Child Abuse

Oregon man, 96, sponsors
his own wake, “because
he wanted to attend.”

Perusing the Seattle Times I came across an article that said “Hundreds expected to file abuse claims against Jesuits.” Then on Truthout there was an article about brutalizing kids in the public schools. At the same time I came across an article on Truthdig, “Australia Sorry for Abuse of Castoff Kids.” This was all on the same day. It made me pause to reflect on this practice of brutalizing and sexually abusing children. Just after World War II, England sent 10,000 children to Australia, there were two reasons given: the British Government would have to spend less money on the children, and Australia would get “good white stock.” The reasons don’t matter much here because the children were made to work extremely hard and many were sexually abused. I know the same thing happened in our shameful past when we took Indian children from their parents and forced them into schools to make them more “like us.” This also happened in Australia with Aboriginal children. We also know that in other parts of the world children are forced to work in sweat shops and are exploited for sexual reasons. You cannot read the newspapers here without seeing virtually every day accounts of the sexual abuse of children. We also know we have American tourists going to Asia and other countries for the express purpose of having sex with children forced into prostitution. The Catholic Church, of course, has an extremely cloudy history of sexually abusing children as we have learned in the past few years. In ancient Greek society there were relationships between men and boys that were considered perfectly normal, even desirable. Recently it has been reported that some Corporations are resisting laws that would make slavery and child labor more difficult to control. There are said to be tens of thousands of child prostitutes around the world, many of whom are slaves. Child pornography is a huge problem here in the U.S., but also in many other industrialized nations. It is an international problem. When a small girl was kidnapped and murdered not long ago it was reported there were 150 sex offenders living within a five mile radius of her. A woman was recently arrested for selling her five-year-old daughter into prostitution, and accounts of the sexual abuse of children are absolutely commonplace nowadays. If you have read Dickens or anything much about the Industrial Revolution you know how bad these things were in the past.

So I am not surprised to learn that things like this happen. I have known of cases for years and have always been mystified by them. I simply cannot understand what drives humans to sexually exploit their children, or even to exploit them economically in slave labor and such (of course I know there are economic necessities for the very poor that cause them to sell their children into slavery and prostitution). While I can at least partly understand why children might be economically exploited, what I do not understand more than anything else is the actual sexual abuse of children. What is there about boys and girls that create such lust in adult humans? But that is not what inspired me to think about this now. What has now finally sunk into my dim brain is that this is so commonplace and has been for what seems like forever. I do not wish to say it occurs so often as to be actually considered “normal,” but how does one explain the fact that it is obviously so common. Always before when I read about it I assumed it was just some deviant, some pervert, some twisted person who was clearly outside of the normal range of human behavior, someone who had themselves been abused, or were of abnormal intelligence, or something. But many, if not most of these guys who trade in pornography and have sex with children appear to be perfectly normal people: businessmen, neighbors, blue collar workers, teachers, athletes, both rich and poor, and so on. I do not believe there is anything like this in any other species. It must have something to do with the fact that human sexuality is not seasonal and people crave sex at all times. But that doesn’t specifically explain the sexual attraction of children to so many people. It may well have something to do with dominance rather than sex per se. In some cases it may have to do with the fear of contracting diseases from more experienced sex objects, but this is just a recent phenomenon. I am thinking here mostly of people having sex with young children. It is not difficult to understand why people might be sexually attracted to teenagers, especially older ones, but that is a separate question. There is even an organization called NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) that wants to legalize relations between older teens and adults. But very often the sex is between adults and smaller children. There are even occasional accounts of infants being raped (and even extremely old women) which, I believe, have to be pathological cases. Even so, it appears that the sexual abuse of both boys and girls, both young and older, is far more commonplace than you might think. It seems to be particularly widespread in institutional settings, like churches, schools, reformatories, and such, but is by no means restricted to such places. I think it may say something about basic human nature, as well as pathology, a possibility that would seem ripe for explanation.

LKBIQ:
Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.
John Barrymore

TILT:
My lovely little cat, Katie, has been playing with a skunk!

The Party that Cried "No"

Family moves rather than give
Up “Strawberry,” 300 lb pet pig
considered “family member.”

You all know the story of the boy who cried wolf too many times so that when a real wolf arrived no one would believe him. We have an interesting example of a similar problem stemming from the Republican Party announcing they will work to bring down the Obama Presidency by being the Party of “No.”They have been living up to this vow religiously. No on the stimulus, no on health care, no on closing Guantanamo, no on leaving Iraq, no on leaving Afghanistan, no on diplomacy with Iran, no on choice, no on unions, no on helping the automobile industry, no on cap and trade, no on trying the terrorists in the U.S., no on investigating Bush/Cheney, no on investigating 9/11, no on global warming, and now no on the President engaging in ordinary protocol, just no, no, no, no, no.

As this is their publicly announced strategy, and as they faithfully vote no on everything, we can rightfully assume they have no claim to credibility of any kind. No on everything Obama wants or needs to do also means no input. No input means we cannot expect them to offer anything in the way of positive suggestions or help no matter what the issue. What it also means is they have declared themselves completely irrelevant as their automatically saying no to everything is both predictable and of no help whatsoever. Thus as they have opted out of participation in our political life they have no right to claim they are not being consulted about anything. They have, in short, become non-participants in our community life. If it were up to me I would take away their right to vote (what is the point of having a minority group of people who have already announced they would vote no, no matter what). If and when they decide to rejoin the rest of us and try to act responsibly I would reconsider, but until then they are simply out of the picture. We must pass health care without them, and anything else that needs doing. As far as I know, no Party in history has ever before simply refused entirely to participate in governing. Usually a losing Party at least attempts to have some kind of input and cooperates on things of national interest. These tactics of no are infantile in the extreme. It’s as if they are having tantrums and refusing to eat their mush.

Knowing they do not have enough no votes to get their way, they have decided to delay on health care. They assume the longer they can delay any action the more chance the Insurance and Pharmaceutical giants will be able to influence more Congresspersons to kill the bill. I hope everyone realizes what this involves. A minority of Republicans, acting out of nothing but naked greed, are going to try to deny health care to millions of their fellow citizens. No matter that this health care reform is desperately needed, no matter that we are the only so-called “civilized” country in the world that does not provide universal health care, no matter that some 40 plus thousand die every year for lack of health care, no matter that we spend billions upon billions killing people but cannot afford health care for our own, no matter this has been an issue for such a long time and is now on the threshold of becoming a reality, they fatten their wallets and campaign funds, sit back in their plush offices, enjoy their own marvelous health care, and just say no to those less fortunate. They are, to be generous, disgusting.

The Palin book is to be released tomorrow, although quite a few people have it already. I fear it is going to be a he-said, she-said fiasco, with the McCain staffers she criticizes insisting she lies and she denying it. In any case we will have to put up with Silly Sarah for quite a while. It is a sad commentary indeed that some 30% of Americans apparently think she is qualified to be President of the U.S., when in fact she has no real qualifications whatsoever, is ignorant as can be about most everything, speaks like a hillbilly, and displays all the sophistication of a nanny goat. She is, I believe, the personification of what is wrong with the United States. I guess it is fitting that she seems to be the one bright star in the Republican firmament: ignorant, greedy, shameless, without an idea in her head except to get rich speaking to people even less well informed than she is, enjoying her few moments of undeserved fame. I seriously doubt anyone will remember her in just a few short years. But I do hope she gets the Republican nomination.

LKBIQ:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas Adams

TILT:
The lynx is the national animal of Romania.

Trotsky - book

Trotsky Downfall of a Revolutionary, by Bertrand M. Patenaude (Harper Collins, 2009)

Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (1879) to a well-off Russian, non-religious, Jewish farming family, became second in importance only to Lenin during the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was first People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, one of the first members of the Politburo, and he founded and was Commander of the Red Army that successfully defeated the Whites. As a critic and rival of Stalin, and Stalin’s policies, he was thrown out of the Communist Party, and eventually found asylum in Mexico where he was assassinated on Stalin’s orders. For these modest achievements he was recently dismissed as a “schmuck” by a most disgraceful excuse for a book review (Justin Moyer, Seattle Times, Sunday, November 8, 2009). This brief and dismissive review makes me wonder if the reviewer even read the book.

This book is not a biography of Trotsky, nor does it tell you much about the Russian revolution. It focuses primarily on the years of Trotsky’s exile in Mexico, the only major country that agreed to accept him after the Russians pressured other countries, finally including Norway, to expel him, and only after the intervention of the great Mexican painter, Diego Rivera (a dilettante socialist), who approached the then Mexican President, Lazaro Cardenas on his behalf. Trotsky, who had been an important literary figure in Russia, and was himself a fine writer and critic, managed to support himself, his wife, and a number of bodyguards through his writing, and with the assistance of Trotskyite factions in the U.S. and elsewhere. While it is true that he did not do well in interpersonal relations, he was a spellbinding speaker, and did receive the loyalty of many (both paid and volunteer) followers who often referred to him simply as the “Old Man.” Much of his time in exile was spent defending himself from the outrageously false charges Stalin persisted in pursuing, in spite of the fact that he was acquitted by an investigative commission led by no less a figure than John Dewey. Trotsky had predicted the shameful Stalin/Hitler pact, and also what would happen to the Soviet Union under Stalin, and he wrote widely and often on such subjects, at times in a very insulting manner towards Stalin, which, of course, did not sit well with the Dictator. It was no secret that Stalin wanted him eliminated.

