A Whistleblower Freed

So, the US news sites I checked yesterday didn't even mention it, but yesterday morning whistleblower Bradley/Chelsea Manning was freed after serving seven years of a thirty-five year sentence,  sometimes under conditions international rights groups decried as torture, for leaking news about war crimes ("Collateral Murder") and an illegal surveillance program.

It's been a long time coming.

Now if only the US would stop its attempts to jail Snowden and Assange.

Here's the link.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/17/chelsea-manning-released-from-prison

--John R.

John Oliver re. Third Parties

I've been meaning to add this as an addendum to my earlier political post, but have decided it's too good to bury.

Here's John Oliver giving the minor party candidates, Gary Johnson and Dr. Jill Stern, the same kind of treatment usually reserved for the major party nominees.

His conclusion: things are just as weird at that end of the spectrum. No, really.

Here's the clip, with the usual warnings about (a) language and (b) politics, either of which might offend.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3O01EfM5fU


Thanks to Alex W. for letting me know this was out there.

--John R.

The Voter Pamphlet Arrives . . .

So, our Voter's Pamphlet arrived a few days ago, a sure sign the election really is coming at last. Here's hoping it spells the end of Crazy Season, which has been going on for a year and more by this time.

The initiatives I haven't been paying any attention to up to this point, so I have some catching up to do there. Most of them seems to have the 'argument against' mantra of 'we can't afford that; we need all that money for education' -- a good argument but at first glance of dubious relevance. We'll see.

On the other hand, the statewide offices and Senate/Congress ones are all down to just two contestants each, thanks to the primary having weeded out the plethora of minor candidates (the judicial candidates are always tricky but hopefully Grubbstreet will do his usual good job there).

The most important election, the presidential one, by contrast has seven contenders: the only place the minor parties make an appearance. There are the two major parties (Democrat & Republican), two minor parties (Libertarian and Green), and three fringe parties (The Constitution Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, and the Socialism & Liberation Party -- the latter two of whom shd really have combined efforts, so similar are their write-ups).

To tackle the small parties first: the Constitution Party is all about 'sovereignty', as they wd define it. They want an end to foreign wars (something I cd get behind). And foreign aid (which is where we part company). And for us to pull out of the U.N. And abolish the Federal Reserve. And go back on the gold standard. And not only put a stop to abortion but to get Congress to pass laws to prevent the Supreme Court from ever being able to rule on that issue again. Which only goes to show that for all that they call themselves the 'Constitution' party, they don't seem to have much of a grasp of what our Constitution actually is.

As for the two Socialist parties, they really shd have co-ordinated better and made some kind of common cause instead of splitting their micro-share of the electorate. Both want to bring an end to Capitalism, they both want the same three political prisoners freed (none of whom I'd ever heard of). One has a more quirky approach, embracing the cause of Lavoy Finicum (the guy who was shot dead during the Bundy-led Oregon standoff a few months back when he pulled a gun on federal agents) and wants recognition for the good work Cuban 'volunteers' did in Angola back in 1974 or '75 (I forget which; back in the Jerry Ford era anyway). The other includes concern for environmentalism as well as a wide array of specific points, such as shutting down all our overseas bases, cutting Israel loose, and a call for Puerto Rican independence (something the Puerto Ricans don't actually want).

Of the two minor parties, I have sympathies with the Greens and would consider voting for them if I thought they stood the ghost of a chance, which they don't. I don't have any sympathy for the Libertarians, though I must admit their write-up of Gary Johnson makes it sound as if the man could walk on water. good job whoever wrote that up.  Though his boast about being incapable of working with his state legislature (he brags that he cast more vetoes than all the other governors of his state put together) is unsettling. And a few minutes' look at Wikipedia shows that he's a booster of school vouchers (which I view as a way to loot public schools for private ones, making an end run around integration laws in the process) and, what's even worse, private prisons (quite aside from the fact that essential public services shd not be lobbed off to the lowest bidder, private prisons have a nasty record all their own).

