for such a stance is, of course, that we are Right and Just, and that They are not, and therefore cannot be trusted with such weapons. Whether this statement is true or not, and to what degree, is completely irrelevant - making the statement undercuts any legitimate moral authority we would otherwise have had. Actions, as always, speak louder than words.

Fossil fools

2006-03-07T17:43:00.001-05:00

As true today as it was then - from The Fossil Fools by the inimitable George Monbiot:

There is a discussion about whether global warming is due to anthropogenic (manmade) effects. But it is not – or is only seldom – taking place among scientists. It is taking place in the media, and it seems to consist of a competition to establish the outer reaches of imbecility.

Science ... learns from its mistakes. A hypothesis is advanced and tested. If the evidence suggests it is wrong, it is discarded. If the evidence appears to support it, it is refined and subjected to further testing. That some climatologists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, and that the idea was dropped when others found that their predictions were flawed, is a cause for confidence in climatology.

But these dolts are rather less dangerous than the BBC, and its insistence on “balancing” its coverage of climate change. It appears to be incapable of running an item on the subject without inviting a sceptic to comment on it. Usually this is either someone from a corporate-funded thinktank (who is, of course, never introduced as such) or the professional anti-environmentalist Philip Stott. Professor Stott is a retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made himself available to dismiss climatologists’ peer-reviewed work as the “lies” of eco-fundamentalists.

This wouldn’t be so objectionable, if the BBC made it clear that these people are not climatologists, and the overwhelming majority of qualified scientific opinion is against them. Instead, it leaves us with the impression that professional opinion is split down the middle. It’s a bit like continually bringing people onto the programme to suggest that there is no link between HIV and AIDS.

Sounds more than a little like our own Fox "News," and the other new organs which have shamefully attempted to emulate its innovations in truth. But since Monbiot's standards of reporting are higher than the American public's, I suspect the BBC leans much closer toward "fair and balanced."

In any event - just because you can find skeptic doesn't mean he or she should actually be listened to. See http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm for information on how the earth is really flat. Really.

But hey, if you don't believe George, you could always listen to a slightly more conservative source: The Pentagon. See Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us, and for more on the Pentagon's report, see links at http://www.climate.org/topics/climate/pentagon.shtml, and MSNBC. Granted that this is a Pentagon visionary, but the current administration has certainly listened to him on ballistic missile defense...

Messiahs and Imperialists

2006-02-20T13:38:00.001-05:00

Some notes on why a state of "minimum and permanent level of international tension" is desirable to U.S. policymakers: Messiahs and Imperialists:

... the main differences among the different schools are tactical—liberal internationalists, for example, tend to value multilateralism and a sense of prudence, they believe in the magical healing powers of global capital, and they don't usually descend into the trance-like messianism of George W. Bush...

... a president with a divine sense of purpose is hardly the scariest religious impulse in American foreign policy. That honor belongs to the various forms of millennialism in the United States, which can hold that it's America's duty to bring about the millennium...

... the standard bearer of a "non-apocalyptic view of means and ends, capabilities and challenges" tends to be the "realists" within the foreign policy establishment—those, like Jeanne Kirkpatrick or Condoleeza Rice, who believe that America must remake the world in its own image, but should be cautious about how to do so. ... But even if these "realists" don't drink from the same millennial Kool-Aid as the neoconservatives, they very much serve their own master: namely, American militarism.

On the one hand, there's the widespread, quasi-religious idea that America is the chosen nation called on to transform the world, with all the genuinely noble and appallingly ugly impulses that brings. On the other hand, there's a security establishment that doesn't buy into these millennial fantasies, but still remains committed to the endless "maintenance and expansion of U.S. global military power." Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is held in high regard by the Democratic establishment, sees the world as a "Grand Chessboard," which gives a sense for what that's all about. If this is all correct, then any hopes for a sensible foreign policy in the near future are probably foolish.

The wages of fundamentalism

2006-02-20T13:23:00.002-05:00

This is a good article on the Taliban in every country - evidently a byproduct of evolution: The Wages of Fundamentalism.

From the article:

There are warning signs, however, that American science is losing its edge, and may even have peaked. One reason is that as religious and political fundamentalism tighten their grip, they are beginning to sap America's intellectual vitality.

Yet history shows that fundamentalism leads only to stagnation and disaster.

