Just take it like a man

If there's one issue that shows most clearly how completely twisted the American value system is, that issue would probably be homosexuality. Well, OK, homosexuality and race relations. Oh, and the weird fixation on pro football.

(OK, the pro football thing ties in with homosexuality. I mean, really: sweaty guys in tight pants running up and down a field? It doesn't take Sigmund Freud. And then they put on weird padding to look even more buff, and start hugging each other if they do something right, and start prancing around the end zone like a Rockette tweaking on crystal meth. And when it's all over, they go and take showers together. Any random NFL player probably handles more pipe than Joe the Plumber ever did.)

(Speaking of Joe the Plumber - a body-obsessed, head-shaving drama queen fixated on ensuring that he's the center of attention? Was he trying out for the Village People too? This guy's so far into the closet he's probably found those red strappy pumps that look so good with that sequined off-the-shoulder number he got for that trip to Fire Island...)

The wide availability of home video has had an impact on society (wow - was that a non sequiter or what? I think I'm suffering from whiplash...): the Rodney King affair highlighted the problem of police brutality in the LAPD, but also was the direct cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots where more than 50 people lost their lives. And remember Derrion Albert getting beaten up last month? Suddenly, everybody got concerned over the violence in our schools.

Of course, the flipside to that is that when some white kid gets pounded on by a couple of black bullies up on a bus, cowardly drugged-out sacks of vomit like Rush Limbaugh tried to insist that, because we had a black president, the beating was Obama's fault.

But you have to forgive Rush - logic doesn't really apply to a man who calls for harsher penalties on drug abusers when he's popping oxycontin like Tic-tacs.

(The humor, of course, is found in the fact that it had already been shown that the attack wasn't racially motivated. But why pay attention to "facts"? In Rush's tiny little pilonoidal cyst of a brain, this whole incident was obviously a resurgence of the Mau Mau rebellion.)

However, the videotaped assault on Jack Price, a gay man from Queens, has one possible upside (aside from the fact that, with their faces and names prominently in the local media, the two wads of fuck who attacked him - Daniel Aleman and Daniel Rodriguez - will be spending the next several years getting traded for cigarettes throughout the New York penal system).

This particular assault is evidence that homosexuality is still a boil on the backside of America, and even in the opening decade of the 21st century, we haven't found the right way to lance it.

There is no reason that any American should be discriminated against due to their sexual orientation. This seems like a simple rule, but for some reason, it still causes controversy. The most commonly given reason for homophobia is religion, and most of that is due to misreadings, mistranslations and selective misuse of bible verses. Of course, even when you make an effort to show them why they're wrong, you're not going to change their tiny little minds.

Once in a while, you'll find somebody trying to claim that homosexuality is "unnatural." This, of course, ignores the wide range of homosexual behavior on view in the wild. ("A homosexual species would wipe itself out in one generation!" Well, there's still bonobos around, right? And trust me, they'll fuck anything.)

And with the rest of these losers, they gain their homophobia the old-fashioned way: they were raised to hate gays, much in the way that many people in the South have been raised to hate blacks, Jews, Yankees, and generally anybody who isn't a close relative (of course, with the inbreeding, that's a fairly large pool of people, at least in their neighborhood); these are people who hate gays because they're savage, knuckle-dragging homophobic subhumans who should be hauled out into the alley and beaten with 13-inch dildos until they bleed out their ears.

One of the weirdest quirks of the gay-haters is the fact that they can't seem to stop themselves from conflating consenting sexual practices between two adults, with forced intercourse with a non-consenting partner: bestiality (where Rick Santorum famously prefers german shepherds, John Cornyn apparently gets all hot and sweaty thinking about box turtles), pedophilia, necrophilia. Your average right-wing hater refuses to see a difference (probably because they tend to have suffered brain damage due to the genetic incompatibility of closely-related parents).

And when this rampant homophobia gets to attach itself to the already-present hatred of our first black president, you get a steaming cauldron of odiferous stupidity, just waiting for a chance to pour out all over everybody. For example, in the outcry over Obama hiring an openly homosexual man as head of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, people like Rep Steve King continues to try to link Jennings to NAMBLA, even though this claim has been so thoroughly debunked that even Fox "News" was forced to admit it. (And you know that had to cause Rupert Murdoch's bowels to clench up like a vise.)

The more recent news that Obama is revisiting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is causing conservative brains to explode like a Palestinian at the Wailing Wall. And the GOP survivors are really hating the fact that they're going to have to keep that homo-rage bottled up - the new hate crimes bill is about to become law.

Trust me, folks, homosexuality is normal. Some people are into it, and some people aren't. You can try to suppress it, but it will still be around; and the harder you try, the more it will burst out in unexpected places (you know, like in airport bathrooms).

Another day, another death threat

Hmmm...

Airport guard accused of threatening Obama

NEWARK, N.J., Oct. 22 (UPI) -- A 55-year-old private security guard at a New Jersey airport was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot U.S. President Barack Obama, officials said.

The New York Post said Thursday John Brek, a security guard at Newark Liberty International Airport, is accused of telling an airport employee he was planning on shooting Obama when the president arrived at the New Jersey airport this week.

Unidentified law enforcement sources said Brek was arrested on Tuesday, one day before Obama arrived at Newark Airport. The president was visiting New Jersey to help campaign for Gov. Jon Corzine.

So, just another murderous right-winger (at least this one doesn't seem like a racist murderous right-winger, but the full investigation isn't in yet).

But, of course, the unhinged right immediately lose their fucking minds: "Demand the death of Bush? You’re safe. Threaten Obama? YOU ARE GOING TO JAIL!... THIS IS CALLED A POLICE STATE BTW" (Vincent dePaul likes his caps lock key - it makes him feel all loud and shouty).

Funny how the Obama-haters have a seriously selective memory, isn't it?

Richard Humphrey went off his medication and made some comment in a bar about a burning bush and was arrested and convicted of threatening the president. Lawrence Ward of Bainbridge, NY, was the subject of a nationwide manhunt after threats he made. And Wilbur Leroy Brown was arrested for a letter threatening the President.

People have been investigated and arrested for threatening the president since the Secret Service started (usually, like in Brek's case, they're arrested by local authorities, though). The difference is that the threat has to be considered credible - the message board entries that Vincent dePaul uses as "proof" obviously weren't (assuming that the Secret Service even saw them - the internet is a big place, and the Bush White House didn't like all this science stuff that much...) See, now this guy, on the other hand, was considered a valid threat.

Of course, not all the threats were valid under Bush. Dan Tilli was questioned for a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, where he mentioned the death of Saddam Hussein and ended with "I still believe they hanged the wrong man." The Secret Service questioned Jesse Ethredge for writing that Bush was a "two-faced murderer" on the back window of his pickup.

Hell, with Dick Cheney, all you had to do was calmly say to him "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," and the Secret Service would have you arrested.

And yesterday in New Jersey, we had a brain-damaged guy with a cubic buttload of firearms, who said to a guy in line for coffee that he had already cut holes in a fence in order to shoot Obama. Yeah, I think the Secret Service should probably take a look at him.

And Mr dePaul should probably try getting his facts straight.
________

Update (10/23/09): Well, we had our little exchange of views, and we have established one thing. VdP is a dishonest wad of fuck. Rather than the usual failure to post dissenting opinions so prevalent in the right-hand side of the blogosphere, he prefers to change them. Many of those words you'll see at his post are mine. The last 2 paragraphs are not.

For the record, what I actually wrote was:

Huh. Well, look at that. You found a couple of sites where Bush' life was threatened. Aren't you something?

Now, just off the top of my head, I'll say that, first, you have no idea whether those people were actually approached by the Secret Service, now, do you? And, even if they weren't, you probably don't have a clue whether their little threats were considered "credible." That's just a theory of mine. Tell me if I'm right...

Oh, yeah. You don't "argue economics with emotional junkies and I don't argue politics with short-sighted moralists." Because you don't have an answer.

Or because you're a cock.

Which was, I admit, a little dickish. But at least it was honest. Whereas our boy with the saint's name... well, as the Rude Pundit likes to put it, if there's one thing we know about motherfuckers, it's that they fuck their mothers.