That just leaves the two major party candidates, Trump and Clinton. Fivethirtyeight.com shows Mrs. Clinton with a massive lead, barring some 'October surprise'. We'll soon know which one becomes president.


--John R.

I Shd Read the Local Papers More Often (Poke-em-With-a-Stick-Wednesday)

So, a few days ago I learned through a piece in the freebie local paper, THE KENT REPORTER, that the week before our state's governor, Jay Inslee, put a moratorium on all executions in Washington State. Here's the editorial in favor of the decision:

http://www.kentreporter.com/opinion/246242001.html


My take on this is:  Just like that, the world became a better place.

We're still caught up in a twelve-year war that shd have ended eleven years ago

We're still running a gulag to imprison men for life without trial

We're still doing a lot of things we shdn't. But sometimes, we get things right. And this is one of those times. So, good for Governor Inslee.

For a haunting look at a visual presentation of the last words of some recently executed people, see the following link; be sure to scroll down past the story to see the images:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/death-row-photography_n_4644109.html


--JDR

Bork

So, on the principle that if you can't say anything nice, you're probably better saying nothing at all, I'd intended to pass over the recent passing of Judge Robert Bork in silence. After all, Toobin's obituary  pretty much covers it, I thought:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/postscript-robert-bork-1927-2012.html

Then last night saw another piece that seemed worthwhile sharing for its perspective of someone who knew Bork:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/robert-borks-tragedy/


So, any time you find yourself thinking about all the damage Justice Scalia has done on the Supreme Court over the course of his long tenure, remind yourself that it cd have been much, much worse. So far as I know, Scalia has never broken the law, never deliberately subverted the Constitution, never acted on the basis that if the president does it, by definition that makes it legal (and then reversed himself when someone from the other party became president).

His passing also reduces to a handful the few remaining Nixon cronies*: Kissinger and Buchanan are the only two I can think of offhand.

--JDR


*whose hundredth birthday this week has once again seen efforts by Nixon apologist to scrub his record.

Lynyrd Skynyrd and the ship of Theseus

So, I was surprised to see an advertisement on the big flashing billboard next to the ShoWare center in downtown Kent that Lynyrd Skynyrd are performing there on Sept. 27th. I'm old enough to remember the night their plane crashed (we were spending hours in a bus on a band trip, as I recall) back in '77, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and putting an end to the group (several of whom were badly injured and years in healing). They were already fading as a group at the time, but the tragedy bestowed a 'legendary' status on them, as it so often does (cf. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jim Croce, et al.)

I knew about the Rossington-Collins band the survivors had briefly formed (circa '79-80), which was pleasant enough but not memorable: their instrumental version of "Freebird", for example, felt meandering and unfocused. It turned out, as is so often the case, that the singer/songwriter lead vocalist is the one member a band can't do without.* And I was vaguely aware that more recently some (not all) of the survivors had re-formed years later for some special event, with Van Zant's little brother standing in as their vocalist. But I guess I hadn't realized they'd stayed together after the tribute was over.** A little checking online revealed that of the six band members who'd been alive after the crash (guitarists Rossington, Collins, and King; pianist extraordinaire Powell, drummer Pyle, and bassist Wilkeson), only three are living now (it has been thirty-five years ago, after all, and the southern rock lifestyle does not encourage longevity): Rossington, King, and Pyle. And of those three, only one is still in the group (Rossington).

Which raises the question: is a band with only one original member still the same band? At what point does it become "those people touring the local casinos as 'Lynyrd Skynyrd' " rather than the real thing?*** How big a role does continuity play (e.g., the Rolling Stones only has three of its original members; the newly reformed Beach Boys only two, Pink Floyd only one****)?

