Jon Swift
The Grind
Pushing Rope
Jaded
A Bird’s Nest
A Commonplace Book
Pacific Views
The Naked Truth
Marginal Utility
…and a couple of my favorite nonpolitical blogs
who are long overdue for a blogrollin’…
Four Four
Dlisted
Waiter Rant
Friday Blogrollin'
Jon Swift
The Grind
Pushing Rope
Jaded
A Bird’s Nest
A Commonplace Book
Pacific Views
The Naked Truth
Marginal Utility
…and a couple of my favorite nonpolitical blogs
who are long overdue for a blogrollin’…
Four Four
Dlisted
Waiter Rant
Rock on a Roll
Did anyone else see Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson on Countdown tonight? He totally kicked ass. Keith was asking him about the Bush supporters in SLC who felt he was doing them a disservice by appearing at a protest against Bush, and he had the most brilliant response: If he'd met Bush at the airport, and accompanied him to his speech, and stood at his side grinning, and applauded him, and stood as part of a standing ovation, no one would have said a word. Support is expected, and accepted. Dissent is not.
Question of the Day
We’ve already had a great question today, care of the ever-splendid Waveflux, so make sure to stop by that thread, if you haven’t already.
For this evening’s question: If you remember, how did you stumble across Shakespeare’s Sister?
Actual Headline
Bush says U.S. must win in Iraq—Oh, why didn’t you just say so before? Now, we’re sure to turn that proverbial corner.
How ridiculous is this rhetoric getting?
"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq… The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation ... and on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism… They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century.”The security of the civilized world depends on the total annihilation of all terrorists? Come on. Completely ending terrorism isn’t even possible; nearly every major world power in “the civilized world” has suffered domestic terrorist attacks (including the US). Our collective security is more likely to be undermined by a major economic disaster, global warming, or pandemic influenza than Islamic terrorists. Get a fucking grip.
And the comparison between stateless terrorists and “totalitarians of the 20th century” couldn’t be more inaccurate—politically, militarily, objectively, in any way logically…it just doesn’t make any damn sense. It’s historically nonfactual hyperbole. End of story.
President Potty Mouth
Dozens of viewers are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to order broadcast fines over President Bush’s swearing at the G-8 summit in July.The FCC has received over two dozen complaints. Wah wah wah.
Bush apparently thought a microphone was off while he was speaking privately with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a luncheon at the leaders’ meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia. Discussing fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Bush used the word s—. His comments , picked up and carried over TV and radio feeds, came just four months after the Federal Communications Commission said that the word was one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit words relating to excretory activity in the English language and would likely trigger fines if broadcast.
Had I no integrity, they’d be receiving one more. But my complaining about Bush cursing would sort of be like him complaining about my grammar.
Oy
Wait Til He Gets His Haynes on You: “Maybe Bush thinks he can sneak him by in August when nobody is noticing. Bush has again nominated the previously filibustered William J. Haynes II as Justice for the Fourth District Court. Yeah. Again. Haynes gets not even a once over in the AP cite.” The Heretik’s got more at the link.
Recovered Scream
Edward Munch’s The Scream and Madonna have been found after being stolen two years ago. A serendipitous day for their recovery as far as I’m concerned, considering how I’m feeling today, heh.
"We are 100 percent certain they are the originals," police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. "The damage was much less than feared."Huzzah. I’ve always really liked those pieces.
It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again
Iran remained defiant Thursday as a U.N. deadline arrived for it to halt uranium enrichment, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said unanimity among the Security Council was not needed to take action against Tehran.I think they’re playing “Exchange a Letter,” too. N for Q.
Key European nations will meet with Iran in September in a last-ditch effort to seek a negotiated solution to the standoff over Tehran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, a senior U.N. diplomat said Thursday.
President Bush said "there must be consequences" for Iran, adding that the war between Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants and Israel demonstrated that "the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran."
And guess what? I have precisely the same questions/objections I had during the first verse of this song. Where is the unassailable evidence from the intelligence community proving the administration’s claims of the “grave threat” that necessitates an immediate action? Once again, it doesn’t exist.
Last August, the first major review since 2001 of what is known and what is unknown about Iran found that “that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon,” and represented “consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies” and a total contrast to “forceful public statements by the White House.” Back in April, Stephen Rademaker, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, claimed Iran could produce a nuclear bomb in 16 days. Huh. That’s quite a fucking disparity, no?
The House Intelligence Committee thinks so, too. Last week, they issued a report warning against uncritically marching down the same road to a war in Iran as we did to war in Iraq, asserting “American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear weapons program” and that information "regarding potential Iranian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs is neither voluminous nor conclusive" and “little evidence has been gathered to tie Iran to al-Qaeda and to the recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.”