Music Feeds the Muse: When Two Worlds Collide

reprinted from Mildly Creative

I‘ve always found it sad when people say things like, "I only read the classics," or "I only read mysteries."

What a shame.

Every classic entered the world as just another book, and every story contains its own elements of mystery. It’s perfectly fine to have your favorite genre, but being so exclusive is like reading with blinders on, and you’ll miss a lot of great stuff along the way.

But I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this kind of snobbery as often as I do when I hear people talk about music. Music is a powerful and emotional art form that people identify with, sometimes so much that they latch onto a genre and won’t listen to anything else.

They talk about what they’re into.

“I’m into two kinds of music,” some say, “Country and Western.” Others will have nothing to do with “either”. I hear it all the time. I’m into Southern Rock. I’m into Opera. I’m into Death Metal. And they scoff at anything outside their CD collection.

A Joyous Collision

But music, like all art, grows and evolves through the joyous collision of different worlds.

A musical style like jazz has its roots in earlier forms developed around the world in Europe and Africa and America, and continues to be influenced by everything it can get its hands on. To me, to love music, to love anything really, is to love it enough to let it expand and evolve.

And that’s why I particularly love the following video, a recording of two icons from different musical backgrounds, Luciano Pavarotti, the world famous opera singer, and James Brown, the godfather of soul, allowing their two worlds to collide.

Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain

It appears that Oklahoma doesn't believe that South Carolina should take the top spot in my heart. So they decided to pass the stupidest, most partisan piece of legislature that they could come up with.

What they've decided to do is to pass a law stating that any woman getting an abortion in Oklahoma will have her personal information posted on line. (The earliest reports were that this website was going to be named ShameOnYouWhore.com - that name has since been abandoned.) The Center for Reproductive Rights has already mounted the first legal challenge.

This law will go into effect on the first of November - ironically, on the same date as the founding of the first medical school for women in America.

Now, the people of Oklahoma have proven themselves to either be idiots or inhuman already; they've reelected business spokesweasel James Inhofe to one branch of Congress or another in every election since 1987.

This is a man who supports the torture of prisoners: he was only one of nine Senators to vote against the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and when talking about prisoner abuse at Guantanamo, he famously said that he was "more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment."

He is, of course, opposed to the concept of climate change, and likes to refer to environmentalists as the Gestapo (because the GOP is almost entirely devoid of imagination, and so they have to refer to anybody who disagrees with them as Nazis - they can't help themselves). He also seems to believe that global warming is a conspiracy started by the Weather Channel to gain viewers. (After all, they're such a powerful force in the media...)

Fascinatingly enough, Inhofe is on record saying that the EPA should just be an outlet for the president's environmental beliefs:

It is my view that, regardless of Administration, the President acting through the entire executive branch is fully entitled to express his policy judgments to the EPA Administrator, and to expect his subordinate to carry out the judgment of what the law requires and permits. It can be argued that the "unitary Executive concept" promotes more effective rulemaking by bringing a broader perspective to bear on important regulatory decisions...

Therefore, I consider this debate over censorship within the Administration to be a nonissue.

Unless, of course, that president happens to be a Democrat, in which case the EPA's "process of determining endangerment appears to be marred by bias and, to some extent, political manipulation." (To be fair, it is always possible that the Senator is more upset about the President of the United States being black than he is about Obama's political leanings - it's hard to tell with Inhofe.)

This is the man who's been the face of Oklahoma politics for the past 30 years.

This latest assault on a woman's right to privacy, coming just two months after a state court struck down their last attempt to limit abortions, will cost $281,285 to put into place, and $256,285 each subsequent year, plus, of course, the cost of enforcing of the law. Certainly an excellent use of Oklahoma's money in a recession.

Among other information that will be posted on the internet, the first eight questions that are required by Oklahoma law to be disclosed are:

1. The date of the abortion
2. The county in which the abortion was performed
3. The age of the mother
4. Her marital status (married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married)
5. The race of mother
6. How much education she's had ("specify highest year completed")
7. The state or "foreign country of residence" of the mother
8. The total number of previous pregnancies (including live births, miscarriages and other abortions)

Now, the average city or town in Oklahoma has less than 4,500 victims residents. However, a quarter of the population of Oklahoma (838 thousand people out of 3.5 million Oakies) live in rural areas or unincorporated communities which usually have a population of a hundred or less. So this law doesn't make it particularly difficult to narrow down the whore in question, does it?

On the other hand, maybe this law is just another type of economic stimulus program. After all, the first time a woman gets identified because of the information on the website, she'll be able to sue the state for millions of dollars in damages.

Then again, it's a strange use of state funds, because if she's smart, she'll use the money to move the hell out of Oklahoma.

Why Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize

by Joan Walsh (Salon.com)

I was as stunned as anyone when I heard President Obama had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize Friday morning. Of course it felt oddly premature. It's enough to send Obama lovers and haters back to the jokes about his being the Messiah; so much seems to come easy to the man. Sometimes Obama makes me think of the old saying: "To whom much is given, much is...given." Yeah, he turns that old proverb on its head.

A few hours of reflection, and reading what the committee said about the award, and I could see its point and purpose. In recent years the Nobel Peace Prize has more often honored promise and encouraged progress than it marked concrete, permanent achievements in the realm of world peace. So the prize went to President Carter's ultimately unsuccessful 1978 Middle East peace drive; and to the same still uncompleted effort by Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi won the prize in her jail cell, but the point was to support democracy in Burma (and 18 years later, she is still under house arrest).Thinking about the Northern Ireland Catholic and Protestant "Peace Mothers" who won the award in 1976, years before real peace accords, I suddenly saw Obama's win as strangely humble, and personal: One man trying to reverse the bloody tide of recent American history.

Obama's prize is a measure of how far the Bush administration pushed the United States, and the world, away from peace. So far that Obama's small but fervent efforts in the opposite direction -- new diplomacy on Israel, Palestine, Iran, Russia and North Korea; slow but steady withdrawal from Iraq and now a painful reappraisal of the increasingly bloody war in Afghanistan; a pledge to eliminate nuclear weapons; new initiatives to the Muslim world -- could win him this prize. But let's take that measure. Let's take in what that said about the way our country had become a source of aggression, belligerence and hostility, and never peace, in the last eight years. And in the midst of all of our partisan squabbling about health care and cap and trade and everything else -- and even as we acknowledge disappointment with Obama on state secrets, torture, Iraq and Afghanistan -- this should be a moment to reflect.

Of course all of Obama's encouraging moves are pledges and initiatives and discussions and promises, truly. We are right to press for more. But they are pledges and initiative and discussions and all kinds of slow but necessary efforts that weren't taking place at all for eight years under the Bush-Cheney regime. So about mid-day on Friday I abandoned my head-shaking, and instead held my head high. I was impressed by Obama's own humble speech, in which he said flatly he didn't "deserve" the award, by the standards most of us hold for this crucial prize:

"Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

"To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

"But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century."

The right-wing's idiocy about Obama's Nobel win is no longer even interesting. So Rush Limbaugh sides with the Taliban now. Good. Both Glenn Beck and Mark Halperin suggested Obama should decline the award; now we know where Halperin stands, that's good too. The country will move on without them. I loved what French President Nicholas Sarkozy (not always an Obama fan) said about why the U.S. president really got the Nobel Peace Prize: "The award marks America's return to the heart of the people of the world." That deserves a prize.

Is That You, Honey?

Several years ago, my wife decided that I needed a hobby, and I ended up with a wine making kit. I did manage to pull off some decent fruit wines (never really got into the whole grape thing - no press, y'know), but percentage-wise, my efforts at the oenophilic arts have not been a complete success.

To put it another way, I've probably ruined a truckload or two of fruit trying to drink it. And there's very little that's good about 5 gallons of battery acid. (Although, come to think of it, the one attempt that really qualified being called "battery acid" would have been that attempt at orange wine, but I only made a one gallon batch of that.)

We have discovered, though, that I can make a mean mead. And as a fairly direct result of that discovery, I've got about 5 gallons of honey bubbling away in a corner of my kitchen right now.