It turns out there's a classical precedent for this, the so-called paradox of 'the Ship of Theseus', which goes something like this:

Plutarch writes that even in his day (1st century AD) the Athenians still had on display the original ship Theseus used (presumably in his famous voyage to and from Crete some twelve hundred years before, the one that ended badly when he forgot to swap-out his black sails). But it'd needed maintenance over the centuries, with rotting timbers replaced by new ones as needed, until there was actually no piece left of the original ship. The question: is it still the same ship, or not?

In the philosophical conundrum, it depends on whether you value the whole or the parts, the ideal or the material, the continuity or a particular moment in time (and, if so, which).

In the case of the band, I think the announcement that Lynyrd Skynyrd is scheduled to play the Republican national convention later this month answers that question: I don't think the band that wrote and recorded "Things Going On", not to mention the denunciation of Wallace and Nixon in "Sweet Home Alabama", their most famous song, wd be a good fit for the gathering in Tampa. Which leads me to think, in this case at least, the answer is No: Not the Same.

--John R.

P.S.: Thanks to my sister, who gave me a copy of Skynyrd's SECOND HELPING just before I moved to Fayetteville, telling me it was so I'd listen to something else besides the music I usually listened to (Captain & Tennille, the Beatles). I still have that album, and still listen to it once in a while (though more often to the version on Itunes). At Fayetteville I added SILVER AND GOLD (which I think had been recommended by my friend Franklin; I know I got it at the Record Exchange, where he was working at the time) and a cassette of their first album (which also, amazingly enough, still plays just fine, over thirty years later). Music and Memories: how well they go together.

* cd. INXS for a more recent example.

**which apparently violated an agreement they'd all made with the widows of two members killed in the crash, that the survivors wdn't use, and thus cheapen, the name 'Lynyrd Skynyrd'.

***a question people used to ask about Jefferson Starship, with its endless shifting line-up.

****although in the later two cases one of the 'replacements' has been with the group since very early on (mid-to-late sixties)

"Thank God for Mississippi"

So, we have a saying in Arkansas: "thank God for Mississippi". The reason behind it being that, as far behind the rest of the country as we may be in Arkansas (48th or 49th in things like education, poverty, &c), things were usually reliably slightly worse on the wrong (east) side of the Mississippi. I've been away now for a long time, first having gone to live up in Yankeeland (Wisconsin) and now the West Coast, but I see from today's news that some things never change. Here's the quote:

Interracial marriage laws were overturned by the Supreme Court

in 1967, but a significant minority of Mississippi and Alabama

apparently still long for their return, or are at least ambivalent

about the idea. In Alabama, 67 percent of respondents said interracial

marriage should be allowed, but 21 percent said it should

be illegal and another 12 percent were not sure.

Mississippi Republican voters were even more divided:

Only 52 percent said such marriages should be legal,

versus 29 percent who said they should be banned

and 17 percent who were unsure.

Of course it cd be worse: it's better to have just over half of the Mississippians to be on the right side of history than the other way around. But looks like it's going to be a long time before they're ready to join the rest of us in the twenty-first century.

Here's the link for the full article:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/ppp-poll-gop-voters-in-al-ms-think-obama-is-muslim-unsure-about-interracial-marriage.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

And, just to show we've got problems of our own, just today came the news that there will be not one but two 'initiatives' for the fall trying to ban gay marriage. There may turn out to be an many homophobics in Washington state as there are racists in Mississippi. We'll see.

--JDR

No Women as Witness

So, here's a weird new story. A congressional committee holding hearings into the new rules of whether women who work for a religious-affiliated institution should have contraceptives included as part of their health plan refused to allow any women to testify before the committee. Here's the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/contraception-hearing-house-democrats-walk-out_n_1281730.html

I find this interesting not for the politics of the thing, but because of how it's an indication of people talking at cross-purposes because they're living in different worlds. For one side it's an issue of women's rights; for the other, it's first amendment religious freedom.

My thoughts:

(1) if a school or church or hospital takes public money, it has to abide by public rules. A faith that believes in miracles still has to follow the local fire code.

