HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Blame Canada. Not.

The real culprits in the death of fat people.

Also Merry Christmas

Joy to all, peace, music, and love be with you.

Top Ten of Zeroic Proportions

Fafblog.  'Nuff said.

The 800th (by Rightist Reckoning) Post

Powered by Journey videos (it's All Your Fault, Lisa Golden!), this compilation of opinionated and informative links owes its existence to 5 days of "no, that's not quite," and "but I have stuff to do!"  (Which led to commenting on lots of stuff on Dreamwidth--have I mentioned that I still have 3 invite codes?--in lots of different directions, because I half-know a lot of stuff--but not on useful projects or useful knowledge increase.  But I digress.)

Dave and Joe host a party for the holidays.  And why it matters:

It struck me last night just how wonderful this whole thing was. Joe and I, together, are hosting a 'do' at work. It wasn't that long ago when we lived in a time where gay people did not live openly, were not acknowledged as couples, did everything to avoid notice. Now here we are part of a relationship both acknowledged and honoured at work. Too, I will be there, as a person with a disability in an office that is fully accessible and where any of our members or staff with disabilities are welcome to drop by and participate.

Mexico City is down with that.

Ten people who might consider a much lower profile in 2010, according to Michael Arceneaux at The Root.  Also, some minor signal-boosting.

As someone who is conflict-averse, I winced along while reading Jill's posting:

We had the sense that all Bill Clinton wanted was quiet. I understand this mindset, I have it myself, coming from a family that experienced a fair amount of shouting fights and uproar in my childhood. When you grow up as a conflict avoider, you tend towards twisting yourself into a pretzel and jumping through hoops in a vain effort to just have some peace and quiet. It's a terrible way to live and it doesn't teach you that sometimes people will disagree and you have to learn that capitulation is not always the best way to resolve a conflict. You have to learn that your viewpoint is just as valid as anyone else's, and that you have a right to defend it.

And having mentioned Lisa (yeah, I know I'm being boring, but the universe is trying to trick me into a state of calm before dropping the next set of disasters on me, and in the interest of not having said disasters dropped, I'm trying to stay mildly paranoid (cue Black Sabbath).  Also to find the earrings that picked up my telepathic search for them and burrowed deeper into the apartment midden of Doom), I'm linking to parts 1 and 2 of her reaction to the reaction to Julie Powell's memoir, Cleaving.

The fact is - infidelity is but one way to hurt your spouse. There are sins of commission and sins of omission. No one ever wants to talk abut the damage done by withholding affection or love or intimacy. No one wants to discuss how marriages begun in one's twenties might just outlive their realistic shelf life when the couple reaches their forties, fifties or sixties. Perhaps the whole reason we've seen a cultural shift in the average age at which people marry for the first time is because the younger generations understand that who you are when you're twenty-two isn't the person you want to have picking out the person with whom you'll spend the rest of your life.

Why we have to keep on fighting for health care payment reform.  And what we lose by not having single payer, and how our politicians (and when I say "our politicians" here, I mean the ones who claim to be on our side) have betrayed us.

Brief review of Muhammad:  Legacy of a Prophet, with one of those quotable sentences:

Catholics cooperating with Quakers to promote understanding of Islam: interfaith activity is alive and well in Orange County.

Ann Louise Nixon Cooper, 1902-2009.

Last, and very much least:  Why rigidity is a bad thing.  From Obsidian Wings, with a whipped-cream sentence:

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't treat such inflexibility kindly.

Faux Perles

So two Internet venues have pointed me at Peggy Noonan's "The Adam Lambert Problem," which is two too many; the one I can blame is No More Mister Nice Blog, since the other was closed before I thought to cite them.  Probably fortunately.

Anyway.  Steve M. of No More Mr... flicks the fly and yawns:  "Yeah, maybe some people felt that way -- for about a day or two. But this is an incident most of America has forgotten, an incident that, by a long shot, isn't even the #1 celebrity sex story of the end of 2009, much less the #1 zeitgeist story."  And in the comments, it was stated that there are real concerns out there, and Mr. L. just doesn't rate.

Note to the Ms. Noonans out there:  "Pearl-clutching" is a term of derision.

(Full disclosure:  I saw some of the video.  I was more concerned about all the stupid spikes.)

Out and About

Driftglass upends a classic.

Like a Whisper's Prof. Susurro showcases women poets of color.

Daisy has music videos up for (in reverse order) Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon, the New York Dolls and Wishbone Ash.

I'm in the back, remarking on all the new gray in Obama's hair, listening to the Rondo Capriccioso, and wondering if the thief who stole the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the gate at Auschwitz is some species of Holocaust denier who intends to suggest it was never there.

798

Strong words from the Sideshow on the health care payment reform battle and the shifting political stances of the major players.

It was just a bargaining chip he intended to throw away. And that puts him far to the right of the American people. Do not tell me that just because he has gotten away with this so far, this proves that the American people are "moderate". The American people are not "moderate" in Village terms, they are moderate in American terms, which means they are not insane enough to want to be, as so many smart people have noted, forced to buy lousy insurance they can't afford. And once they realize that this is what Obama is forcing on them, they will hate him even more than they hated George W. Bush.

Because when I'm that mad, I can't word.

Anyone We Know?

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/12/14/

Still Magic

Actor/singer explains his life with rock 'n' roll.

Season's Greetings

Happy Hanukkah!  (or however you spell it.)  May your lights remain lit!

ETA:  Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast proposes Major League Dreidel.

Fafblog is Not Alone

Shark-fu's dream of Rupert Murdoch's true self:

“I give you the information I think you should have the way I think you should have it. I give you conservative pundits and personalities all pre-programmed to maintain your fear and confusion so I can continue to dominate you – for this you should thank me.”

To paraphrase a line from North by Northwest, an awful lot of people are confronted with Rupert Murdoch and see only his money.  Back in 1976, however, he bought two New York newspapers: the New York Post, which up to that point (I know; hard to believe now) had been a liberal voice in the region, and the Village Voice, a weekly with a national readership and reputation which mostly reported on the local (to Greenwich Village primarily and secondarily to the rest of New York City) art scene and relevant national politics.  If you click that last link, you'll notice that Murdoch was unable to digest the Voice.  But he destroyed the Post as a newspaper.  If you hear a cry of "The Post is not a newspaper," that's me.  So yeah, I despise him.  In case you wondered.

In Memoriam

Yosef H. Yerushalmi, historian.

I have not read his work, nor met him.  Just so you know.

In Memoriam

Gene Barry, actor.  (The New World version of Patrick MacNee.)

They've Lost Bruce

Bruce Springsteen:

A BRIEF STATEMENT FROM BRUCE
Like many of you who live in New Jersey, I've been following the progress of the marriage-equality legislation currently being considered in Trenton. I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples and fully agree with Governor Corzine when he writes that, "The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law." I couldn't agree more with that statement and urge those who support equal treatment for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to let their voices be heard now.

Individual items don't have links, but this is demarcated by a box, which should be on (or near) top for a while.

Say What?

Shellfish harvesting resumes in Alameda

I did a double-take before realizing that mussels are not part of the hiring process.

Yahrzeit and the War

John Lennon, 29 years ago.  Next year, he would have been 70.  I can't imagine.

Bob Herbert on the toll the wars exact:

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

(I wouldn't know about that--there's a lot of denial out there.)

"Prepare to Panic"

Arthur Silber gets totally blunt about "health care reform."  Judicious use of the usual four-letter word.

Adventures in the Empyrean

The retreat/reflection was interesting, centering on the Spe Salvi encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI.  It's a wide-ranging document, citing Dostoevsky and Marx.  I'm going to go read some St. Augustine.

One of the things I got out of it, though, is that the Pope should start a blog.

On to the dream, which featured a seriously weird apartment building with the remains of rails buried under debris in one corridor and a semi-transparent floor allowing one to see the tracks on the next floor down, preceded by [a beautiful woman] in a nearly-red flared-skirt dress whom I embraced.  The other stuff going on was probably the stuff important to my subconscious, but that, of course, is the part I forgot.

Delayed Business

OK, link is fixed:  Avedon Carol on the health care reform process.