OK, technically, only about 16 pounds of it is honey. And another one ounce is made up of yeast. In a couple of weeks, it gets racked into a secondary fermenter, and a couple of weeks after that, it gets bottled and put away for at least a year. Maybe longer. (This is a long-term hobby; there's not a lot of instant gratification going on here.)

Honey is a fascinating product. Evidence shows that humans have been cultivating it for around 10,000 years - roughly 4000 years longer than some people believe that the world has been around. So it's literally a Stone Age skill, if you still use that pop-culture, ethnocentrically-biased term, anyway. (I do, but I'm shallow.)

As Alton Brown will tell you, honey is the only food produced for us, by animals. What about milk, you ask? Well, you actually have to work to get the milk out of the cow - now, if the cows milked themselves, and stored the milk in little bladders, and then stored the bladders in giant cow-hives, it would be an equivalent situation. (Of course, then you'd have to shoo off the angry hordes of cows before you could harvest the milk, and that would probably take bulldozers and massive, pitchfork-shaped cattle prods. So overall, it's probably best that bees are small.)

Honey has been used in medicine for centuries, and for good reason. It's hygroscopic, antimicrobial, and even antioxidant. If you get a cut, you could easily smear honey on it (like they did for centuries), and the antibacterial qualities could keep it from getting infected, the hygroscopic qualities would keep the wound moist and cut down on scarring, and all you'd be left with is figuring out how to deal with all the ant bites.

If you really insist on it, you can get all mystical about the stuff. On a bookshelf in the kitchen (next to The Joy of Home Wine Making), I've got a copy of Mad About Mead. I suppose that the subtitle should have warned me - "Nectar of the Gods." It's about 150 pages long, and the first 40 are taken up with mysticism, ancient religious beliefs and questionable history. I suppose it must be useful to somebody (even if you build your own religion from scratch, you've got to get building materials from somewhere). But I was definitely not the target audience.

The second two thirds of the book contain some decent tips, although I take many of them with a grain of salt, as well. For example, I don't support the idea of the "open fermenter" method: when the mead is in its initial, most active phase (where the yeast is bubbling away like mad), the author believes that an open drum covered with a sheet is the perfect container. I don't agree - although I can laugh at the idea of pulling an angry cat wrapped in a honey-soaked sheet out of a large trash can, I'm pretty sure that the reality would be much less entertaining.

On a related note, even though he barely touches on mead-making, I strongly recommend The Joy of Home Wine Making, which was written by Terry A. Garey; he also has a website, joyofwine.net, which is an equally important resource. Mr Garey's book is the bible of wine-making (only more readable, and more useful, than the actual Bible). Everything you need to know about making alcohol from various forms of sugar is in that book.

Mead is relatively bulletproof (which is probably why I can do it without screwing up too badly). At its core, mead is really just honey, water and yeast; in fact, if you make it this way, the result used to be called a "show mead," and it was the only type eligible to be entered into competition in the UK.

There are other varieties of mead, too. For example, if you use herbs and spices to flavor it, you have "metheglin," and if you use fruit, you end up with "melomel." (Don't blame me - that's what they're called.)

Almost every culture has their own version of honey-wine. This is probably because honey often has strains of "wild" yeast in it, and will sometimes, if mixed with water, ferment itself. This isn't recommended - the yeast won't be very good at making alcohol, and might screw up the flavor to the point where you can't drink it.

The first step to making mead is to boil the water and honey, to kill off the "wild yeast" and break up the proteins. Most people also add acid (to make the yeast more comfortable), yeast nutrient (sometimes called "yeast energizer," to round out the yeast's diet a little), and tannin (to help the flavor). While it's boiling, a lot of proteins will break and rise to the surface as foam, which you skim off.

Then you pour it into a primary fermenter (in my case, an airtight jug fitted with a pressure-release valve called a "bubbler"), along with enough water and ice to make 5 gallons. (You need to reduce the temperature to around 70-75 degrees, or you kill the yeast; if it's too cold, you put it to sleep. So you have to be careful with the ice.)

And then you sit back and let the yeast do its thing.

"Its thing," if you're taking notes, is to eat sugar, belch carbon dioxide, and crap alcohol. (Yes, I could have said "excrete alcohol," but let's be real here, OK?) The yeast dies when the alcohol content is too high; this used to be around 10-13 percent, but some of the more modern wine yeast can produce around 18 percent alcohol.

You get some sludge settling at the bottom of the container as it ferments, so, as the first stage of fermentation starts to settle down, you siphon it into a secondary fermenter (most people use a big jug called a carboy), leaving the sediment (or lees) behind. You can "rack" it (which just means siphon it out, basically) a couple of times to clear more sludge; some people recommend it, some people say anything more than once is too much. I figure it's all waste, and cleaning the toilet is a good thing.

Once the bubbling is pretty much done, you bottle it and store it in a cool dark place for a while; in the case of mead, like I said, the absolute minimum is a year. I've never had it last long enough to tell you what the top end is, but I'm told that seven to ten year old meads are incredible.

(Quick disclaimer - that was less than you needed to know to make the stuff. There's all kinds of chemistry you can do - which I mostly fake - and other steps you need to know about. This was the 5-minute overview for the layman.)

On this batch, I'm experimenting on a couple of steps. First, I didn't boil it. I've been reading that boiling destroys a lot of the "nose" (smell) of the mead, and you only need to heat it to 152 degrees to kill off the wild yeasts. I admittedly went closer to 160 degrees, but I never let it boil.

Secondly, I went semi-natural. Instead of a powdered acid, I used the juice and zest (peel, with as little pith - the white stuff inside the peel - as possible) of two lemons and three oranges. And instead of powdered tannin, I brewed strong black tea and added that.

However, I did add yeast nutrient (hence, semi-natural). I could have added raisins, but that isn't the flavor I wanted. And the other top choices I found were bee pollen (didn't have any), and crushed bee larvae (umm... ick). And besides, I had yeast nutrient, so I'm pretty happy with my choices here.

This might be the first batch I've made that turns out badly. I won't know for a year. But as I write this, on day 2, it's over there popping like a tenor drum about once every three seconds. So it seems like I've done something right.

Only time will tell.

Rep. Alan Grayson May Just Fuck Your Shit Up

reprinted from the Rude Pundit

It's too soon to tell, but there's a good chance that Representative Alan Grayson, he of the "Die Quickly" Republican health care plan, will end up fucking your shit up. Too rich to be bought off, Grayson's been fucking with the powerful for a few years now. As an attorney, he represented whistleblowers, going after the hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud committed by contractors and others in Iraq. He told CNN in April 2006, "The development fund of Iraq was looted by war profiteers and war whores." Check out the huge ass article on him in Vanity Fair from 2007 (and check out that goatee). He went after Halliburton and KBR; he fucked with Dick Cheney. You think a man whose name is a homophone with "boner" is gonna trouble him?

Look, let's be clear: Grayson of Orlando, Florida, is something of a drama queen. Defeating an incumbent Republican in a previously solidly Republican district as part of the Obama wave in 2008, he's an attack dog straight out of old school progressive politics. Here he is in January on President Obama's stimulus plan: "It shelters the homeless, and it heals the sick. It helps us to look forward to a day when we beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks, and when a nation does not lift up a sword against nation anymore." It's a bit over the top, like his Holocaust remark yesterday and his demand that AIG's CEO "name names" of those who received bonuses.

But sometimes those kinds of dramatics can be absolutely energizing, like the second shot of cheap tequila, as when Grayson said, "Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we'd all need pain killers."

And this dude knows how to apologize to right-wingers. Pushed by Michael Steele to beg forgiveness from Limbaugh like so many Republicans did, Grayson offered, "I’m sorry Limbaugh called for harsh sentences for drug addicts while he was a drug addict. I’m also sorry that he’s bent on seeing America fail. And I’m sorry that Limbaugh is one sorry excuse for a human being."