(2) it's a sad commentary that when assembling a panel of ten religious leaders to serve as witnesses, they cdn't turn up a single woman in a prominent position.

--John R.

Liberal/Conservative Smart/Dumb

So, here's a news story that caught my eye yesterday:

A new study suggests that people with low IQs tend to be more conservative, politically and socially, while people with high IQs tend to be more progressive. Here's the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/intelligence-study-links-prejudice_n_1237796.html?ref=science

My main problem with this is twofold. First, I'm inherently dubious of generalizations about the behavior or beliefs of vast numbers of people. "Women", "Southerners", "Liberals", "Muslims" -- all are too diverse a group to be easily potted.

Second, as Stephen Jay Gould masterfully demonstrated in THE MISMEASURE OF MAN [1985],* IQ isn't a measure of intelligence but of of one's ability to second-guess the test: it's original purpose was to gauge learning speed. What IQ tests test best is the ability to take IQ tests (try saying that ten times quickly): they don't measure innate ability or capacity.

That's assuming there's even such a thing as "Intelligence" that has any more meaning than a D&D stat: that problem solving, verbal skill, memorization, visualization skills, extrapolative logic, &c are all expressions of the same thing, as opposed to widely varied mental functions that have little to do with each other and are found in all kinds of mixes in individual brains.

So, fun headline, but bogus study.

--John R., who scored quite well on IQ tests, actually**

*a book I gave Owen Barfield a copy of -- now at Wheaton, I think -- though I never did hear what he thought of it.

**apparently I'm a low-grade genius. Does that mean my IQ's just high enough not to believe in IQ?

The Greenwood Tea Room

So, since I had several days in Shreveport this week, I decided that if I found myself with any spare time at all I shd try to find a little more about the city, where I stay for a night or two once or twice a year but never get a chance to poke around in outside the hotel, since I only come here on family visits. This time, I decided to try to find at least one good restaurant and one interesting walk.

Between various touristy booklets in the hotel lobby and some online searches, I found several places that looked potentially interested. Some turned out no longer to exist when I went there, or at least not at their listed locations. Some were too far away (i.e., not actually in Shreveport but in the outlying area). Some I simply didn't have time for, since most of my stay is devoted to a family crisis. But one I did try out was the Greenwood Tea Room on Line Avenue.

http://www.glenwoodvillagetearoom.com/

I admit I had reservations about the place, since it's inside a gift shop, and Janice and my's experience with a similar set up in Portland (or, actually, in the Portland area) last year had been a little disappointing. Also, looking at their web site, I discovered that the owner-operator is a big fan of Glen Beck,* so I knew her views and mine on many issues wd be worlds apart.

In the event, I'm glad I went: it turns out to be a really neat shop. I was particularly taken with some contemporary angel art that reminded me of the art in Gaiman's THE DAY I TRADED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH (wish I knew the name of the artist). I was at the wrong time of day for High Tea (given the chance, I'd have chosen what they call their Scone Tea), so I had an early lunch followed by late breakfast. That is, I had two cups of soup: one of their Victorian Soup (which was new to me) and one of their tomato basil (wh. also had a lot of other things in it, like carrots). This I followed with a freshly baked blueberry scone with lemon curd and whipped cream, all accompanied by a small pot of strong black tea kept nice and hot by a tea light.

Yesterday being my last full day in Shreveport, I stopped by one last time, and yet again found them going above and beyond. I'd thought they served until four, but it turns out this is when the shop closes; the tea room part usually shuts down at three. However, finding out that all I wanted was a pot of tea and a scone, they insisted I come in and sit down while they got together tea and scone for me. It was a comforting touch to be so welcomed by strangers: a reminder that Southern hospitality really does exist.

So, many thanks to the tea room folks for a quiet, calming moment in an uncertain week.

And now, on to Magnolia!

--John R.