Christianity in the Roman Empire led to half a millennium of dark ages, ending only with the rediscovery of Aristotle in the 12th century. ... And Islamic fundamentalism beginning in Baghdad around 1067 led to a millennium of backwardness, which still afflicts the Islamic world.

By contrast, the very history of modern Europe - the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, the modernist battles of the 19th century - may be characterized as the victory of rationalism and science over religious dogmatism.

Turkey has tried to rid itself of fundamentalist Islam twice - and failed twice.

Above everything else, Europe is not fundamentalist. This is why, in their hearts, many Europeans have misgivings about Turkey's entry into the EU. Europe has no shortage of problems of its own making, and has no need to import fundamentalism of any variety.

Just a reminder that any sort of ideological Christian fundamentalist entrenchment is likely to result in conditions as bad as those of the "barbarians at the gates," whether real threats like fundamentalist extremists abroad, or imaginary threats like evolution, obscenity, environmentalism, or liberalism (which was, after all, the offspring of the Enlightenment and the foundation of our nation - prior to the term's corruption by the 80s right-wing media machine).

The foundation of democracy?

2005-09-05T14:27:00.001-04:00

"Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions."

-- Sir Leslie Stephen
(1832-1904), literary essayist, author
Source: The Suppression of Poisonous Opinions, 1883

http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Leslie.Stephen.Quote.30EE

Surely the above is at least a foundation of democracy - perhaps the primary one. Ideas and opinions are not worthy of respect. As soon as they're uttered, they deserve nothing more than to be attacked, beaten, defiled - even as we maintain our respect for the person who expressed them. The worthy ideas will survive and flourish. Not all ideas are created alike, and the fact that someone holds an opinion (or belief, or creed) has no bearing on its value.

That said, the same argument holds for the criticisms - they must be subject to purifying abuse as much as that which they assault. And that's where our democracy is most in danger of falling down - not in the plurality of opinion, but in weak, impoverished critical analysis of those opinions.

Puritans

2005-08-09T20:09:00.001-04:00

An interesting and relevant bit of religious history from George Monbiot - the complete article is at Religion of the Rich. The basic notion is that Puritanism (as it really unfolded, not as we imagine it) is easily seen as an "intellectual" ancestor to the recent crops of Republicans in ~~orifice~~ office. In lieu of commentary, I've highlighted some of the most interesting (and contrary to what I regard as real Christian teachings), but I recommend the complete article.

Puritanism was primarily the religion of the new commercial classes. It attracted traders, money lenders, bankers and industrialists. Calvin had given them what the old order could not: a theological justification of commerce. Capitalism, in his teachings, was not unchristian, but could be used for the glorification of God.

By the mid-17th Century, most English Puritans saw in poverty "not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion … but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will."

"Next to the saving of his soul," the preacher Richard Steele wrote in 1684, the tradesman’s "care and business is to serve God in his calling, and to drive it as far as it will go." Success in business became a sign of spiritual grace: providing proof to the entrepreneur, in Steele’s words, that "God has blessed his trade".

Tawney describes the Puritans as early converts to "administrative nihilism": the doctrine we now call the minimal state. "Business affairs," they believed, "should be left to be settled by business men, unhampered by the intrusions of an antiquated morality". They owed nothing to anyone. Indeed, they formulated a radical new theory of social obligation, which maintained that helping the poor created idleness and spiritual dissolution, divorcing them from God.

Of course, the Puritans differed from Bush’s people in that they worshipped production but not consumption. But this is just a different symptom of the same disease.

There were some, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, who remained true to the original spirit of the Reformation, but they were violently suppressed. The pursuit of adulterers and sodomites provided an ideal distraction for the increasingly impoverished lower classes.

So why has this ideology resurfaced in 2004? Because it has to. The enrichment of the elite and impoverishment of the lower classes requires a justifying ideology if it is to be sustained. In the United States this ideology has to be a religious one. Bush’s government is forced back to the doctrines of Puritanism as an historical necessity. If we are to understand what it’s up to, we must look not to the 1930s, but to the 1630s.

Damned nation

2005-08-09T19:47:00.001-04:00

Damn, are we all damned.

