Or why the Heavens are weeping.
Most alarmingly, the world is now into the third week of mutually escalated and uniformly deplorable genocide in the Gaza strip (or what is left of it). This deadly and insidious game of, “I’ll see your two rockets and raise you a 100 tons of TNT” has reached, exceeded and then exceeded again, all humanely unimaginable levels of wonton death and destruction. The pundits, the correspondents (who can maybe get in and maybe back out), the politicians, the war strategists and the “world leaders” argue, debate, disdain and abstain when it comes to making or offering as any lasting solutions, fruitful ideas or enduring truce proposals. Many on both sides of the conflict are hardened and re-hardened to obdurate positions on the death of the other, and just as many throw up their hands in an act of exasperation and a mental resoluteness about the needless carnage, claiming “historical” precedent, and therefore hopelessness. . I have not heard so many lame-brained excuses for disgusting behavior in my adult life.
Although I referred to this situation “neo” in the title, there is nothing neo about how the world is viewing this hideous conflagration. And “retro” is only a wishful way in which to dismiss the problem and I double-dare you to find anything visionary about any of it.
I just finished watching Bill Moyers (You-Tube, on Salon) speak eloquently (as he always does) about the historical and biblical underpinnings of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. He quoted the Old Testament, and remarked that the words of Moses, which once stressed, “Thou shalt not kill” had been replaced by the use of phrases designed and selected to create an unseemly enmity between Jews and Caananites. And with all due respect to Mr. Moyers, he has missed a few historical and cultural links, and so have the rest of us. In our Neo-Retrovision of today, we have taken convenient, easy and gap-laden thought paths to understanding the causes beneath what has been taking place.
I have come to this conclusion only after being recently re-educated and also being inadvertently alerted to a revised viewpoint by an unlikely informant. If I had not just been to a lecture that refreshed my memory about early Islamic behavior and then seen Newt Gingrich on “Meet the Press”, I wouldn’t be writing this now. Please do not ask me how I got from early Mohammed to Gingrich. Beats me.
During the middle portion of the first millennium A.D., during the rise and growth of Islam, there was considerable dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. They were (and prompted as much by the Islamists as anyone), to be respectful to and knowledgeable about one another’s respective religious beliefs. According to the history I know, there was at least as much reverence for the “prophet” Jesus as there was for Mohammed and a good deal of Muslim respect (ala Mohammed and his followers) for the history and traditions of Judaism. There was some degree of peace and fraternalism (harmony) during this time, but not many people seem to know this (I went to a “Christian” theological seminary, and most, if not all, of these details were glossed over). Then, on the morning of 9/11 (the ’09 one, not THAT one) I heard Mr. Gingrich sum up the general attitude about the Arab-Israeli conflict by stating, repeatedly, that after nearly every contemporary discussion of the quandary, the uniform response by the Arab world is . “Fine, Let’s just wipe Israel off the map.” Somehow, none of the “conventional wisdom” elements fit together any more. Alas, the mid-east conflict and America’s “war on terror” are close ideological cousins, both afflicted by and with a lack of information and historical perspective. This gives most of us a myopic lens through which to view the world as we think we know it today.
Sometime between the time the Roman Emperor declared Christianity the religion of the realm (the world), the time of the crusades and prior to the 20th century, the Hebrew religion had become eclipsed by Christianity and largely unknown and misunderstood Islamic culture of the middle east. The Catholic Church (I’ll make some people angry, here) came to dominate Europe (n both beneficial and despicable ways), through its’ deft manipulation of money and power, and was then pushed further along after the Protestant reformation. Christianity of course spread to the New World, where “freedom of religion” became an abused freedom to create and propagate right-wing, sectarianism. Morally obtuse groups who have managed to insert God in to the pledge of allegiance and conveniently and almost completely obliterate the original intentions of the founding fathers (that being to keep this from being Christian nation, at all costs). Apparently the costs were ultimately too much for anyone to bear and today Pat Robertson has his own TV show and Bill Graham has been the unofficial protestant pope of the United States for most of the last century. Judaism, on the other hand, settled into a small minority position amongst the religions of the world and existed largely unnoticed, un-nurtured and not of much concern to the world population, in general.
Meanwhile, Islam flourished in the middle-eastern portion of the world, despite the bloody and futile efforts during the Crusades to stamp it out. The Christians regarded the Muslim worshippers as “infidels”, and the Muslims thought likewise of those “Jesus people”. For some period after the end of the crusades, Christianity and Islam settled into a peaceful co-existence, but one nonetheless tainted by mutual suspicion.
Here is what I think happened, and why “neo-retrovision” might be one stilted way in which to look at the mess we have today.
First of all, over some period of time, and I think in large part due to both Catholic and Protestant Christian arrogance, the western world assumed an undeserved and unwarranted superiority in their vision over the other religions of the world, and not just to the exclusiveness of Islam. Why else would Christian churches (and especially those from the US) spend as much energy and money to send missionaries around the world to make converts? (Have you ever read about the Spaniards and the Aztecs, the Spaniards and the Mayans? The Spaniards and the native peoples of the American southwest and California? The priest has long been seen as the soldier of pacification. And for George W, Bush and most Republicans, at least in this century, the terms “Democracy” and “Christianity” have been inter-changeable.). The Crusades set a precedent for all of this. The rapid simultaneous spread of self-granted piety, mixed with financial gain and political power, caused Christianity to rampage it’s way through the Western world and believe itself to be a supreme way of life and thought. It is odd how Christians morphed from turning the other cheek to “My God is better than your God”.
Let me back up and remind you that during this time, while Christians were wont to ignore Muslims, Judaism grew less influential, less noticeable, less visible and easy to ignore.
But also during the years following the crusades, Muslims were having an understandably difficult time forgetting that they had been regarded as savages and infidels, that their one true prophet had been repeatedly maligned, and their homelands ravaged, raped and robbed of the their treasures and their history. An enmity against the western, “Christian” world was apparent, inevitable and growing. Both of these great world forces of faith had become irreversibly hostile and bigoted toward one another…and almost without any significant input from the Jews themselves. The two most optimistic and formerly peace-imbued faiths of the known world had come to hate and despise one another.