As a result of Stalin’s known intentions, Trotsky’s life in Mexico was one of constant vigilance. He lived in a carefully guarded complex with five or six bodyguards in attendance at all times. For a man who liked to travel, picnic, hunt and fish, his activities were restricted but not completely, and he did enjoy occasional outings. Among other things he became interested in collecting cactus and filled his patio with different varieties. He also enjoyed raising chickens and rabbits. Trotsky was known as a bit of a philanderer and had a brief affair with Rivera’s artist wife, Frida Kahlo, that was apparently not known to Rivera who was an extremely jealous person (when Rivera and Trotsky finally parted ways it was not because of this affair). While Trotsky’s wife, Natalia Sedova (of almost forty years, and mother of their two children), might well not have been happy about this, to say she was “humiliated,” as the above mentioned reviewer writes, has to be far from the truth. No one could possibly read the account of Trotsky’s death in this book, and Natalia’s reaction at the time, and not believe the love between them was not far more powerful than could possibly have been affected by Trotsky’s apparently occasional dalliances. Indeed, one of the last things Trotsky said to her while dying was that he loved her, he insisted everything should go to her, and implored his colleagues to take care of her. When he died, in her grief, she pressed her face against the soles of his feet.

Having survived a major but failed attack on his stronghold by a number of armed intruders, Trotsky was finally murdered on Stalin’s orders with a blow to the head by single operative who had managed to infiltrate his immediate entourage. The picture of Trotsky that emerges from this interesting book, at least for me, is that of an intellectual and political giant who, entirely consumed by his belief in the possibility of a workers’ paradise, did not suffer fools gladly, was not very concerned about most others or their feelings, did not compromise easily or at all, was a demanding taskmaster, and perhaps a bit of a perfectionist, and relentlessly pursued his revolutionary beliefs. He opposed and bravely fought against Stalinism when it was exceedingly dangerous for anyone to do so. He believed that Stalin had failed the revolution and socialism, but at the same time could not repudiate his own life’s work as a socialist, and believed in socialism until the very end. I do not think the subtitle of this book, “Downfall of a Revolutionary,” is entirely appropriate, it should more properly be “Destruction of a Revolutionary,” or even more appropriately, “Assassination of a Revolutionary.”

Just Politics

Swedish woman arrested for
attempting to strangle co-worker
for wearing strong perfume.

Is it stupidity, ignorance, fear, insanity, or just politics as usual for Republicans? The response of Republicans to the news that four of the 9/11 terrorists will be tried in the United States (presumably New York) has to be all politics. They have to know that we have tried terrorists in the U.S. many times and that our civilian courts are well up to the task. They have to know that the chances any of these guys will end up on the streets of our cities are nonsensical. They have to know that our prisons already contain terrorists and that they are virtually escape proof. They have to know that these men have been held in prison without being charged for eight years. They have to know the U.S., at least in principle, stands for truth and justice for all. And they also have to know that the attack on 9/11 was not truly an act of “war,” but, rather, basically a criminal act of unusual scope and significance. If they do not know these things they are either stupid or ignorant, or both. And if they are as truly fearful of these prisoners as they claim to be, they are no more mature than schoolgirls fearing to cross the street or encountering the boogyman. Their objections to the Attorney General’s announcement are just another example of being opposed to anything Obama or his administration wants to do, no matter how right or just or proper it might be. John McCain ought to know, if he doesn’t, that these four defendants are not “soldiers” fighting in a “war.” They do not represent any country or nation or political entity that could properly be called an organized polity that could wage war against another country. For McCain to claim otherwise is just as phony as his pick for Vice-President.

You might think in a case of this kind Republicans would be every bit as interested in doing the right thing and seeing justice prevail as all the rest of the country. But, no, all they are interested in is seeing Obama (and by implication our country) fail, so they can somehow return to power and again let the corporations and obscenely wealthy keep us all in wage and credit card slavery. I keep telling myself these Republicans cannot possibly be as stupid or crazy as they appear, but each day they do something to make me have to reconsider. I am beginning to believe they will not rest until they have forced a revolution or destroyed the planet, or both.

Sarah Palin’s book will be out next week. I pray the gods will be merciful enough so that we will not have to suffer it very long. Bits have been leaked and it is already pretty clear that much of what she says is either false or trivial. I do not intend to read it (having suffered enough from the Palin “phenomenon” already). Although I haven’t read it, and won’t, I would be willing to bet there is nothing of substance in it, in spite of Limbaugh’s claim, and reading it will be nothing but a waste of time (certainly no one in their right mind would actually purchase it). No need to buy it, you can be sure we’ll hear all about it over and over and over on the 7/24 infotainment networks. The very idea that anyone, anywhere, anyway, in any circumstances, could possibly believe Palin is “Presidential material” makes me shudder, my blood run cold, and the few hairs left on my head stand up in fright. I think this is the most terrifying possibility I have encountered in all of my years, to say nothing of the most ridiculous.

With the news that the 9/11 criminals are going to be tried comes now a lot of talk about how we are a nation of laws, seeking justice, and accountability and blah, blah, blah. So why are we not investigating and prosecuting the known war criminals in our midst, war criminals still walking around, making speeches, getting awards, making big bucks, even criticizing our current administration? Most of the major details of the Bush/Cheney criminal activity are already known, torture, for example, they have already admitted, and their lies for starting an illegal “war” have been exposed for all to see. So if we are a nation of laws, and if our law and constitution require that we take action against such criminals, why are we not doing so? The misery these two criminals have caused should get them, at an absolute, minimum, eternal damnation.

Armies march by tower and spire
Of cities blazing, in the fire;
Till as I gaze with staring eyes,
The armies fall, the lustre dies.

From a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

The 20-60-20 Rule

Confused man wakes up in ditch
with empty moonshine jar in overall
bib, loaded rifle, machete, and pot.

I could be wrong (as I often am), but my experience leads me to believe that the 20-60-20 rule is pretty accurate when it comes to almost everything. That is, it doesn’t matter much what it is or what you are doing: making a speech, manufacturing a product, teaching a class, talking about an idea, inventing something, or even being President of the United States, 20% of the population will like it, 20% will not like it (or even hate it), and 60% will not think much about it one way or the other. I suspect this is pretty much the way people think now about Obama, and I suspect it is probably the way they think about the health care bill, and even abortion. This is not often obvious because polls show that the population is pretty much split on things. Obama’s poll numbers, for example, or the split on abortion, or the Afghanistan “war,” and so on. But if you think about it, this, too, makes sense, because the 60% who don’t think much about things, if forced to decide, probably split 50-50 pretty predictably. These numbers are not very precise, of course, and there are sometimes exceptions. It is possible, for example, to have a teacher who is so bad most everyone hates him or her. And in the case of Dick Cheney or George W. Bush, things got so bad their numbers were skewed as well. Cases have to be really extreme however, to violate the rule by very much. What this means, unfortunately, is that the 60% who really don’t think about things very much, are the ones who ultimately decide elections. You notice that most elections are decided by only a few percentage points, 53%, 47%, or less, or something like that, and rarely, by an overwhelming majority. This is also one reason they can be unpredictable.

Another such rule I believe holds true as well, the 20%, 80% rule, that states basically (and I think pretty accurately) that 20% of the population has 80% of the health problems. This is how the Insurance companies make their money, by refusing to insure the 20% that need Insurance the most. One might argue, of course, that the healthy should not have to pay for the unhealthy, but that seems to me to violate the very notion of empathy and looking out for each other that a decent society should aspire to do. Remember “love thy neighbor as thyself,” or the Golden Rule, that ought to influence our behavior (but doesn’t seem to very well in our “free-market,” capitalistic system, or among Republicans).

Another rule that is sometimes called into question has to do with democracy. We tend to believe that in a democracy the majority should rule, and most of the time it does. It is what happens when that rule is challenged that trouble can arise. This is what is happening at the moment when it comes to abortion. Abortion in the U.S. is legal, the majority has spoken on this, the courts have gone along with it, and you would think that would be that. But the pro-life crowd simply refuses to give up, as we can see now in the battle over health care (which really isn’t about abortion). The Stupak amendment tries to extend the rules on abortion in such a way as to make it more difficult for women (especially poor women) to get abortions, and thus is a subtle attempt to shade Roe vs Wade. Needless to say, the many women (the majority) who believe in choice are not at all happy about this amendment and insist it be removed from the health care bill. Stupak and others are insisting it must be in the bill or they will not support the (health care) bill. The women say they will not support a bill if it remains in the bill. This could potentially kill any health care bill once again. Either one side must prevail or there will be no compromise and thus no bill at all. I believe it would be absolutely unconscionable to not pass this vitally needed health care bill because of this one amendment. We might hope that when it comes down to the wire the proponents of the amendment will blink and agree to remove it. The worst feature of this is that unfortunately if they do not ultimately give in they will not only do away with changing health care for the better, they will basically be challenging the democratic system itself. If you live in a democracy you must abide by the rules, rules established by the majority, you cannot just pick and choose which rules you will follow and which ones you will not. If allowed to violate whatever rules you wish you have anarchy rather than democracy.