An old article from the inimitable George Monbiot, titled We're All Damned. Some choice cuts:

Leviticus leaves little room for doubt. Thou shalt not eat animal fat, or the fruit of a tree you’ve owned for less than five years. Thou shalt not round the corners of your head, or mar the corners of your beard. Thou shalt not touch a woman, or anything she’s sat on, until seven days after her menstruation begins. Thou shalt not put a stumbling block before the blind (which does for anyone parking on the pavement). Thou shalt not trade in freehold: after 50 years, all property must revert to the people it was bought from.
Leviticus prohibits from officiating in church anyone that hath a blemish, be he lame, crookbackt, with a flat nose, “or any thing superfluous”. Quite what this means is anyone’s guess, but it must certainly cover deaf aids, spectacles, dentures and toupees, thus barring the greater part of the priesthood from its duties.

*sniff* *sniff* Is someone barbecuing? Oh, I'm sorry - that's my soul. Damn.

Of course, one can rely on the traditional New Testament opt-out: Jesus came to fulfill the Mosaic Law, and therefore Leviticus and hyperlinked chapters are irrelevant. So clearly a clever stratagem is to define the "fulfilled law" as whatever bits you don't care to observe (e.g."Rise in the presence of the aged," Lev. 19:32; "The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses," Deut. 14:8; "Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear," Deut. 22:12).

The remainder, of course, is lovely for bashing homosexuals. Yee haw!

P.S. The Bible is clear throughout that the problem is man lying with man. Ellen Degeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, and those hot Miller Lite commercials with the chicks wrestling are safe. *whew*

Paradise as hell, or vice versa

2005-07-31T21:14:00.000-04:00

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level,
that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will
understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda,
people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way
around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."

-- Adolf Hitler
(1889-1945) German Nazi Dictator
1935

Source: Mein Kampf, p. 197. 14th Edition.
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Adolf.Hitler.Quote.EE50

This propaganda tactic was used effectively by the Republican Party in their anti-liberal branding campaign throughout the 90s, and continues today in the form of right-wing talk radio, supplying "listeners" with a stream of sound bites they can unleash on their unwitting families and co-workers.

As a result, we see the mindlessly-repeated "liberals ruining the country" (despite the fact that liberals control very little of the government, there are evidently still rats' nests of liberalism so powerful that they must be exterminated before they spread). We also hear the mantras of the "trickle-down" theory (aka "supply-side economics"): if only all corporate regulations were abolished, the wealthy would unleash a neocapitalist paradise on us unwashed masses.

This sounds exactly like the ultimately fatal Bolshevik party line of 100 years ago, turned on its ear. Some of the nouns have been exchanged ("The Party" is now "The Market", "Enemies of the People" are now "Liberals", etc.), but the basic pattern of villainization, and the brainwashing of the public through repetition in the large corporate media, are alarmingly similar.

Sieg heil, komrades.

A parting thought, just to show how disturbingly eloquent psychotics can be:

"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."

-- Dr. Joseph Mengele
Infamous Nazi doctor
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Joseph.Mengele.Quote.E5E2

Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era

2005-05-23T17:23:00.000-04:00

Some of the best new dictionary entries from Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era:

Homeland n: A term successfully used by the Germans and the Soviets in World War II, less successfully (and in the plural) by Apartheid-era South Africa. It means neither home, nor land, has replaced both country and nation in American public speech, and is seldom wielded without the companion word "security." It is the place to which imperial forces return for R&R.

Nationalism n: How foreigners love their country (when they do). A very dangerous phenomenon that can lead to extremes of passion, blindness, and xenophobia. (See, Terrorism)
Patriotism n: How Americans love their country. A trait so positive you can't have too much of it, and if you do, then you are a super-patriot which couldn't be better. (Foreigners cannot be patriotic. See, Nationalism)
Homeland Security Advisory System: Color-coded program for emotional destabilization.
Democracy n: A country where the newspapers are pro-American.
Checks and Balances: The system whereby the campaign checks of the few balance the interests of the many.
Town-hall Meeting: A meeting in a hall in a town where all the participants have first been vetted for loyalty to the Bush administration.
Mandate: 1. The opinion expressed by about a quarter of the eligible voters. 2. The opinion reflected in an electoral-vote margin smaller than in any 20th century election other than 1916 and 2000. 3. The opinion expressed by the smallest popular vote margin obtained by a sitting president since 1916.
Democracy n: 1. A product so extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted. 2. When they vote for us. (See, tyranny: When they vote for someone else.)
Ownership Society: You no longer own your national parks, your public transit, your commons, your government, your Bill of Rights, or your future, but you may purchase a Burger King franchise or some stocks with your Wal-Mart earnings.
Peace n: What war is for.
Security n: Something to be applied to the homeland but not to the social.
Social Security: A good idea except for two problems: Social verges on socialism and guarantees of security violate a free market.
Abuse n: Modern word for what was once referred to as torture. An interim term, soon to be replaced by "tough love" (which, in turn, is expected to be replaced by "freedom's caress").

