What I should have been reading this spring.  Y'know, instead of keeping up with the real world and stuff...

I Had a Wow Title, But It Evaporated

Well.  That was weird (odd error message about cookies and Javascript, but then signed me in anyway).

Driftglass the blog is five years old today, and still has all its own teeth!

Also, today is Cesar Chavez Day, a state holiday in California; Like a Whisper has a brief meditation on his legacy.

And Echidne of the Snakes has a post up about body image in Hong Kong and Asia.  (Takes a few minutes to load.)

Explains it All with a Sigh

I don't know what it is about Tuesday, other than the afternoons are forever, but stardreamer at Dreamwidth just hit one out of the park.

Taste:

You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You didn't get mad when American soldiers died because of inadequate equipment.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

What I suspect is that faced with the truth these are people who lie to themselves even harder.  Fox News is no longer necessary.

The Lessons of History and Guantánamo

As I mentioned a while back, the Dreyfus case has had repercussions extending into the present.

Scott Horton brings this around to the prisoners at Guantánamo and justice.

But outside of a handful of lawyers and human rights activists, now themselves the targets of a McCarthyite smear campaign, no actors on the political stage in Washington see any advantage in rallying to the cause of the Gitmo prisoners. This is demonstrated by the infamous 90-6 vote in an overwhelmingly Democratic senate to block funding for the Obama initiative to close Guantánamo. America does not want to confront the reality of its own conduct. Where today is the voice of a Clemenceau or Zola on the American political stage?

One of the key lessons of the Dreyfus experience is that in times of perceived national security crisis, the justice process often suffers in the face of perceived political exigency, and few political leaders have the fortitude to defend it. Justice too often is itself denounced as a weakness or luxury that the state cannot afford in such circumstances. History teaches another lesson: true justice, wielded forcefully, is no liability, but rather a powerful weapon in the hands of any democratic state.

This needs to be called out, over and over again.

Essay You Should Read

From twistedchick on Dreamwidth, writing about cheap hate:

Independent, intelligent thought is valuable, and it doesn't take a master's degree or a bachelor's degree or even a high-school diploma. All it takes is a willingness to listen to more than one point of view, ask questions, and keep asking questions until the answers make sense -- and then think about those answers, see if they accord with the truth that you know about how the world works (and I mean common sense and basic thought, not ideologies) and keep asking questions.

Go, Oaklanders!

Oakland Marathon first in 25 years, coolish day, bright sun.  Folks loved it.

In Memoriam

Probably the last of the early aviatrixes:  Elinor Smith.  (Under all 4 East River bridges?  Wow!)

Comix

Last Gasp is 40.

Now distributing 14,000 titles a year, Last Gasp has grown into a $3 million lit house, publishing works by such cultural notables as R. Crumb, Justin Green, Ed Hardy and Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman.

The rest is much more fun, though.

In Memoriam

The Fifties were all about harmony.

No, not in reality.  Reality was the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the civil rights struggle in the United States (Brown v. Board of Ed, Montgomery bus boycott), pressure and counter-pressure to conform (Beat was not, strictly speaking, a mass movement).

In popular music, well, let's fudge a little.  Big band/swing music was still lumbering along, but  it was slowly dying off.  Rock and roll was percolating, but didn't come into its own until the late '50s.  In between, one could hear jazz and blues and folk, which were nurturing a lot of the changes in music through this and the next decade; and you heard a lot of vocal group harmony.

When I think of vocal group harmony, I think of glee clubs and choruses and choirs.  I sometimes remember barbershop quartets, although The Music Man typed them as being turn-of-the-previous-century.  (We've shared hotels with barbershop quartets, and having them spontaneously serenade is cute.)  Mostly, though, I think of my cousins' then-boyfriends harmonizing on "What's Your Name?" in the living room.  I think of the Flamingos, the Del-Satins, the Penguins.  I think urban streetcorner singing.  I think of the Doo-Wop side of the Force.  (Although I call it Doo-Wah.)

(Since I don't know the history, I get to speculate that there is more than a tinge of racism in the barbershop/doo-wah divide.  I expect to be enlightened if I'm wrong; that's what the Internet is for.)

Two of the harmonizers I used to hear all the time on the radio have died:  Cherie DeCastro, singer with the DeCastro Sisters, and Johnny Maestro, singer with the Crests (and later the Del-Satins and the Brooklyn Bridge).

Trying Not to Repeat Myself

The Cleaning Frenzy is lurking in the corners...