People who really want genuine health care reform that would cut costs should spend less time trying to pass this bill and more time demanding that real cost-cutting, in the form of universal single-payer with real enforcement on restraints on insurance companies, be put at the foundations of the bill. Every concession to conservatives should be removed from it. Get rid of anything supporters of health care reform would have to explain away. Fight four-square for a bill like that, and you'll have the public with you in no time. That's the only way to get real health care reform - fight for it.

Also, Bernanke should be spanked, the tears of rapist sympathizers, and a link to a gorgeous version of "Carol of the Bells."

UPDATE:  More on the subject:

But think about this: The administration said publicly that they had no intention of passing a public option. They said it where the insurance companies could see it. They started from the weakest possible negotiating position. And the only reason we are still even talking about the public option is that enough people decided to push back. As far as I can tell, most of them are pushing back only because the administration has given them the go-ahead to do so. But we still have no reason to believe that the public option is in any way their goal. Maybe they just figured out that they needed a bit of grass roots steam to power their fake threat to the insurance companies to get them to play ball.

If you're not reading The Sideshow, you're missing some of the best political writing on the Web.

I will be taking part of my journey to God today, so watch out for 15-car pileups. ;-)

Goo Goo G'Joob

Fafnir's pie is missing.  And he knows whodunit.

While I'm Waiting for That Link to be Fixed

The Mahablog is on fire this morning:

In a nutshell — health reform legislation is being gutted of the most critical cost control measures by “centrist” legislators who complain the cost control measures are too costly. So the aspects of the bill that make it fiscally responsible are being removed in the name of fiscal responsibility. At the same time, Republicans who for years have badmouthed Medicare and sworn to dismantle it are scaring seniors by telling them the health care bill would ruin Medicare.

That Tolling's Been Going On Awhile...

Arthur Silber urged the reading of the latest posting by Chris Floyd.

So I did.

I guess we're in trouble.

...[S]hould we give credit to such a regime, single it out for praise, whenever it happens to behave in a rational manner on one issue or another? After all, functioning governments of every kind do a multitude of worthy things for their people every day. They build roads, lay electric lines and sewer pipes, maintain the food supply, sponsor medical research, facilitate technological developments, adjudicate civil disputes, provide disaster relief, maintain parks and recreation areas, etc., etc. – the list is virtually endless. And this was equally true of, say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, and other regimes imbued with a crimeful essence. Would you have told a dissident opposing the depredations of Hitler or Stalin or Franco or Tojo or the apartheid regime in South Africa that he or she must always be sure to point out any constructive thing these governments do, and give them credit for it?
[...]
...extreme systems force that kind of triage upon us. Raoul Wallenberg could not end the Holocaust; he could only save what was in relative terms a very small number of people at the margins. But who would deny his heroism, and wish that he had not sought such small but deeply meaningful mitigations? Conversely, who among us would have suggested that Wallenberg, in the dire moral urgency of his mission, take time out to give credit to the Nazis for, say, their "Strength Through Joy" recreational programs for ordinary workers, or their remarkable highway system? Or in our time, do we require Shirin Ebadi to praise the Tehran regime for its social housing programs, or Aung San Suu Kyi to give credit to the Burmese generals for building roads or installing storm drains?

In Memoriam

Robert Degen, who was at least partly guilty of the Hokey Pokey.

The December "From the Archives" obituaries are wonderfully rich.  James Baldwin...Grandma Moses...

More Skewers, Please, We Still Have Corn

Why extraterrestrials don't eat us

"Well at the very least they would've eaten us," says Giblets. "Just look at us, all marbled with succulent fat and dripping with tasty earth juices!"
"Maybe they're vegans," says me. "Or maybe we taste all weird an gamey."

and the purpose of the war in Afghanistan.

And just as America can't afford to abandon this war, surely it can't afford to abandon the Afghan people, who without the American military would be left to the savage whims of their hated enemy, the Afghan people.

Mostly, you can't beat Fafblog! Except sometimes.

L'Amuse-Bouche

Driftglass pokes at the current apostasy of Andrew Sullivan.

Next Step

Banning divorce.

(Not, strictly speaking, serious; but, y'know, slippery slope stuff.  It would be like re-instituting stoning for adultery:  Too many hypocrites conservatives would be personally inconvenienced.)

Takedown

The Slacktivist calls out the authors of the Manhattan Declaration and names their sin.

Metamorphosis

Barack Obama turns into Lyndon B. Johnson.  Bad sign.  Jumping into quicksand is never the smart thing to do.

ETA:  And then there's this matter.

All Greek to Me

One of the other reasons I subscribe to Harper's is that Scott Horton not only excerpts a passage from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, he connects it both to historical parallels between Athens and the U.S.  and to architecture in Germany, with additional Bruckner.

This is the sort of thing public intellectuals are supposed to do.

No Man Can Find the War

Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker on major U. S. wars since WWII.  There's also a Roger Angell article (the baseball season is not over until Mr. Angell has analyzed the Yankees' part in it, and since that included a World Champeenship, there was more to write), but that's not available on-line unless you subscribe, and while I do, I'm not up for ladling out any more data than I already have.  So there.

Arctic Sea Ice

Melting like ice in a warm drink.

Yawn

Apparently that business about the Governor having died early this morning was a dream (I thought I'd heard an announcement on the news, turned over and went back to sleep, and have not yet found the slightest hint of confirmation).

Different Journey

Terrance of Republic of T on Alcoholics Anonymous (today being the birthday of one of the founders of AA) and Thanksgiving.

In Trust

So the question for you is: Do you trust this system? Do you? I would offer one further point: the degree to which you think global warming is a genuine crisis requiring urgent action, is the precise degree to which you should trust this system even less. If you think the entire globe faces a frightening crisis of truly unprecedented proportions, do you trust a system where decisions are made on the basis of friendships, alliances, connections, "influence" and doing "favors" for those one prefers, for whatever reason? No matter how sincere some individuals may be, do you trust a system which invites and encourages the participation of people who aren't sincere in any measurable degree, but are primarily and sometimes solely concerned with increasing their own wealth and power?

Well, do you?

Read the rest.

Researching

Apparently Phil Agre has dropped out of sight.

Random Acts of Senseless Clickiness

So apropos of nothin'-in-particular, I was thinking of Tony Bennett yesterday (no, not the basketball coach) and well-aged singers, which led to poking around skippy's blogroll, which led to Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, posting about movies and baseball.  (I heard that "Do tell.")

Most of it is so rich that I can only nosh for half an hour, but have the entry on Halloween Leftovers for a thorough overview of early horror movies.

More in Sorrow Than in Anger

The word for this is not Schadenfreude, but it's close.

Opening That Door

This being a Monday morning (pries open one eyelid and mainlines decaf) of a short work-week, I poke around the usual Web readings of a morning and found a couple of inspirational things, which caused inspiration to blossom inspirationally, and I think I'm sending the characters in the story I am not writing (not.  not.  not) to a party.  But that comes later, after I unearth a really spectacular bad pun.

Sorry.  Anyway.  J. C. Hutchins at tor.com suggested two questions to move a story along, good.  But Shark-fu gets to a deeper issue:

So, while the blessed few among us who are able to defeat our fear and experience creativity go about the bitness of making and eating sumptuous cakes, the rest of us eat crackers…all because we afraid to risk fucking a few cakes up before we get that shit right.

Because society punishes the creative among us when they do fuck up…because deep down in the core of too many of us is a resentment toward those pretty ass cake making motherfuckers.

(The talk she refers to is a video with subtitles one needs to turn on.)

So, yes, I've been terrified of mistakes in writing for a while.  But it's time to grab that back.  Even if I have to do it in pieces.

Watch this space.  (Not too closely, mind.)

(xposted to Dreamwidth journal)

Organized Football Takes a Stand

Remember the article on concussions in football and the consequences thereof?  The NFL is arranging to have independent neurologists work with teams on concussion issues.

They're also relying on self-reporting and teammates voicing concerns.

The Associated Press this month conducted a survey of 160 NFL players — about 10 percent of the league — and 30 replied that they have hidden or played down the effects of a concussion.