MediSin

2005-05-23T17:14:00.000-04:00

In an effort to comfort poor ailing neocons, let's try to rationally analyze the terrifying monster sometimes called Socialized Medicine. Calm down! Everything will be alright if you only wake up the even more terrifying Rational Brain, to confront the evil minions of liberalism: facts and logic. Some information from Paul Krugman's series of articles on health care in the U.S. - I've cut and reordered them for brevity (believe it or not!), but the source articles are:

The Medical Money Pit

Passing the Buck

A Private Obsession

Most Americans probably don't know that we have substantially lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality figures than other advanced countries. It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that this poor performance is entirely the result of a defective health care system; social factors, notably America's high poverty rate, surely play a role. Still, it seems puzzling that we spend so much, with so little return.

An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.

In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child in the population. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Canada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2,048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending.
According to the World Health Organization, in the United States, administrative expenses eat up about 15 percent of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4 percent of the budgets of public insurance programs, mainly Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers for both public and private insurance are similar in other countries - but because we rely much more heavily than anyone else on private insurance, our total administrative costs are much higher.
... private insurers generally don't compete by delivering care at lower cost. Instead, they "compete on the basis of risk selection" - that is, by turning away people who are likely to have high medical bills and by refusing or delaying any payment they can. Yet the cost of providing medical care to those denied private insurance doesn't go away.
First, in the U.S. system, medical costs act as a tax on employment. For example, General Motors is losing money on every car it makes because of the burden of health care costs. As a result, it may be forced to lay off thousands of workers, or may even go out of business. Yet the insurance premiums saved by firing workers are no savings at all to society as a whole: Somebody still ends up paying the bills.
Second, Americans without insurance eventually receive medical care - but the operative word is "eventually." According to Kaiser Family Foundation data, the uninsured are about three times as likely as the insured to postpone seeking care, fail to get needed care, leave prescriptions unfilled or skip recommended treatment. And many end up disabled - or die - because of these delays.

Remember that while democracy requires capitalism, the reverse isn't true. Capitalism isn't about free trade (which has nothing to do with the movement of capital overseas). Capitalism isn't about competition (witness the vigor with which growing corporations swallow competitors and cross into new industries, and how entrepreneurs position themselves to be bought out by large corporations). Privatization isn't about additional opportunities for you and me - it's about additional opportunities for large companies poised to bid big for new markets. And none of the above is about healthy government or healthy citizens. The neocons would have you believe that all of the above are natural fallout from "freedom," but the evidence says different.

And by "evidence," I mean something more than a friend of a friend who had a neighbor who had to wait for a medical procedure in Canada, or dittoheads calling in to Rush to say how a second cousin of a co-worker lost a toe there. Such things happen here too, though more frequently to those with inadequate health care - probably no one reading this on his or her computer.

I was wrong about Bush

2005-05-23T17:12:00.000-04:00

Recently I thought Bush might have accidentally done the right thing in his Social Security pitch. Unfortunately, I was wrong, as A Gut Punch to the Middle gently reminds us:

Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.
The average worker - average pay now is $37,000 - retiring in 2075 would face a cut equal to 10 percent of pre-retirement income. Workers earning 60 percent more than average, the equivalent of $58,000 today, would see benefit cuts equal to almost 13 percent of their income before retirement.
But above that level, the cuts would become less and less significant. Workers earning three times the average wage would face cuts equal to only 9 percent of their income before retirement. Someone earning the equivalent of $1 million today would see benefit cuts equal to only 1 percent of pre-retirement income.
In short, this would be a gut punch to the middle class, but a fleabite for the truly wealthy.
If the Bush scheme goes through, the same thing will eventually happen to Social Security. As Mr. Furman points out, the Bush plan wouldn't just cut benefits. Workers would be encouraged to divert a large fraction of their payroll taxes into private accounts - but this would in effect amount to borrowing against their future benefits, which would be reduced accordingly.
As a result, Social Security as we know it would be phased out for the middle class.
No, this is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs.