1. Happy 7th Anniversary to Fafblog!  (Well, there was that missing year, but Medium Lobster was probably being Very Serious.)
2. Marijuana legalization is on the ballot in California.
3. Greta Christina at Blowfish Blog (I got there by way of The Angry Black Woman) writes on "Closeted Politicians and Bi Invisibility" and I love two things: one,
   
   

   It’s getting to the point where, when a politician is rabidly homophobic, I just assume now that they’re gay. It’s become a standard item on my gaydar: Does he have unusually good fashion sense? Is he a little more aware of the works of Lady Gaga than is strictly necessary? Is he a right-wing politician who foams at the mouth about how disgusting homosexuals are and consistently votes against gay rights? Yup — probably gay. I think we need to start a PR campaign about this: if “rabid anti-gay political activism” becomes a standard marker for “probable homosexuality,” maybe fewer right-wing politicians will run with it.)

   and two,
   
   

    It’s not like there’s a gay person in a vacuum in the Smithsonian, against whom we all measure ourselves to determine our own sexual orientation.

The Doc's in Trouble Again

Dwight Gooden charged with driving under the influence of unspecified drugs (and leaving the scene of the accident).

Sigh.

Point for Point, or I Have Marshall McLuhan Right Here.

Linked via Driftglass:  American Dad at TPM brings what even Drifty calls a BFG to the fight with conservative attack weasels.

I'm only going to quote the section on history.  He's pretty thorough:

History

If you're going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they're NOT synonymous!)

You can't cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you've decided you don't like his ideas.

You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word "terrorism" or say we're at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.

If you're going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.

You can't just pretend historical events didn't happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn't make it better.)

You can't say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from "socialist utopia"; health care reform is not "reparations"; nor does health care reform create "death panels".

There are loads of links at the original if you need specifics and citations.

Oh, And...

Showcased this morning by Brilliant at Breakfast and Shakesville so far this morning that I've seen:  Bob Herbert's column in the NY Times this morning.

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship. [Emphasis added.]

The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.

If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades.

With a freer hand, the Republicans would have done more damage. George W. Bush tried to undermine Social Security. John McCain was willing to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and thought Phil Gramm would have made a crackerjack Treasury secretary. (For those who may not remember, Mr. Gramm was a deregulation zealot who told us during the presidential campaign that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”)

A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country. Back in the 1960s, John Lewis risked his life and endured savage beatings to secure fundamental rights for black Americans while right-wing Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were lining up with segregationist Democrats to oppose landmark civil rights legislation.

Since then, the right-wingers have taken over the G.O.P. and Mr. Lewis, now a congressman, must still endure the garbage they have wrought.

I was reading "The Vanishing Liberal" by Kevin Baker (that so wants to be typoed) in Harper's this morning (hard copy—I subscribe), which asserts that the right did not become populist; the oft-repeated lies about liberals convinced Democrats that liberals no longer spoke for the people.

I suspect other factors, but that's me (I also last week finally got hold of a copy of The Last Days of the Late Great State of California, which firmed up my knowledge about California in the '50s and '60s and about Ronald Reagan in particular; I'd thought that Governor "Pat" Brown had term-limited out [because I was under the impression then that California governors were only allowed to serve two terms, even before that actually became law], not that he'd lost, and Mr. Reagan was Not One Of The Good Guys, not by a long chalk; anyway, that campaign has shall we say resonances even today, even though the culminating and well-imagined disaster in the book has not [yet] happened).

A Little Historical Perspective. Very Little.

America's Finest Presidents.

National Treasure and a Schmear, Please

Jon Carroll on the New Guy at CNN:

My temptation was to headline this column "Is Erick Erickson molesting Lutheran schoolchildren?," with the first sentence "I assume not." It's the oldest trick in the smear-campaign handbook; on the other hand, provocateurs wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't work. "Carroll boffing Peace Corps returnees?" and then: "We have no evidence that this is true."

Mr. Erickson apparently believes that subordinating his id to his ego and super-ego is elitism, and will have none of it.

Why I Love Jill @ B@B

"So where are the Republicans? Getting ready to tell Americans that no, they can't have these things. They're getting ready to tell Americans that insurance company profits are sacrosanct. They're getting ready to tell Americans that THEY stand for 40% premium increases; that THEY stand for denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Because if you're a Republican, screwing over working people is the American Way."