Both sides in this battle over abortion believe they have morality on their side, and they tend to believe their particular moral standards are absolute. Absolute moral standards unfortunately are not compatible with democracy, where standards are decided politically rather than theologically or philosophically (although these might well feature in individual decisions).
The corporate entities that are opposed to any change in our dysfunctional health care system could care less about abortion, but they will not hesitate to use it as a means to torpedo the health care bill. This is as undemocratic as it can be, and un-American as well (if you believe America actually is a democracy). This marriage between corporations and fundamentalists, however unlikely it may seem, has been a very unhealthy partnership for our country and the interests of its citizens.

LKBIQ:
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.
Alfred North Whitehead

TILT:
The comic strip L’il Abner was drawn and published for 43 years by Al Capp.

Can Both Sides be Right?

She sleeps with vodka bottle,
he throws it out,
she responds with knife.

How nice to have a President with brains who also seems to use them! Obama has rejected all options presented to him on Afghanistan, all of which involved sending more troops. Does this mean he won’t send more troops? Not necessarily. But as he has said our commitment there is not open-ended he has certainly taken a new position and indicated that he wants us out of there if and when possible. You know perfectly well that were Bush/Cheney still in office we’d already be there with more and more troops, more and more war profiteers, more and more deaths, and no plan to end it ever (a non-ending war is necessary to keep their industrial/military/political system in eternal profits).

I find this to be a truly interesting situation in which it is possible that both sides of the argument are probably correct. But they begin from entirely different premises. That is, if the goal is to “win,” the generals are probably correct, they need more troops. But as it has become clear, there is no way to win either militarily or politically. While some have already concluded we cannot win militarily, there has remained, among some at least, the idea that we could still bring about a democratic government in Afghanistan. Now, however, even that goal is being acknowledged as unrealistic and unattainable. This is partly because the corruption of the Karzai government makes it difficult if not impossible to continue, and also because our Ambassador there, a retired three-star Admiral with vast experience both in the military and in politics, has been imploring Obama not to send more troops. What Obama is being forced to decide is what to do in these circumstances. This is as it should be. He is the Commander-in-Chief as well as our President. He does not have to tell the generals they are wrong, only that as their goals cannot be achieved, we have to change them. He is, I sincerely hope, changing them by abandoning them as totally unrealistic, facing reality, and trying to end what is a hopelessly lost cause. The growing opposition on the part of the American public to sending more troops, plus the fact that we cannot realistically afford this unnecessary “war,” should make Obama’s decision somewhat less politically dangerous. Of course Obama’s critics, and Republicans in general, will accuse him of surrender and of being too weak to govern, and a quitter, and doubtless a lot worse things, but if he succeeds in getting us to give up this failed venture he will surely have done the brave and right, and not simply politically expedient thing (for which he could pay a very heavy and undeserved price).

I confess I cannot understand what Republicans think they are doing. They have already lost any chance of getting much of the Black vote, it is exceedingly doubtful that many Hispanics will vote Republican, Muslims and gays will not vote for them, and now they have managed to enrage a majority of American women. They seem to believe their only chance of winning again is by causing Obama to fail. But their tactics have been so thuggish, shrill, rude, crude, and publicly announced, I can’t see how they could gain many votes that way. But this is the U.S., and half the population is of below average intelligence, and many others don’t seem to pay any attention, and on top of that the Republican propaganda machine (including the MSM) is pretty efficient, the lies are so outrageous many will believe them, and the electorate has no memory, so I suppose anything could happen. And not only that, if Obama cannot quickly demonstrate that he can walk on water and part the sea of red ink he inherited from Bush/Cheney he will no doubt be blamed for everything (that can’t perhaps be blamed on Clinton). I should think the Republican Party ought to be on the way to extinction, but stranger things have happened.

LKBIQ:
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Sir Winston Churchill

TILT:
Confirmed: No good deed goes unpunished.

The Nightmare Years

Arguing with girl friend, he
forces her out of her car
and pushes it into the river.

I realize that politics is not bean bags, and I know there have been times in the past when vile tactics have been employed by one political party against another, but I can’t help but wonder if what we have been seeing for the past few years on the part of Republicans (and fellow travelers) really has any precedent. Let me start with the Republican attack on Bill Clinton if only for convenience. It does seem that the Republicans deliberately set out to bring down the Clinton Presidency no matter what they had to do to succeed. This was not designed to change a policy or direction but, rather, to actually destroy him. They brought up Whitewater (a nothing issue to begin with) and then proceeded to accuse Bill and Hillary of everything including murder (I don’t know if any previous President had been accused of murder but I suppose I could be wrong). In any case when all of their attempts and false accusations proved groundless they mounted an unprecedented attack on his private, particularly sexual life (an area that had previously not been considered fair game, so to speak). While they succeeded in getting him impeached, they failed to bring down his Presidency. I believe this whole extreme episode was basically something new in American politics.

At this same time the concept of roviating (my term) was born. That is, it became an integral and acceptable part of the Republican strategy to use tactics that in their extreme form were probably unprecedented. They deliberately set out to slime, malign, denigrate, humiliate, and lie to whatever extent necessary, and however false, to bring down their “prey.” I think they had some success with this although I cannot think at the moment of a specific example (other than Bill and Hillary Clinton).

Now turn to the election of 2000 when, as far as I know it had never happened before, a gang of Republican thugs were sent to Florida with the express (fascist) purpose of stopping the vote count and, then, with the Supreme Court in a completely unprecedented action on their side, managed to steal an election. Subsequently there have been cases where it is known that the new electronic voting machines were fixed to steal votes, also unprecedented.
Apparently buoyed by their successes in the field of stealing elections by cheating and threatening and lying, they have continued on a campaign of “anything goes” to try to get their way. When, for example, was their ever before an organized attempt to simply shut down community meetings by shouting and disrupting the proceedings more or less randomly? That is, the purpose was not to argue a point but, rather, to just shut down any dialogue at all. And when did anyone previously shout out “you lie” during a Presidential address? When before were women deliberately shouted down when they attempted to exercise their right of free speech in Congress?

And what about the so-called tea-baggers, organized groups to protest anything and everything the President wanted to do, using signs and slogans as vile as could be imagined, with comparisons of the President of the United States to Stalin, Hitler, and even monkeys and apes? A major media organization printing a cartoon of the President as a Chimpanzee, knowing full well it would be a deliberate insult and smear, a cartoon printed by the same paper that has now admitted to its deliberate goal of bringing down the President of the United States, and also acts as an ally of the Republican Party rather than a legitimate news organization (and owned and operated by an Australian). While cartoons lampooning Presidents and others have long been employed, I do not believe there is any precedent for Fox “News.” Nor do I believe there is a precedent for using horrible pictures of the Holocaust to compare it to health care. Nor, as far as I know, have individuals been showing up armed at public meetings.

When did members of one party come to believe it is appropriate to actually assassinate individuals who were doing perfectly legal things they did not agree with? Abortion doctors have been fair game for these fanatics who show no remorse for their vile acts. Now they have even taken their terror tactics and obscene pictures to the school in which the President’s children are in attendance. What bothers me the most about all this is that there seem to be no limits to how low they are willing to go to get their way, it’s as if once they started down this basically criminal, mafia-like career path it has just gathered more and more momentum and thrown morality, ethics, and common decency out the window. I have not even mentioned the deliberate lies about death panels, concentration camps, and what have you, and I have not mentioned the lies that led us into an unnecessary “war,” the torture, the war crimes, war profiteering, renditions, etc., etc., There appear to be no depths of depravity they are unwilling to descend into in order to maintain their power and their inhuman “free maket” capitalism. I hear this evening on Maddow they are even resisting laws against slave and child labor (we know they have always been opposed to decent wages, unions, health care and anything in the public interest).

I do not know the specifics of previous political periods very well, but I suspect there has never been a period quite like this one. The first decade of the 21st century should deservedly be described as “The Nightmare Years.”

At the End

He was so old his bones seemed to swim in his skin.
And when I took his hand to feel his pulse
I felt myself drawn in. It was as faint
as the steps of a child
paddling across the floor in slippers,
and yet he was smiling.
I could almost hear a river
running beneath his breath.
The water clear and cold and deep.
He was ready and willing to wade on in.

Ed Meek

Insurance Care

Man says he is not a bigamist
because he failed to say
“I do” during second marriage.

I guess we should be thankful that the House passed some semblance of a health care bill, even if it is a sell-out to the Insurance industry. For me it’s really quite simple, if the Insurance industry is still included in our health care system, the system cannot be worth having. I believe this sincerely as I can see no reason why Insurance companies should have anything whatsoever to do with health care. They make no contribution towards health at all, merely shuffling paperwork around and devising more and more outrageous ways to keep from paying. Their obscene profits are in direct proportion to the amount of misery they produce, and they produce plenty. It is apparently true there are some positive features to what has been passed so far. But in return for any positive change for the better the Insurance industry was given some 30 to 40 million more people who are now obliged to carry health insurance, they now have to have it, and if you think the Insurance companies came out on the short end of the deal you must be either naïve or Republican, or both. With that many more suckers to fleece the Insurance people can afford to be (at least a little bit generous).