Grayson was the member of Congress who authored the grandly symbolic bill attacking executive compensation in the financial firms now owned by all of us, also known as the "Pay for Performance Act," currently somewhere on hold in the Senate after passing the House in April. This would be back when "populist anger" was actually about people against corporations, which, of course, meant conservatives thought it was wrong. Grayson said, "You should not get rich off public money, and you should not get rich off of abject failure... This bill will show which Republicans are so much on the take from the financial services industry that they're willing to actually bless compensation that has no bearing on performance and is excessive and unreasonable. We'll find out who are the people who understand that the public's money needs to be protected, and who are the people who simply want to suck up to their patrons on Wall Street."

The bill caused Fox "news" host Neil Cavuto to lose his shit on the air with Grayson, to the point where Grayson said that Cavuto was conjuring a "paranoid fantasy" about the implications of the bill. Cavuto cursed and spat while Grayson looked like he was wondering if he was going to have to grab Cavuto's jaws to keep him from biting.

Since Grayson said that the Republican plan for health care is "Don't get sick" and "Die quickly," Grayson has become this week's punching bag for conservative wads of fuck who want to equate his words with Rep. Joe "Insert Banjo Music" Wilson's loud "Don't lie" fart during the President's health care speech. Beyond the hypocrisy of the death panel people saying someone's being too mean, it should also be pointed out that Grayson didn't just bray out of nowhere like he was getting fucked by a donkey. He was recognized and speaking in turn. Robert's Rules of Order don't say anything about whether or not a speaker can drip with savage sarcasm.

Yesterday, on The Situation Room with Wolf "Bow Down Before the Sartorial Magnificence of My Beard" Blitzer, the gathered CNN superfriends couldn't comprehend Grayson, as if anger and honesty coming from a Democrat is some unknown species of rhetoric. "They should apologize to America," Grayson said of Republicans calling for him to beg forgiveness. He may as well have said, "Suck my balls."

The best part was when designated Republican Alex "Douche 'Stache" Castellanos asked Grayson which people does the Congressman think he wants to die. Grayson went right back at him, calling Republican ideas "amorphous nonsense," and "Do you really think that tort reform is going to take care of 47 million people?" By the point that Grayson said Republicans were just using the "usual cliches," Castellanos had the look of a straight man who was just shown the cock that was going to fuck him.

It was truly something beautiful because Grayson walked into Wolf Blitzer's house, drank his whiskey, and took a giant shit on CNN's floor. The pundits from Carville to Castellanos to Borger didn't know what the fuck to do with this guy who wasn't going to play by the usual rules of suck up and pander and call for bipartisanship like other Democrats. The closest they've gotten is the occasional Barney Frank appearance, but Grayson is something different, a Democrat who not only has his own balls, but is ripping the nuts off others. "They've been dragging their feet. These -- these are foot dragging, knuckle dragging Neanderthals who think they can dictate policy to America by being stubborn. And I think it's -- the time is over. We had an election. That's it. Now we have to move ahead in just the way the president wants us to," Grayson said, and, oh, the sputtering that happened.

James Carville asked Grayson at the end if he was ready for how his life was going to change. What ought to be happening is that Democrats should be using Grayson as their point person, sending him out to take a wrecking ball to the stick houses of arguments Republicans keep constructing. Republicans have never known how to deal with it when someone fights back with the same brutality they use. Grayson just pointed out that motherfuckers fuck their mothers. It's that simple.

Something could be finer...

One of my three regular readers recently asked what evidence I have that South Carolina is a particularly inbred state. And it's a fair question.

First, to be entirely honest, there's no real way to tell. The government really doesn't track that kind of thing, and even if they did, their data would probably be inaccurate, as this particular problem is widely under-reported, according to most experts (and we won't even touch on the problem of false memory syndrome and how it might skew the results).

The argument can still be made, of course. There are a number of fascinating medical anomalies in South Carolina, any or all of which could be genetic, and thus reinforced by inbreeding: South Carolina leads the country in stroke deaths, and has the third highest rate of infant mortality in the United States; epilepsy, which affects between 0.4% and 1% of the rest of the country (lifetime prevalence rate), affects 2.2% of South Carolinians.

Interestingly, they also have one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the country, but that probably isn't related. (Not directly related, anyway...)

Having said that, though, we are still left with one question: what the hell is wrong with South Carolina?

South Carolina has a long history of racism - they were so in love with their plantations and ability to chain up fellow human beings that they were the first state to secede from the Union; and Edmund Ruffin was the South Carolinian (technically, a transplated Virginian) who claimed to have fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, kicking that whole mess off. (Also, upon hearing that General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, Ruffin penned a letter stating his hatred for "the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race," and shot himself in the head, which many say gave him the dubious honor of firing both the first shot and the last shot of the Civil War.)

South Carolinian John C. Calhoun (7th Vice President of the United States) even gave a speech on the Senate floor where he explained that slavery was a "positive good" - he also spearheaded a gag rule that automatically tabled any discussion of slavery in the Senate.

"But, oh, Nameless One," you're probably saying, "that's the past. What about the present?" But is it truly the past? I'm not so sure, because when Mike Huckabee, while talking about the Confederate "stars and bars", can say to a group of South Carolinians, "You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," the audience just cheers, and nobody feels constrained to say, "Uh, Mike, that isn't our flag any more."

Regardless of that, though, South Carolina is well known for having more than their share of citizens who are frequently described as "colorful" - Sheriff Leon Lott, who purchased an armored personnel carrier for his police force, and famously broke down a door based on a picture of gold-medalist Michael Phelps holding a bong; Mayor Sallie Peake, who banned the police from chasing suspects on foot in Wellford, SC; noted hunter Nathan Dickson; Joshua Glidewell, a Fred Phelps wannabe who's suing the city of Greenville for not allowing him to harass passersby.

They're the only state in the nation who elects their National Guard adjutant; one candidate for that office, Republican Dean Allen, recently raffled off an AK-47 at a fundraiser. (You'd think that one of his opponents would point out that Mr Allen not only couldn't even be counted on to buy American, but felt it was appropriate to raffle off a weapon from the former Soviet Union.)

South Carolina also has a long-standing militia movement - people deluded enough to believe that a hundred hillbillies with hunting rifles can overthrow the entire US government.

You should probably also remember Caitlin Upton, the Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina, who gave this fascinatingly incoherent response when asked why 20% of Americans can't locate the US on a world map:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our (children).

And she was an honor student in high school. (Admittedly, a South Carolina high school, so the bar is pretty low.)

And their politicians are notoriously unstable. As far back as 1856, Representative Preston Brooks used his walking stick to beat another congressman, Charles Sumner, so badly that Sumner couldn't return to his congressional duties for three years. (Brooks actually had a long history of violent behavior - he never finished law school because he was expelled for threatening the police with a gun. However, his violent impulses apparently only extended to attacking without provocation - after being denounced for his actions by a third Congressman, Anson Burlingame, he challenged Burlingame to a duel, but chickened out when Burlingame accepted.)

Strom Thurmond was an evil old racist from South Carolina, who kept his Senate seat for 49 years following 2 years as governor. One of his many notable remarks was that "there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." And he still holds the record for the longest filibuster in Senate history; he talked for 24 hours and 18 minutes opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. (Of course, this didn't prevent him from having a daughter out of wedlock with his black maid. Go figure.)

More recently, we had South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, who felt that shouting "You lie!" at the President of the United States was an appropriate way to uphold the dignity of his office. (Wilson was also a strong supporter of Strom Thurmond, and an advocate for the aforementioned Confederate flag, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that it's a symbol of slavery and repression.)

And lest we forget, Governor Mark Sanford, recently in the news for his habit of taking publically-funded junkets to chase Argentinian tail to meet his soul mate.

All of which brings us back to our original question: What the hell is wrong with South Carolina?

I can't answer that question, but until I'm given evidence to the contrary, I will continue to believe it's inbreeding.

The Catholic Church, Private Insurance and Abortion

Reprinted from Pruning Shears

On Monday I sent the following email to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Colorado:

The recent letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops [USCCB] opposing a House health care plan on the grounds that its prohibition of abortion funding was a "legal fiction" raised a question to me. I first learned of you because of your statement that voting for John Kerry in 2004 was cooperating in evil due to his position on abortion, so I know how seriously you take the issue. My question is, has the American church, the Conference or any other official Catholic body or agency taken a position on Catholics’ purchasing insurance from companies that provide abortion services? All of the major ones - Aetna, Blue Cross, Cigna, United Healthcare and so on - provide abortion services in their policies. Doesn’t anyone who pays premiums to these insurers help to fund abortion, and wouldn’t that also amount to cooperating in evil?