*cf. for example her post re. her trip to the holy land to attend his rally last October ( http://host.pappapak12.com/~glenwood/article_21/Ancient-Israel-October-2011.htm ). I was particularly puzzled by the statement that of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, only "one to two percent" were fanatics who hated America, which totals "91 million" radicals. It's been a long time since I took a math class (12th grade!), but I'd thought 1% of 1.2 billion was 12 million, making 2% twenty-four million. Don't know where the 91 million figure comes from (that's about seven and a half percent, by my reckoning). In any case, more projection on our part than any correlation to reality.

Who's Naughty and Nice (Occupy)

So, I haven't posted on the Occupy movement, mainly because I've had too much to say. I've gathered enough material for three separate posts, but sorting out just what to say about each aspect proved entangled to the point that none of the three actually got posted.

Then, when we were down at the Pike Place Market on Saturday, picking up my father-in-law's Xmas present (which shd go off tomorrow, and get there Thursday), I saw a Santa handing out 'Occupy Seattle' stickers. It reads simply "WE ARE THE 99%" and gives the url for Occupy Seattle .org. I've been wearing it on my jacket ever since.

I mean, if anybody keeps track of who the good guys are, of who's naughty and who's nice as the old song puts it, it's gotta be St. Nick. Plus, for those who are into 'the Reason for the Season', the Gospels are pretty explicit about eyes of the needle and all.

Good enough for me.

--John R.

current audiobook: THE WAR LOVERS by Evan Thomas [2010]

current book: ANCIENT EGYPT AS IT WAS by CHarlotte Booth [2008; 2011]

I Am Scouted (sort of)

So, about a week ago I got a call out of the blue asking if I'd be interested in dropping by a local Starbucks on Saturday and finding out more about the president's new jobs bill. I haven't been paying much attention to the latest round of debacle in DC, having largely tuned out after the disaster of the 'debt ceiling' fight --which in turn followed on the tax-cut-extention disaster, which in turn succeeded the train-wreck that was the health-care debate. After all that battering, I've scaled back on what political news I read in recent months, mostly following the bemused follies of the Republican candidates and wondering which one will be running as Third Party against Romney come the fall. Checking the calendar to find we weren't already scheduled for something else we needed to be doing at that time, I said sure.

Turns out "yes" isn't good enough; these people are persistent. They called again to confirm, and then yet again, but this third time they no longer presented it as a one-on-one presentation or information dissemination but mentioned that it was being run by the Obama re-election committee. Okay; I'd been a big supporter of the president during his run for office, and despite my deep disillusionment since at his repudiating most of the things he ran on I was curious to see what this latest proposal that wasn't going to get enacted was all about.

So, we showed up, got ourselves some tea (chai), and had a long talk with a v. nice guy who identified himself as the state director of the re-election campaign -- partly about specifics of the bill (insofar as the information sheet and little pamphlet he gave us laid them out) and partly about what the president shd or cd do to gain support. I'm afraid that while some of the bill's provisions sound good in the abstract (others, like cutting back on collecting Social Security, don't; that's just guaranteeing bigger trouble down the line), he wasn't able to convince us that it was anything but moot: Obama's assumption is that this time the other side will see reason, and compromise, and raise taxes. Why on earth shd they start acting responsibly now, when simply sabotaging the national government has worked so well for them for three years now? It was interesting to hear that he's about to resort to the 'executive orders' route of governing by fiat, which seems v. unlike his everybody-must-agree-upon-this style, but even that won't solve the major problems, all of which require funding and thus congressional support.

In the end, we were asked if we'd be interested in doing any volunteer work with the campaign. So we might end up stuffing envelopes at some point, or I may wander around the neighborhood knocking on doors; get-out-the-vote stuff (though neither of us is interested in making phone calls, having been on the receiving end of too many ourselves). Maybe at some point my enthusiasm will be rekindled, but at this point I really doubt it. Too many broken promises, too many surrenders without a fight. We'll see.

--John R.

current Kindle-book: 1956 (re. Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis)

A Different Kind of Mess

So, I refrained from posting during the Debt Ceiling crisis, mostly because I found the whole thing too alarming and discouraging. But in its aftermath I thought I'd share a few links.