Unemployment by the Month

In easy visual form:  http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html.

You can supply the thousand words.

Antelope Freeway, 1/128 mi.

Via The Sideshow:  Our intelligentsia ain't too bright.

(Yes, the "ain't" is deliberate.  Yes, it's Salon; close the ad.)

As leading opinion-makers, Broder and Diehl are paid to carefully ponder issues and then offer their considered thoughts. That's not part of what they're supposed to do -- it's what they are singularly employed to do. It's how they earn their living and credibility -- indeed, it's their entire raison d'être. And yet, these leading lights of the intelligentsia are overtly preaching anti-intelligence, insisting the president must avoid taking time to think through his actions.

This isn't interpretation -- it's what these Beltway sages are literally saying. Broder is explicitly demanding Obama make a knee-jerk decision -- any decision -- even if it has catastrophic consequences. Likewise, Diehl is calling for Obama to immediately risk thousands of American lives simply because that's what Diehl believes the establishment wants.

At least today, I like this David Sirota guy.

Cy Young Winners

Zack Greinke, K. C. Royals; Tim Lincecum, S. F. Giants.

The Dunes of Seattle

Mrs. Robinson is back!

Sara Robinson on the Copenhagen climate change conference and possible results.

Pass the Popcorn, Please

Driftglass is mocking Thomas Friedman.

We keep being told that all that conservative venom is shellac, and we keep waiting for it to dry...

Stuff from Harper's

Scott Horton features Hannah Arendt on political falsehoods:

The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes, or denied and distorted, often carefully covered up by reams of falsehoods or simply allowed to fall into oblivion. Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling place in the domain of human affairs.

He also has a brief piece on contractor immunity:

The contractor had been required by U.S. contracting rules to take out insurance to cover just such an event–not that it mattered, since no American court could require them to pay. Neither could any court in Iraq, it turns out, because of Order No. 17, issued by Paul Bremer as American proconsul, which had granted contractors immunity from process in Iraqi courts. The contractor, it turned out, had been completely immunized for its wrongful acts.

John R. MacArthur draws a lesson from William L. Shirer.  No, not that one:

At the end of his first chapter, Shirer takes stock of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 with nearly 100,000 troops. The Red Army, he wrote, was “reported to be meeting the usual reception which Afghans gave foreign invaders…. To the surprise of no one who knew the land, the Russian troops apparently were having a more difficult time than Moscow had envisaged.”

Here Comes The Judge

You see the critical point of common agreement: the United States is the bestest ever, in this and every other universe. God, we love us. Verily, 'tis a romance for the ages.

On the issues involved in trying the supposed 9/11 co-conspirators:

1. Sentence first, then trial;
2. Fruit of poisoned tree;
3. Corruption of justice.

No, that's my condensed summary. You still need to read the whole article.

It's Not Paranoia if They're Really Out to Get You

Coverage for women's health seems to be getting chipped away.  Gee, I can't imagine why I'd think that.

For Your Edification

Dictionary definitions of Mrs. Palin's favorite epithet.  Via piranha.

Bring Popcorn

Arthur Silber illustrates cultural misogyny with Andrew Sullivan.

(Yes, the sentence may be read two ways.)

Heads' Up

An alert from Mills River Progressive, via Allen L. Roland's Salon blog; I want to see more information before broadcasting.

In Memoriam

Sy Syms, clothing retailer.

Because I heard that commercial at least 5 times a day.  Much lower key than Crazy Eddie, though.

Coincidence

I Like Pie, Spot places tongues firmly in cheek for Blackwater Massacre Legal Services.

Peekaboo!

While I wasn't looking, Fafnir and the Medium Lobster popped up and posted.

Tour de force

Profile of Patricia Racette, soprano.  Seen at Iron Tongue of Midnight.

Sirens Blazing

Progressives following the conservative path, with quotes from Barbara Tuchman.

Connections

Susie Bright notes some similarities:

In the midst of this reality-fantasy convergence, another piece of patriarchal-creep rocked the country— this time, affecting more people than Ft. Hood and Mad Men's viewership combined. We witnessed the Orwellian "health care reform" process become derailed by what I call "The Stupid Amendment," a wildly successful Vatican intervention to make sure that whatever health care plan comes out of Congress, it will be engineered to control women's wombs.

In other words, health insurance for men, not for women.

Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott

John Calvin and James Madison on the necessity of government and Madison's religious life.  (It's Scott Horton's Harper's column, but there is at present no by-line given.)

With 4th movement of Mendelsohn's 5th Symphony as counterpoint.

Listening to the Yardbirds

Silber on American foreign policy, then and now.

Watching the Watchbirds

Suspicious behavior from prosecutors--what to do?

The question that remains is simple: what happens when Justice Department prosecutors break the law, abusing the prosecutorial powers of the United States in the process? In general, the Justice Department’s reaction is to sweep the whole affair under the carpet. There’s no evidence here that this case has been treated any differently. If prosecutors are able to intimidate and cajole the press in violation of Justice Department orders with impunity, that suggests that the attorney general doesn’t treat his own guidelines very seriously.

Note:  This matter occurred prior to current U.S. Attorney General tenure.

Health Care Comparison Shopping 2

1. The legislative path, with obstacles and a Sphinx playing at shortstop.
2. Conservatives are conservatives.
3. Some wisdom:

   I'm all for bloggers pointing out how the conservatives are lying about the public option, but not before pointing out how Democrats are lying about it, too. The fact is, both the supporters and the opponents in Congress are lying about the public option and the whole damn health care bill. Every single one of us should be opposing this bill. Every single one of us should be refusing to be a party to this complete sell-out to the insurance companies and the forced-pregancy forces and the proponents of the Savonarola approach to women and the damned neo-Calvinists who are trying to destroy us all. -- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
   

With all this tooth-grinding, I'm going to need a dentist...

Follow-Up Article

Conviction in a murder case.  (via supergee.)  Note that the article has rather a different slant from the one at the time of the murder.  (Mentioned here.)

Recent Not-Exactly-Prognostication

In July, Lou Dobbs of CNN allied with the birthers.  (Links to my post, which links to Southern Beale's account, which links to Media Matters, just so you have the complete chain of evidence.)

Mr. Dobbs is leaving CNN, effective today.

I can't help wondering whether there were subtle pressures applied.  Subtly.

Veterans Day

Thanks, appreciation, and gratitude to those who served.  (My father, uncle, and elder cousins in particular.)

1.  Bossymarmalade on Dreamwidth posted the video of the National Film Board of Canada's documentary on Chinese veterans of WWII (copyright 1999), which is both heartbreaking and stirring.
2.  Making Light's annual posting is not yet up, but here's last year's.
3. Ruminations on Armistice Day, by Terry Karney. ETA:  More recent thoughts.
4. Shark-fu lays down the law.
5. What I said.  See also this (Prof. Susurro).

34 Years Ago

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Pat Kight was a young reporter then; her account is here.

Dr. Grumpy posted the lyrics to the Gordon Lightfoot song and adds a little-known fact.

On Authoritarianism

Two parts of an ongoing series on authoritarianism (remember when Republicans were going to great trouble to distinguish authoritarianism from totalitarianism?  Specious) running in Cogitations, which I will add to the blogroll.

Part I.

Democracy, you see, requires compromise, and truly listening to what others have to say so that compromise can be achieved. Because of the authoritarian orientation that closes doors to open discourse and marches roughshod in condemnatory righteousness over “enemies” (Let’s take our country back! We’re the Real America!) – we are losing or have already lost our channels of true bipartisanship. It is increasingly difficult to find common ground in national issues. The disconnect between liberals and conservatives has become a gaping chasm, and authoritarianism is the underlying dynamic, I think, behind why the country has become so polarized, so Red State/Blue, “Us or Them”, most markedly over the last decade.

Part II.

(The Germans knocked down the Berlin Wall on November 9th 20 years ago.)

(Next year will be the 25th (!) anniversary of the recording of "We Are the World" and I find it still moves me, so I've been running the video, and then I realized there had to be a Making Of feature, and there is, and it's in 9 parts.  [Jimmy Thudpucker was apparently not in camera range. ;-)]  I'm bookmarking everything and (YouTube Willing) will link or post videos next spring.