Of course so far the bill has only made it through the House. It still has to go through the Senate. It is quite possible we will end up with no health care bill at all, or one that is worse than what we have now (if, indeed, that is even possible). Like Afghanistan, said to be the graveyard of empires, the Senate is often the graveyard of anything that smacks of improving the public welfare. At the moment one of the grave threats emanating from that pompous body is coming from Joe Lieberman who says he will oppose any bill with a public option. This wouldn’t be quite so bad if Holy Joe didn’t insist his conscience will not allow him to do otherwise. From his behavior of the past few years I wasn’t aware he had a conscience, but if he does, it doesn’t seem to bother him that he and his wife have benefitted handsomely from the very interests that do not want to see a public option. I suppose this is just a coincidence. But if you think Lieberman is hypocritical about this he is not alone. Evan Bayh and his wife benefit even more from these predatory industries and Bayh, too, is threatening to vote against the public option, just another strange coincidence no doubt.

There is another reason we may not get a bill, those uppity women who insist they should have control over their own bodies. In order to get a bill passed in the House Pelosi had to agree to allow a vote on the Stupak amendment. As the Stupak amendment turns the clock back a bit on the right to choose, naturally it passed. Pro-choice women, who are in the majority, are (rightly) furious about this and some are now saying no bill can come out of the Senate unless this Neanderthal amendment is stripped out completely. I don’t know if this can happen as elderly white men seem determined that they, above all others, should have control over women’s bodies. Is this perhaps just the survival of a primitive form of womb envy carried over from the distant past?

It appears that the only two Congressmen with valid reasons to vote against this health care bill were Dennis Kucinich and Erik Massa. They saw it for what it is, a gigantic giveaway to the Insurance industry. I don’t know anything about Massa, but Kucinich has long been a champion of single-payer health care, the only plan that I, too, believe is truly is worth having. Kucinich seems to be about the only person left in Congress (along with Senator Bernie Sanders, gasp, a socialist) who actually believes they should act in the public interest (for which they are often ignored, ridiculed and considered “eccentric” or worse).

I think that even with all its flaws, including the fact that it is basically not worth having, we do have to commend Pelosi for a job well done. Obama and the Democrats under Pelosi did manage to pass something that no other congress has been able to pass for somewhere between 60 and 100 years. This did require great political skill and hard work, especially given the intransigent nature of the Democratic Party and its representatives in Congress. It does remain true that doing nothing at all is not an option, but I do wonder if awarding billions more to the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries in order to get some little more than cosmetic changes will be worth it.

LKBIQ:
The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.
Confucius

TILT: Agoutis are regarded as the only species that can open Brazil nuts without tools

The Blind Side - book

The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton and Co., 2009).

This, for me, was one of those rare books that I found hard to put down once I began reading. It is an exceedingly interesting account of a young Black man’s rise from poverty and neglect to become a millionaire professional football player. Sometimes described as “a freak of nature,” Michael Oher at sixteen already was six feet six inches tall and weighed 350 pounds. But he was also, for a person of that size, extremely gifted by being exceptionally fast and mobile. Through a series of rather improbable events he was enrolled in a small, private Christian college where he could play both basketball and football. Although this was an obscure college as far as football went, he was discovered early by football scouts who all believed at first sight of him, because of his size and unusual physical abilities, that he was destined for College and eventually a career in the NFL. During his first weeks at college he still had no permanent home and was forced to spend time with a number of different people in the ghettos of Memphis, living hand to mouth, wearing the same clothing day after day, and so forth. He was then taken in by a white, Republican, and very wealthy family who eventually adopted him. Thus he acquired a white mother (who became extremely active on his behalf) and a wealthy father (who was unusually generous), along with a sister of his own age and a young brother with whom he became very close. As he had had virtually no education they provided him, not only with love and a home, but also with a tutor and most everything he could have desired. As his background was so impoverished he had to be slowly enculturated into the upper middle class society he had entered. He eventually raised his grades sufficiently to be allowed to play sports, and also to be admitted to Ol’ Miss University where he duly became a football standout. It is difficult to read this inspiring story without a tear or two along the way as it is a story of hard work and dedication, ambition and determination, as well as love and devotion. As Michael was one of thirteen children whose mother was a drug addict and could not look after him, with a father he didn’t know, and a history of running away from one foster home after another to live on the street, the odds against him were enormous. Without the help of his adopted (and wealthy) parents he would not have had much of a chance at anything other than prison.

But there is much more to this book than Michael Oher’s personal story, as the author situates Michael in the context of professional football and its demands for players, especially players with Michael’s rare size and ability. Not only do you learn much about football strategy, coaching, and the like, but specifically about the unusual demand for left tackles, a position that has been raised to a much higher status than other linemen, and, indeed, sometimes even higher than that of quarterback. You also learn the lengths to which Universities will go to sign outstanding football prospects, the promises they will make, and the various means that can be employed to make prospects respectable. For example, if you have money to hire tutors, and if you know the right places to go, you can quickly raise failing grades into “A’s” and thus conveniently raise a grade point sufficiently for college acceptance. You can also expunge criminal records and make certain the prospective players will not be considered potential troublemakers, and so on. As Michael’s adopted father had been a standout athlete at Ol’ Miss himself, and his wife was also a graduate of that distinguished University, there was much suspicion on the part of some (a great many other Universities had attempted to sign Michael) that they had deliberately groomed Michael specifically for the purpose of playing football there. By giving him food and lodging, as well as money and other material things, this might well have been against the rules of intercollegiate recruiting. But as the family had taken Michael in before he even played football, and as they were already incredibly wealthy, these kinds of charges could not be confirmed, even though Michael did sign at Ol’ Miss instead of the many other football programs that might have promised him even more. Michael now plays left tackle for the Ravens, having signed an initial five-year contract for 13.8 million dollars. His fantastic success story is being made into a motion picture.

Michael Oher comes across as a sadly neglected and ignorant, but by no means unintelligent, young man who tried to do the right things and learn what was required of him. However, much to my chagrin (and chagrin is putting it mildly) there is what to me is a dark side to this fantastic story. For one thing it demonstrates (once again) that if you have money and connections you can pretty much do as you please, whereas if you are poor and powerless you may well be doomed. There is a disturbing aura of “I’ve got mine, you get yours,” as well as a “what’s in it for me,” attitude. This can be seen clearly in the behavior of the younger brother who, even though a child, demands of the various recruiters what they will do for him. This might strike you as funny, but later, when he demands to know why his sister and Michael should even be included in his father’s will (because they will both be wealthy on their own) it reveals a mind set that is not very flattering. But what truly soured the story for me was the following:

“Not long after college coaches informed him that he had a future in the NFL, Michael informed Leigh Anne (his adopted mother) that, if he indeed made it to the NFL, he intended to buy a house with thirteen bedrooms so that his mother and siblings would be guaranteed shelter. Now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to do that. ‘They had the same chances I had,’ he said. ‘They need to get off their lazy asses and work. They need to start hearing ‘no.’”

This is a statement so delusionally false and (in my opinion) awful, that I wonder if he really said this or if it is merely being attributed to him by the author or someone else.

In an afterword to the paperback edition the author observes that reactions to his book were bizarre and self-contradictory, some thinking it was too liberal and other complaining it was a conservative polemic, others thought it was a Christian miracle, and still others shunning it because it contained the word “evolution,” and so on. For me, I’m sorry to say, I think it reveals the depth of Michael’s indoctrination into basic and apparently permanent Republican values: money and influence count more than what might be right, what’s in it for me, and I’ve got mine, you get yours.

Amazing!

New Zealand artist protests
Environment Minister by sculpting
his bust with cow manure.

It’s amazing! I watched a few minutes of the debate on health care and was astounded to learn there are apparently two totally different bills, the one described by Democrats, and the one described by Republicans. As I learned long ago that too much hot air is not good for me I fairly quickly turned it off. It’s a bit difficult to describe what is going on as a “debate,” because they do seem to be talking about two entirely different things (bills). As Pelosi and the Democrats seem to feel they will have enough votes to insure passage of this monumental bill, I trust that by morning I can feel they have succeeded. But wait! They have succeeded! The House passed the health care bill with 220 votes (219 Democratic and apparently 1 Republican who must be out of the loop). So Obama and the Democrats have managed to do something no one has been able to do for somewhere between 60 and 100 years. Hooray!

And if they do succeed (they did), the Republicans will once again find themselves on the wrong side of history, just as they were when Social Security and Medicare were passed. For at least a hundred years they have battled nonstop against anything and everything designed to improve the lives of ordinary citizens, and for anything and everything that would benefit the wealthy and the huge corporate interests. This time they have, in my opinion at least, made such utter fools of themselves we might hope they would hide somewhere for the next few years and say nothing. Witness the absolutely disgusting display that Bachman and her loony supporters put on the other day as a case in point. You might also watch the video going around of Republican men despicably shouting down women as they attempted to have their say about health care. This was truly like something out of the dark ages. Of course they had Wilson’s boorish shouting at Obama for a model, as well as some of their past Brown shirt activities (as in the 2000 election that apparently established a precedent for fascist activity in the U.S.).