What’s that? It almost sounds like the administration is pushing an agenda rooted in inconclusive intelligence on both WMDs and terror ties. Gee, that has a familiar ring.
And, like I’ve said before, all the assumptions in the world can’t substitute as evidence. If we need to take action against Iran, then fine. But that need must be determined by rigorous analysis of facts, not by the Bush Gut, or pants-wetting fears about what could be, or the salivation of warmongers, or anything else. This administration has already blown it big time once.
No doubt Ahmadinejad is a nutball. But is he a nutball tiger with teeth, or with just a roaring bravado masking his lack of them? (To use a contemporary reference, is he a nutball who actually killed a blond little pageant princess, or a nutball who just claims to have killed her?) Before the Iraq war, the suggestion that Saddam was a toothless tiger was considered laughable—and yet, it was right. Saddam was the John Mark Karr of despots—an odious, nasty dude with a wicked history, and totally innocent of the current crimes he himself professed to commit. We've got a bad track record following such men down the trails they want us to go, and we need to be sure we're not making the same mistake again.
Barkley Gets It Right
Snap:
Charles Barkley [former NBA MVP, who is considering running as a Democratic candidate for governor in his home state of Alabama] was … a Republican until recently, saying he switched parties when the Republicans "lost their minds." He said he is troubled by some of the actions of people in the United States in the name of religion.Anyone else getting tired of thinking “I’d vote for this actor / basketball player / comedian / businessperson / dude with whom I just shared an elevator / 8-year-old child / quick-witted mongrel / lamp post in a heartbeat over Bush”? Sigh. It seems like there’s almost no one who understands America less than the man currently charged with leading it.
"Religious people in general are so discriminatory against other people, and that really disturbs me," he said. "My idea of religion is we all love and respect. We all sin, but we still have common decency and respect for other people. So right now I'm struggling with my idea of what religion is."
He also said he supports gay marriage.
"I think if they want to get married, God bless them," Barkley said.
…"When you get elected to public office, you're supposed to represent everybody. Your job is not to take care of the rich or the poor or the black or the white. Your job is to take care of everybody."
(Hat tip Pam.)
Dear America, Wake the fuck up. Love, Shakespeare’s Sister
Mark, seriously pissing me off not because he’s wrong, but because he’s exactly right:
The death knell for our secular, balanced-power democracy will be sounded before a somnambulant, unconcerned, and flaccidly assenting silent majority. To pass off the final outrage, it will only be necessary to whip up the basest xenophobic terror. The Final Dismantling will be performed by bureaucrats promising liberty from a “new fascism” by imposing one. They will promise peace through war. They will promise freedom through arbitrary detention, and human rights through torture. They will label thoughtful discussion as treason, and careful analysis as unserious.What has him in such a state of despair? Our president, explaining that the ruling of a Federal District Court is wrong, because it does not address to his satisfaction—and according to his definition—“the world in which we live.” Our government, barring two American citizens from re-entering the country, because they refuse to consent to FBI interrogations in Pakistan—interrogations which violate their civil rights. Our Secretary of Defense referring to administration and war critics as appeasers of "a new type of fascism." And all the bloody rest of it.
Sound familiar? That’s because most of their work is already done.
I can’t imagine what it will take to jolt the sleepy, lackadaisical masses from their blissful ignorance, because if they wait to get outraged about the plans for massive detention centers until someone they know is actually relocated to one, it’s too late. If they wait to get outraged until the redistribution of wealth until they’ve lost their own home to foreclosure, it’s too late. If they wait to complain about dissenters being branded traitors until they object to something and find themselves at the blunt end of political marginalization, it’s too late. Nothing seems to matter to Americans until it directly affects them, and, by then, it’s almost always too late.
Instead, they will suffer all manner of indignity being imposed upon others to preserve themselves. Wiretapping other people without a warrant is fine. Holding other people indefinitely without access to an attorney or due process is fine. Torturing other people is fine. Maligning other people for dissent is fine. Disenfranchising other voters is fine. Rewarding corporations for moving jobs filled by other people offshore is fine. Destroying the environment for other generations is fine. Cutting federal funding for programs that benefit other people is fine. Denying equal rights to other people is fine. Using other people as a wedge issue is fine. Denying bodily autonomy to other people is fine. It’s all fair play as long as it’s not being done to me, and you tell me it’s keeping me safe and happy.