I guess it's my own fault. I should know by now that when the Bush administration talks about inconveniencing the wealthy and helping the poor, they really mean hitting the upper middle class and hands-off the poor. Actually hindering the truly wealthy, in any way at all, is so ideologically inconceivable that it never enters consideration.

'Compassionate conservative suppository'

2005-05-23T17:07:00.000-04:00

Now that some of the smoke has cleared over the Schiavo case, and Tom DeLay has removed his hand from inside the poor woman's backside and moved on to new ventriloquist dummies, some post-debacle commentary is in order. Needless to say, someone else has said it well - from The Culture of Death: Let us Prey, America:

Is there any American who has not agonized over the final hours of a loved one? And is there anyone who has not lost a loved one who doesn't thereafter think of that person every single day of their life? And is there anyone who isn't himself or herself going to one day be lying in a hospice or hospital bed with, if they're lucky, their loved ones by their side and, if they're horribly unlucky, Tom DeLay and Jeb Bush and Jerry Falwell and James Dobson and Randall Terry drooling down their feeding tube?
Right. Thought so. These people don't "love life," they hate the freedoms the rest of us so blithely took for granted before George W. Bush was inserted by the Supreme Court in the nation's rectum as a compassionate conservative suppository.
Which should send a collective shudder down the spine of all who are growing more nauseated by the day with the Republican Party and the right-wing extremists in whose grips it has fallen. If the GOP continues to pander to this insane agenda, we may all hereafter be denied the freedom to grieve for our loved ones in peace. But that's a small price to pay for promoting the "culture of death," just as the loss of our civil liberties was a small price to pay for security.
How can one even respond to such criminal stupidity? It's like trying to argue with someone whose only rebuttal is, "Why do you hate America?"

Moral bankruptcy

2005-04-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

The Republicans' "decision" (reflex is probably a better word) to crack down on bankruptcy filings (Bracing for the bankruptcy bill) follows on the moral footsteps of the "Class Action Fairness Act" (AKA tort "reform"), and is a harbinger of the coming repeal of the "death tax." The majority cites "fairness" and the ever-popular "individual responsibility" as justification for these, although you might ask: When fairness benefits primarily the wealthy and corporations, and removes safety nets for the already fragile working class, is it still "fair"?

Half the bankruptcies that the bill gets "tuff" on are the result of medical emergencies, while most of the rest are the result of job loss and divorce. Congress chose to reject provisions that would provide protection in the cases of medical emergency, and for seniors trying to keep their homes. Meanwhile, credit card companies (who lobbied heavily for this) continue to earn record profits pandering to the credit-unworthy. This bill helps them lessen their risk and increase their profits. Fair?

Comments on "fairness" from Bankruptcy bill or welfare for usurers?:

Consider this: The Senate rejected a measure to cap credit-card interest rates at 30 percent.

As Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America noted, lenders "have it within their power to control the bankruptcy rates by controlling their practices."

When Washington pushes for more responsibility among debtors, but not loan-shark-like lenders, when its "ownership society" principles don't make big corporations own up to their role in the bankruptcy problem, the GOP is toadying to big business. (Ditto the 18 Democrats and one independent senator who voted for the bill.)

"Tort reform" might be equitable if it had any impact on corporations, which file roughly 75% of all civil lawsuits, consuming publicly-funded court time - but it doesn't. It restricts individuals in class action suits, one of our few remaining checks on corporations' abuses. Fair?

The "death tax" is claimed to possibly maybe bankrupt some farms - although no actual case has been cited (as we've seen from the Republican Noise Machine, facts wilt before repeated cliches). The estate tax affects roughly 19,000 people, and apparently the major moral issue is that if the tax stays intact, wealthy heirs (once again, the wealthy benefit) won't be quite as far ahead of poor heirs as they used to be. Meanwhile, lost taxes will be paid by our children and grandchildren in the form of debt. Fair?

The results of all this fairness are predictable: It's better to be poor in Norway than in the US and Industry Secrets (Scary Debt Stats). This at the same time that the U.S. pays extremely high rates for healthcare yet ranks poorly among other industrialized nations, despite having the best-trained practicioners and best medical infrastructure - adding, of course, to medical bankruptcies. Fair?