The two large sacks, each containing one of the two largest sets of religious tenets in the world, had been picked up and shaken violently, then dumped out on the plane of human existence. In so doing, the essential messages of harmony had been exchanged for violent discord.
Then along came (not necessarily in order of appearance): U.S. Manifest Destiny(Imperialism), oil, Hitler, oil, The Holocaust, oil, WWII, oil, 1948 and the Exodus, The United Nations, oil, Aramco, Israel, modern politics, world-wide monetary expansionism, oil, modern warfare technology, oil and post-war, oil-burdened guilt. And of course, the re-emergence of Judaism as a focal point for world views and fundamental religious intolerance. It seems that everyone needs some one or some thing to dislike. Intensely.
Yes. I know this is humongously overly simplistic: so is right-wing, findamentalist Christian thought and sectarian Islamic hate rhetoric. Get over it.
Once the United States got the complete hang of the notion that it (mysteriously) had the God-given, politically democratic and financial might and right to rule the world, it almost simultaneously realized that this dominance was not possible without oil. Then it was realized that the world’s greatest reserves of oil were in places like Saudi Arabia. Nothing so geographically inconvenient like that had ever stopped the U.S. before, and would not have, either, except that centuries of abject treatment of Muslims had made them suspicious and wary, and Hitler had declared that all Jews (no matter how inconsequential) were the scourge of the earth. While that psychopathic ideologic perversion gripped much of Europe, the U.S identified two apparent realities: First, the U.S. could not (if it were indeed as sanctimonious as it claimed) let the Jews of the world be exterminated, and second, the U.S. could never lay claim to all of that oil in Saudi Arabia if Hitler got control of the world, with or without Jews. Clearly this could not be allowed to go on.
To make a long story short, the U.S. rallied and won the world war, Hitler ( and Mussolini and the those unscrupulous Japanese) were defeated (until we needed Italian silk suits and Toyotas), the war was ended, the United Nations was formed and the Jews who had escaped the Nazis and the camps were given the state of Israel. Israel was seen as the West’s foot in the door to middle east oil, Aramco was formed to blend the English language and farsi and progress was on the march. Somehow, however, everyone missed the inevitable trouble that would be caused by arbitrarily placing the State of Israel smack in the middle of Palestine. Oops.
I know I am leaving out the intermediate and ongoing wars between Israel and it’s neighbors, the Shaw of Iran and his overthrow, the wars in Lebanon, Ronald Reagan and SDI and Osama Bin Laden and the Bushes and the Saudis and 9/11, but there is only so much I can write about in one article.
The State of Israel, however, by default, and as a result of all of this, became the step-child and surrogate bully (adopted their own version of Imperialism) for the U.S. in the middle east. In subsequent years, the Israelis have benefitted (?), year after year, from generous monetary support and a steady supply of the best armaments and weaponry the west could ill-afford to give it. As a consequence, virtually all of the enmity between Christians and Muslims was transferred to an enmity between Jews and Muslims, which was all complicated and exacerbated by plunking the Jews down in land appropriated from the Palestinians without so much as a “Thank you very much”. Sadly, the arrogance of eminent domain and entitlement (an American tradition:Imperialism) has been completely absorbed and put into play by the Jewish state. When those counterproductive ideologies from the Muslims and now the comtemporary Jewish state are combined, you have the Gaza strip. Viola’! Meanwhile. Americans really, really wish that gasoline would stay at around $1.50/gal and there is a new kid of the block named “Opec”. Oh boy.
So I think we have this largely wrong. The Muslims are justifiable angry (to a certain extent) because the Christians have been trying to shoot their camels, urinate in their couscous, appropriate their land and swipe their olive oil and oil for as far back as anyone can remember, and their extremist elements have taken up the arms available to them from the modern world, in protest. The Israelis have been given (and happily, it seems, taken up) the mantle of non-Christian, un-Christ-like, Christian omnipresence and chosen to impose themselves on the Palestinians, using western firepower. In their extremism, they are acting like southern Baptists with shotguns. And almost everyone (including the right reverend Bill Moyers) and chosen to blame it all on Deuteronomy. Hogwash.
This Neo-Retrovision is wrong in its perception and reasoning. When I was a trainer/teacher, I used to talk to my students about the meaning of the word “rapport”. It comes from a Greek word meaning to “re-establish harmony”. Not in a very long while have I felt the need to communicate this message so clearly as I do right now. Our glimpse back at history, circa 350—500 A.D., tell us that there was sufficiently amicable relations between two major groups of monotheists for peaceful coexistence (harmony), and war and oil, oil and war, racism, bigotry an shallow thinking have disrupted it and transferred the animosity from culture to culture with deleterious results. The world is doing a poor job, just now of “re-establishing harmony”.
The Muslims need to reign in their extremists and go back and re-read the portions of the Koran that instruct them to be merciful, peaceful understanding and (pardon the expression)’ Christlike”. The Israelis need to stop acting like Missouri Synod Lutherans with a Torah chip on their shoulders and stop being the de- facto surrogate bullies for the unfounded hatred of Islam borne by Americans. And the Americans need to stop putting them in that position and giving them F-16 fighter-bombers. In what other country I the world could you have a lobbying group like AIPAC? In the end, I think we must fault, at least in part, ferocious, pious American Christian anti-Muslim sentiments for fostering Israeli aggression.
I have concluded (you can think as you want to) that this no longer has so much to do with biblical wars and rumors of wars (I used to think that), but rather much more with modern idolatries, a lust for oil and absurdly inappropriate moral high grounds which have, in turn, been also inappropriately purloined by Arabs, Christians and Jews alike. Allah, God and Yahweh must all be chagrined.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
"God" News
Or God "knows"...take your pick. Here we go!