I expect the Stupak amendment will pass that will not allow taxpayer money to be used for abortions, thus denying legal abortions to poor women who need them the most (it did). These anti-abortion fanatics apparently believe that women (and their doctors) have abortions just for fun, and that the responsibility for children stops once the fetus is born. I hear many people, especially in Congress, say, “I don’t agree with them (abortion opponents) but I understand where they are coming from.” I don’t agree with them and I don’t understand where they are coming from. I believe there are usually if not always perfectly good reasons for abortions and they are not done casually or just for fun (and if done early enough do not destroy a viable human life, but that is for another time and place). Furthermore, I think the alternative to abortion (neglect, abuse, and abandonment) is often worse.

I see references now fairly commonly that refer to the “Democratic debacle” of Tuesday. I hate to be so dense but I don’t get it. Democrats won two more Congressional seats, one of them in a district that has not been Democratic since the Civil War. I guess the “debacle” has to do (in the MSM anyway) with the loss of the Governor’s races, one in New York and one in Virginia, and the loss of the New York City mayor’s race. Granted it would have been better had Democrats won, but it seems to me these races were perfectly predictable. Corzine was a most unpopular Governor who had not produced what he had promised, was a long way back in the early polls, but with Obama’s support only lost by a much smaller margin than predicted. Bloomberg is apparently regarded as one of the best mayors ever (although why I could not say), and also spent around 100 million dollars of his own money to get re-elected, and then only won by a small margin over a not very well known Democratic opponent. Virginia, apparently since time immemorial, has always elected a Governor from the opposite party in power. How you can consider this somehow bad for Democrats I find highly questionable, and given the fact that the exit polls indicated Obama had little to do with the voting, I think I am right about this. Of course whether I am right or wrong is irrelevant.

LKBIQ:
No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean them - campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again.
Bill Clinton

TILT:
I finally did it! I found something that did not appear on Google – tolstovakas (the name of a kind of peasant blouse Leo Tolstoy started wearing).

Goebbels is Passe

Miss England forced to
relinquish crown after
punching Miss Manchester.

Goebbels, it turns out, might have been a pioneer when it came to lying, but he is now passé. It was Herr Goebbels, I believe, who said something to the effect that “if you tell a big lie often enough people will come to believe it.” Rove, Bush and Cheney refined that technique by discovering that if you tell constant lies about everything, all the time, truth simply becomes completely irrelevant. That is what I think is going on now. We have reached the point where the lies have become so commonplace and ubiquitous that no one has any idea of truth anymore. This is why Republicans can now say anything they wish, no matter how unbelievably ridiculous, and there will be at least some who will believe them. And it is also why whatever Democrats say cannot be believed because no one believes there is any truth anymore. Thus when Republicans say the Obama health care proposals mean that old people will be put to death, no Democratic denial matters, because we have all been conditioned to understand that no one tells the truth. If Bachmann claims there were 50,000 or 500,000 supporters at her rally in D.C., and someone else claims there were a million, the police claim of 4,000 is no more acceptable than the larger numbers, because who knows anymore who is lying? If Republicans claim a huge victory in the election last Tuesday, and Democrats think otherwise, who is to know? Everything nowadays is just considered “spin” because that is what we have been fed for the past eight or more years. I have to concede, however grudgingly, that this was a brilliant strategy on the part of Bush/Cheney. The result of it is that nothing can be taken seriously as there is no truth. If I say Cheney is a blatant war criminal who should be prosecuted for his terrible unconstitutional and illegal atrocities, others will say he saved us from a fate worse than death, and who is to be the wiser? If I say we have no reason to be in Afghanistan and should get out as soon as possible, others will say that is unthinkable, but no one seems willing to explain why.

This is why I believe that there may be someone, somewhere, perhaps more than one (but not many), who must actually know the truth but won’t tell us what it is. It is all this uncertainty and doubt about veracity that has led me to start thinking about conspiracies. For example, I believe there is a “truth” about our continued “war” in Afghanistan, and that is we still must be planning to build a pipeline through that troubled land, but no one will admit it. I believe there must be a “truth” about Osama bin Laden as well that we are not being told. I doubt very much that a millionaire Saudi Prince is still hiding out in a cave in the wilds of Pakistan, and I also suspect that he may still be a CIA asset they cannot possibly reveal now (for good reasons). He certainly was an asset for Bush/Cheney as he became their only excuse for their barbaric and illegal behavior. Similarly, I have no idea what to believe about health care and its presumed changes. Some Democrats say one thing, some say another, Republicans just say “no” to whatever it is, and how could anyone possibly know the truth. If it passes I would venture to say we still won’t know the truth because the bill is almost 1000 pages, probably mostly gobbledy-gook that most of them have not bothered to read, and quite likely unintelligible so that it can be interpreted, reinterpreted, argued about and ignored for years. The Obama administration claims they have stopped torture, but some say they are still involved in renditions. How could I be expected to know what is true? It all reminds me of a story I once heard about a father who put his son on top of a fence post and told him to jump and he would catch him. The boy jumped and the father didn’t catch him. He said, “there, son, let that be a lesson to you, don’t trust nobody, not even your own father.”

Why can’t everyone be like our Independent (socialist) Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders? As near as I can make out he and Dennis Kucinich are about the only two people in Washington D.C. that have any interest in the public interest. Sanders says, rightly, that we must break up the huge “too big to fail” banks. I say hurrah! Yes, by all means we should do that. And while we are at it, we should break up all the big corporations, especially the corporate farms that are slowly trying to kill us with their pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and genetically modified crops. Here again we are caught up in lies so frequent and never-ending we have no way of knowing what is what. Some say genetically modified foods are perfectly safe, others (including me) say how do we know? They say they have been researched and found to be safe, but the research usually turns out to be research sponsored and paid for by those who want to modify our crops in the first place. So who do you want to believe? Again, we seem to have reached a place where no one knows who to believe. How convenient for those who want to just go ahead and do whatever they want. If we had any genuine interest in the public interest, when there is any doubt whatsoever about the possible deleterious effects of something, we should stop doing it until we really know. Not here, not in the good ol’ U.S.of A. Caught in the strangle-hold of our huge and immoral corporations we have to prove that something actually is harmful before any action can be taken. And simple correlations won’t do, so if there is a correlation between tobacco and lung cancer and such that doesn’t really count, let ‘em sell their poison until we can prove causation. Hey, it’s the American way, and Americans are infallible as well as being the greatest country on earth. Just ask Republicans, they never lie.

LKBIQ:
We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
Dave Barry

TILT: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870 (I am entering a Russian period).

Are They Trying to Kill Us?

Young man Halloween-costumed
as breathalyzer test, arrested
for drunk driving, blows 0.158.

One often raised objection to a change in our dysfunctional health care rackets is that we can’t afford it. Got that? We can’t afford health care. We can afford a “war” in Iraq that costs billions upon billions, another “war” in Afghanistan that costs more billions, a dismally failed “war on drugs” that costs billions, tax breaks for the filthy rich who do not need them that costs more billions, an “empire” that stretches around the world and costs billions, a defense budget that costs even more billions year after year, and we can’t afford health care for our citizens? Words like “pathetic,” “insane,” “stupid,” “absurd,” “ridiculous,” “disgusting,” and even “obscene,” do not even begin to describe how unutterably awful this is. And when you realize that most of the above expenses are not even necessary to begin with it gets even worse. The war in Iraq was completely unnecessary (and even illegal and a war crime), what should have been a police action in Afghanistan somehow became a war, the war on drugs is, and has been a dismal failure for years, we do not need 1000 or so bases around the world, especially in places like Germany and Japan, the tax breaks for the obscenely rich were certainly unnecessary. What does this tell you about American priorities? It tells me we are a bunch of pitifully stupid people who have no understanding of right and wrong, no empathy for suffering humanity, and no genuine sense of community. Our society has been increasingly dysfunctional for years and we are now paying the price for our inexcusable stupidity and short-sightedness.

There is also, at the moment, a problem that seems to have not yet registered with most of us. Namely, the Republican party, not content to be the party of “no,” is now actively trying to kill us (and I guess everyone else on the planet as well). Global warming is known to be a serious (even more than serious) threat to our planet. This is not a joke. The vast majority of our scientists, and scientists from all around the world, recognize this is happening and threatens our very existence. Democrats, who are currently in power in Washington, D.C., have been holding meetings to discuss this crisis (and it is a genuine crisis) and pass legislation that might lessen this dire threat. They can do nothing, however, unless at least two Republicans attend the meetings. Republicans are deliberately sending only one representative at a time, thus blocking any conceivable action that might be taken. This is irresponsible beyond belief and is, in fact, a threat to our very existence. They might as well be holding guns to our heads and insisting we just go quietly to our deaths. Granted global warming is not going to kill us all tomorrow, or next month, or even next year, but if left unchecked it is going to kill us, or certainly a great many of us. So why are Republicans doing this? You might say some of them are doing it because they are ignorant and uninformed, and don’t believe it is happening. Some think it might be happening but human activity has nothing to do with it. Some might be informed but simply don’t believe in science. But you can safely bet that the most basic reason they are resisting action on global warming is because they are getting lots of money from corporations who stand to lose money if any restrictions are placed upon their profit-driven, greedy, destructive enterprises. It is, alas, the American way.