The Song Remains the Same

Driftglass excoriates the Bloviators of Sunday (that's Led Zeppelin in the background).

...Lindsey Graham warned “the public option will destroy private insurance.”

Just as public parks and gyms have destroyed for-profit fitness clubs, public beaches have destroyed private seaside resorts, public transit has destroyed the car, Segue, motorcycle, bike and scooter industries, public libraries have driven Amazon into bankruptcy, taxpayer-funded police departments have wiped out the market for private security firms, the US Armed Forces have put Blackwater out of business, community colleges have killed the Ivy League, public playgrounds have destroyed private sports franchises, public washrooms have people turning their bathrooms into extra closet space, public housing has destroyed the housing market, public drinking fountains have crushed Evian and Ice Mountain.

[snipped]

Of course, even if you accept Graham’s bullshit premise, he still failed to explain why it would be a bad thing.

It got worse:

Luntz: The public is most angry about wasteful Washington spending. (Luntz then reads his own polling questions as if they mean something.)

Cokie Roberts: The problem is, people want jobs and don’t want to spend any money. How oh how will they do that?

Will: I remember how the Carthaginians handled a similar problem in the…

Luntz: I’m gonna throw out a completely unrelated issue which my PR firm is contractually obligated to drag into this conversation: Governors releasing prisoners.

At which point you can actually see Donna Brazile roll her eyes.

Drifty is a treasure from the Steve Gilliard school.

Daughter of Linguistic Oddity

Guy in dark green t-shirt which read "Eu no trabalho aqui."

Think he browses in Portuguese bookstores?

One Reaction to Passage by House of Health Care Payment Reform

Not only bad, but destructive.

Another reaction.

So I was looking at one of my regular stops [found it--Body Impolitic], noted someone objecting to "homophobia" [4th comment] as a term for people who object to gays, lesbians, transgendered, bisexuals, and generally sexually speaking not heteronormative, on principle rather than out of fear, wondered whether this person realizes that there is a fairly sizable intersection set of people who have principles and also in some sense fear queerness (for whatever reason), and am considering whether the term "homobigot" should be brought back, even though the word seems to mean "same bigotries" rather than "intolerant of GLBTQ&" and might therefore confuse.  Perhaps (one of the distinguishing characteristics of the human in the wild is the insistence on distinguishing characteristics) I need to resort to mathematical notation.  So in the Venn diagram, we get the set of not-phobic, not-friendly, not-gay [in the umbrella sense].  Homotolerantsorta?

New Series

Arthur Silber begins a new series somewhat related to the series on Tribalism.

When a small number of individuals seek to effect major change in the societies in which they live, the success of their efforts depends on a variety of factors. Among them are the clarity of their vision (what precisely it is they "see," using that word with Sondheim's meaning), the degree of dedication they bring to their task, their imagination and passion, and the specific methods of advocacy and action they adopt. In terms of how successful they are, one factor can be of great importance: the alliances they are able to forge, and the segments of society to which the different parts of that alliance appeal. Such alliances can be determinative in the success of the overall effort.

Essay touches on the struggle to end slavery and the agenda of "teabaggers" (political version).

In Memoriam

Stacy Rowles, jazz musician.

Cookie Jill Brings More Corroboration

[Paraphrase] We're big wealthy (having stolen taxpayer money) companies and one of our employees might have a child who is exposed to this H1N1 virus thing and who doesn't have a nanny, so we need to be vaccinated against swine flu before pregnant women, children, child-care providers, medical-care professionals, and people with chronic conditions!  Because we're big and rich and we should get it first! [/paraphrase]

I hear John of Gaunt, myself.

Corroboration

What Digby said.

War is hell and that's no lie. And the wars the military are fighting today have their own special spin on that hell. But the problem with Matthews and other pampered gasbags is that they apparently think war is some sort of a pageant and never fully grasp that war is always about lethal, bloody violence. Which is why we shouldn't do it unless there is absolutely no choice. Using it to "send messages" or "protect the country's prestige" not only kills the other, it kills your own --- and not just on the battlefield.

It's not that human beings haven't evolved. It's that not enough have evolved enough.

Ongoing

I'm as disappointed as the rest of you, but at least the Phillies didn't get swept this time.

Home truths from Avedon Carol.

I am holding the victims and families of the Fort Hood shooters up to the Light; back when we lived in Germany, a lot of the people we knew who were being rotated Stateside were going to Fort Hood, so even if the chances are slim-to-none that I'd know anyone there now...it's a connection, tenuous though it is.

Let the River Run

Fafnir is streaming his consciousness again.

Must be that New Jerusalem.

Somersby Smacks Rich.

I never did get why Frank Rich turned from theater criticism to politics.

Odd Things in the Corners of The New York Times

Chuck Berry considered as poetry master.

Guess Who's Coming to Town?

Right down Santa Claus Lane.

Also, the first sighting of eggnog occurred today at 6:04 PST.  Alas, there is an astonishing amount of cholesterol in eggnog and I now have to be concerned with that.  Rats.  (And yes, it has to be the real thing; reduced fat eggnog tastes awful.)

And so begins the two month flogging of The Season of Spending Money.  Some say the recession is over.  I don't believe that.  Do you believe that?  The recession is over and Sauron really didn't want the One Ring.  Right.

Remember The Beatitudes

Arthur Silber on hatred of women, the rape in Richmond, and learning to be bullies.

In the most crucial sense, this is not a culture that deserves to survive. In all those ways that are conducive to fulfillment and joy, those ways that concern the sanctity of life and the possibility of happiness, such a culture is already dead.

And then there is Senator Lieberman.

Good News

GI Bill amended to include children of service members.

Oh, And...

Christopher Lee got knighted.

Oh, And...

Hmmmmm.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Pretty comprehensive.
(via Brilliant at Breakfast)

From the Daily Howler

1. New York Times science writer inserts irrelevance into article on the speed of light, and;
2. What Olbermann gets right (and what he gets wrong) about the health insurance situation.

Link to article (it's the same article) is here.

Two Things

1. We're having an anniversary.  Here's hoping we don't have to have the whole lesson all over again.
   

   Stagnant wages, shrinking personal savings, and record household debt, have created conditions similar to those in the Great Depression. The symptoms have been masked by the trillions in monetary and fiscal stimulus, and by the cheery talk in the media. But people are poorer and they are acting like it.
   

   With videos.
   
2. What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding.
   

   If anything, a draft makes any government's decision and ability to engage in destructive "wars of choice" more likely, not less (and Vietnam is but one example of that principle). Moreover, the American public's astonishing, even sickening, ability to remain apathetic and immovable even when heinous crimes are committed by their government has almost certainly increased immeasurably in recent decades. If the endless crimes committed by the Bush administration demonstrated nothing else, they surely demonstrated that. As the Bush administration launched two wars, were there massive, ongoing demonstrations, protests or, most importantly, systematic acts of civil disobedience? There were a few large protests before the Iraq invasion (which were almost entirely ignored), but otherwise, there was nothing. As the Bush administration tortured, brutalized and regularly set aside the most basic protections of individual liberty, and did all this in broad daylight, did outraged citizens bring government to a standstill, demanding that these depredations cease? They did not.
   

   
   

The right fears a Nanny State precisely because they can't help, um, soiling their own beds in the morning.

Remembering History

Scott Horton on the reason for knowing exactly what Stalin wrought.

In America today, the name and image of Stalin are invoked heavily by fringe critics of Barack Obama. The critics disagree with his policies on health care and see in it the basis for increasing power of the state. The role the state will play in the healthcare system is a legitimate political issue on which well-informed citizens can have different views. But the comparison to Stalin makes clear that these critics really have no inkling of who Joseph Stalin was, what he did, and why his name lives in special infamy at hallowed spots like the pit at Chon Tash.

Tutorial with Santayana

It's déj
à
vu all over again.

THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

The sauce was OK, but I forgot the ginger and the chicken Italian sausage and apparently didn't crush nearly enough garlic... The mushrooms were successful, though.