"Best-selling 'God' author faces plagiarism claim".
www.msnbc.com/id/28538509/
I thought all of these "god" writer people were born knowing that God had already written and read everything (Intelligent Design?), but apparently they are not beneath stealing from one another to sell books. Shocking.
"For Eastern Orthodox, gas crisis means chilly Christmas".
www.msnbc.com/id/28515983/
For most people in the US, we look forward to a white Christmas. But it seems that Russian energy moguls are not content unless Jesus freezes his little swathed ass off. Praise the Lord and pass the gasline.
"Fighting resumes In GAZA after truce for aid." Both sides mull cease fire plan; three hour pause for humanitarian supplies ends."
www.msnbc.com/id/28404637/
"What God hath wrought, let all men put asunder? " There will be a slight pause for food, water and penicillin before we resume pounding the living crap out of you, you filthy heathens." Is this the pause that refreshes?
This just in:
Obama announces the appointment of a "Waste Czar". A Chief Performance Officer. The pres-elect says his pre-election campaign promised more change, but that the way things are (not) going, we need "more change than that."
www.msnbc.com/id/28538966
I am not certain I like the idea of a government official (should be Czarina, anyway?) to oversee or manage waste. There is a company here called "Waste Management" and all they do is haul mountains of trash to the land fill, down the road. Maybe waste eliminator? Or "terminator"? Maybe we need Arnold? Maybe it should the Office of "Waist" Management. Then she could logically talk about tightening our fiscal belts and reducing our pork intake?
Then Harry called:
An email from Give 'em Hell, Harry. "Yesterday was a terrific day to be a Democrat". Seated seven new Senators (screw Roland Burris). But we have a slumping economy. OK. Got that part. Then down at the bottom:
Contribute
These miserable jerks just don't get it, do they?
"Best-selling 'God' author faces plagiarism claim".
www.msnbc.com/id/28538509/
I thought all of these "god" writer people were born knowing that God had already written and read everything (Intelligent Design?), but apparently they are not beneath stealing from one another to sell books. Shocking.
"For Eastern Orthodox, gas crisis means chilly Christmas".
www.msnbc.com/id/28515983/
For most people in the US, we look forward to a white Christmas. But it seems that Russian energy moguls are not content unless Jesus freezes his little swathed ass off. Praise the Lord and pass the gasline.
"Fighting resumes In GAZA after truce for aid." Both sides mull cease fire plan; three hour pause for humanitarian supplies ends."
www.msnbc.com/id/28404637/
"What God hath wrought, let all men put asunder? " There will be a slight pause for food, water and penicillin before we resume pounding the living crap out of you, you filthy heathens." Is this the pause that refreshes?
This just in:
Obama announces the appointment of a "Waste Czar". A Chief Performance Officer. The pres-elect says his pre-election campaign promised more change, but that the way things are (not) going, we need "more change than that."
www.msnbc.com/id/28538966
I am not certain I like the idea of a government official (should be Czarina, anyway?) to oversee or manage waste. There is a company here called "Waste Management" and all they do is haul mountains of trash to the land fill, down the road. Maybe waste eliminator? Or "terminator"? Maybe we need Arnold? Maybe it should the Office of "Waist" Management. Then she could logically talk about tightening our fiscal belts and reducing our pork intake?
Then Harry called:
An email from Give 'em Hell, Harry. "Yesterday was a terrific day to be a Democrat". Seated seven new Senators (screw Roland Burris). But we have a slumping economy. OK. Got that part. Then down at the bottom:
Contribute
These miserable jerks just don't get it, do they?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Three Witches
For a very long time now, I have lamented, railed against, screamed about and been oftentimes completely incensed by the (almost impossible to ignore) fact that the United States of America has been and is being run by gray-haired, old men, in expensive suits (Barack Obama excepted, although I hear the gray hair thing is already started.). Bill Clinton and George W, Bush, our two most recent top dogs, didn’t start out their tenures with gray hair, but would you look at them now! Wow!
A note, here: I have seen countless portraits and portrayals of the founding fathers; Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams; (old guys?), almost always wearing one of those silly gray or white powdered wigs they carried over from England. It could have been that there was some intent to set a standard for future hair styles of the members of the legislative branch, but somehow I don’t think so. Of course, the first group to give their King George the boot also tried to make it clear that ours was NOT to be a Christian nation, but we have screwed that up, as well. So who the hell knows?
As for the “old” part of the description, I give you the likes of Strom Thousand-Year-Old-Egg Thurmond, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Give ‘em Hell Harry Reid and Ted The-Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens. These guys are but just a few of the current standard bearers of the coiffes which are salt-and-pepper hair to gray to barely there. But I know the Capitol building has a whole raft of “guys”, not many years on the junior side, just waiting to take up their places as the aging keepers of the public trust. (I also believe that there are more walkers and wheelchairs parked outside the doors of the Senate chambers than any of us imagine).
The expensive suit observation is partially speculative, but during the vice-presidential debates (with all due respect to Sarah Palin and Nieman-Marcus) and Democratic nomination acceptance speech celebrations (somebody finally bought Barack a new tie), Joe Biden’s threads hardly looked like they came off the rack at the J.C.Penney store in Dover, DE or Scranton. And I don’ think you will find Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank picking up their wardrobes at the thrift shops in their local home environs. (I don’t recall seeing any thrift stores on Martha’s Vineyard…although I vacation there often, as I am certain you do…but I’m sure Martha must have some old grape-stained dresses lying around somewhere).
However…
(You’ve been wondering where the three witches come in, haven’t you?)
Now come the three women of the epoxy-snit. I say this because they seem to be glued together in a permanent state of whining and hormonal minstrel misery. Who are these women, you ask? Why, I give you the Pugilist and Pecuniary Barbara Boxer, the Indignant Feisty Feinstein and the Nasal Nancy Pelosi. As a trio of malcontents, they have trumped my contempt, disdain and disavowal of the gray-haired old men, as they stand together and stir the cauldron of Washington politics, like characters from a modern day MacBeth. They appear, all too often, as a boil on the complexion of the political landscape, and seem intent on stirring up toil and trouble. They are a triad of dis-chord in the nearly atonal harmony of the rakes regress across the business of Capitol Hill. They just piss me off.