It’s all about me. What is perhaps most despicable about this attitude in America is that we are largely a nation of Christians (as we are constantly reminded by the most ostentatious adherents), a religion which has as its centerpiece the notion of personal sacrifice for, literally, everyone else, yet the majority of Christians seem to have drawn from the story of Jesus not the notion of self-sacrifice, but the notion that someone else will make the sacrifice for them. God sent his only son to die so that we might live forever, I was told week after week after week in church, my entire childhood, and as I look across the American landscape and see nothing but people willing to let others suffer and despair for their security, I can’t help but think that too many Christians have not learned to identify with the savior, but are instead quite content to sit back and be saved. They reaped the rewards of the Messiah’s death; might as well reap the rewards of the lashes on the backs of the prisoners at Gitmo, too. (And false rewards, at that.)
It’s all about me. There is no sense of an American community, and certainly not a global one. Americans look at those in worse circumstances than themselves and see not the myriad of ways to help, but instead breathe a sigh of relief—at least I’m not them. And when we’re not busy using the less fortunate as a way to bolster our own trembling sense of security, we hold them in contempt, and claim it’s because we resent the drain of resources they create, cloaking the reality that they remind us of our dereliction of duty toward our fellow citizens, and, worse yet, that they remind us what a thin line separates us from them.
It’s all about me. We still remain a dreadfully segregated nation, and much of the country shields its residents from even a passing familiarity with any alternative American experience to their own, leaving the majority of Americans incapable of comprehending how someone outside their race, sexual orientation, and particularly social class might arrive at a drastically different destination in life than they have. Knowing people who aren’t like us is the key to empathy, to caring about the struggles, blockades, and even the most basic circumstances of people who don’t share our individual experiences. People sniff at multiculturalism and shrug at the suggestion that international travel is a necessary experience to broaden our own isolationist horizons. We are actively discouraged, by omnipresent reassurances that “America is the best country in the world!” that we don’t need to experience other cultures because they have nothing to offer (and we are actively prevented from world travel by being provided with the shortest vacation times in the Western world). America is the center of the universe for many Americans—and often, not even the whole of America, but just their own region, state, town, neighborhood. Best place in the country in the best country in the world. Why leave, even for a day? Incuriosity. Ignorance. It’s all about my home, my experience, me.
It’s all about me. The American Dream is not, and has never been, that we collectively eradicate poverty, provide equal opportunities, and celebrate our shared success, but that each of us as individuals would achieve some sort of perfect destiny of wealth, health, and security. And always—obscured, inextricably—tied to that is the notion that for some to succeed, others must fail. The American Dream is a zero-sum game, and once I got mine, I don’t have to give a shit about everyone else who ain’t got theirs; in fact, it’s because they don’t that I’m so fortunate. Oh, but did I mention I got here on my own steam? It’s completely, irrationally schizophrenic, and it’s an intractable component of the American definition of success, to which we are all, subtly and overtly, encouraged to aspire.
It’s all about me. If it’s not directly affecting us, most Americans just don’t feel the need, or the obligation, to care.
Except it’s not all about me. “In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.” — Martin Niemoller, Lutheran pastor in Berlin, arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1938; the Allied forces freed him seven years later.
By the time it affects you, it’s too late.
Put. That Coffee. Down.
Alec Baldwin is one of those actors that I should probably like more than I do. I've seen him in just a smattering of roles: the pre-Harrison Ford Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October; the dissolute movie star Bob Barringer in State and Main; an unfortunate turn as the iconic Lamont Cranston in The Shadow; a self-portrayal on The Simpsons. And, of course, his stirring performance as Mr. Conductor in Thomas and the Magic Railroad. I've always found Baldwin kind of slight, a little underwhelming. But for me, his entire career is redeemed and vindicated by the eight minutes or so he spends in a role especially written for him in the film version of David Mamet's testosterone fest, Glengarry Glen Ross. To put it succinctly:
Alec Baldwin's cameo scene from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross is a classic distillation of what the ideology of hard selling is all about: high pressure, shame, humiliation, competition, and the link between financial success and self worth.
Baldwin's character, the crisply-dressed and pitiless Blake, parachutes into a sleepy real estate office to threaten, berate, and otherwise motivate its hapless salesmen. His performance, fired by Mamet's dialogue, is truly a thing of beauty:
Blake: Put. That Coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers. (Levene scoffs) Do you think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I'm here from downtown. I'm here from Mitch and Murray. And I'm here on a mission of mercy. Your name's Levene?
Levene (Jack Lemmon): Yeah.
Blake: You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?
Eight minutes of pure venom, delivered with a passionate contempt.
Moss (Ed Harris): I don't have to listen to this shit.
Blake: You certainly don't, pal. 'Cause the good news is -- you're fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonights sit. (Pause) Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, you are shit, hit the bricks, pal and beat it, 'cause you are going out.