In the process of cooking up red sauce with meat.  Later.

Philosophy

Arthur Silber on definitions, political paradigms, and living ecstatically.

A taste:

I note that I well understand the concerns that prompt IOZ's question, "why must you call yourselves anything at all?" -- which is in part why I always offer an explanation, however brief, as to precisely what I mean by the terms I employ, excepting only those contexts in which the meaning should be obvious. But using terms such as those I utilize here and in the above excerpts is not only useful, but unavoidable. We do, in fact, live in a particular culture at a particular time. All terms, including those of political self-description, have associations and meanings, even when they are vague and approximate, or represent even dubious connections. That is why it behooves us to explain what we mean when we use them. In the political context, we are building on thought which has evolved over hundreds, even thousands, of years. In significant part, we thus formulate our views in response to how those ideas have altered over time, as well as to how societies have changed. And when we conclude it is necessary or desirable, we reshape those ideas and their associated terms to our own ends, and/or we alter the terms we employ as required.

I enjoy the meticulous way he sets up his arguments whether I agree with him or not. (Also, a day or so ago, he had a clip of Noel Coward doing a song with which I was unfamiliar.)

Why we fought a revolution.

Sample:

It seems to me we fought a revolution over this kind of exploitation, the attitude that “you little people are here to serve us aristocratic foks.” The economic exploitation of colonies is a theme which runs deep through British colonial history, and one often hears the argument that this is what led to the fall of the British empire. How ironic these arguments are now parroted by America's free-market conservatives, our own home-grown brand of elites who confuse greed with patriotism.

No Rooting Interest, But Here's the Balance Beam

Aside from the previously mentioned Swisher/Damon/Stairs/Blanton:

Chad Gaudin, Pitcher, Y
Pedro Martinez, Pitcher, P
Miguel Cairo, Shortstop, P
Mike Harkey, Bullpen Coach, Y
Davey Lopes, 1B Coach, P
Mr. Damon was on the 2004 Red Sox.
Mr. Blanton was on the 2008 Phillies. [ETA: As was Mr. Stairs. Huh.]
Mr. Swisher was on the early oughts contending A's.

Too close to call.  Marginally favoring Phillies.

All We Are Saying...

One of the Velveteen Rabbi's reports on the J Street conference, which is Muslims, Jews, and Christians working for peace.  (I wonder if that's the Maureen Shea I went to school with...?  Naaaaahhh!)

Malcolm Gladwell Article in The New Yorker

On concussions and football.

“We were in the cold tub, which is, like, forty-five degrees, and he starts passing out. In the cold tub. I don’t know anyone who has ever passed out in the cold tub. That’s supposed to wake you up. And I’m, like, slapping his face. ‘Richie! Wake up!’ He said, ‘What, what? I’m cool.’ I said, ‘You’ve got a concussion. You have to go to the hospital.’ He said, ‘You know, man, I’m fine.’ ” He wasn’t fine, though. That moment in the cold tub represented a betrayal of trust. He had taken the hit on behalf of his team. He was then left to pass out in the cold tub, and to deal—ten and twenty years down the road—with the consequences. No amount of money or assurances about risk freely assumed can change the fact that, in this moment, an essential bond had been broken. What football must confront, in the end, is not just the problem of injuries or scientific findings. It is the fact that there is something profoundly awry in the relationship between the players and the game.

Dogfighting is also woven in.

ETA:  The NFL's study and whether its methodology is flawed.

Oh Well

I see the Yankees are going to the Series.

Phils v. Yanks last happened in 1950 (Philadelphia in those days still had two teams), and the Yankees swept.

So far on my ex-A, ex-Met, extra points for championship teams (that would be the '86 Mets and the '89 Athletics) factor scale, Johnny Damon and Nick Swisher balance out Joe Blanton and Matt Stairs.  Research is indicated.

Sighting at an Apple Store:

A performance of MacBeth in which the actors read the script off iPhones.

Huh?

The Swedish royal family/house?

MBA Crybabies

I can't even begin to describe the profundity of the contempt I have for the executives who plundered the pockets of Americans, profited richly from their high-class pyramid schemes, fucked the economy in the process, got bailed out by the American taxpayers, and now balk at any suggestion their business should be more tightly regulated (i.e. regulated at all) or that they should make a little less money. Disgusting.

Via Shakesville, referring to execs jumping ship ahead of pay cuts.  As in "We'll have to tighten our belts and give up the third yacht, dear."

In Memoriam

Soupy Sales, comedian.

Firetruck.

Reform 101

Stoneself explains the health care reform effort situation.  (It's not for you; it's for me.)

Fourth in the Series

Sometimes, I'm just so frustrated I have to scream.

Giant Rat of Where, Again?

Well, the Phillies beat the Dodgers to win the pennant and advance to the World Series.  The Yankees and Angels play tomorrow.  We shall see.

Also, Sara Paretsky talks about V. I. Warshawski and the new book.

Also:

The fall's new moon, with
nameless blimp in silhouette
floating overhead.

We're a Political Blog

"We're coming to your town,
we'll help you party down,
we're a political blog!"

(Tune:  "We're an American Band," and I could probably further filk it if I felt like it, but my brain is lying on the floor and panting at me.)

1. Via Mills River Liberal, this piece from Consortium News on "The Politics of the Public Option."  A sample:
   

   What the industry does want is a bill that forces nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, including healthy young people, to buy private insurance, many with government subsidies, a potential bonanza. The industry also wants the federal government to act as the enforcer to coerce these people by hitting them with stiff fines if they don’t sign up.
   

   
   
2. Dr. Grumpy on the medical business and the warpage attendant thereupon:
   

   At a meeting to address these concerns the floor manager was asked why this problem kept occurring. She explained to us that her year-end bonus was based on how far under-budget the floor was, and that she needed to run the floor understaffed because she was trying to afford a down payment on a new car.
   

   
   

Any questions? (Besides why all this extra space has been inserted even though I've deleted blank lines 3 times already.)  ETA:  Fixed; thanks! to Daisy.

An Observation

From Politics After 50:  Medicare not broken.

(And the occasional fraud cases appear to be doctors, mostly.)

In Memoriam

Vic Mizzy, songwriter.

Creepy, spooky, mysterious, kooky, altogether ooky.  Because "I get allergic smelling hay."

Step Out in the Night...

So I found myself climbing into the shower and hum-singing "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed," which is what I do when Richie Havens enters my thoughts and I can't quite manage "Run Shaker Life."

I hope I'm not having a premonition, but it occurs to me that it has been many years since I've heard anything by him other than the version of "Freedom" he sang at Woodstock.

Luckily, he too has a website (which plays "Freedom" when you open it), and this time I'm making a note of it.

Current tour schedule stays east of the Rockies.

(crossposted to other blog)

The 700 Club

First:  Digby calls out the media.  And about time.  

If you don't hear the derision in those comments [a previously quoted exchange]... you aren't listening. And it's coming from allegedly liberal journalists pretending to have some direct conduit to a Real America that Democrats and "the left" just don't understand. You hear it over and over again. But these aren't liberals in any operational sense. They are wealthy, celebrity aristocrats donning "country garb" and pretending to be serfs at the harvest festival.  [editorial interpolation mine]

Second:  This is approximately my 700th post here and I continue to find it fun to throw links onto the screen to see if they stick.  It's the on-line equivalent of the long-lost and -forgotten spiral notebook at long-gone Labyris Books, originally for recommendations for books.  (Sometimes I think of the whole blogosphere that way.)  I mostly post political stuff here, when I post political stuff (it's important and it makes you want to tear out your hair and scream and retreat to Monty Python, am I right?  Nudge nudge), and, for those new to this venue, baseball, music, and anything I feel like.  Comments for the first ten days are open; after that they're moderated, so if you want to pick a fight with me about the Czech t-shirt?  I check moderation once a day. Usually.  If you comment and my response is laughter or "Yes, that's right," I will generally not write out a comment; comments are for your voices, all seven of you.  I  journal elsewhere, usually with different material.  And that's enough about me.