I think it all began
Sometime during the latter part of the recent election cycle. For some seemingly inexplicable reason, I began to perceive all women as relentless, nasal, gold-digging, petulant opportunists, and I knew I couldn’t blame it all on the Governor of Alaska. As I recall, there was not a lot of Fein-steining going on, but Boxer and Pelosi had set several repugnant practices into motion. I have no proof that the three of them actually sat and plotted out this attack on the general populace, but they may well have. It did (and does) seem like a concerted effort, a sort of gender-based maliciousness.
Please bear in mind that two important and indomitable movements were afoot at that time: the first was of course the all-out campaign by the Democrats, liberals and the progressives to sweep all manner of Republicans (especially that Shrub fellow) from office. Doing that would require heroic amounts of effort and mountains of cash. Nearer the end of the cycle, we were beset by the Paulson-Bernanke-October-Wall Street surprise: we had all been robbed and would starve to death any moment, only Congress and the Treasury could save us, the sky was falling while hell was freezing over and we were all going to freaking die in the next 11 minutes. Other than that, everything was fine. Except…
Almost as nicely formatted as a country-western female duo from Nashville, Boxer and Pelosi both attempted to take and steal the national stage. The only elements missing were tin cups and twangy guitars. While on the one hand, I was receiving emails, almost daily, from Boxer, asking for cash (in our national time of dire straits) for some of her projects that were absolute musts if she were to save the world, poor people and medical aid programs in CA (hell, I don’t even live in CA), Pelosi was front and center before the press cameras, warbling about what “she” would and would not let Congress do or not do to save the financial futures of America. Boxer (thankfully) remained largely invisible, save her picture and plaintive messages in the emails, but these belied her expensive suits and carefully coiffed hair (remember the old guys?). Meanwhile, Pelosi was highly visible (and shrill), standing up next to ( and trying, it seemed, to be on top of) Harry Reid, making pronouncements about how powerful she was while acting like this was all monopoly money, playing both politics and her side of the sad song record on the jukebox she shared with Boxer. She always looked gaunt, but she always had a nice suit and her hair looked fabulous (remember the old guys?) Later on, Boxer stopped asking for cash (because the Dems had won) and Pelosi settled in to a more complacent demeanor after she and the Congress let Paulson slip $85B to AIG. Talk about hiding the salami.
I was beginning to get over this (these two women had almost turned me against women) until Obama’s team leaked out the news that Leon Panetta had been selected to run the CIA. Feinstein went as indignantly ballistic as a Sec. of Defense, and threw a linguistic plate of matzo balls against the walls of the intelligence committee hearing room:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732447.aspx
Then we got this:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/panetta-feinstein-rockefeller/
Some time later, the Obama camp apologized for the leak, saying they had fully intended to consult Feinstein before hand, but, as Rumsfeld might say, “Stuff happens”. (I am quite certain that Feinstein would have said “s$#@ happens, but it would not go well with her suit. Besides, it is hard to say “s@#^” and sound whiny and California at the same time).
I had a grandmother like Feinstein once. Even now I can hear, “Well, I declare!”, and “Well, nobody asked me before they did that!”, and, “That was very inconsiderate and I don’t appreciate it one bit”. I always wanted to say to my grandmother (as we would say today), “Get over it”. I should like to say the same to Ms. Feinstein. And I saw her picture today. She was not hiding her displeasure, but she had on really nice clothes and her hair looked great, too. (Old guys, again)
And so it seems that I must back down somewhat, from my disdain and disappointment when it comes to my views about “gray-haired old men in expensive suits” running the country. I must, it seems, temper that ire with the added knowledge of the activities of the female contingent (at least as regards this trio) whom equal gender opportunities hath wrought. Perhaps you can cage a chauvinistic leopard but you can’t change his (my) spots.
I was reminded today of the movie, “The Witches of Eastwick”. Those ladies were fun until they decided to join forces and go after Jack Nicholson with a vengeance. I don’t know what “aspirational horizons” Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi have their eyes on for the next four years, but they are all living together in the same cottage on Capitol Hill, and if I were Michelle, I’d watch my Barack.
Life Goes On In Texas.
A note, here: I have seen countless portraits and portrayals of the founding fathers; Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams; (old guys?), almost always wearing one of those silly gray or white powdered wigs they carried over from England. It could have been that there was some intent to set a standard for future hair styles of the members of the legislative branch, but somehow I don’t think so. Of course, the first group to give their King George the boot also tried to make it clear that ours was NOT to be a Christian nation, but we have screwed that up, as well. So who the hell knows?
As for the “old” part of the description, I give you the likes of Strom Thousand-Year-Old-Egg Thurmond, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Give ‘em Hell Harry Reid and Ted The-Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens. These guys are but just a few of the current standard bearers of the coiffes which are salt-and-pepper hair to gray to barely there. But I know the Capitol building has a whole raft of “guys”, not many years on the junior side, just waiting to take up their places as the aging keepers of the public trust. (I also believe that there are more walkers and wheelchairs parked outside the doors of the Senate chambers than any of us imagine).
The expensive suit observation is partially speculative, but during the vice-presidential debates (with all due respect to Sarah Palin and Nieman-Marcus) and Democratic nomination acceptance speech celebrations (somebody finally bought Barack a new tie), Joe Biden’s threads hardly looked like they came off the rack at the J.C.Penney store in Dover, DE or Scranton. And I don’ think you will find Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank picking up their wardrobes at the thrift shops in their local home environs. (I don’t recall seeing any thrift stores on Martha’s Vineyard…although I vacation there often, as I am certain you do…but I’m sure Martha must have some old grape-stained dresses lying around somewhere).
However…
(You’ve been wondering where the three witches come in, haven’t you?)