It seems the Catholic Church has focused all of its energy and activism on government’s role but left the private sector off scot-free. I am not aware of any visibility on this from the church, and that appears to be a glaring omission. Has it been addressed, and if so has it been addressed as forcefully? On the face of it, it seems to me that anything contributing to abortions, public or private, would be equally objectionable.

Thanks in advance for any time and attention you are able to provide.

Archbishop Chaput declined to provide an on the record response. He is obviously not obligated to, but the opposition to the House bill raises what I believe is a legitimate question: Why has the church not targeted private insurers for the last thirty years? They are indispensable players in providing abortion services, yet as far as I know they have not been highlighted the way pro-choice politicians have. The Democratic nominee for president is singled out for his position. Why not the CEO of Aetna?

How is it that the USCCB can object to increased health care coverage that will "subsidize the operating budget and provider networks that expand access to abortions" while having never said a word about the provider networks themselves? Why oppose raising the quality of life of millions of people through insurance reform if the objection is to the health care infrastructure? Or conversely, if you object to adding new people to the system then why not also work to get current enrollees out of it? Don’t employers who provide health care plans subsidize provider networks? Why aren’t they being targeted for doing so? Why is the system as it exists now and has existed for decades so studiously ignored if putting new people into it is so problematic?

The disparity between the easy treatment of private insurers and the objection to a public one could create a philosophical tipping point. Since Roe v. Wade the church has been visible and energetic in its opposition to abortion while giving comparatively short shrift to other life issues such as capital punishment and war. The fact that such emphasis lined up nicely with conservative ideology is presumably coincidence. The church’s recommended political course for addressing abortion is to support pro-life candidates on the theory that they will appoint pro-life judges who will eventually overturn Roe. That too benefits the GOP, coincidentally I am sure. In a few years this strategy will conclude its second full generation as an exercise in futility. Meaning, in practice it boils down to perpetual straight ticket voting for the party in pursuit of a goal forever just out of reach. As year after fruitless year passes, claims of nonpartisanship begin to strain credulity.

Any religion worth its salt will periodically cause great discomfort at points across the political spectrum, and opposing Democratic health care reform because it expands coverage may be a coincidence too far. It makes the leadership’s position look more political than moral - abortions paid for by the private sector are acceptable, abortions paid for by the public sector are not. The long running alignment between the church’s antiabortion activism and the right wing has been plausible as just circumstance, but we may now be entering an area where the American Catholic Church risks looking like nothing so much as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party.

Norse (by Norsewest)

It seems that some Norwegian metal guitarist named Varg Vikernes has been making stuff up ridiculous stories. Like this creation myth.

Our world was created in co-operation between these three proto-forces. Between Múspellheimr (the stars) and Niflheimr (the frozen matter in space) there was Gínungagap (the void). The universe was resting. It was inactive. It was in a state of complete balance.

The universe woke after this rest of Freyr. Óðinn's force threw the mass out in all directions again. The stars began to melt the frozen matter in space when they met each other, out there in Gínungagap; in the void.

In Múspellheimr, there was the divine bosom, the explosion which gives new life to the universe. In Niflheimr, there was the resting divine thought, frozen. The ice melted and it became active again.

In Ragnarök, the opposite forces cancel each other out until only one force is left standing. Since the gravitational pull is constant, while the explosion only works over a limited time, gravity will always win. It will always, after a period of time, force the mass of universe together again.

Everyone knows that Ginnungagap was the boundary between Niflheim (the land of frost) and Muspelheim (the land of fire), where the great icecow Audhumla, who belonged to the giant Ymir, licked Buri out of the ice. And Buri was the father of Borr, who mated with Bestla (a frost giant), to beget the Æsir: Odin, Vili and Ve.

Then the Aesir killed Ymir (whose blood poured forth and destroyed all but two of the jotunn), and used his flesh to make the earth, his bones to make the mountains, and his teeth and bone fragments became stones; and they used his skull to become the arch of the sky.

(See? They recycled.)

Is Varg just insane? The Allfather will destroy him for this heresy! And I can go on at length about how Odin is a metaphor for death, not some stupid proto-force of expansion/explosion.

(That whole question of Varg's sanity is actually a valid concern. I mean, he did do 16 years for murder and arson. On the other hand, he's descended from the Vikings, so burning down churches and slaughtering innocents might just be a genetic imperative for him.)

The whole skycow story makes as much sense as "God was bored, and took a week to make the earth, but we don't know how or what he built it out of," if you think about it.

I wonder if the story of Ymir's blood is where we get these profane bastardizations like "the Great Flood"?

Walking the dark, ugly streets

So, for the last week or so, I've been having some nice chats with people.

You see, ever since Joe Wilson (R-Bethlem Royal Hospital)

yes, he just made a Victorian England reference (the benefit of a classical education)

ever since Joe Wilson (R-Batshit Insane - happy now?) decided that interrupting the President of the United States to impugn his honor was the perfect thing for a Southern Gentleman to do, Joe has become the toast of the wingnut blogs.

Now, when I say "Southern Gentleman," I use the term in it's most historical sense, as Joe Wilson is famously remembered for having said how sad it made him to have slave-ownership compared to Nazi Germany. (I mean, please! One group raped, killed and imprisoned Jews! (And gypsies and homosexuals, of course.) The other raped, killed and imprisoned blacks! Don't you see the difference?)

Of course, it's fascinating that our boy Joe is being feted by the right for his strong stand against ensuring that illegal immigrants die in the streets (which is a perfectly reasonable, responsible attitude as the threat of a Swine Flu H1N1 outbreak looms closer). After all, his voting history in this area isn't quite as stellar as they would like to believe.

However, in 2003, Wilson voted to provide federal funds for illegal immigrants’ healthcare. The vote came on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which contained Sec. 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually between 2003 and 2008 for government reimbursements to hospitals who provide treatment for uninsured illegal immigrants. The program has been extended through 2009 and there is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to make it permanent.

But let's be big about this. Let's ignore the somewhat inherent hypocrisy in his bona fides, and move on. Let's consider the simple matter of "honesty."

The basic argument, as far as anyone can tell, that so enraged the potentially-not-inbred Senator from the chromosomally-challenged state of South Carolina is the President's statement that illegal aliens would not be covered by health insurance. That, after all, is the point where common sense, common decency and simple etiquette all simultaneously failed for our pro-slavery Senator, and he suffered from his momentary spasm of Tourette's.

Well, sadly, it's true. Illegal aliens would, in fact, be covered under any of the healthcare reform plans currently under consideration (well, except for the one that Senator Inhofe proposed where old people are ground up into crackers - but even Newt Gingrich doesn't like to talk about that one...). Just like they are currently.

Because that's one of those little things that our wingnuts don't want to accept: illegal immigrants are already covered when they go into an emergency room. They have to be – it’s a basic fact: emergency rooms cannot turn away anyone. This has already been decided by the courts - it's the law. (

It's a simple fact: the healthcare reform bill doesn’t guarantee care to illegal aliens. But it’s not going to deny anyone emergency care. That’s the way it is now, that’s the way it’s going to be in the future, whether we have healthcare reform or not.

Now, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the only real strategy that the GOP has for combatting healthcare reform these days is to openly lie about it, from "dealth panels," to "rationing care," and now "them illegals is gonna git a band-aid instead of your child!"

So, armed with nothing more than a few freely-verifiable facts and a little common sense, I have, as I've said, gone foraging for reality on the Dark Side.

As usual, there were people who had no answers and chose to look the other way.

A site calling itself "The Republican Resistance" seemed to feel that forwarding ignorant emails wasn't enough, and some should become blog posts; they also have no answers. That seems like a fairly weak resistance movement to me.

Suprisingly, it was on a site calling itself ExposeObama.com where I encountered a small dash of common sense; a poster called "Rush LimpPaw" agreed that I was correct almost immediately.