Third:  It has finally dawned on me that I really need to combine the Time Insensitive and Blog 'n' Roll, but don't want to have to do all that by-hand transfer.  Also, I am very, very tired of "All the Single Ladies."  If ya liked it, then ya shoulda put the Cone of Silence on it.

Glimpse

A brief recollection of mid-20th century Afghanistan.

History of the "Bloody Shirt"

Or "Bullies Painting Themselves as Victims." Also known as "You're all picking on me! And I didn't do nothing! And that quote's a lie, and they said it was OK!"

Dave Neiwert points out:

To Bill O'Reilly and Juan Williams and the rest of the Fox crew, the outrage is never the atrocities they actually uttered, only the effrontery of having those atrocities held against them. They all want to make a victim of the bully and a bully of the victim. Their narrative is that the real story is not the atrocities that Rush Limbaugh utters but only the attempt by his political enemies to make political hay out of it.

And he quotes Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War (excerpted by the NY Times) about the bloody garment canard:

Once again the beating was a fact, the alleged Northern reaction to it a fantasy. Furious at the insult to Southern honor Sumner had committed in a speech attacking slavery and the morality of the slave owner, South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks had approached Sumner in the Senate chamber, stood over his desk, and beat him on the head thirty times with his gold-headed cane until Sumner crumpled to the floor in a pool of his own blood.

And sure enough, Southerners were soon saying that Sumner’s bloody coat had become a revered “holy relic” in Yankee and abolitionist circles. Sumner, they said, had carried his own blood-encrusted garment to England to show the Duchess of Argyle, when she invited him to dinner; had placed it in the hands of an awe-struck John Brown, before his fateful raid on Harper’s Ferry; had put it on public display in Exeter Hall. “All the abject whines of Mr. Sumner, for being well whipped,” wrote one Southerner in 1856, a few months after the event, “all the exhibitions of his bloody shirt to stale Boston virgins who, in vexation of having failed to secure a man, would now wed a Sumner, have proved futile.” Years later, years after the Civil War, scornful stories about Northerners exhibiting Sumner’s bloody shirt were still being circulated in the South. Not a scrap of it was true.

There's more.

Promoting

I added FWD/Feminists With Disabilities yesterday, and get to promote a language-related post today! All right! But all the articles (so far) are engaging and interesting. Go read!

Oh, OK. A taste:

So, if someone says “this television show is lame” and you turn the sentence into “this television show has difficulty walking,” it doesn’t really make sense, right? Just like when you say “this social activity which I am being forced to do by my parent is a homosexual man,” it doesn’t really make sense. And this should tell you something. It should tell you that the word you are using has an inherently pejorative meaning.

Running up to the 700th Post

Loquaciousness, c'est moi, as long as the Internal Censor is off having pizza with other people's Internal Censors, networking to decrease what can be said. In the last week or so I ran across a couple of "Why do I do this blog thing?" things and since I don't really have an answer for that, other than as an outpost for my style of silliness, I give you two of the questioners: Daisy and Sady.

Also: The Removes. (Like The Ramones, only with blood.)

South Carolina Politics

Senator Lindsey Graham at a town hall meeting in Greenville, SC via Daisy's Dead Air.

Quote of the Day

"Who says Republicans aren't good conservationists? They recycle more useless shit than anyone else I know."

--Melissa McEwan, Shakesville.

Context.

The CBC's Idea of the 10 Funniest Monty Python Sketches

For however long they're up, ten YouTube videos of Monty Python sketches and bits from movies, and I have to say right up front that you should not watch the Mr. Creosote vid if you are either eating, planning to eat, or finished with your meal. Just saying.

State of the Playoffs

Let me see. The Yankees swept, the Angels swept, and the Dodgers swept. That leaves Philadelphia and Colorado (what, they couldn't use Denver as the team name? No baseball fans could find Denver or whatever suburb they're using on a map? Denver. Denver, Denver, Denver!) and Philly might win tonight. As might the Rockies. Some suspense might be nice.

[ETA: Phillies won.]

Of course, at least one sportswriter has leapfrogged the pennant playoff.

Baseball needs a World Series for the ages, one that reinforces its roots and, yes, its relative purity. Granted, this is a lot to ask one World Series matchup to accomplish, but baseball needs an authentic fall classic.

It needs Yankees-Dodgers, for the good of the game.

Excuse me while I remove sharp objects from the vicinity.

This guy is a chowderhead. Because, "the good of the game," my gluteus maximus. "The good of the game" translates into "putting the steroid era behind us" and "restoring the purity and innocence of the game." (My quotes, not his, not that that isn't what he means.) I can't find now the snarky remark I made years ago that media executives would prefer a Yankees-Dodger World Series every year for the ratings, but the moaning over the low ratings of the World Series when it's held anywhere else indicates exactly that, and the only reason the championships are not abolished in favor of Yankees/Dodgers every year is that that makes it too clear that the fix is in. You know, for "the good of the game." (I think we can dismiss the purity and innocence arguments on their face. It's 2009, people.)

Guess Who?

Aaaauuugh! [drama pose] Fafblog! [/drama pose]

Q: What about bombing their cities and burning their children and raping their livestock and feeding their people to thousands of millions of man-eating ants and piling their skulls into a heaping bonfire on the White House lawn while the President and the Cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff dance naked in circles ejaculating wildly into the flesh-filled smoke? Is that on the table?
A: It would be irresponsible for this option not to be on the table, given that all other options, as we have said, are on the table.
Q: What about leaving Iran alone? Is that on the table?
A: No. That is not on the table, because it is not an option.
Q: Are you sure? It looks like an option.
A: It may look like an option, but in fact it is the East Tunisian mock option, which over the course of many years has evolved to mimic the distinctive coloring and plumage of the true American option, in order to better evade and intimidate predators.

Happy birthday, Mr. Lennon.

Schooling

Mr. Krugman speaks of learning.

The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.

On the right, that result is probably desirable.

Unexpected Music

OK. It is not yet 7:00 am EDT and President Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wow!

I suppose I'm being persnickety.

Asked why the prize had been awarded to Mr Obama less than a year after he took office, Nobel Committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve".
"It is a clear signal that we want to advocate the same as he has done," he said.
He specifically mentioned Mr Obama's work to strengthen international institutions and work towards a world free of nuclear arms.

Interesting. The conservatives will probably hold that against him, too. [Edited because pessimism in the morning uncalled for.]

On Coups

Noli Irritare Leones puts together a short primer on coups with particular attention to the March 2009 coup in Madagascar.

Quotation is from the Oxford Council on Good Governance, which is cited in the above posting [OCGG Security Recommendation No. 4 on the Mauritanian coup of 2005(.pdf)]:

The US has in this context pursued a short-sighted policy towards Mauritania. This policy guided by fixed principles and the focus on fighting against a perceived Islamist terrorist threat in Mauritania without respect for and knowledge of the specific Mauritanian context, was doomed to fail and gave rise to last week’s events.

What's Going On

1. The Twins beat Detroit Tuesday and were beat by the Yankees Wednesday and are now resting up; also there seems to be (as seen in Modell's sports clothes store at the mall) serious Swisher fandom in Yankeedom. (That's two first basemen the Yankees have gotten from the Athletics lately, and Giambi is kicking around somewhere post-release. You think they'd learn...)


2. Irving Penn, photographer.


3. Via Brilliant at Breakfast, Keith Olbermann talks about health care and the current system.

   Olbermann is the kind of rich, famous person who gives Republicans fits, because he hasn't lost his soul just because he's got some money. Here's a man who recently lost his mother to breast cancer, and has spent much of the last month navigating the health care system with his ailing father, to whom he appears to be clinging like a shipwreck survivor clutching at a fragment of deck chair.



4. From the Daily Herald, via sirriamnis, via supergee: Kid smacked (verbally) down by alleged adult lawyer over library.

   "I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me," Sydney said solemnly. "It will never be the same without the people you fired."
   
   Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn't stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine "Connie" Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.
   
   "Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is," Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children's librarian) and two part-timers to stop "whining" and raise the money themselves.

   Mr. Xinos himself:

   "You may like the library, but when you call 9-1-1, you want a policeman or a fireman before someone to tell you where the books are in the library," says the man who has talked of privatizing, outsourcing or even closing the library.
   