Now come the three women of the epoxy-snit. I say this because they seem to be glued together in a permanent state of whining and hormonal minstrel misery. Who are these women, you ask? Why, I give you the Pugilist and Pecuniary Barbara Boxer, the Indignant Feisty Feinstein and the Nasal Nancy Pelosi. As a trio of malcontents, they have trumped my contempt, disdain and disavowal of the gray-haired old men, as they stand together and stir the cauldron of Washington politics, like characters from a modern day MacBeth. They appear, all too often, as a boil on the complexion of the political landscape, and seem intent on stirring up toil and trouble. They are a triad of dis-chord in the nearly atonal harmony of the rakes regress across the business of Capitol Hill. They just piss me off.
I think it all began
Sometime during the latter part of the recent election cycle. For some seemingly inexplicable reason, I began to perceive all women as relentless, nasal, gold-digging, petulant opportunists, and I knew I couldn’t blame it all on the Governor of Alaska. As I recall, there was not a lot of Fein-steining going on, but Boxer and Pelosi had set several repugnant practices into motion. I have no proof that the three of them actually sat and plotted out this attack on the general populace, but they may well have. It did (and does) seem like a concerted effort, a sort of gender-based maliciousness.
Please bear in mind that two important and indomitable movements were afoot at that time: the first was of course the all-out campaign by the Democrats, liberals and the progressives to sweep all manner of Republicans (especially that Shrub fellow) from office. Doing that would require heroic amounts of effort and mountains of cash. Nearer the end of the cycle, we were beset by the Paulson-Bernanke-October-Wall Street surprise: we had all been robbed and would starve to death any moment, only Congress and the Treasury could save us, the sky was falling while hell was freezing over and we were all going to freaking die in the next 11 minutes. Other than that, everything was fine. Except…
Almost as nicely formatted as a country-western female duo from Nashville, Boxer and Pelosi both attempted to take and steal the national stage. The only elements missing were tin cups and twangy guitars. While on the one hand, I was receiving emails, almost daily, from Boxer, asking for cash (in our national time of dire straits) for some of her projects that were absolute musts if she were to save the world, poor people and medical aid programs in CA (hell, I don’t even live in CA), Pelosi was front and center before the press cameras, warbling about what “she” would and would not let Congress do or not do to save the financial futures of America. Boxer (thankfully) remained largely invisible, save her picture and plaintive messages in the emails, but these belied her expensive suits and carefully coiffed hair (remember the old guys?). Meanwhile, Pelosi was highly visible (and shrill), standing up next to ( and trying, it seemed, to be on top of) Harry Reid, making pronouncements about how powerful she was while acting like this was all monopoly money, playing both politics and her side of the sad song record on the jukebox she shared with Boxer. She always looked gaunt, but she always had a nice suit and her hair looked fabulous (remember the old guys?) Later on, Boxer stopped asking for cash (because the Dems had won) and Pelosi settled in to a more complacent demeanor after she and the Congress let Paulson slip $85B to AIG. Talk about hiding the salami.
I was beginning to get over this (these two women had almost turned me against women) until Obama’s team leaked out the news that Leon Panetta had been selected to run the CIA. Feinstein went as indignantly ballistic as a Sec. of Defense, and threw a linguistic plate of matzo balls against the walls of the intelligence committee hearing room:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732447.aspx
Then we got this:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/panetta-feinstein-rockefeller/
Some time later, the Obama camp apologized for the leak, saying they had fully intended to consult Feinstein before hand, but, as Rumsfeld might say, “Stuff happens”. (I am quite certain that Feinstein would have said “s$#@ happens, but it would not go well with her suit. Besides, it is hard to say “s@#^” and sound whiny and California at the same time).
I had a grandmother like Feinstein once. Even now I can hear, “Well, I declare!”, and “Well, nobody asked me before they did that!”, and, “That was very inconsiderate and I don’t appreciate it one bit”. I always wanted to say to my grandmother (as we would say today), “Get over it”. I should like to say the same to Ms. Feinstein. And I saw her picture today. She was not hiding her displeasure, but she had on really nice clothes and her hair looked great, too. (Old guys, again)
And so it seems that I must back down somewhat, from my disdain and disappointment when it comes to my views about “gray-haired old men in expensive suits” running the country. I must, it seems, temper that ire with the added knowledge of the activities of the female contingent (at least as regards this trio) whom equal gender opportunities hath wrought. Perhaps you can cage a chauvinistic leopard but you can’t change his (my) spots.
I was reminded today of the movie, “The Witches of Eastwick”. Those ladies were fun until they decided to join forces and go after Jack Nicholson with a vengeance. I don’t know what “aspirational horizons” Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi have their eyes on for the next four years, but they are all living together in the same cottage on Capitol Hill, and if I were Michelle, I’d watch my Barack.
Life Goes On In Texas.
As Then Economy Turns (Bad)
Dr. Reich is at it again, and rightly so. I recommend his blog today, 1/6/09.
Here is what I told him (he of course listens closely to me):
My concern is this: you have stressed repeatedly that the question is not whether the government will do too much or too little, and that 'too little" will be a big mistake, a waste of time. The problem is, that while that all makes perfect sense, we do not have economists and people looking out for the good of the country making these decisions: we have politicians.
The stink and discussion for the last 24 hours has revolved around what has come (to some) as a surprise that the Obama stimulus package will include a 40% portion devoted to tax cuts rather than cash infusions. Lefties are horrified and righties are gloating. Republicans have already vowed to assail, contort, delay and hamper all efforts to get a package signed unless they have their way and the Obama folks seem to be working toward a compromise which will be only a luke-warm solution which fails to do enough. I.e., it will do "too little" but the politicians will be happy because their side "won".
You are preaching to the choir, Dr., but the choir is still paying the salaries of the politicians,and they have the purse strings and the check book. Unless this paradigm is altered, you and Krugman, et.al, are pissing into the wind.