First, to Mr. Krugman on just how bad the resultant deal is. Given that just in the last three days we're already hearing talk about the recovery collapsing, the economy falling back into recession, AND the U. S. credit rating being downgraded anyway,* I'd say he's more Cassandra than not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=2

By contrast, here's a piece by someone who rather smugly chides those who believed Obama might actually attempt to do any of the things those who voted for him elected him to do. It's one of several pieces that have appeared lately that have made me wonder if it isn't best to think of Obama as essentially a moderate Republican: an essentially decent man dedicated to not rocking the boat, whose ideal audience/potential supporter is David Brooks.

http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2011/07/31/did-obama-cave/

And finally -- and here's why I'm posting at all -- here's the loony take on things: the suggestion that the treasury simply coin two $1,000,000,000,000 platinum coins as a way out of the crisis. I shelve this one with the 'sovereign citizen' loons, but hey, at least it's numismatically interesting:

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/28/282471/the-platinum-coin-option/

--John R.

*given how disfunctional the government just showed itself to be, and how incapable of taking even the most obvious steps (i.e., raise taxes on the quarter-million people in this country who are millionaires).

Arizona

So, we'd been thinking, a few months back, about how the SouthWest (which we mainly know from Tony Hillerman novels) is one part of the country neither of us has ever visited. And there's a lot of interesting, indeed spectacular, things to see in that area that wd make it well worth a visit.

Then came the Juan Crow laws, a sudden outpouring of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and a string of racist incidents that made us decide that if we did go to the Southwest sometime in the next few years, it wouldn't be to Arizona -- more likely New Mexico, which shares a lot of the same problems but hasn't become unhinged in facing them.

States do go through crazy seasons: McCain & Brewer's Arizona, George Wallace's Alabama, Faubus's Arkansas, John Brown's Kansas, John C. Calhoun's South Carolina. That's not to overlook the decent, sane, honorable people who live there during such times; it's just to recognize that they're not in control of events. And this current spate is not altogether unprecedented in the state's history -- people tend to forget that Barry Goldwater ran on a states' rights platform opposing the pending landmark civil rights bills; his strongest support in the 1964 election came from white supremacists in the Deep South, which provided him with 90% of his electoral votes. Now there's been another upsurge and, like the local sheriff said, Arizona has become "a Mecca for prejudice and bigotry".

So, while the horrific news this weekend of attempted Congressional assassination, which included the murder of a federal judge and nine-year-old-girl, is shocking, it's not surprising. Hate speech has its consequences.* Or, to put it another way,

"Guns don't kill people: People with guns kill people."

--JDR

current audiobook: Acts of the Apostles

current book: TROY & HOMER [still!]

current project: "Macpherson & Tolkien: A Tale of Two Legendariums" [Kalamazoo paper]

----------------------------

*The Wife Says:

Anyone who doubts that words have consequences should consider the effect of calling the estate tax a "death tax".

Or, in the wise words of John Stewart, our national court jester:

"Take it down a notch for America"

Before There Was WorldNetDaily . . .

So, Jeff Grubb at recently posted a disturbing reminder that there's nothing new about anti-government crazies, and he provides a vivid example from the Kennedy years.*

http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/2009/11/artifact.html

In a way, it's a tradition as old as Jefferson's paranoia about Hamilton (or, later, Burr). It never really goes away, and every once in a while it surfaces into the mainstream.** And it's never pretty.

The latest manifestation, the 'Tea Party'/deathers/birthers/whatever, while ugly, is pretty much par for the course. But there are signs that we may be passing into new territory ("new" for our lifetimes, that is --things have gotten this bad, and worse, in what we naively think of as the good old days***).

First, and most recently, there's the "Psalm 108.9" movement, in which faux-Xians pray for the president's death.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/21/cafe-press-pray-obama/

This reminds me very much of a saying of Janice's, that "Anytime an American tells you 'this is a Christian nation', it's a sure sign they're about to go all Old Testament on you".