It's no wonder W talks about "private accounts" as apparently the only significant part of an "ownership society." We no longer own our government, if we ever did.

More on toughening bankruptcy laws: The Bankruptcy Bill: a Tutorial in Greed and The Debt-Peonage Society and Bankruptcy Bill is Congress' Shame.

More on tort "reform": Tort 'Reform' Triumphs and The Hypocrites Of Tort Reform.

More on the estate tax: True to Ritual, House Votes for Full Repeal of Estate Tax.

The death cry of education and achievement

2005-04-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

I just stumbled across Michelle Malkin's The death cry of snob journalism, referenced on our local radio host Jim Quinn's warroom.com, and it nicely encapsulates the growing contempt Americans have for education, achievement, and professionalism. Not quite what she intended, I hope, but instructive nonetheless. From her article:

Dan Rather, Professional Journalist, and CBS News, Professional News Network, want us to keep believing that they are the ordained purveyors of truth. ... The wall between the self-anointed press protectorate and the unwashed masses has crumbled.

Self-annointed? Journalists work to develop skills collecting, verifying, and analyzing data, and presenting issues clearly. This discipline, however easy to dismiss and difficult to appreciate, is a wall between professional journalists and the unwashed masses, as it is in any field - unless you think Sam the Butcher could do a bang-up job with your next triple-bypass, since he can probably make those cuts just like a surgeon.

In failing to make a distinction between a discipline and practicioners, Malkin falls into knee-jerk anti-elititism appealing to the unaccomplished, underskilled, and undereducated. Apparently in America, it's OK to be studious and learned, just not too much, in case you outgrow yer britches.

Questioning "experts" is fine when one has a basis for questions and critiques, and god knows experts can be arrogant; that has no bearing on their correctness. The growing tendency for slavering masses to dismiss "experts" outright, based on their education and expertise (from which arrogance can now apparently be inferred) rather than a reasonable doubt, is pathetic and frightening. The ability to click a mouse and post a blog entry doesn't mean the post has any value.

Then Malkin launches into a romantic description of blogger derring-do:

Bloggers take orders from no one. But with that irresistible platter of publishing freedom comes a tall glass of responsibility. For serious blogging pundits and news-gatherers and discussion board operators, cyber-cred is everything.

It's far, far easier to spray tripe (even easily-refuted tripe) than to analyze and refute it - especially when you're just one in a sea of sprayers. And for the average person (remember the consumer?), reading a limited number of information sources per week, how are they to decide, track, follow up? Journalistic integrity is what helps us turn a sea of he-said-she-said into something converging on truth.

And it's silly to assume that, because Malkin might be a "serious blogging pundit," that they all are. Malkin would probably admit that blogdom is a heterogeneous stew of personalities, so they also have individual motives. Has no blogger ever been motivated by cash, by notoriety, by ideology, or by party loyalty? "Cyber-cred," whatever that is, isn't everything, and Malkin's implication that CBS and company "spin" while bloggers report only "The Messy Truth" is, if not nonsense, irrefutable spin.

Blogs are a godsend for journalism: hundreds of fact-checkers rabidly attacking news stories can only be an advantage for seekers of truth, as it was in pointing out CBS's severe lapse of judgement. "Relentlessly unmasking the frauds of snob journalism" is a good thing, although her use of "snob" is a bizarre indicator of motive. Fraud is fraud, isn't it? Or is it worse when the perpetrator is a snob? Maybe we oughtta knock them old boys down a peg?

But washing over the puddle of fact-checking bloggers comes a sea of spinners - those with no desire to objectively present facts, including those like Matt Drudge who regurgitate reports with no concern for source or accuracy. Perhaps objectivity is a statistical function of this sea of blogs - but since no one has time to even skim all these sources, professional journalism remains valuable.

With amusement, I have watched my colleagues in the Old Media fight every democratizing and choice-enhancing trend during the dozen years I've spent in the information business.

Choice and "democratization" are good, all other things being equal, but can erode value in favor of palatability. News now competes with entertainment, forcing an evolution into programs that people choose over others - not necessarily that which is informative. And Malkin appears to infer virtue and value in La Resistance (flashy new trends), based purely on her amusement.

They scoffed at Rush Limbaugh as a flash in the pan (and have searched in vain for a commercially viable liberal counterpart for the last 15 years). They sneered at The Drudge Report (then bookmarked his site for hourly reading).