The stink and discussion for the last 24 hours has revolved around what has come (to some) as a surprise that the Obama stimulus package will include a 40% portion devoted to tax cuts rather than cash infusions. Lefties are horrified and righties are gloating. Republicans have already vowed to assail, contort, delay and hamper all efforts to get a package signed unless they have their way and the Obama folks seem to be working toward a compromise which will be only a luke-warm solution which fails to do enough. I.e., it will do "too little" but the politicians will be happy because their side "won".
You are preaching to the choir, Dr., but the choir is still paying the salaries of the politicians,and they have the purse strings and the check book. Unless this paradigm is altered, you and Krugman, et.al, are pissing into the wind.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
And Now For Something Completely Different
What good is a blog if you can't let your mouth run-over, occasionally?
This is Not Fun
This recurrent dream
Keeps playing again
And again
A peek-a-boo
Déjà view
About a part
Of life’s past
Particulars
That I wish had not been
A part of mine.
Particularly when they keep
Coming and going
And calling at Will
E. Nilly’s own proscribed time.
This can make a long sleep
Not worth
being had
And ruin completely
A short nap,
Cats or know.
There is always a holy
Of some grail of sorts
Or
A grail of some holy sort
Needing to be sought after,
Cleansed, found, rehabbed, delivered
Or
Retrieved
Or
Just plain nabbed, grabbed quickly
For
Redemption or salvation
Or
Kept from immolation, ordination
Interpretation, induction or inauguration.
But in the end
There is never resolution
Or
Absolution and I wake
Tired and confused.
Perhaps proseletyzed.
Always there is somewhere
Where I must get to
To pick up
Or
Deliver what I do not
Know as gospel
Or have as any
Tangible evidence of the quest
In question,
Any glimpse of what
I am in search of
(get your own damn preposition;
This one is mine).
After an Order has been given,
In the name of my father
The Sun or some Holy
Grail ghost sonuvabitch
Who talked me into
This,.
I then find to run
My errant errands
That there are always
Two cars,
One mine, the other
Something other than mine.
I leave the one
And take the other
Only to misplace it,
Myself and my way
Along the way
Along with all the keys
To both.
(If you have never been stranded
In a dream, I don’t recommend it.)
I have learned
That these are the keys
To my kingdom
But they always land
On a dirty floor
before
They open
Any door.
On one trip I drove an Audi
That had been fitted
For James Bond
And the scenery I passed
Exploded all along the way.
The last was black Saab
Turbo, of course
Another spirit-packed
Power-horse that got
Misplaced like the others,
In a sub-terranean dungeon
Which was really
A garage with many exits,
All of them
Old wooden doors
With writs tacked on them
That none of the keys
would open,
And then I then remember
That the view would be
Made fine all over
Again
If I could make my way
Back
To the other car-
The one less flashy-
That I’d left
Full of books
That I’d not read
Yet
Back
In the university parking lot.
But I can’t
And I’ve just dropped
The keys
To the menacingly black turbo
Down a drain grate
In the garage dungeon floor
And
It is cold and damp
In here
Where
I am all alone
And
I hate cars now
And
Unread books.
Every time I dream
This dream I learn
Again
I have learned so little.
Then this voice says
“Just shut up and give me
The fucking keys.
This time I’ll drive.”
This is Not Fun
This recurrent dream
Keeps playing again
And again
A peek-a-boo
Déjà view
About a part
Of life’s past
Particulars
That I wish had not been
A part of mine.
Particularly when they keep
Coming and going
And calling at Will
E. Nilly’s own proscribed time.
This can make a long sleep
Not worth
being had
And ruin completely
A short nap,
Cats or know.
There is always a holy
Of some grail of sorts
Or
A grail of some holy sort
Needing to be sought after,
Cleansed, found, rehabbed, delivered
Or
Retrieved
Or
Just plain nabbed, grabbed quickly
For
Redemption or salvation
Or
Kept from immolation, ordination
Interpretation, induction or inauguration.
But in the end
There is never resolution
Or
Absolution and I wake
Tired and confused.
Perhaps proseletyzed.
Always there is somewhere
Where I must get to
To pick up
Or
Deliver what I do not
Know as gospel
Or have as any
Tangible evidence of the quest
In question,
Any glimpse of what
I am in search of
(get your own damn preposition;
This one is mine).
After an Order has been given,
In the name of my father
The Sun or some Holy
Grail ghost sonuvabitch
Who talked me into
This,.
I then find to run
My errant errands
That there are always
Two cars,
One mine, the other
Something other than mine.
I leave the one
And take the other
Only to misplace it,
Myself and my way
Along the way
Along with all the keys
To both.
(If you have never been stranded
In a dream, I don’t recommend it.)
I have learned
That these are the keys
To my kingdom
But they always land
On a dirty floor
before
They open
Any door.
On one trip I drove an Audi
That had been fitted
For James Bond
And the scenery I passed
Exploded all along the way.
The last was black Saab
Turbo, of course
Another spirit-packed
Power-horse that got
Misplaced like the others,
In a sub-terranean dungeon
Which was really
A garage with many exits,
All of them
Old wooden doors
With writs tacked on them
That none of the keys
would open,
And then I then remember
That the view would be
Made fine all over
Again
If I could make my way
Back
To the other car-
The one less flashy-
That I’d left
Full of books
That I’d not read
Yet
Back
In the university parking lot.
But I can’t
And I’ve just dropped
The keys
To the menacingly black turbo
Down a drain grate
In the garage dungeon floor
And
It is cold and damp
In here
Where
I am all alone
And
I hate cars now
And
Unread books.
Every time I dream
This dream I learn
Again
I have learned so little.
Then this voice says
“Just shut up and give me
The fucking keys.
This time I’ll drive.”
Friday, January 2, 2009
News Flash! Real Thinking Found NOT To Be Dead!
Just before real writing, and the inclusive nature of the circumspect thought which it requires, was about fall from the precipice of our extremely temporal, sensationalistic and immensely dissatisfying existence, this comes along.