   "I understand that my philosophy is conservative," Xinos says, adding that government just needs to catch bad guys, put out fires, fix the streets and make sure buildings are sturdy.
   
   He campaigned, successfully, against a plan to bring subsidized housing for seniors into town by declaring, "I don't want to live next to poor people. I don't want poor people in my town."
   
   A poor kid who grew up in Berwyn and worked in his dad's cafeteria in Chicago, Xinos went to law school and served in the Marines.

   Maybe he was shushed by a librarian. Ya think?

Alive and Well

Lower Manhattanite, that is.

(It's pretty hot.)

In Memoriam

Sarah E. Wright, writer.

Ms. Wright’s novel was among the first to focus on the confluence of race, class and sex. Republished by the Feminist Press in 1986 and again in 2002, “This Child’s Gonna Live” remains in print today.

Rundown

Tigers and Twins are tied (fit to be, anyway) and will perform the 1-game playoff dance (yes) Tuesday.

In Memoriam

In alphabetical order:

• Marek Edelman, commander in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising;
• Mr. Magic, deejay;
• Donal McLaughlin, graphic designer;
• Douglas Watt, theater critic.

We're Not Children Anymore

The second part of what Arthur Silber was saying this week. A paragraph:

I do not maintain that these issues are obvious; I have remarked before that it took me several years of intensive reading and thinking to grasp them as I do now. But the truth of this overall argument is no more "secret" than the allegedly "secret" information upon which the Daddy State relies when it decides to hurl us into the abyss. But the Daddy State desperately wants you to believe that it possesses "special, secret information" which you can never access. In this way, the Daddy State maintains and expands its power, as it commands obedience from subjects who are forever condemned to ignorance on the most momentous questions.

Speaking of Baseball

Colorado has clinched the NL Wildcard, and is still contending in the Western Division. The Tigers and Twins seem determined to take it down to the wire.

And Jerry Izenberg, columnist emeritus at the Newark Star-Ledger, writes about Pop Lloyd Weekend in Atlantic City, the reunion of Negro League players, who grow few and old.

They gather this weekend accompanied by tunes of glory. The gray hair will fade, the waistlines will melt and their laughter and their tears will say to all of us:
‘‘Never forget we were here. Never forget we were history. Never forget that the past we forged was America’s prologue.’’

Speaking of the Emperor's Wardrobe

Driftglass is so very On the Case.

Villagers: But isn't saying mean things about Republicans just as bad as praying to Allah for the Sun to explode?

No.

Villager: Isn't saying mean things about Republicans as bad as setting fire to a bus full of widows with an Easter Bunny!

No.

Villagers: Feeding live babies to a dog?

No.

James Carville: Boy howdy, ah tell you at least this man haid the guts to come right ohn The Situation Room ™ and say what he said!

Wolf Blitzer: Yes. He did come on The Situation Room ™.

Villagers: Yes. Yes. How very brave of him come on the The Situation Room ™.

Yesterday

Chick chicky boom chick chicky boom chick chicky boom.

And now I need to email people and practice yelling "Get off my lawn!"

Rock-tober

Phillies have clinched. Boston is the AL Wildcard. There don't look to be any come-from-behind or sudden-collapse surprises this year. Darn.

Arthur Silber Has a Dream

And it's a horrorshow.

And that was the other deeply frightening aspect of my nightmare. Most other people did believe him. Even those people who said they had serious doubts about the truth of his claims proceeded to debate those claims as if they had some merit that deserved scrutiny. I tried to explain why nothing he said should be regarded with any degree of seriousness, but no one would listen to me. They engaged in endless debates over the particulars of his accusations. Since none of his claims was based in fact, all such debates were entirely futile. But my accuser -- this monster who had brutalized, tortured, raped and murdered an unending succession of innocent victims -- had achieved his primary aim: his accusations were regarded as legitimate, if only to the extent that they had to be disproved. Even if those who doubted my accuser's claims succeeded in debunking this particular set of claims, this monster without a conscience knew that he had won the most critical battle. He would simply invent another series of groundless claims. And so another debate over a another series of fictions would ensue; this pattern would be repeated endlessly. Finally, in time, I would be punished, just as my accuser demanded.

Kafka was an optimist.

No Water in the Pool

Brief thought on Polanski: Link is from Anglachel's Journal. Much better phrased.

Also, I stopped by flip flopping joy, who had a suggestion about why we defend people with power rather than their victims:

But I do wonder how culturally trained we are to challenge/question people with power rather than respect and admire them (think: He’s a police officer, what were you thinking?? Or, he’s your *teacher*, you respect him! Or; Don’t you talk to your mother like that! etc). It’s not just that a person *gets* something from defending and supporting a person in power (i.e. a job, money, prestige, etc), but that going *against* a person in power is not just “supporting the survivor” but directly challenging the entire power structure U.S. culture is based on.

Huh.

Intermediate

OK, the Angels have clinched the Western Division, and Boston has all-but-clinched the Wildcard.

Your Baseball Update

Yankees clinch. Boston and Texas are duking it out for the AL wild card. Detroit and Minnesota still wrestling, Angels and Rangers playing out the skein (if the Republican Party en masse were to be infected with a virus that compels the victim to tell the truth at all times, the Rangers might have a shot of coming from behind. Maybe). The Cubs were finally eliminated, and St. Louis has clinched. Florida bit the big one, so the competition is between Philadelphia and Atlanta. The Dodgers and the Rockies, well, I don't think it's the Rockies' year. There will be NL wild card eliminations coming up right after this important word from--

Sorry. Wrong patter.

Meanwhile, what the hell are Nashville and Columbus doing in the NHL?

Actually Further Than the Pull Quote

Quixote at Shakesville: What's wrong with people. A sample:

The solution is to take away power from the those who've grabbed too much of it. We don't need a reorg. Or not just a reorg. We need to return to accountability. And not in some braindead, No Child Left Untested, cheap, easy, and ineffective way. Politicians who don't represent their constituents need to lose elections. The media has to fulfill its role in creating that crucial component of democracy: an informed electorate. Corporations need to be responsible for their actions.

It's that scary "get to the root" stuff.

Knew I'd forget something...

Why being able to cash your checks at the supermarket is important. From Anglachel's Journal.

That Pennant Thing (Double Play)

The Cubs are still (!) 1 game from elimination, but the White Sox are out.

Prof Susurro (Like a Whisper) reviews Surrogate (with spoilers) and finds it problematic on several points.

Busting Mythology

From The Hathor Legacy: The myth of the woman who craves abuse. Because pop culture's narrative lies.

Late-Breaking

Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox are one game away from elimination from their respective divisional races.

Sadly, San Francisco has slipped below that event horizon. They are still in contention for the wild card slot, but fourth place is an unlikely launch pad for the drive to first. Anything could happen, though. And has.

Pigs, goats, garbage, and Terry Pratchett.

Twofer

Today's Daily Howler tackles two topics:

1. Health care reform:

   It isn’t hard to explain how much the French spend on health care. In his report, Post reporter Edward Cody cites the 2007 OECD data. Here’s what those data tell us:
   
   Total spending on health care, per person, 2007
   United States: $7290
   France: $3601
   
   There! Do you see how easy that is? The French spend less than half what we spend! But go ahead—try to tease any such knowledge out of Cody’s lengthy report! Surely, we must have a National Censor, one who’s charged with keeping us clueless about the foreign experience.
   
   Cody’s first peculiar moment arrives in paragraph 4. “France has long been proud of its national health insurance, part of a many-tentacled and costly social protection system designed to embrace almost everyone who is legally in the country,” he writes (our emphasis).

2. Pundits who "get" race and miss, for example, corporate malfeasance:

   Rich is so in love with yelling race, he can’t quite bring himself to get it. As Sleeper said, he doesn’t really understand that Beck’s declaration here (his “rant”) actually seems to [be] right. Wall Street does seem to own the government—and when Beck names the names of the corporations involved, he is naming a lot of accurate names. (When Eliot Spitzer did this on Maddow, he disappeared from the program.)
   