Here Malkin again confuses democracy with demagoguery: Rush Limbaugh, by his own words, is an entertainer. Large chunks of Drudge's spew are refuted daily, some of which are posted quietly on his site days later; do his readers care? While facts can be entertaining, entertainment requires no standards, merely a subjectively rewarding end result. If Malkin believe Limbaugh to be in the "information business," would she deem it as necessary to apply the standards of fact-checking to Limbaugh and Drudge as they were (correctly) to Rather?

They sniped at Fox News (then ripped off every one of Roger Ailes' innovations). They mocked the insurgent New York Post (as their own circulation figures and ad sales tanked).

Surely Malkin doesn't confuse the thirst for circulation and ratings (and hence dollars) with a thirst for the truth? Apparently not; by labeling the Old Media as "frauds" in her article, then pointing to their emulation of "New Media," she indicates that fraud is the future, if not our present.

Bush's National Lampoon: European Vacation

2005-04-12T21:16:00.000-04:00

Bush's recent romp in Europe - an attempt to convince "Old Europe" that despite our actions and policies and words that we really are the defenders of peace and freedom and capitalism and motherhood and apple pie - may have underachieved, showing that Dear Leader is consistent. Some summaries of the results of his adventures follow.

From Lost in Europe:

At the last minute he rescued his summit with Vladimir Putin, who refuses to soften his authoritarian measures, with a step toward safeguarding Russian plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons production. This programme was negotiated by Bill Clinton and neglected by Bush until two weeks ago.

Putin's crackdown on dissent and democracy generates some "concern" by the administration, but apparently no more than the un-democratic practices of Pakistan,Turkey, Egypt, etc. Either good allies are hard to find, or easy for this administration to lose.

Ceasing the finger-pointing is the basis for European consensus on its new, if not publicly articulated, policy: containment of Bush. Naturally, Bush misses the nuances and ambiguities.
The Europeans have committed their credibility to negotiations, the Iranians have diplomatic means to preclude unilateral US action, and Bush - who, according toEuropean officials, has no sense of what todo - is boxed in, whether he understands it or not.

And from Bush's Geopolitical Legacy:

Apparently, he [W.] thinks that he will be remembered for advancing "liberty"
in the world, and perhaps particularly in the Middle East. This seems to me most unlikely. I think he will be remembered for having anchored a major geopolitical shift that will be lasting - the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis.
What happened after 2001 is that George W. Bush, in his failed attempts to intimidate western Europe and Russia, accomplished the remarkable feat of speeding up the divergence between Europe and the United States to a point where a major fissure is in the process of being consolidated.
There will be three geopolitical stories to watch. One will be the economic competition between Europe and East Asia for the central role in the accumulation of capital in the coming decades. ... The second will be the struggle of what might be called some middle economic powers that are also regional giants - India, Brazil, South Africa, at least - to maintain their balance and assert their role (and alliances) in this new geopolitical arena. The third is to see how the United States will be able to adjust to these new realities in which its real and perceived role will be much less than it is now.

And last but not least, referenced from the excellent tomdispatch.com, George W. Bush, Europe's Godfather in Spite of Himself:

The United States settles for aspiring to global hegemony, marginalizing the United Nations, rejecting a multi-polar world and seeking to impose, problem by problem, the formation of coalitions over which, by happy coincidence, it systematically presides. Faced with this imperial, not totalitarian - an appreciable difference - but nonetheless authoritarian, Republic, Europe has but a single alternative: unite or obey.
What the European Council of Heads of Government never was able to do, George W. Bush succeeded in achieving: the citizens of all of continental Europe and a good number of Britons, whether their governments were left or right, whether their Prime Ministers had committed themselves in the American wake or had refused, all these citizens purely and simply rejected their choices and American methods. George W. Bush was midwife to the birth of a European public opinion.

It's fascinating how quickly Bush Ltd's extremist approach to the world outside Crawford, TX has polarized it against America. As we anger growing economic giant China by mincing words on Taiwan and encouraging Japan to militarize, and alienate Europe through contempt for Kyoto, the U.N., the International Crimincal Court, etc., we may find ourselves sucking hind teat on the tripolar sow. And as India's recent partnership with China shows (India, China declare a trade partnership), even friendly nations are starting to think that the costs of alliance with the U.S. don't justify the shrinking benefits.