I never read The New Republic, and would never had seen this, if it were not for David Brooks in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02brooks.html?th&emc=th
“The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam — to achieve a decisive and final break with history — has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past — in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities — has a way of lingering around.”
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a559152f-70db-4183-8a8e-ed818ce6df7c
Happy New Year(s).
I never read The New Republic, and would never had seen this, if it were not for David Brooks in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02brooks.html?th&emc=th
“The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam — to achieve a decisive and final break with history — has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past — in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities — has a way of lingering around.”
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a559152f-70db-4183-8a8e-ed818ce6df7c
Happy New Year(s).
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Woe is Me..And the Bombs Bursted in Air
I can’t decide what's worse, my crippled communications status (my TV died) or the lack of immediately incendiary political news. I am really glad that “yes we did”, but now what?
With no television, I cannot watch Christ Matthews yell and spit at his guests or Rachel Maddow crucify Rick Warren (again). The shortage of political firewood (Blago is asleep, Obama is in Hawaii) since Sarah Palin went away makes it tough, because no one wants to hear about the mundane realties of urban hunger or listen to another “expert” tell us why our economic conundrum sucks. But life must go on. And one more re-hash about why some Wall Street CEO thinks he deserves his multi-million dollar bonus and I will vomit. But anyway…
The economy: Today (12/28) the NYT had a new op ed from Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) in which he quotes and defends his use of the phrase:”niggling nabobs”. He essentially concludes that if you listen to all of the experts, you will, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that “nobody knows nuthin’ “. In the same newspaper, Thomas Friedman speaks up (Op-Ed Columnist: Win, Win, Win, Win, Win ... ) and while I think he makes some good points about the (needed) gas tax hikes, I have heard dissenting remarks from others who think he has got much of it wrong. You decide. All I know is I don’t “know nuthin’ “ except that somebody ran off with all the money.
I got this in an email from NOWAR (http://thirdcoastactivist.org/) this afternoon:
Hello, all. Over the weekend Israel has killed over 300 Palestinians and wounded at least 900 more with F-16 jets and Apache helicopters supplied by the United States. Anger at this assault has ignited spontaneous demonstrations in many cities, including Austin, where a protest called by UT's Palestine Solidarity Committee will take place at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 29 in front of the State Capital (11th and Congress). To read more about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the complicity of the United States, and the broader historical context visit http://electronicintifada.net
The home pages of MSNBC.com and the BBC have been covering this firestorm and violence all day as well.
I am baffled about who to blame and why. Condi Rice and the Israeli Foreign Minister say the whole thing is the fault of Hamas for pitching rockets over the walls into Israel after breaking a truce. Hamas says it should be expected, since Israel won’t allow humanitarian food stuffs and medical supplies into Gaza. So Israel retaliates against the rockets with several hundred tons of bombs and kills at least 300 people right out of the box. The word “overkill” comes to mind.
However, I think this is all an environmental problem. Or rather a problem of environmental disruption. Perhaps we keep forgetting to remember that Palestinians and Israelis were both once nomadic desert warriors. They shared the sand, the sun, camels and brutality. Their morality was determined largely by desert survival. As the centuries progressed, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and (eventually) arrogant Protestant democracy got mixed in there and now these two camps live in artificial walled cities. They still hate one another for a thousand thousand wrong and bigoted, short-sighted reasons and religious tenets, but their environments have been altered to maximize the terror they can inflict upon one another. They are now walled-in and have much better and more lethal weapons to use against each other (perhaps if they were forced to hack one another to bits with scimitars and hurl camel dung back and forth at each other things would slow down). . There is nothing new in their brutality: they brought it with them from the desert. They are just much more efficient in how they can go about slaughtering one another in this new environment. It is very much akin to the economic “experts” Krugman decries: “Nobody knows nuthin”.” And nobody wants to be confused by the facts. Pardon my use of the phrase, but when it comes to the use of logic, it appears that both sides can only say, “God forbid”.
The Mid-east has high-powered explosives; Wall Street has loan default/debit/credit swaps covered by a TARP. In either case, the result is dead bodies and rubble. If there were a website for all of this, it would be called "Screwup.disorg/".
ThinkProgress.org is having great fun (as are the readers) with the fact that it looks like the Bush “libery” will be a “white elephant”. It seems that many of the restrictive directives that Bush has issued will prevent many of the materials that should be in a presidential library from actually being there, making it largely an empty building. But that is to be expected as we endure the attempts by the administration to make “valedictory” (say what?) speeches and to rush to artificially create W’s “legacy”. You can read about the legacy efforts anywhere you might care to look, but I can create only this one dominant image:
A legacy, something that one leaves behind, trailing after him/her following their time in the leadership limelight, should be at least somewhat noble and awe inspiring. But when I close my eyes, all I see is W leaving a stall in the men’s room, with a long trail of toilet paper, dangling from the back of his pants, following him down the hall. And he has made it clear he has no intention of looking back. So be it.
The related not-very-new news today was that both Condi Rice and Laura Bush gave separate TV interviews and defended the Bush leadership record. Condi gave him an A+ (she must be smoking crack) and Laura Bush said , “history will tell”. It sure will. So be it. And I hope he will be “it” soon, so can all tag him and run away. There is sad irony in the fact that at the end of W’s “reign” his two most prominent Sunday morning apologists are two women, both devoid of a sense of the real world and devoted to perpetrating lies.
“Hi. My name is Dick Cheney, and I’m here to help you”. That is written on the toilet paper. The stuff legacies are made of.
We are but three days from a new year. In the absence of a television, I am rummaging through my CD collection for entertainment. I have just heard singer/songwriter Steve Goodman go on with great eloquence about the fact that, no matter how bad or gruesome or awful that which has gone before us has been, every year on Jan 1 we get the chance to begin anew. And country singer Gretchen Wilson just warbled that she was “one Bud wiser than I was a minute ago.” Perhaps in three days we will all acknowledge Steve’s admonishment to begin anew and be like Gretchen, “one Bud Wiser”.