I found a blogger calling himself "Philosophy Guy," whose arguments boiled down to "you're wrong because you disagree with me." And since that's my jurisdiction, he needs to just clear the hell out. And apparently, I only got to knock down his arguments twice - after that, he ignores you. An attempt at putting an intellectual spin on wrong-minded right-wing tropes, and then cutting off the argument in mid-sentence - I'm glad he identified himself as Kiel Moreland, or I might have thought I was debating Donald Rumsfeld.

Over on True Health Is True Wealth!! (with two exclamation points, thank you very much), she sniffed dismissively that she'd read the entire bill (HR 3200, in case you're confused here); oddly, she wasn't willing to explain where she'd found the passage giving healthcare to illegal immigrants. Go figure.

I'm not sure why Bill Baar calls his blog Pfarrer Streccius ("Pfarrer" being German for "minister," and wasn't "Streccius" a character on Saved By The Bell?), but his arguments also boil down to "I know better than you." (Again, a lot of people marching on my turf, by God!)

(Actually, I think that character was named Screech... hmmm...)

Easily my longest discussion was with a wild-eyed libertarian named Joel Turtel, who calls his blog "My Kids Deserve Better" (no exclamation points, this time). It's one butt-ugly page, with random font selection and superfluous underlining, but he was apparently just copying a fund-raising letter from AmericPAC, on his (get ready for it) Conservatives are Cool news feed. (Really? Are they "hip," too?)

Joel doesn't support public schools, apparently because they failed him so badly: he doesn't understand political philosophies, history, grammar, spelling - and I'm sure I'm only scratching the surface of his ignorance. I was in full-on snark mode by the time we were done.

You know, I might have more patience for these teabagging idiots if they'd just look around and realize that they were being played for fools. They rant, they rave, they scream about "socialism" and taxes, but they openly ignore the hypocrisy rampant in their own movement. You know, little things, like Dick Armey (who runs FreedomWorks, one of the top two teabagger organizers), who opposes all government-run healthcare, except his own, of course: he's fighting to keep from being taken off his Congressional healthcare plan, despite the fact that he hasn't been in Congress in almost seven years.

That's the type of high-quality leadership running this movement.

__________

Update: And, just to show that he truly believes in free speech, the Turtle has deleted all my responses, but left his answers intact, which makes it look like he's holding a conversation with the voices in his head.

Like a Virgin

(An essay by Driftglass)

“...they turned to prayer, beseeching
that the sin which had been committed
might be wholly blotted out.”
-- 2 Maccabees. 12:42

Once upon a time, there was a President named Bill Clinton, who was, by most historical standards, a typical Centrist Republican, although by a fluke of geography and circumstances he ran for public office with a "(D)" after his name.

Under his Administration, many Conservative ideas which had long gathered dust on the shelf -- ideas such as welfare reform, a balanced budget, debt reduction, a strict “Pay as You Go” fiscal regime, a boom in technology jobs, budget surpluses, NAFTA, GATT, official bans on gay marriage, etc. -- were finally realized.

And for all of his good work on behalf of their ideology, Conservatives spent eight, long years treating Bill Clinton -- a Southern, White, Christian man -- as if he were a case of flesh eating nuclear syphilis.

Because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name.

And because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name, according to the leading voices in the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, Bill Clinton was, in no particular order, Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate.

And counterpointing the 24/7 slime campaign, there were those endless, endless hearings. Whitewater. Travel office. Christmas Card lists. Lincoln bedroom. Etc ad nauseum.

Or don’t you remember?

He was “Not my President!” (Ollie North: War criminal, terrorist arms dealer, GOP Senate Candidate [1994] and FoxNews Contributor.)

He was warned “not to set foot in my state.” (Jesse Helms: Professional Bigot, Confederate Senator, 1820-2003)

His picture was used for target practice by G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate felon, would-be assassin, radio personality and Republican hero.

From "The American Prospect":

...it's worth remembering just how virulent the opposition to Clinton's presidency was. Republicans began plotting to impeach Clinton long before anyone had ever heard the name "Lewinsky," and many on the right simply refused to accept that he legitimately occupied the office he held. Then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, when talking to Democrats, used to refer to Clinton as "your president."

It was a warped, hysterical campaign funded by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Richard Mellon Scaife



and propagated by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Rupert Murdoch who made sure the lies were jack-hammered into the headlines day after day, year after year.

And judging by its objectives, it was also a very successful campaign: it legitimized and metastasized Hate Radio; killed the credibility of the "objective" media once and for all; made the overt mass-slander of political opposition by the Right acceptable; moved radicals, militia nuts, bigots, Creationists and Limbaugh zombies to the center of the Republican Party; accelerated the exodus of reasonable moderates the hell out of the Republican Party; destroyed the possibility of public discourse; and kicked the door open to the use of Congressional hearings as instruments of political vendetta.

But as successful as it was, it was also an incredibly high-risk strategy, because of a thing called the "public record".

The public record meant that each and every time a Republican stood up to, say, slam the Democrat Commander-in-Chief during a time of war:

“You can support the troops but not the president”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“President…is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”
-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)

“American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.”
-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

“I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning…I didn’t think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.”
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years”
-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

“I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?”
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”
-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

“This is President Clinton’s war, and when he falls flat on his face, that’s his problem.”
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

they left a documentary trail wide and bright enough to be visible from space.

Or from the next election cycle.

The public record meant that every frivolous Republican witch hunt and every syllable of hate and demagoguery gleefully poured out through public megaphones and megachurch pulpits to malign and demonize the Left could potentially represent a thick bar on the cage of any future Republican president's imperial ambitions.

Because, after all, should the tables ever turn -- should there ever be a Republican President whose election really was suspect, or who really did lie to the American public and flagrantly abuse his office, and did it in ways that cost the nation trillions of dollars and thousands of lives -- after spending eight years establishing a public record in such clear and unambiguous language what the Hell could the Right possibly say?

After conspiring to bring about two of the most destructive events in modern American history -- the impeachment of a US President over trivia, and the probable theft of the subsequent Presidential election -- to what God could Republicans possibly pray that their eight years of insanity, venom and violence "might be wholly blotted out?”

On 09/11/01, their dark miracle came winging its way out of a clear, blue sky.

Eight years ago, this is what we all saw.



All of us, all together across all political, cultural and religious spectra watched the worst thing many of us had ever seen.

Together.

But in what now seems like less time than it took to wipe away our tears, the same depraved thugs who sponsored eight years of "Clinton Murdered Vince Foster!" hysteria began hijacking of our pain and patriotism to serve their partisan interests right before our eyes.

The minute the Bush Administration began trying to stretch the war they got into an excuse for the war they wanted, 9/11 stopped being merely a national tragedy and started being the Bush Administration's bottomless political ATM machine.

The minute the Party of Personal Responsibility began using the mantra "9/11 changed everything" as the political equivalent of the Blood of Christ -- as a means to absolve themselves of their personal responsibility for eight years of malice and derangement -- for them September 11, 2001 stopped being a moment of shared, national anguish and started being a suit of cultural body-armor which magically deflected any criticism of their lies and their and hypocrisy.

An impervious sniper's nest from which they could cynically escalate their war on the Left.

Or don't you remember the day the Right robbed the graves of all those who perished on 9/11 to turn this



into their all-purpose "Get Out of the 90s Free" card?



And the thing is, it worked.

By selling 9/11 for a mess of wingnut pottage, the Right bought itself an anti-Liberal free-fire zone and two Presidential terms-worth of blank checks. Two terms of an alternately supportive and supine media. Two terms of catastrophe, corruption and treason protected from scrutiny by an ablative shield made out of solid "Why do you hate America?", and a promise that they could go on bareback fucking diseased monsters in the alley all night long, every night, forever and wake up each morning miraculously clean, virginal and still beloved in the eyes of God.

But they forgot that tempus just keeps fugiting along. And as time passed, the Right got so accustomed to butt-scooting their depravity all over the public square and never being called on it they simply stopped noticing that they were amassing a whole new post-9/11 public record so despicable and overflowing with Conservative atrocities that it positively dwarfed their antics during the Clinton Years.