Ah, yes, the elections yesterday. The ones Republicans are claiming were a referendum on Obama and predict how the vote will go in 2010, and even 2012. Obama, they claim, was the big loser, because two governorships went to Republicans and blah, blah, blah. This is known as “spin” nowadays. Actually, these elections most likely had nothing to do with Obama. And if they did, Obama probably came out the winner. Corzine in New Jersey was an unpopular governor and was quite a way behind his opponent in the early polls. Obama campaigned a bit for him, the result being he lost, but not by the large margin that had been predicted. Bloomberg is widely regarded as perhaps the best mayor of New York ever. As he also spent more than 100 millions of his own fortune it is not at all surprising that he won. You simply cannot use these two examples to demonstrate that Obama lost anything. Furthermore the exit polls made it clear that most voters said Obama had nothing to do with their votes. In California democrats picked up a seat in Congress that was pretty much expected. What was not expected was that the 23rd district in New York would elect a democrat for the first time since the Civil War. How can it be spun that Obama lost anything? The one truly disappointing vote was in Maine, where they proved they were every bit as bigoted as people in California. Obama had nothing to do with this vote. This is my interpretation of the votes. You may not agree with it, but it is an interpretation and not simply spin. Genuine attempts at interpretation are seldom if ever attempted by Republicans and their media puppets, preferring instead just more and more spin (lies) with no foundation or explanation whatsoever. I do not believe the elections of yesterday had anything to do with President Obama, nothing at all, but if Republicans want to believe they have already won in 2010 and 2012, that’s fine with me. But I truly wish they weren’t trying to kill me in the meantime.

LKBIQ:
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche

TILT:
Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein.

Is it all really real?

After argument, man spikes
wife’s tea with anti-depressant
to calm her down.

“I dreamed I was a butterfly, and now I do not know if I am a butterfly dreaming I am a man.”
Chuang Tzu

I once thought I was a sane person, but now I am not certain if I am an insane person who once merely thought I was sane. Events of the past few years, months, weeks, and days have left me terribly confused. I have begun to wonder if I am sane and the world insane or vice versa. Take Afghanistan for example. Here we have a situation where President Karzai presumably won re-election by a vote that everyone recognized was blatantly stolen. So, under pressure he agreed to a new vote. But then, his opponent announced that the second vote would be just as dishonest as the first one, so he withdrew. As a result of this Karzai was declared the winner and is still President of Afghanistan, and is acknowledged to be such by the U.S. So we are agreeing to recognize and work with an illegal head of state that is not acceptable to the majority of the Afghan people. I guess as we installed him as President in the first place, and now realize he is seriously corrupt, it will be okay to work with him. Strange, no?

Then there is my pet awesomely unbelievable situation with ex Vice-President Cheney. Cheney is a known war criminal who also engaged in what was a treasonous act against his own country by “outing” a secret service operative, destroying her career, and putting her colleagues in danger. His crimes and lies are so well known that they are now being discussed on the MSM. The law and the constitution of our country would seem to demand that he be brought to justice. Not only has that not happened, he walks around free and offers his (terrible) advice to our current President. Mysterious, is it not?

The 23rd district in New York State offers still another example of some really weird stuff. There was a perfectly respectable Republican candidate who was to run against a Democrat. But members of the truly conservative right-wing of the Republican Party, like Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, and others, decided she was not conservative enough so they conspired to oust her from the race in favor of an Independent candidate who is ultra conservative. The most interesting thing about this is that their preferred candidate, Hoffman, does not even live in the district, gave an unusually embarrassing press conference during which he admitted he knew nothing of their local issues, and seems (from the little I have seen of him) to be without charisma of any kind, and virtually without even a personality. As this district has not had a Democratic representative since Civil War times, Hoffman could even win (apparently he did not). But what the Republican conservatives hope to accomplish by this, whether he wins or not, is beyond my limited comprehension.

Then there is the perennial problem of Israel and Palestine. Obama has said the Israelis must stop their settlement building. The Palestinians have said there can be no further peace talks until Israel stops. Israel has refused to stop. Obama says he is committed to an Israeli/Palestinian peace accord. So, when Israel has refused to stop the settlements, and the Palestinians refuse to talk peace, what has the Obama administration done about it? Why, naturally, they have said the Israelis shouldn’t have to stop. Now doesn’t that make sense?

The issue of health care has become about as crazy as everything else. The American public wants a public option of some kind. Their corporate opponents do not. So our Congress, elected presumably to serve the public interest, have stalled and done everything they can to stop anything that might resemble a viable public option. Why do some of our Congresspersons and Senators do this? Why, they have accepted really big bucks from the corporations that oppose any meaningful change. What is truly insane about this is that everyone knows about it. Everyone knows they are being bribed and this is apparently considered appropriate behavior for a political system that claims to be a democracy. Even individual Senators who are known to have accepted large sums and are acting in the best interest of those who are paying them, are not being castigated or punished (or expelled from the Congress). This system of bribes and payoffs is now apparently considered just a natural part of our political system.

There are many other examples of what I regard as insanity or near insanity that are nowadays just considered “politics as usual.” Watching this, and hearing about it daily, I have come to believe that perhaps I am not who I am at all, but, rather, the Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. The line between sanity and insanity has been blurred in our country, or perhaps erased.

Although I admit to having been neglectful of late, I have not given up on my latest hobby, Collecting Sex Advice for Women as it Appears on Women’s Magazine Covers. This is the best hobby I’ve ever had, it’s cheap (costs absolutely nothing), it’s interesting, it’s easy, and it stimulates your imagination (because I never read these articles). Standing in line at the check-our station, I pursued the covers of some of the latest women’s magazines. Cosmopolitan featured this captivating title, “What He Thinks While Having Sex.” On the same cover I also found, “Foreplay Men Crave.” These were both featured in the “Sexy Bitch Issue.” Cosmopolitan is not called cosmopolitan for nothing. On Redbook’s cover was another sort of provocative title that almost made you want to read it, “Could a Stripper Pole Save Your Marriage.” Glamour threatened to undermine the entire trend of sex advice in women’s magazines by proclaiming, “Finally All the Answers to Sex and Love.” They also featured an article, “50 ways to dress your body sexier.” This latter almost doesn’t count as virtually all women’s magazine contain advice on dressing and being sexier: sexier hair, sexier legs, butts, thighs, dresses, hands, arms, eyes, and just about all other parts of the body (except feet, I have never yet seen any claims about having sexier feet). This is really a great hobby as you know it will be never-ending so you don’t have to worry about running out of material or having collected everything possible, and, like I said, it costs nothing (although the clerks sometimes raise an eyebrow or two).

LKBIQ:
Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
Nora Ephron

TILT:
I would not have liked Leon Trotsky personally.

Race to the Polar Sea

Race to the Polar Sea, The Heroic Adventures of Elisha Kent Kane, by Ken McGoogan (Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2008)

The primary theme of this fine book has to do with Elisha Kane’s attempt to find out what happened to the expedition of Sir John Franklin that had disappeared somewhere in the arctic. He was also attempting to prove there was a “Polar Sea” surrounding the North Pole. The belief in a Polar Sea, although we now know it was a nonsensical idea, was widely believed by a number of arctic explorers in the early to mid 1800’s. The belief was that if you could travel through the pack ice far enough to the north there would be open water surrounding the pole. Not only would there be such a sea, there would also be an abundance of fish and game. There were a number of reasons for why people believed in a Polar Sea, mostly based upon assumptions we know now to be false, but there is no need for me to mention these here.

I found this book of uncommon interest not only for the detailed account of Elisha Kane’s arctic trials, unbelievable hardships, and triumphs, but also because it tells one a great deal about Elisha Kent Kane himself, an unusually adventurous and fine young man who had traveled widely around the world before he led his famous expedition to the arctic. In search of nothing but adventure (and possible fame), Elisha had traveled widely in Brazil, China, Africa and Mexico by his mid twenties. Some idea of his adventures can be seen in the following quote: “Despite his youth, a weak heart, and recurring health problems, Elisha Kane had made countless tough decisions in difficult circumstances. He had descended into a volcano in the Philippines, infiltrated a company of slave traders in West Africa, grappled with thieves on the Nile River, and narrowly survived getting stabbed during hand-to-hand combat in the Sierra Madre.”

Elisha had been repeatedly confined to bed by sicknesses of various kinds. In spite of his ill health he continued his university studies. He had natural abilities in art, music, and literature, but also studied chemistry, mineralogy, mathematics, as well as geography. At nineteen, appraising his health, he decided to study medicine and become a doctor. He apprenticed himself to a well-known Philadelphia doctor, excelled in his tasks, and then enrolled in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated at the top of his class in 1842. His interest in medicine had always been more theoretical than practical, and as he did not need money, he began looking for opportunities for travel and adventure. As his father was exceedingly well-connected he was given a position as ship’s surgeon on one of four ships being sent to China (just after China had grudgingly opened its ports to foreign ships). He eventually traveled to other countries, and, upon returning to Philadelphia signed on for a trip to the arctic in search of Sir John Franklin. This first trip failed to find any trace of Franklin but gave Elisha enough arctic experience to then be chosen to lead a second expedition, the main theme of this book.

