Eagerly Awaiting the Other Shoes

You read it in some progressive blogs. TV’s talking heads hint that they are coming. Occasionally an unnamed source “close to the White House” implies they are part of the long range plan. I’m talking about the “other shoes,” as in “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Our change president seems desperate to enact change in little bits and pieces after the USA electorate gave him a mandate for unambiguous change. So far…we have a stimulus package (now failing to stimulate) that is half the size needed. We have health care legislation working its way steadily through congress that addresses expanded coverage, but ignores (or even sabotages) critically important cost reduction. We’ve bailed out the banks, but are reluctant to enact meaningful banking reform. We say we need to investigate allegations of torture, but won’t pursue prosecution of lawbreakers.

When, President Barack, when will the other shoe drop? I’ve thought from the beginning that President Obama would tread carefully at first, saving more aggressive steps until after he shows some initial progress. But it’s becoming clear that the initial progress may be too little and too late to provide the momentum for movement on a growing list of Step 2s. Democrats show little taste for success, choosing to squander their majorities in congress on watered down legislation that still gets slammed by the do-nothing party on the right.

Now is the time, Mr. President. Do you want to be a transformative leader? Push Step 2s now, while you can. Push your party to reach for the brass ring. Take the hits. Your nation needs the other shoes to drop.

Behind the Facade – The MJ hoopla and our culture via Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert articulates the best perspective on the Michael Jackson Death and Celebration phenomenon and what it means about our culture.  Of the 80s and 90s Herbert writes:

In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world behind.

Politicians stopped talking about the poor. We built up staggering amounts of debt and called it an economic boom…We let New Orleans drown.

Jackson was the perfect star for the era, the embodiment of fantasy gone wild…Reality is unforgiving. There is no escape. Behind the Jackson facade was the horror of child abuse. Court records and reams of well-documented media accounts contain a stream of serious allegations of child sex abuse… Jackson, a multimillionaire megastar, was excused as an eccentric…

One case of alleged pedophilia against Jackson, the details of which would make your hair stand on end, was settled for a reported $25 million. He beat another case in court.

The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death…is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life.

Or under the rock of our own society’s real life.  Read the full column here:

Op-Ed Columnist – Behind the Facade – NYTimes.com.

Rediscovering Secular America

We are everywhere and, finally, people in Washington are beginning to notice.  Lots to do… Lots to do…

…then came the moment approximately 50 million Americans– who identify themselves with terms like agnostic, atheist, materialist, humanist, nontheist, skeptic, bright, freethinker, agnostic, naturalist, or non-believer — will never forget. In his inauguration speech, Obama said, “…Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.” Two weeks later he talked about “non-believers” and “humanists” at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Read more about us in The Nation.

Rediscovering Secular America.

Turn the volume down

I just returned from vacation to discover yet another politician who thinks with his dick.  Lately, most of these heady souls have been Republicans, which suits me just fine. To the degree any party must suffer for this brand of foolishness, I’m glad it’s the GOP, especially considering the circus it created over the dick-driven behavior of Slick Willy. I was disappointed that Willy traded his potentially brilliant presidency for a blow job in the back room, but, seriously, impeachment?

Which brings us back to the latest herd of rampaging, testosterone-poisoned pols. I don’t particularly care if these men (and so far, all are men, at least those caught with their libidos exposed) lose their positions for their stupidities. I don’t care if they suffer much or not.  I do care that these little flurries of reality serve to stifle the growth of self-righteousness in Washington and perhaps among our media friends.

Perhaps if the percentage of public figures caught with their pants down and their hands in the nookie jar rises, the volume of the sanctimonious moralists (many of whom, I’m sure, fall in the not-yet-caught category) will fall. It makes this old sinner want to pray for the silence we all, as fragile humans, deserve when our unsteady private lives come tumbling down.

ADDENDUM: Follow the link to read an especially thoughtful post on the Sanford affair.

NYT’s Frank Rich – The Haters and Their Enablers

The haters – ably represented by those who murdered Dr. Tiller and the security guard at the Holocaust Museum – are clearly enabled by right-wing media clowns like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and their many imitators.  When the clowns deny this and then blame the “elite liberal media” for exploiting these tragedies to criticize them, they indulge the worst kind of hypocrisy.  For a trenchant analysis of this phenomenon see Frank Rich’s recent column linked  here.  Op-Ed Columnist – The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers – NYTimes.com.

Samples:

Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.”…

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on…

Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any “mainstream media” debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as McCain did last fall. Where are they?…

Coincidences are for sissies

Coincidences just happen. That’s what they are: Things that just happen together. Like, I’m reading a book called The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Began to read it a couple days ago. Then I began to read another book, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. In the first chapter of the latter book, the author, Rust Hills, refers to a Eudora Welty short story titled “Livvie.” I read “Livvie” last night to understand what Hills was telling me about writing short stories. Today, the bulb flickered on: The name Livvie is a diminutive form of the name Deliverance.