   Indeed: Just as Sleeper said in his piece, Rich can’t quite bring himself to understand the accuracy or the anger lodged in this analysis. He quotes Beck naming G.E., General Motors, Wal-Mart, Citigroup. And sure enough! In his very next paragraph, he goes right back to implying this is all about race.

The fun never ends.

Excellent Book Review

Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker reviews Louis Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters.

Remember how I love book reviews? This one's a beauty. It connects modernism, European anti-Semitism, national transformation, societal turning points, ideals and realities, history, culture, and deferred but eventual justice.

Just as picking up A Distant Mirror or The Proud Tower means that I disappear into that milieu until I've finished rereading the entire book (which is why both tomes are presently somewhere slightly difficult to reach, that I may at least try to get on with life), so thoroughly evocative of those times is Tuchman, so does any piece on turn-of-the-[previous]-century France rivet my attention (why yes, somewhere in here is Janet Flanner's reportage from early 20th century Paris, which gave me new names to pique my interest when I saw them elsewhere). Most of the roots of "modern" (i.e. late 20th century cultural, political, social, and fashion) life were sunk back then. (World War I sank the rest.) And the Dreyfus "affair" intersected with culture and politics in far-reaching and unimaginable-at-the-time ways.

A taste. Maybe a full bite:

Begley wants to use the occasion not for French-bashing, or for reciting the enduring history of European anti-Semitism, bleak as it is, but as a pointed warning and reminder of how fragile the standards of civilized conduct prove in moments of national panic. The Dreyfus affair matters, he believes, because we have, in the past decade, made our own Devil’s Island and hundreds of new Dreyfuses—the Dreyfus affair matters because we’re still in the middle of it. Begley, as he recounts the story of the Parisian fin-de-siècle legal drama, also spends many pages showing that among the prisoners in places like Guantánamo are many Dreyfuses—innocent, as he was, and, on the whole, much worse treated. He wants to arraign Americans, and particularly those who fetishize the Dreyfus case without grasping its principles: that every accused person should be able to face his accusers in a fair trial, and that national panic makes bad policy and false prisoners.

and

In any modernized country, the backward-looking party will always tend toward resentment and grievance. The key is to keep the conservatives feeling that they are an alternative party of modernity. (This was Disraeli’s great achievement, as it was, much later, de Gaulle’s.) When the conservative party comes to see itself as unfairly marginalized, it becomes a party of pure reaction, which is what happened to the French right after Dreyfus. Instead of purging the anti-Semites, people on the right decided to rally behind them. They came to hate the idea of the Republic itself..

and

The lesson to be learned was the lesson that Clemenceau had tried to teach the jury at Zola’s trial. The urge to protect the nation from its enemies by going around the corner to get them is natural, but what you get is usually not the enemies, and, going around the corner, you bump into something worse. Breaking the law to defend the nation ends up breaking the nation. Sometimes long stories have short morals.

I remember looking this up in our newish World Book Encyclopedia, probably after seeing The Life of Emile Zola on TV, probably around the time that Paul Muni died. There were many mentions of the case in places like Vogue and Time (the magazine) and Exodus (the movie) and a full section in The Proud Tower.

Just to be sure there is no misunderstanding: Je suis une Dreyfusarde.

Please read the whole thing, even though it is more than three paragraphs.

I might crosspost this.

Another Departure

Well, the Cubs have hung on for another day, but Seattle has been eliminated.

Blithering

So yesterday, I did one long post with a number of links and then I went and annoyed the gang at Dreamwidth by dribbling out five (or six?) little posts. Obviously, this is Bad.

On the other hand this belongs here.

We once had rules, enforced by priests—by an elite comprised of people like Murrow. No, that wasn’t a perfect system. But now, the democratization of media has given us a loud, inane, morning zoo jock—a man by the name of Beck. And we have no national press corps which is willing to apply old standards to such low-grade practitioners.

Someone on my prowls brought up A Face in the Crowd. (Name to be added when I find that again.) True, very true, and more difficult now to root out because that stuff is all tape-delayed. (Although I also believe that "standards" only repel the worst of this kind of "entertainer." "Standards" was also the network euphemism for "Censor.")

One of the mercies of not having a TV is that I never see any of this crap.

Also, St. Louis should clinch tomorrow.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

Henry Jenkins runs in my rut!

MySpace is described as "crowded, trashy, creepy, uneducated, immature, predators, crazy" while Facebook was praised as "selective, clean, trustworthy, educated, authentic, college, private." In other words, MySpace takes on values we associate with inner city slums, while Facebook is tied to the values one might associate with a gated community.

(Emphasis mine.)

To be fair: I've visited MySpace exactly once and it looked like it might be fun for people who go in for heavy social networking. Which is not me. I also visited LinkedIn once and ran immediately into Guy Kawasaki's page and have been too intimidated to go there again.

To be even more fair: I used to live in New York City. I like to explore and travel, and you can find almost anything in New York by taking the subway and walking. (In The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, subway, bus, and walking. On Staten Island, mostly bus, because that subway is a single line unconnected to the rest of the world.) You can at any moment characterize almost any neighborhood in Manhattan, including the Very Upper East Side, the way MySpace is characterized above.

That is exactly why everyone wants to live in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. (Yes, I am thinking of a certain editor who, offered the editorship of Some Prestigious Magazine, turned it down because he couldn't get (or couldn't be guaranteed, I forget which) an apartment with a doorman in Manhattan.)

Let me drop a small secret here: Many people live in Manhattan without doormen. Even in ritzier nabes.

The other thing is that very few people believe that Facebook's "values" are New York virtues. New York is proudly heterodox (there may even be New Yorkers who'd sympathize with that guy Rocker) in all matters. Not terribly clean, either, although Montréal on Sunday morning is also grungy. Authentic, sure, but more in (ha!) a MySpace way. And the "educated...college" thing is a legacy from Facebook's origins, which probably means smart trolls.

By the way? Facebook has claimed rights to members' materials. That's not what I'd call "trustworthy."

Oh, yes. New York over Smoke Rise forever.

Unpacking the Blogs

1. Milwaukee joins the Mathematically Eliminated.


2. Educators not happy with Federal education policies:

   If the education profession as a whole had insisted on determining effective practices that reflect the realities of learning, rather than caving in to the push to reduce the complexities of learning into scores for simplistic funding models, then we might be looking at a different scenario now. And the education departments of colleges and universities are just as much to blame, for their ubiquitous lack of spine in confronting fearful administrators and obnoxious politicians.

   Via Mills River Progressive via McClatchy Newspapers.


3. Anglachel's Journal on food and how privilege intersects with it:

   I think about the industry of shaming fat people. I think about scarfing down ice cream, ashamed I am doing so because I'm fat. I think about the self-indulgence of watching rock concerts to stop hunger. I think of the anxiety about not ingesting the courant food of the month. I think about the miracle elixers that will save us all from the heartbreak of some obscure condition. I look at case after case of frozen convenience foods and their bar codes. I think about quaint little groceries in the Oakland Hills with prices written by hand onto the shelf tags. I think of relatives who sneer at stores I rely on. I think about the medicalization of food, turning eating as such into a pathology. I think about the transformation of food into a visible sign of personal rectitude.



4. Why accessibility training is important. From Rolling Around in My Head:

   So what part of accessibility training did they miss when they direct a guy in a wheelchair to a staired entrance. Is there any hope for disability training if those attending think we can just pop out of our chairs, climb up a set of stairs with our wheelchairs on our backs. Um, that's not disabled.

5. Driftglass shows David Brooks for what he is.

   Seriously, why isn’t the ghost of Pigmeat Markham beating the crap out of these clowns with his pig bladder?
   

   WARNING: Language that would not be out of place at a performance by Lenny Bruce (or, for that matter, Sarah Silverman), but which workplaces frown upon.


6. Shakesville spotlights Doctor Grumpy in the House. A tiny taste:

   [A] few days go by. BII will claim they never got our fax. Or that we filled the form out wrong. Or that they don't cover Capricorns when the moon is in Pisces. And we don't know this until Annie calls back after a few days, because they're hoping we forgot about it.

7. Art Ferrante has died. (Mr. Teicher died last year.)