There is no mention of Elisha Kane having experience as a ship’s captain or the leader of any previous exploration, but apparently this was not deemed to be necessary for him to be put in charge of a second arctic voyage. He was certainly not without experience as in two and a half years he had traveled some 40,000 miles, sailing in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, and cruised the Mediterranean, Red and Adriatic seas. He had been on five continents and explored three of them. In this sense he was well qualified. But having experienced the brutal practices that occurred on sailing ships of the time, he had unusual ideas about how things should be run more democratically. While this endeared him to most of his crew it also caused him some trouble with some. In any case, Kane managed to sail farther north than anyone previously, discovered and named the Humbolt glacier as well as many other points in the arctic. He also discovered what later became known as the American route to the North Pole, the route than was subsequently followed by most other arctic voyagers.

His major troubles arose when his ship became stuck in pack ice and they had to spend the winter locked in that icy embrace. They suffered almost indescribable ailments from lack of the proper food, weeks without any daylight, and cold, cold, cold. Amputations of toes and feet became almost commonplace, scurvy was a constant problem, and, as might be expected in such a situation, some of the crew threatened mutiny. Somehow, in spite of his own ill-health, Kane managed to keep them all together, treat their ailments, and get them through the winter. But then, calamity, because their ship could not make it out of the pack ice for the second year as they had thought it would. Faced with a second year locked in the ice, with little food, and much desperation, their plight looked hopeless. Kane, however, unlike previous explorers, was not too proud to refuse help from the Eskimo, and making a pact with them, managed to survive the second year and then later lead the remaining crew on an almost impossible 1300 mile trip by sled and boat to safety and home.

Kane was also remarkable in that he kept very detailed logs of their day-to-day activities and hardships, and as he was an exceptionally gifted writer and lecturer (as well as unusually handsome) he finally received the fame he had sought, and even more than he might have imagined. I have not mentioned his strange love affair with a woman deemed unsuitable for him, his attempt (long before Eliza Doolittle) to make her acceptable, and his eventual marriage to her, against his father’s wishes, and unfortunately not long before his untimely death at thirty-seven. This is a truly fine book, a remarkable adventure story, and an account of a truly remarkable man who was once the toast of the world and has subsequently been rather badly neglected.

Stop Dithering!

Mercedes hit-and-run driver
claims he didn’t see six foot
orange rabbit’s bright pedicab.

Quityergoddamnedithering, that’s what I say. I’m not talking about Afghanistan. I’m talking about health care. For Dick the Slimy to criticize Obama and his many advisors of dithering over Afghanistan is not only insulting, it betrays once more Cheney’s complete indifference to reality, rules, morality, and the deaths of our troops. Obama and his advisors are attempting to try to craft some way to gracefully get out of the incredible mess Cheney and his puppet, Bush, left them, and it is not an easy task. Someone said they are looking for an exit but can’t find it. I suspect this is true. By shifting our troops early on to Iraq (itself a terrible mistake) and neglecting Afghanistan (which Bush/Cheney shamefully did), they made matters much worse than they might have been. Now Obama and his advisors are trying to find a way to correct these horrendous mistakes (not an easy task) and Cheney (who has been wrong about literally everything and should not even be showing his face in public) should just shut up and hope he can disappear into the dustbin of history without being put in jail (where he clearly belongs). Carefully reviewing the complete situation and trying to find a decent solution cannot reasonably be seen as dithering. Of course Cheney would have just sent in more and more troops, forever, to make sure his buddies in the defense and oil industries continue to make their exorbitant profits from permanent “war.” What does he care if more and more of our young people die and keep on dying as long as profits are to be made. Not only is Cheney a blatant and unrepentant war criminal, he is also a chronic liar. How he continues to avoid accountability for his evil deeds I will never understand. To think Bill Clinton was impeached for lying, as Cheney’s record of lying goes unpunished, makes me want to weep. Whatever good Obama manages to do, and I think it will be quite a lot, I will never forgive him for letting Cheney avoid responsibility.

But when it comes to dithering, can there be any greater example than our President and Congress dithering for months over health care? It is perfectly obvious that the easiest, quickest, cheapest, most efficient system of health care we could have for all our citizens would be a single-payer system, basically medicare for all. This apparently was not even considered. It was taken off the table even before negotiations began. Now, if we are lucky, we are maybe, possibly, perhaps, going to get some kind of public option that would make insurance companies have to compete for customers. But even the public option is slowly being made into an impossible dream as it has been modified into a system that will have only a very small percentage of the population eligible, which means it will not have enough clout to really compete with the insurance giants. Of course as things are going we may end up with no public option at all, in which case there will be no meaningful change in our totally dysfunctional health care system. This vacillating, pussyfooting, wishy-washy, timorous approach to health care will get us exactly nowhere. Having failed for 60 years to pass a decent health care system it appears we may be on the brink of failing dismally once again. And why is this? It is because our political system, from the Executive Branch right on down, has become completely dysfunctional itself. Whereas the President and Congress are supposed to act in the public interest, they no longer do so. Corporations and big money rule – everything, including our Senators and Congresspersons. The very few elected officials that argue for a sane system that would benefit the people, like the late Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders, are marginalized and even ridiculed as “socialists” by the bought and paid for morons they have to serve with, most of whom wouldn’t know socialism from a wart on their ass. What makes this worse is the fact that it is so blatantly obvious. Both Lieberman’s and Bayh’s wives, for example, are making big bucks from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. This is known. If Lieberman and Bayh claim this has nothing to do with their decisions they are lying. But even this pales in significance when compared with the money Baucus and others have taken from the corporations who want to kill health care. Most Americans want affordable and universal health care. The corporations and their whores in Congress do not. It’s unfortunately just that simple. I want universal health care in the form of a single-payer system like those that prevail in decent, moral, “civilized” cultures such as Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, and others (systems that are lied about and distorted constantly by those who want no such thing, who want to continue our broken system that provides them with their annual obscene profits that come from nothing but shuffling paperwork around and devising new schemes to rip us off). This is really what the dithering has been about, trying to create the impression of change without interfering with (and perhaps even improving) the profits of those who have been gaming the system for all these years. ” I’m mad as hell and…” what the hell can I do about it?

LKBIQ:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Krishnamurti

TILT:
An estimated 2000 species of geckos is thought to exist and there are more to still be discovered.

Who's Stupid?

Caught with stolen ferret
stuffed in his pants, thief
uses it as “deadly weapon.”

It is obvious by now that no matter what President Obama does, or doesn’t do, some Republican will attack him for either doing it or not doing it. The latest case in point is Cheney’s daughter criticizing Obama for meeting and honoring the caskets of our dead warriors, and taking photographers along. This can be dismissed as just another example of how absurd and petty Republicans can be. But there is a dimension to this ubiquitous criticism that I find of interest, as much of what they have been doing is so stupid I can’t understand why they are doing it.

You are all familiar I am sure with their “birthers” argument. Some of them have claimed, and some still do claim, that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore cannot truly be our President. This claim has repeatedly been shown to be completely false, Obama’s birth certificate has been produced and the State of Hawaii has vouched for its authenticity. Most people have given up pursuing this lost cause but there are still a few who haven’t.

Then there came the “deathers,” who have argued that Obama’s health care plan is really a plot to kill old people. This belief has been expressed not only by the real nut cases but even by some of our Senators and Congresspersons. Here, unlike the birthers, they picked up on a statement in one or another of the proposed health care bills that suggested doctors should be paid for counseling people about dying and death. This made their claim of “death panels” at least remotely plausible, but only if you believe that Obama and Democrats in general really might desire to kill old people (a most unlikely claim). Other forms of this argument had to do with Democrats apparent desire to kill women with breast cancer, handicapped children, and even our veterans, to say nothing of using registration rolls to select out and kill Republicans.

Also recently has been their stated outrage over the fact that in one pre-school, in one state, one time, in honor of black history month the children sang a song about the U.S. and also included lines referring to President Obama. To listen to Republicans on this you would think this was an established, universal, and fully required procedure, akin to the Chinese cultural revolution or the Nazi youth movement. It was, by the way, seven months after this happened that they saw fit to bring it up and raise such a fuss.

Now there is a rumor making the rounds that Obama is going to take over the Internet and thereby control what we can read and write and so on. This one seems to have such little foundation in fact that it hasn’t received as much play as most of the others. I think perhaps the best one of all, however, is the rumor that plans to maybe build a high-speed rail system across the U.S. is really a plot to be able to transport people more quickly to the concentration camps that have been built here and there by FEMA.

What I find of the most interest about all of these rather outrageous claims is not really where they originate, we know they originate with Republicans, desperate to attack Obama at every opportunity. There are many others having to do with false claims of raising taxes, how expensive health care will be, and so on, which might have at least some semblance of validity. But most of them are so completely far-fetched, so virtually insane, so absurd or ridiculous, I cannot believe those who say them can in fact believe them. This would seem to leave only two possibilities: either they do believe them and are completely stupid, or they don’t believe them but think they can get others to believe them, in which case they think the American public is unutterably stupid.