And second, there's the serious suggestion, about two months back I think, that this country desperately needs a military coup to overthrow the government.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/09/full_text_of_newsmax_column_suggesting_military_co.php?ref=fpblg

As if losing an election were reason enough to call for an act that would permanently damage our constitutional system. As if that system didn't have its own corrective (impeachment). As if we've had a general since Jackson who rose above mediocrity as president. As if you could dismiss democracy itself -- letting people vote to choose their leaders-- as "gambl[ing] the national survival on . . . political whims".

GAH!

.........................

*I must admit the 'secret wife' bit was a new one on me.

**Heinlein got involved in one iteration, a brief anti-Eisenhower eruption calling themselves 'the true heirs of Patrick Henry'.

***For example, Ambrose Bierce was deeply embarrassed by McKinley's assassination, since he'd been calling for McKinley's death in his newspaper column.

White Supremacists March on Washington

So, this past weekend about 50,000 to 70,000 people went to Washington DC -- ostensibly to celebrate the legacy of 9/11*, but really to protest the presidency of Barack Obama. From the signs shown on the news, they were apparently a collection of 'Birthers', 'Deathers', and 'Tea-baggers' united only by hatred of the new president and his administration.

Coming as it does almost a half-century since Martin Luther King's March on Washington, which drew a quarter-million people, I view this event as affirmative-action for racists. It's only fair the white supremacists have their turn. After all, according to wikipedia it's been over eighty years since the Ku Klux Klan had its big rally in D.C. (1925), and this year's gathering more than doubled their turnout of about 25,000.

All irony aside, it took a while, but I'm not the only one who's noticed the racist undertone to the anti-Obama movement. I can see folks getting caught up in the 'birther' conspiracy theory -- it re-enforces the preconception that he's 'not really one of us'. The 'death panels' idea simply shows how stupidly gullible people can be; no big surprise there. And as for the tea-baggers, both tax deadbeats and 'states rights'/secessionist sentiments have never been too far away from the surface.*** 

But that the same people just happen to converge in belief on all three entirely unrelated points shows something else is at work here: a deep, deep desire to de-legitimize the president. A rejection so visceral that I reluctantly have come to conclude that it's racist at heart: a desperate attempt to deny the reality of our now really, truly having a black president.

And now, just in the past day or so, I find I'm not the only one. Yesterday came the brief notice by Josh Marshall on talkingpointsmemo.com:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/09/show_some_respect_boy.php?ref=fpblg

Then, of course, there was the article to which Marshall referred. I don't usually have much use for Maureen Dowd, who seems to think she's Dorothy Parker in the same way Geo. W. Bush thought he was Abraham Lincoln, but here I think she deserves credit for connecting the dots:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?_r=1

And then just tonight came news that our greatest ex-president has weighed in on the issue: I guess hitting 85 (as he will next month) means you can speak your mind. And remember that this is the man who ran against Lester Maddox, Georgia's would-be George Wallace: he knows racism when he sees it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/15/jimmy-carter-wilsons-outb_n_288003.html

Now, given that people are printing up t-shirts to wear expressing solidarity with Congressman Wilson's failure to learn the manners most of us were taught in kindergarden, I'm wondering how long until the tea-bagger-birther-deather-racists start to put the white hoods on and proudly boast about their common ground with the KKK.

--JDR

*[as if any of use really want to commemorate the unnecessary wars, warrantless wiretapping, torture, and rendition that followed in 9/11's wake]

**[surprisingly enough, the stations that ran Rev. Wright's "God damn America" clip over and over and over again a year ago don't seem to be running the footage from that recent Texas secessionists rally in which the (white) speakers in their cowboy hats shouted out "We hate America"]

***[tax deadbeats were the cause of the first time President Washington had to call up the U. S. Army after the Revolution, while 'states rights'/secession/nullification goes all the way back to Jefferson & Madison's plottings against Washington's and Adams' administrations.]