And that brutal, meth-addict level of dependence on never being brought to book for anything they say or do left the Right completely unprepared for the one thing their leaders promised would never happen again.

Losing.

And losing has driven them a special kind of crazy; that screaming-incoherently-and-lashing-out-in-every-direction kind of cold-turkey junkie withdrawal crazy.

In the few, short months since they lost, they have emptied out their entire store of raving invective and delusion.

Losing has left them insisting that that the legally elected President of the United States somehow isn't really the President. That he is a secret enemy. A Communist. A Hitler. A Muslim sleeper cell. A Chicago gangster.

Has left them swearing that "their country" has been stolen and that somewhere hidden in secret code in a 1,000 health care bill is a plan to murder senior citizens.

To understand how deep and relentless their addiction goes, you need only consider the recent example of Mrs. Katy Abram, who leaped into microcelebrity and the wingnut pantheon a month ago with her Clown Hall rant of “I don’t want my county to become Russia!” speech.

Mrs. Katy Abram wants the world to believe that, like a wingnut Sleeping Beauty, she somehow slept through 9/11.

Slept through two wars and the two trillion dollar bill they racked up.

Slept through tax cuts for the wealthy that added another few trillion to our debt.

Slept through Katrina.

Slept through Terri Schiavo.

Slept through the screams of the Constitution as Bush Administration fed it an inch at a time through the wood chipper (the same Constitution she is now so deeply concerned about that she has somehow become, virtually overnight, an “original intent” quote-spewing expert) only to be awakened in a sudden, patriotic fury by the sound of a Black Democrat taking the oath of office.

I’m sure in Mrs. Abram’s mind – and in the tiny little minds of tens of millions of Americans just like her – she sees absolutely no contradiction between explaining that she never paid any attention to a single fucking thing prior to January of 2009....and saying that she started paying attention in 1991 "when we first went to the Gulf War" and that she has debated politics with friends at the opposite end of the political spectrum “a million times over”.

It is, in fact, a sign of the depth and effectiveness of their brainwashing that people like Mrs. Abram see no conflict between saying in one breath “I have never been interested in politics” and "I always seem to have faith in the government“ in the next.

Because during the Bush years, people like Mrs. Abram never saw their love of their Dear Leader and their fealty to his Administration as something "political". They saw it normal. As the Universe being at its proper, wingnut default setting: White, male, fundamentalist Christian, Conservative, flight-suit clad and killing scary brown people. And as long as that remained true, all was right with the world and people like Mrs. Abram were absolved by their "Don't Worry, Go Shopping" leaders of any responsibility for paying attention to anything their government was actually doing.

And once the Dear Leader's reign ended, as far as people like Mrs. Abram were concerned, the natural order of mindless obedience in exchange for a smug and blissful ignorance collapsed. "Their country" was suddenly broke and fucked up for reasons that they dared not think about too much. "Their country" was suddenly awash in dirty fucking hippies, who for some reason were no longer satisfied with being cultural punching bags. "Their country"suddenly had politicians and activists who said mean things about the Dear Leader and the Republican Party...and got away with it!

And worst of all, "their country" suddenly had a Scary Black Man living in their Dear Leader's pretty White House, probably having dirty, Muslim sex in the Dear Leader's sacred, Christian bed and putting his filthy, Kenyan hands all over "their county's" pure, white Constitution.

So, for example, when you hear the same people who fanatically supported President George W. Bush when he famously told Iraq war critics to fuck off --
"Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election."
-- now insisting, less that a year after the 2008 elections, that President Barack Obama needs to:
"...scrap the current grandiose plans and to start over."
or when you see the mobs on the Right being whipped by talk of secession or revolution or spilling the "blood of tyrants" into a nearly-pornographic frenzy, understand that what you are witnessing are the echoes of political decisions made in the wake of September 11, 2001.

Political decisions that trained the Right to believe, on a visceral level, that a sufficiently bloody and horrifying disruption to the life of the country can -- if properly exploited -- wash away their eight otherwise-unforgivable years of sin and restore "their country" to its proper, wingnut default setting.

That if the right sacrifices are made to the right Gods in just the right way, then they can be virgins again

The Public Policy

Robert Reich (the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor, former Harvard University Professor and current Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley) explains it for you.

2010 California Marriage Protection Act

My friends, there's a spectacular movement going on in California right now, which will definitely protect the institution of marriage far better than Proposition 8 ever will.

It's the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act, and it has one simple goal. To prevent any married couple from getting divorced. Ever.

The whole thing takes just over 75 words (including the title):

2010 California Marriage Protection Amendment.

SECTION 1. Title. This act shall be known as the “2010 California Marriage Protection Amendment.”

SECTION 2. Section 7.6 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:

No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of an unmarried person during the lifetime of the other party unless the marriage is void or voidable, as set forth in Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code.

Simple, right?

He gave the following web interview to one of the better 'zines out there, cockeyed.com:

Rob Cockerham: John Marcotte. You've filed a petition with the Secretary of State, in an effort to get a voter's initative on the California 2010 ballot.

John Marcotte: Yes. Filed the paperwork on September 1. It's the "2010 California Marriage Protection Act." I am trying to ban divorce in the state of California.

RC: Ok. So your act, if it became law, would make marriage undissolvable.

John: Exactly. The only exception would be if the marriage was "voidable" -- if you married an 8-year-old, you don't get to keep her. She goes back on the shelf. You can't marry the mentally incapacitated, etc... 99.99% of all marriages would be set in stone. It's a return to traditional values.

RC: Wow, that is amazing. Could it really happen? What steps remain to make this initiative into a valid, enforced law?

John: I am trying to extend the good work done with Proposition 8 last year. It could really happen. The United States has not always had divorce as an institution the way we do now. As a ballot initiative it bypasses the legislature and the governor. It's the will of the people made law...

RC: Who is providing the bulk of funding for this initiative?

John: It began as a self-funded initiative, but we've been collecting donations and already recouped a fair percentage of the filing fees. We hope to collect more donations and maybe start selling t-shirts, etc. to raise more funds.

RC: Are you going to hit the streets collecting signatures for the initiative?

John: We're going to set up a table in front of Wal*Mart and ask people to sign a petition to protect traditional marriage. We're going to interview them about why they thing traditional marriage is important, and then we'll tell them that we are trying to ban divorce. People who supported Prop 8 weren't trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That's why I'm confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical. We're also going to collect signatures in front of "Faces," the largest gay nightclub in Sacramento.

RC: Can gay and unmarried people sign the petition to make this California Law?

John: Anyone can sign the petition as long as they are a registered voter in California. Sinners signatures work just as well as saints. That brings up and interesting point. We are a Christian nation. Jesus said, "What God has put together, let no man separate." Divorce is a sin. Fun fact: Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality. Probably some sort of clerical oversight that will be rectified in the end of days...

RC: This initiative does seem like it would "Protect Marriage", but if two people decide to not be married anymore, shouldn't they be in charge of their own lives?

John: Sometimes other people need to sacrifice in order to protect my ideas about traditional marriage. It's just a fact of life. It's not about their soul-sucking sham of a marriage, it's about what we value as a society. We live in a divorce-promiscuous society. It's on the television, it's in movies, the newspapers. It's even in our kids' textbooks. I'm Catholic. In my religion, divorce is a sin -- completely impermissible.

RC: Sounds like you'd like to shield kids from learning too much about divorce.

John: I don't want the government teaching my child (what) is "cool" or "legally permissible." That's a conversation that should happen in the family. It's the parents' role to teach the kids about reality -- not the state's.

RC: well, this is a bold step. Do you think you face a strong opposition?

John: The opposition will always be there. The secular progressives, gays and MSNBC hosts -- but we beat them once with Prop 8 and we'll beat them again. If people are thinking about getting a divorce, just remember "Hell is eternal, just like your marriage was supposed to be." Jesus still loves you if you get divorced, just not as much as before.

RC: What about people who are currently married? Will this law apply to them, or only new marriages?

John: I wish that I could force people that hate each other with the intensity of a thousand white suns back into a loveless marriage, but my attorneys tell me that getting that law passed would be unlikely in the current political climate. I'll try to get a "win" by banning divorce and save that for 2012 -- when Sarah Palin will be president and/or the end of the world will occur.