Could anyone actually believe that President Obama, or anyone in his administration, would want to kill old people, women with breast cancer, veterans or the handicapped? If so, how and when did we come to be so suspicious and fearful of our government? I may be wrong about this, but I don’t recall anything like this happening prior to the Clinton administration, when Republicans accused the Clintons of everything including outright murder. It is true that Lyndon Johnson was accused of killing Vietnamese children (“hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today”) but these were anti-war chants, not claims Johnson was about to kill our children or old people or such. I think the use of such outrageous claims can probably be traced initially, and mostly, from the Republican unfounded attacks on Clinton, through Karl Rove and the Bush/Cheney administration until they have now become institutionalized as part of the regular Republican strategy. Yes, I know that techniques such as false accusations can be traced back earlier, certainly to LBJ, but they were never before systematically used by an entire party to destroy the Presidency of another party, no matter who was President. Karl Rove has had much to do with this as he has always seemed to believe that anything at all was fair, as long as it benefitted Republicans and would help to bring about a permanent ruling class (of Republicans). At the moment they do it because they have no record of accomplishment they can stand on, and no ideas whatsoever about solving our current problems. I guess they think it is better to babble idiotically at every opportunity than to actually try to help (which might require effort and would no doubt reveal them as true enemies of the public).

LKBIQ:
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell

TILT:
What was previously known as Bechuanaland is now Botswana.

On Becoming an Octogenarian

On October 29, 1929, “Black Tuesday,” the U. S. Stock Market crashed… and I was born. I have never allowed my sometimes runaway ego to actually relate these two monumental events. But here I am now, eighty years later, another octogenarian, and it is quite possible the Stock Market could do it again. Things change, but stay the same.

If anyone asks me how to live to be eighty I tell them to live an exemplary life, completely free of sin and decadence, mind your mother, eat well, get lots of sleep and do everything in moderation…You there, I see you laughing, and that other guy smirking…I didn’t say this is how I, personally, managed to become eighty. Frankly, I have no idea how I managed to live so long, especially as during much of my life I was terribly self-destructive. You could say medical science has had much to do with it, as they have sometimes patched me up and also slowly turned me more and more into a cyborg. When I was a teen-ager I thought anyone would be lucky to live to be thirty-five. When I was 35 I figured maybe 50, then after that 65, but I never anticipated being 80…never… until yesterday. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the longer I have lived, the more the goal posts have changed. There are now, I estimate, probably at least 100,000 centenarians in the U.S., so I guess at best, by those standards, I am really just a young old man, or perhaps middle-aged.

But, depending upon how you look at it, eighty is pretty old. Naturally I remember (not always with nostalgia) many things from what does seem like a very long time ago. I remember when there was no Airline travel and no television. We listened to Amos and Andy and Jack Benny on the radio. I remember as a boy we had no refrigerator, only an old-fashioned ice box, and the iceman carried the 20 or 25 pound block up our back stairs once a week. Milk was delivered in bottles to our back porch, and during the winter it would expand, lifting the cardboard lids an inch or two in the air. Our only source for both heat and cooking was a wood stove in the kitchen and we had no telephone until I was in my teens. On the family farm in Post Falls we still farmed with horses until WW II, and I remember driving a team to rake the hay, and a horse-drawn stone boat to pick stones out of the fields. We had no hay bailer and pitched hay up into a horse-drawn wagon and then into the barn. People still darned their own socks, butchers gave away dog bones and even liver, and there were no supermarkets. Most every town had its own brewery. We used metal roller skates that you screwed onto your shoes with a key you hung around your neck and we swam only in the lakes and rivers. People wrote their manuscripts by hand, typewriters were not common, electric typewriters not yet invented, computers not even conceived. During the “Good War” there was rationing of gasoline, shoes, butter, meat, and I don’t remember what else, and we collected tinfoil, grease, and newspapers for the war effort. It was a time when men still tipped their hats to ladies, and perhaps even more shocking, there actually were “ladies.” I cannot deny thinking those were good times. Perhaps I was just too young to have become cynical. But I think I would argue even now that in general things really were better in those halcyon days than they are at present. Although I cannot explain it, it seems to me everything began to change for the worse with the atomic bomb.

For a long time, through my studies of anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, history, sociology, and diverse other subjects, I believed it would be possible to not only understand human behavior but perhaps be possible to change it for the better. I no longer think so. My eighty years of existence have revealed to me there is a dark and perverse side of human nature we do not understand that is apparently impervious to change and unpredictable in the extreme. While we have words for our behavior: envy, hate, sloth, gluttony, lust, greed, jealously, and so on, these are merely descriptions with no useful explanatory value. How do you explain a human history of virtually unremitting war, murder, arson, rape, torture, misery, and plunder, a history of the most unbelievable acts of savagery even by those societies who have claimed to be the most “civilized?” Man’s in humanity to man continues unabated, only the means of causing such misery change over time. If there is a “missing link” in human evolution it is not some mysterious skeletal intermediate form midway between man and non-man, but, rather, some basic element that would allow us to live in peace and harmony with our fellows. It is unlikely that such an element ever existed in our evolutionary past, far more likely it has just never developed at all.

So… now I am pretty old, pretty cynical, not likely to change, and certainly not going to get any younger. Many of my classmates and friends are now gone, although a few are still alive, in conditions ranging from horrible to not so bad. One is still alive after suffering two devastating strokes, another is still alive hospitalized with severe Parkinson’s, several have wives that have recently died, and one has just entered a Nursing Home he terms the “Penultimate Arms.” Still another keeps going, although he has more health problems than you can count. He keeps reminding me that “we all just remain infants, but in increasingly decaying bodies.” I think he is right, although some of us are lucky to decay much slower than others. I am one of the lucky ones, a situation I accept with much gratitude from the “Great Mystery.” Perhaps if my luck continues I will someday join that cohort of centenarians who, after being broken down by age and sex, and carefully studied, might actually give us a useful clue to longevity.

Would I do the same things if I had it to do over again? No way, and I suspect people who say they would do so, did not really "live." Do I have any regrets? Yes, many, but mostly, and most personally, I regret not having been able to be a father before I became a son.

Time to Surrender?

Man claims he is too fat
to have climbed stairs
to shoot his son-in-law.

“Tell General Howard I know his Heart. What He told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting, Looking Glass is dead. too-Hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are--perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

The above is the famous surrender speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce delivered at the Bears Paw Battle, October 5, 1877. It was clear that he could no longer deny being defeated and surrendered with dignity. Although the circumstances are entirely different, there are some eerie similarities between what happened to the Nez Perce and what is happening to us now. Many of our warriors are dead, or dying, or exhausted. Our children are hungry and without food, many are ill with no health insurance, more and more are becoming homeless, many are functional illiterates, there is no work, we have exhausted our credit, winter is coming, and we are facing defeat.

Unlike the Nez Perce, we are not facing defeat by enemies far too powerful to overcome, rather, we have defeated ourselves. Evil, greedy, power-mad men, temporarily in charge of our nation, took what should have been a relatively simple police problem and converted it into two completely unnecessary and illegal “wars.” The results have been and continue to be disastrous. We have spent ourselves into near, if not de facto bankruptcy, almost destroyed our military, become a pariah among the nations of the world, and are rushing headlong into potential oblivion. We have become weak and what we are doing is no longer in our own best interest. The only way we will ever recover from these terrible mistakes is to admit defeat, with as much dignity as possible, and begin to repair our seriously damaged country. In order to do this we must admit we cannot subdue and dominate the rest of the world by force, bring all our troops home, use the money we will save by reducing our obscene budget for the military/industrial/political complex system to pay off our debts and rebuild our country and our reputation. We should give up the absurd idea that we are the world’s policemen and tend to our own business.

Do I believe this will happen? Do I believe it is politically possible? Of course not. Do I believe it ought to happen? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Could it happen? I think so. The neocons and their fellow travelers who got us into this mess now say these are Obama’s wars. They are not. Obama did not start them, but he could stop them. He could apologize to the rest of the world, admit that Bush/Cheney made terrible mistakes, and announce that we will no longer pursue them. He could, and should, hold those responsible for these war crimes accountable. With the vast sums of money he could save he could easily reduce our outstanding debts as well as provide health care, more and better education, and rebuild our seriously deteriorating infrastructure, thus actually making us a much stronger nation than we are currently. Not only that, he could actually help other nations instead of destroying them. This, I believe, would be the right thing to do.

Of course if Obama were to do this, even though it would be the right and brave thing to do, those on the right who long for permanent wars and more killing, torture, and human misery, would be on him like a pack of attack dogs. He would be termed a coward, soft on terrorists, weak, unfit to be Commander-in-Chief, an appeaser, to say nothing of being a socialist, fascist, communist, treasonous scoundrel who sold out the country. He would probably lose his Presidency. But what a way to go! All the rest of the world would consider him a martyr, the President who gave up his Presidency to save his nation. What greater reward could anyone desire?

LKBIQ:
For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Sir Winston Churchill

TILT:
The Ironwood tree is found only in the Sonoran desert, and only below 2,500 feet.