Levene: The leads are weak.
Blake: "The leads are weak." Fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years -
Moss: What's your name?
Blake: Fuck you, that's my name. You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove a eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name.
Brings a smile to my face every time.
My question (and I do have one): Is there an actor whom you generally discount who yet managed to utterly floor you (in a good way) with a performance?
(You know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes cross-posts to sell real estate.)
Crumble
May 17: “[T]he first signs of decay are starting. … Subtle things, that no one else seems to notice, as they happen ever so slowly. The schools and the library and other public buildings aren’t quite as clean, quite as kept-up, as they used to be. The streets aren’t quite as clean. The potholes and the cracked sidewalks don’t get fixed as quickly, or at all. There are more houses around town that need fresh paint, more vacant retail spaces. Little things. Little degrees of difference. But they’re everywhere, when you really look. They’re the little things that indicate that salaries aren’t keeping up with inflation, that local and state governments don’t have the funds they used to. Belt-tightening everywhere. The house can go another year without paint. The City Hall can go another year, or two, without tuckpointing. We can get rid of a couple of sanitation trucks, give up a couple of salt trucks in the winter. We don’t need two toll booths onto the interstate open; one is fine. Little things that no one really notices, to stave off the rot for as long as we can. Little things that happen in communities like mine before crime starts to go up in communities that aren’t as fortunate, communities that don’t have any give in their belts to begin with. … [We] need someone to care about putting money—and attention—back into America again.”
Today: “You know how to tell when a nation is in decline? Just look at its infrastructure. A society on the rise is marked by trains that run on time and well, highways that are a pleasure to drive upon, and basic services that work well. That's not happening in the U.S. anymore. Our pal RJ Eskow details: ‘The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.’ The U.S. is in decline, ladies and germs, and that decline has been hastened by the people in power for the past six years.”
Hastened by the war in Iraq, which was supposed to pay for itself. My governor, Mitch Daniels, who was the White House Budget Director during the run-up to the war, asserted the war would be an “affordable endeavor,” and rejected as “very, very high” the chief White House economic adviser’s estimate that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. The war has already cost us well over $200 billion.
Hasted by out-of-control wasteful government spending, with Congress having approved a record $29 billion in earmarks for 2006, including crap like $591,017,000 for eight additional C-130J aircraft, even though a “2004 report from the office of the inspector general of the Department of Defense rated the J model unsatisfactory and cited deficiencies in, among other things, its defensive systems,” and $1,300,000 for berry research in Alaska.
Hastened by tax cuts, 70% of the savings generated by which benefit the top 2% (those making $200,000 or more) of taxpayers. Bush’s tax cuts cost the government over $75 billion in revenue from those making $100,000 or more. (See chart below.)
(Click on image for larger view.)
Hasted by the increasing disparity in wealth between individuals and corporations. (See chart below, via Eric Hopp.)
“[W]ages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as ‘the golden era of profitability’.”
Additionally, corporations share significantly less of the tax revenue burden than they used to. “In 1965, individual taxpayers paid 66% of all US income taxes, and corporations paid about a third. But by 2000, the corporate share had dropped to 18%, just about half what it used to be.”
And it has fallen since. TomPaine: “The treasury department reports the federal government collected $184 billion in corporate income taxes in 2004 (up from $ 132 billion in 2003)—or just 9.6 percent of total taxes collected.”
In less than 40 years, corporations’ tax share fell from 31% to less than 10%. Meanwhile, the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 1998, and “the median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation,” even though productivity (and corporate profits) continued to rise steadily over the same period.
The average American worker is being robbed blind by a massive redistribution of wealth orchestrated by a government that leaves itself wallowing in deficits and unable to sustain the infrastructure on which those Americans depend. The nation is crumbling. If we continue down this path, forget drowning the government in a bathtub; we won’t even be able to afford the tub.
Sic 'Em, Keith!
Keith Olbermann goes after Rummy like a pitbull. Transcript at the link, if you can't watch. Here's just a snippet.
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."
Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men; not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."
And so, good night and good luck.
Question of the Day
What's your favorite scary movie?
I don't get scared by horror movies, slasher films, thrillers...although I love them. (I find movies like An Inconvenient Truth a lot more chilling.) My favorite at the moment is probably 28 Days Later.
(Sorry for the light posting today, Shakers. I'll be back tomorrow with a little more vim and vigor.)
Caption This Photo
President Bush walks away from the 'New Birth Brass Band' before meeting with local residents and volunteers on Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006 in New Orleans, La. Bush is visiting the Gulf Coast to mark the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