RC: Its good to have a plan.

John: One step at a time. We can return this country back to its proud, traditional Judeo-Christian roots.

They even sell T-shirts to that effect, reading: You said "Til death do us part." You're not dead yet.

Admittedly, there may need to be a "fornication" clause added in. After all, it's right there in Matthew 19:9, where Jesus said "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." But that would be difficult to regulate. And really, isn't it better to be too harsh at the beginning?

Now, Mr Marcotte is not the perfect man. He has been known to read comic books, and occasionally uses foul language. But which of us is perfect? This man is doing God's Work. And what more can we ask of him?

Random Musings - 9/09

At a meeting this morning, while talking about the Swine flu H1N1 (some of the lab guys call it "hiney"), one of our doctors asked our Infection Control lady whether antivirals were shown to do anything for the patients.

Of course antivirals do something. They increase the numbers of drug-resistant cases next time around.

Silly damned question.
____________

On the home front, though, we seem to have ended up with a new turtle. Went out into the back yard, and there he was, sitting on top of our pool cover. Nobody seems to know where he came from, nobody's come looking for him, no signs posted around the neighborhood saying "lost amphibian," no nothing. He might not even be from close by - the "sternum" of his bottom shell is worn.

I have no urge to go door-to-door holding a turtle; flyers seemed like an easy solution, but none of the phone calls I've gotten have been from people who can describe the one easiest identifying mark on this little beast. Of course, we can't be talking about a particularly spectacular pet owner. I mean, no explanation will end well when it starts with "My turtle ran away from me."

My son had gone out to water the garden, and come back in to get my wife so she could see if any of the tomatoes needed to be picked. This means that he passed the turtle twice without noticing this cantaloupe-sized green thing on our bright blue pool cover; my wife saw him as soon as she stepped out the door.

That boy would not survive in the wild, if he just walks past ferocious wild animals like that. Vicious beast could've taken his leg off. (You know, given enough time...)

I asked if he thought he could finish doing the dishes without finding any more stray animals. He just smiled.

A Real American... Something

My son made me go see the live-action G.I. Joe movie last weekend. Now, the following article may contain a spoiler or two. But the damned movie's been out for a month - I'm thinking I'm safe from the wrath of the disgruntled fanbase. Everybody who really, really, really wanted to see the movie probably already has. But if you haven't, be warned.

(And if you've been waiting to see this movie and you aren't seven, how sad are you, anyway?)

Can't say it was a great movie: it was mostly a celebration of fight scenes and crap blowing up. But in the end, that's all GI Joe has ever been, so why strain yourself, right? Well, a couple of random thoughts on the movie:

1. Christopher Eccleston (the 9th Doctor) could have phoned in his part - unless he's given significant scenery to chew, he tends to come off bland and restrained. (In fact, since they gave him the full-face metal mask of Destro at the end, he could now literally phone his part in for the inevitable sequel.)

2, Thank the 36 aspects of Shiva that the producers realized in time that they needed to change Cobra Commander's costume, or they would have risked throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into a movie where the head bad guy looks like a Klansman with a leather fetish.

3. I did appreciate the exchange between a drugged out Marlon Wayans saying "Hey, look, he's got realistic hair!" and reaching out to muss it, only to have his wrist grabbed and spit out "...and a Kung-Fu Grip!" But I'm a big fan of the cheesy joke.

4. Brendan Frasier and Arnold Vosloo both make appearances in here, apparently because they've placed the GI Joe base of operations in Egypt. (Or maybe because Stephen Sommers liked working with them. It's hard to tell.)

It's a movie full of pretty people - there's eye candy for you no matter what your gender choice. Although there were limited ethnic choices - there's white men, black men, oriental men... and white women. At least the two leading white women they chose, Rachel Nichols and Sienna Miller, are eyeball-meltingly hot, if that's what you're into. So at least I had something to stare at for the extended periods where my brain was decomposing under the weight of the product placement.

Because, really, that's what the movie is all about. The cartoon (and probably, to a lesser extent, the comic book) was all about selling toys, but this movie has taken that open commercialism, and raised it to a whole new level of avarice.

There are, of course, all the usual, expected tie-ins: the action figures (of course, always the action figures), the movie posters, the soundtrack, the t-shirts, the coffee mugs, the video game (apparently not a winner), and, of course, the comic book.

But what stunned me was the amount of product placement this movie piled into its 118 minutes. From the billboards in the background to the products in the foreground, I'm not sure that the company paid for a single prop outside of guns and costumes. When Rex breaks into the underground bunker and finds the computer screens, the program in question is specifically and prominently shown to be a Norton product (leading to one of the most tenuous movie tie-ins ever).

I think what stunned me the most was the Double Bubble advertisements pretending to be part of the movie. Right before the Norton incident, Duke offers Rex a piece of Double Bubble (which he identifies by name), and explains how it always calms him down before he goes into battle; and later, their computer guy insists on taking the last piece of the (specifically-named) Double Bubble, and, in fact, is shown happily blowing a bubble with it.

Now, this movie is based on the 3.75" action figure/cartoon synergy of the Eighties. When I was a kid, though, I owned G.I. Joes. Not the action figures that my sons played with years later, but the original, 12" toys.

In 1963, Stan Weston had merchandising rights to a TV show called The Lieutenant. (This happened to be the first series created and produced by Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame. Majel Barrett probably met then-married Roddenberry on the set of The Lieutenant; a few years later, his marriage failing, he hired Majel for the first pilot of Star Trek, and the rest is... well, it's a long-running job for Majel, anyway...)

Weston went to the toy company Habro, makers of Mr Potato Head; playing on the success of the Barbie line of fashion dolls, which had been launched by Mattel four years earlier, he convinced them to produce a line of military-themed dolls.

(On a side note, the Hassenfeld Brothers toy company was founded in the Twenties by brothers Henry and Halal Hassenfeld; they didn't technically shorten their name to Hasbro until 1968, but most of the histories you read tell you that the first G.I. Joe's were made by "Hasbro" - go figure.)

(On another, only-vaguely-related side note, when Weston approached the nascent Hasbro-to-be, it had only been three years since they had marketed Mr Potato Head with a hard plastic body: prior to that, it was just plastic parts on push pins, and you stuck them in actual potatoes.)

Now, the original GI Joe had a prominent facial scar, which they did, in fact, give in the movie to Duke (Channing Tatum - no relation to Tatum O'Neal, if you're curious, although he was in a movie in 2006 with Steven Randazzo, who was in Basquiat ten years ealier with Tatum O'Neal - thank you, Kevin Bacon). The official story on the scar is that it was a trademarkable addition to the face; my personal theory is that it was added because the toy company realized that Joe looked a lot like a square-jawed Ken without it, and that just wouldn't do. Joe underwent only minor cosmetic changes for years, and with limited exceptions, they all had the scar.

Two years after their American release, Palitoy became the licensed distributor of GI Joe in the UK and Australia, using the same designs as their American counterpart. The British version was named Action Man, and the head of product development for Palitoy, William A.G. (Bill) Pugh, is credited with the creation of the "lifelike" flocked hair, Kung-Fu Grip, and the wierdly-moving "Eagle Eyes" changes to the design. So it might have been polite if some mention of Action Man had made it into the movies.

The retooled "GI Joe" apparently now stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity (it probably took them hours to come up with that one); it originally meant "Government Issue" (the attitude being that, if you're in the military, the government owned you as much as it owned everything it issued to you). Originally planning to call the prototypes by original names like "Rocky the Marine", "Skip the Sailor", and "Ace the Pilot," they instead decided to go with the more generic "GI Joe" based on a 1945 film, The Story of G.I. Joe.

(That movie, loosely based on the experiences of war correspondent Ernie Pyle, starred Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith, a couple of minor actors, and an actual group of war correspondents, and a bunch of American GI's about to be transferred from the European theater to the Pacific. Ernie Pyle also acted as technical advisor for the film, which stole several punchlines from Bill Mauldin's cartoons. Just after filming was finished, the GI's were transferred to Okinawa, where many of them were killed, along with Ernie Pyle himself, having never seen their movie.)

And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.