A coincidence…that’s all. But…The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is about witchcraft. I’m jus’ sayin’…

Remember Dick Cavett? Jonathan Miller? I see you are older than dirt too…

Here’s a refreshing clip of Dick Cavett interviewing Jonathan Miller, perhaps the most erudite man of the 20th century. Dr. Miller appeared in the hit British satirical revue “Beyond the Fringe” in the 1960’s.  He went on to host a prize winning series, “The Body in Question,” and become one of England’s premiere director of Shakespeare. Pay close attention to Miller’s comparison of the benefits of modern medicine compared to those of public health, nutrition, ventilation and good drainage. Enjoy the thoughts of two articulate men. Now…If we can just find two more for THIS century.

clipped from cavett.blogs.nytimes.com Miller Talks Again! A sample of Miller, the clear-thinking, reality-facing Dr. Miller: The idea of evolution, he said, is not sitting around waiting for accreditation. “No credible scientist or biologist questions it. Creation is not a hypothesis. Not something that can really be taken seriously.” He went on to say, in his tolerant, non-ranting tone, that it would be “extremely difficult to think of anything more plausible to explain how things are” than Charles Darwin’s works on the subject. How creatures, by gradual alteration and modification, became what they are today.” (Click the link below to launch the video of Dick Cavett interviewing Jonathan Miller) clipped from graphics8.nytimes.com The Dick Cavett Show (January 1981)

GOP energy plan: prohibit talk of global warming

Why do our presumably conservative friends complain about so much about being left out of the debate on key issues? Perhaps living in the same century as the rest of the country would help. Where are Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt when our country needs them?

“The impact of greenhouse gas on any species … shall not be considered for any purpose …”

clipped from thinkprogress.org House Republicans today introduced their alternative energy plan. Developed by the Republican American Energy Solutions Group, the American Energy Act is billed as an “all of the above” energy program. But as The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, the legislation looks more like an attempt to legislate the threat of global warming “out of existence.” Indeed, the bill specifically states that at no point in implementing their energy plan can the effects of global warming on the environment “be considered for any purpose”: Johnson remarks, “The Republican response to our dependence on fossil fuels and their pollution is to give billions of dollars in new tax breaks and subsidies to the oil, coal, and nuclear industries.”

This Time, We Won’t Scare – NYTimes.com

This time we know.  We’ve been to the USA emergency rooms.  Can a government supported system be any worse?  We’ve had the dozens of endless tests with endless waits in USA hospitals.  Can a government supported system be any worse?  We’ve paid the deductibles and the ever-increasing co-pays for services at USA hospitals.  Can a government supported system be any worse?

Read of one person’s experiences with a government supported system.  And let’s all stop being scared.

Nicholas D. Kristof – This Time, We Won’t Scare – NYTimes.com.

We Can Do Better

Yesterday, I completed Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and can’t write a review yet. I may need to read it again to see past my anger to the real importance of this outstanding novel. Now, I am simply angry.

Every patriotic American, and I am one, loves his country and the ideals it represents. Every patriot must guard his country and its ideals from the predations of greed and hubris. Unfortunately, no country in the world can match, even approach, the wealth and power of our country. Too often, the world’s greed and hubris involve American players.

The Poisonwood Bible is set in the Congo in 1959-60 (and later) and highlights that country’s painful move into independence. Well, into a simulacrum of independence. This novel, accurate in its historical detail, plays out its deeply personal story inside the chaos of the larger world, a world set on destroying the hope of a nation and murdering millions of its people.

After decades of exploitation by the Belgians, under the inspired leadership of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese negotiated their independence. Lumumba was elected prime minister. Too bad Lumumba didn’t realize how serious Americans and Belgians were about controlling Congo’s resources. In less than two months, Katanga, the province with most of those resources, successfully seceded with the help of American money and personnel. Lumumba was arrested and eventually murdered, with the help of the American CIA. Twenty-six years of the murderous, puppet leadership of Joseph Mobutu followed, the Congo sunk deeper into poverty and ruin, and, to this day, is torn apart by greed and corruption.

Of course, the CIA knew how to do these things. In 1953, the American CIA engineered the overthrow of the elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadeq, who had the temerity to claim Iran’s oil for Iranians. American is still paying in blood for foolishly crushing Mossadeq’s democratic and secular vision for Iran. America installed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, to protect its oil and we’ve all seen how well that turned out.

But wait. There’s more. In 1970, Chile elected Salvador Allende to be its president. The unfortunate Allende used the magic get-yourself-killed-by-the-CIA word when he promised a transition to a socialist democracy. Within three years, America assured his assassination and the institution of decades of sadistic rule by Augusto Pinochet.

Then, there are Rafael Trujillo, Ngo Dinh Diem, Rene Schneider and who knows how many others, but, for fear of again killing the horse I beat, I’ll stop here.

My country is a great country with a bad habit. These examples of bad behavior are not all of what America is about, of course, but they indicate a willingness to act ruthlessly when our national greed and hubris run wild and we lose our sense of fairness and decency. We have done better. Mostly, we have done better. But not always.

OK. I’m not so angry now. Now I am just little sad.

So…read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. It may not make you angry. But it may.

For documentation of many of the activities described above see the report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (commonly called the Church Committee), 1975-76.

For a simpler version with links to many other resources go here.