Russ Feingold Strikes Again

So, looking at the unseemly spectacle involved in replacing the various senators who have resigned to take posts in the new Obama administration, Russ Feingold suggests that it's time we give up on letting governors appoint senators when a seat becomes vacant. For the first century or so of this country, we didn't get to elect senators; the state legislatures did that for us. That had come to seem so patently undemocratic that they changed the process to allow for direct election, just as with a state's governor, with the 17th Amendment (1913) -- a measure which was so popular that it was ratified in only a year. Now, almost a century after that, Feingold suggests it's time to follow through and make replacement senators be chosen by special elections rather than making it a really nice executive perk of the governor, as is the case in most states.

I've always rather liked the idea of appointments to fill out terms myself -- we've gotten some interesting people in office that way who would otherwise never have gotten in, like Hattie Carraway. But recently Paterson's incompetence, and Blagovich's corruption, has so tainted the process that I think Feingold's suggestion at least needs to be seriously considered, and I don't have much doubt that this is the way we'll ultimately go, whether now or later in piecemeal fashion. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com argues that while special elections are expensive, what better way is there to spend money in a democracy than in setting up and running a free and fair election?

here's the link:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/feingold-introduces-28th-amendment.html


--JDR

current cup of tea: licorice

. . . some of the people

So, an Illinois politician once said

"You can fool some of the people all of the time
And you can fool all of the people some of the time
But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

In the newest issue of THE NEW YORKER (Jan. 19th 2009, page 22), Hendrik Hertzberg adds a little more precision, observing that

"you can fool some people all the time. We now know how many 'some' is: twenty-seven percent."

--JDR

Update, Jan. 19:
Tonight on MSNBC they're reporting the results of a newer poll: the Incumbent's approval rating is now down to 22%.

God Bless Russ Feingold

So, Senator Feingold once again steps forward when no one else will.

It turns out I was one of the lucky ones. I took our laptop with me on the research trip to Oxford last October, where it proved invaluable for my research in the Bodleian. What I didn't know at the time was that it could have been confiscated upon my return. Here's the quote summarizing the law as it currently stands:


"Most Americans would be shocked to learn that upon their return to the U.S. from traveling abroad, the government could demand the password to their laptop, hold it for as long as it wants, pore over their documents, e-mails, and photographs, and examine which Web sites they visited--all without any suggestion of wrongdoing," Feingold said. "Focusing our limited law enforcement resources on law-abiding Americans who present no basis for suspicion does not make us any safer and is a gross violation of privacy."

Here's the link to the newstory:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10055020-38.html

It's good to know that Adam Smith, my congressman here in Kent, co-sponsored the bill. Also that Maria Cantwell, who was a massive disappointment her first four years in office, continues to show that she's finally become the senator people thought she'd be when she was first elected.

It'll be interesting to see if Feingold can roll back the Homeland Security people.

--JDR

McCain Forgets Where Spain Is

Here's a story that was on Talking Points Memo last night that seems to getting picked up in more mainstream outlets today: In an interview on Spanish-language radio, McCain not only didn't know who the prime minister of Spain was (most people don't, but you'd have thought he'd have been prepped on it) but even worse got mixed up and kept talking as if Spain is a country in South America. Today his campaign is claiming that by lumping Zapatero with Chavez, Castro, and Morales he was sending a stern signal that a NATO ally that crosses us in any way (e.g., pulling out of 'the coalition of the willing') is an ally no longer. But it seems more likely that exhaustion of the campaign trail has combined with his seventy-two years to leave him momentarily addled -- which makes it part of a pattern of "senior moments" in recent weeks (the 'Iraq/Pakistan border', Czechoslovakia), and raises again the spectre of how well a frail old man can survive the incredible stress of the presidency.

Here's the link; there are plenty of follow-up reports examining different aspects of the incident on the same site.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/217744.php

--John R.