That.  There's more, but Jill is nothing if not succinct.

Some Health Insurance Reform

So now we're where we would have been in 1912 were it not for the phobia about socialism (I've seen some of the thoughts of normally-intelligent people who seem to be expecting jack-booted thugs showing up at the door demanding breakfast and a bed tomorrow morning, and I want to say, "Get a grip," except that the fear seems to mirror the ancient Puritan suspicion of someone, somewhere, having a good time.  Y'know, evil things happen to good people.  Good things happen to evil people.  That's the way the universe works.  If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.  [And if you think ignorance is expensive, wait till you have to deal with folks who've been taught from books sanctioned by the Texas Board of Ed.]).

Dissection

Which would prove again my point: people throw these terms around not because they have a clue what they really mean, but because they have learned through a century of propaganda that these are “bad things”, naturally opposed to the Good and Democratic things that all right-thinking Americans should support. And of course in today’s climate, if you don’t support them, you are, ipso facto, Un-American.

Political accusations that don't mean what you think they mean, from Cogitations.

Noisy Skeletons

Via The Root:  Baltimore Brew documents Baltimore's history of racial segregation as abetted by the Baltimore Sun.

Speaking of People Who Poke Badgers With Spoons...

Roger Ebert examines one such, with videos.

Short quote:

Beck even went so far as to cite Jesus Christ, saying, and I quote: "Nowhere does Jesus say, Hey, if somebody asks for your shirt, give your coat to the government and have the government give them a pair of slacks." Well, Beck has me there. It is quite true that nowhere does Jesus say that. Nor, for that matter, does he ever say, A wop bop a lu bop, a wop bam boom!

I hear that some right-wingers (who will never score in hockey) want to edit the Bible to "correct" the words of Christ to be more like those of Ayn Rand. Note to these twerps: Matthew, chapter 5, and Luke, chapter 6. Special to GB: Matthew 5:40, Luke 6:29.

(The Conservative Bible is going to be a Very Short Book.)

Presenting in Time for Pesach

Your 2010 Facebook Haggadah. You may recall the 2009 version, which is now here.  Note: holdovers from last year.

Via Becky Zoole on Dreamwidth.

We Get A Little Upset

Anna van Z of Mills River Progressive Gets Angry:

PLEASE - Start badgering, start harassing, and start getting LOUD to your alleged representatives this week, preferably Monday. STOP BEING NICE. STOP BEING POLITE. STOP BEING AGREEABLE. Stop pretending that your nicety-nice communication attempts are going to see anything but the circular file.

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

Thinking about the Almighty

Real Live Preacher on God.

(You don't see much of that soubriquet of God anymore, do you?  At least, I don't, and I read a lot.  I just find it fascinating to contrast Gordon Atkinson, who writes the blog Real Live Preacher, with Glenn Beck, who pokes badgers with spoons.  And yet God has informed the lives of both men.)

Time to break out Journey videos.  Old Journey videos.

About the Election in Iraq?

Medium Lobster has a few things to say.

Is Iraq a democracy? Of course not. But is it close to becoming a democracy? Ha ha, no. But it certainly does resemble, from a distance, when we squint, the vague shape of a notion of the idea of something that contains one particular rote procedural aspect of democracy - albeit one that happens to be attached to a military dictatorship. And certainly that must be worth something.

Attorneys on Toast

Phil Spector's lawyers appeal his 2nd degree murder conviction.

(And probably the lack of coverage in American media, but that's just me being catty.)

So I was hiking back after provisioning myself for the weekend (I hope) and for some reason lost to science realized that I had forgotten the Spanish word for 'fire.'

Seriously.  (It's 'fuego.'  I had to look it up.)

Not Romanian, Either

Via whump, Slacktivist sees Glenn Beck for What He Is.  Hint:  Mr. Beck has studied the Bizarro-world Gospels.

A Quickie, Because I have a Gig

Jon Carroll on supporting the troops.

I support our troops. I support our troops because almost everyone is afraid to rescue them from death or disfigurement, so they band together and develop a finely honed us-against-them mentality, except the "them" isn't only the enemy; it's the corrupt politicians and lazy media types and people who want someone else to fight their wars for them. Support the troops; let them come home.

Go, Jon.

Leave it to...

Fafblog! to post a pair of on-target short bits!

Fafnir and Giblets, respectively, use karate chops on global warming and Iraq.  Respectively.

I have passed 900 posts without outing any politicians.  This must be corrected.