I don’t know if that will keep any bombs from bursting over head in Gaza, make our economic experts any smarter or keep money out of he hands of some Wall Street tycoon. , but it might be a start. It would certainly be better than “nobody knows nuthin” and “one Bud wiser” would be better than none. Of course, things could get worse, but “God forbid”.
Happy New Year.
Life Goes on in Texas.
With no television, I cannot watch Christ Matthews yell and spit at his guests or Rachel Maddow crucify Rick Warren (again). The shortage of political firewood (Blago is asleep, Obama is in Hawaii) since Sarah Palin went away makes it tough, because no one wants to hear about the mundane realties of urban hunger or listen to another “expert” tell us why our economic conundrum sucks. But life must go on. And one more re-hash about why some Wall Street CEO thinks he deserves his multi-million dollar bonus and I will vomit. But anyway…
The economy: Today (12/28) the NYT had a new op ed from Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) in which he quotes and defends his use of the phrase:”niggling nabobs”. He essentially concludes that if you listen to all of the experts, you will, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that “nobody knows nuthin’ “. In the same newspaper, Thomas Friedman speaks up (Op-Ed Columnist: Win, Win, Win, Win, Win ... ) and while I think he makes some good points about the (needed) gas tax hikes, I have heard dissenting remarks from others who think he has got much of it wrong. You decide. All I know is I don’t “know nuthin’ “ except that somebody ran off with all the money.
I got this in an email from NOWAR (http://thirdcoastactivist.org/) this afternoon:
Hello, all. Over the weekend Israel has killed over 300 Palestinians and wounded at least 900 more with F-16 jets and Apache helicopters supplied by the United States. Anger at this assault has ignited spontaneous demonstrations in many cities, including Austin, where a protest called by UT's Palestine Solidarity Committee will take place at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 29 in front of the State Capital (11th and Congress). To read more about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the complicity of the United States, and the broader historical context visit http://electronicintifada.net
The home pages of MSNBC.com and the BBC have been covering this firestorm and violence all day as well.
I am baffled about who to blame and why. Condi Rice and the Israeli Foreign Minister say the whole thing is the fault of Hamas for pitching rockets over the walls into Israel after breaking a truce. Hamas says it should be expected, since Israel won’t allow humanitarian food stuffs and medical supplies into Gaza. So Israel retaliates against the rockets with several hundred tons of bombs and kills at least 300 people right out of the box. The word “overkill” comes to mind.
However, I think this is all an environmental problem. Or rather a problem of environmental disruption. Perhaps we keep forgetting to remember that Palestinians and Israelis were both once nomadic desert warriors. They shared the sand, the sun, camels and brutality. Their morality was determined largely by desert survival. As the centuries progressed, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and (eventually) arrogant Protestant democracy got mixed in there and now these two camps live in artificial walled cities. They still hate one another for a thousand thousand wrong and bigoted, short-sighted reasons and religious tenets, but their environments have been altered to maximize the terror they can inflict upon one another. They are now walled-in and have much better and more lethal weapons to use against each other (perhaps if they were forced to hack one another to bits with scimitars and hurl camel dung back and forth at each other things would slow down). . There is nothing new in their brutality: they brought it with them from the desert. They are just much more efficient in how they can go about slaughtering one another in this new environment. It is very much akin to the economic “experts” Krugman decries: “Nobody knows nuthin”.” And nobody wants to be confused by the facts. Pardon my use of the phrase, but when it comes to the use of logic, it appears that both sides can only say, “God forbid”.
The Mid-east has high-powered explosives; Wall Street has loan default/debit/credit swaps covered by a TARP. In either case, the result is dead bodies and rubble. If there were a website for all of this, it would be called "Screwup.disorg/".
ThinkProgress.org is having great fun (as are the readers) with the fact that it looks like the Bush “libery” will be a “white elephant”. It seems that many of the restrictive directives that Bush has issued will prevent many of the materials that should be in a presidential library from actually being there, making it largely an empty building. But that is to be expected as we endure the attempts by the administration to make “valedictory” (say what?) speeches and to rush to artificially create W’s “legacy”. You can read about the legacy efforts anywhere you might care to look, but I can create only this one dominant image:
A legacy, something that one leaves behind, trailing after him/her following their time in the leadership limelight, should be at least somewhat noble and awe inspiring. But when I close my eyes, all I see is W leaving a stall in the men’s room, with a long trail of toilet paper, dangling from the back of his pants, following him down the hall. And he has made it clear he has no intention of looking back. So be it.
The related not-very-new news today was that both Condi Rice and Laura Bush gave separate TV interviews and defended the Bush leadership record. Condi gave him an A+ (she must be smoking crack) and Laura Bush said , “history will tell”. It sure will. So be it. And I hope he will be “it” soon, so can all tag him and run away. There is sad irony in the fact that at the end of W’s “reign” his two most prominent Sunday morning apologists are two women, both devoid of a sense of the real world and devoted to perpetrating lies.
“Hi. My name is Dick Cheney, and I’m here to help you”. That is written on the toilet paper. The stuff legacies are made of.
We are but three days from a new year. In the absence of a television, I am rummaging through my CD collection for entertainment. I have just heard singer/songwriter Steve Goodman go on with great eloquence about the fact that, no matter how bad or gruesome or awful that which has gone before us has been, every year on Jan 1 we get the chance to begin anew. And country singer Gretchen Wilson just warbled that she was “one Bud wiser than I was a minute ago.” Perhaps in three days we will all acknowledge Steve’s admonishment to begin anew and be like Gretchen, “one Bud Wiser”.
I don’t know if that will keep any bombs from bursting over head in Gaza, make our economic experts any smarter or keep money out of he hands of some Wall Street tycoon. , but it might be a start. It would certainly be better than “nobody knows nuthin” and “one Bud wiser” would be better than none. Of course, things could get worse, but “God forbid”.
Happy New Year.
Life Goes on in Texas.
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