I got no love for Trent Lott, but this exchange clearly delineates the difference between a real Southerner and the drawl-chewing, chain-saw-toting, Lubbock-dissing, punk-ass corporate-cowboy-in-a-blue-suit who claims to be a Texan. Lott's best line from the article:
In politics (and in law, and in teaching, and in engineering), intuition only works if it's underpinned with expertise. Bush has neither.
I love used book-stores. Not only because of my money-neurotic Presbyterian upbringing, or because of the money-nut attitude that says a paperback mass-market is supposed to cost between 0.75 and 1.95 or a trade paperback 3.95-5.95, or because I used to work in bookstores where I got books free or cheap, or because my home town's public library (I realize in hindsight) was the only place I felt safe as a child, or because I love the 0.25-cent book racks that sit outside used book-stores, or because I love to read so much that I could never afford to pay the absurd inflated prices that are charged for new books.
No.
Because I think that books are permanent, and life is temporary. Because I like the idea of writing that lives past when I die. Because I like the idea of owning and loving a book that someone else owned and loved before me.
Because on the Thames embankment in 1974, I bought a small, leather-bound copy of the Three Musketeers, with a bookplate inside the cover that read "St Thomas School", and the typed inscription "To Thomas F----, Sixth Form Latin." And then, in a fountain-penned scrawl, "To Claude, in memory of Thomas, killed over Kiel, 1941."
No question that Frank Zappa would take Joe Lieberman, Tipper Gore, Bill Bennett, Michael Medved, and every other "moral-arbiter-by-appointment" in a Steel Cage death match.
FZ testified before Congress, where he reamed the Senators, and then cut up the testimony into the spoken-word, album-length "Porn Wars":
The reason for this hearing
is not to promote any legislation,
(indeed, I don't know of any suggestion
that any legislation 'd be passed),
but to simply provide a form
for airing the issue itself,
for ventilating the issue,
for bringing it out in the public domain.
Senator Hollings?
I've had the opportunity to ah,
attend a, a showing you might say,
a presentation of ah,
this Porn Rock as they call it.
In the tested pornography,
one of the things to look at
is that it does not have any redeeming social value.
Ah, there could be an exception here
because I haven't attended that presentation.
A redeeming social value,
I find that it's inaudible.
I have a hard time understanding it.
And, Paul, since I travelled the country for three years
and they said they couldn't understand me,
maybe I could make a good rock-star, I don't know.
But in all candour I would tell you it's,
it's outrageous filth.
So I'll be looking from this senator's standpoint
not just to bring pression,
but to try to see if there is some constitutional provision
to tax, or procedure can be used on the Congress
to limit this outrageous filth.
Senator Trible?
Rape, incest, it's outrageous filth...
Sexual violence
Now, the effects of such lyrics on a well adjusted child may
not be cataclysmic
It's outrageous filth!
A lot of the emotional damage is more subtle
Fire and chains and...leather
It's outrageous filth!
Objectionable...
Tools and presentations in some twisted minds...
...effects of such lyrics on a well adjusted child may not be
cataclysmic...
...Porn Rock...
A lot of the emotional damage is more subtle
Fire and chains and...leather
This must be the end of the world!
All the people turning into pigs and ponies
I can't let it happen to me!
What is the reason for these hearings...
Sex!
Well...
Sex!
Thank you, I think that statement...
Sex!
...tells the story of these many...
Listen you little slut...
What is the reason for these hearings...
Sex!
Bondage!
Listen you little slut!
Listen you little slut!
Mixture of drugs...
Sex! Sex! Sex! Sex!...
I might be interested to see what toys your kids ever had
Why would you be interested?
Just as a point of interest in this ah...
Well, come on over to the house and I'll show them to you.
Really!
I, I might do that!
Now, the effects of such lyrics on a well adjusted child may
not be cataclysmic
It's outrageous filth!
A lot of the emotional damage is more subtle
Fire and chains and...leather
It's outrageous filth!
Objectionable...
Tools and presentations in some twisted minds...
...effects of such lyrics on a well adjusted child may not be
cataclysmic...
...Porn Rock...
A lot of the emotional damage is more subtle
Fire and chains and...leather
Thank you very much, Mr. Zappa.
You understand that ah,
the previous witnesses were not asking for legislation
and ah, I don't know,
I can't speak for senator Hollings,
but I think that the prevailing view here is
that nobody's asking for legislation.
The question is just focusing
on what a lot of people could feel that could be a problem.
And you've indicated that you at least understand
that there is another point of view.
Really nearly over the year...
Senator Gore?
Thank you very much, ah, mister chairman.
I found your statement very interesting and,
ah let me say although I disagree with
some of the statements that you make,
and have made on other occasions
- I have been a fan of your music, believe it or not -
and I, I ah respect you as a true original and,
and ah tremendously talented musician.
Wait a minute!
Maybe I could make a good rock-star, I don't know
Comics, comics, comics daddy!
Maybe I could make a good rock-star, I don't know
Comics, comics daddy!
Maybe I could make a good rock-star, I don't know
Comics, comics, comics daddy!
They don't even understand their music...
of course nobody does, but ah...
They don't, they don't even know what they're doing
No!
I've, I've seen 'em a couple of times...
Did you, did you see their uniforms?
Unbelievable!
Which ones? They're the red ones?
All those rhinestones of their rings and things like that
Do you know what I...
Golden May hoof-covers
Unbelievable!
Maybe I could make a good rock-star!
Gonna drive my love inside you!
etc...
It's outrageous filth!
Comics daddy!
etc...
Rock, rock, Porn Rock!
etc...
And I think your suggestion is a good one
if you pledge those words.
That would go a long way for...
All we have to do is find out how it's gonna be paid for...
Pyromania!
No question!
Burn the building!
Burn! Burn! Burn!
Yeah!
If I could find some way constitutionally to do away with it I would!
This issue is too hot...
So I'll be looking from this senator's standpoint
not just to bring pression,
but to try to see if there is some constitutional provision
to tax, or procedure can be used on the Congress
to limit this outrageous filth.
Yeah!
We'll get back to de whimp
and his low-budget conceptium of personal freedom
in just a moment.
But foist, welcome to:
What de fuck gwine on here?
A celebratium o' de American way o' life!
I see some y'all be FROWNIN'...
'cause mebbe y'think what I's tellin' ya' is a LIE!
Am I right?
Les' jes' have a test...
How many o' you nice folks think I knows what I's talkin'
'bout?
RAISE Y'HAIN UP!
Uh-huh!
An' how many thinks my potato been bakin' too long?
RAISE YO MIZZABLE HAIN UP!
Uh-huh!
Now...how many you folks is CONVINCED
de gubnint be totally 'UNCONCERNED'
wit de proliferatium o' UNDESIRABLE TENANTS
in de CONDOMINIUM o' LIFE?
An' how many folks believe THEY number won't come up,
next time de breeze blow fum de Easterly directium?
Les' face it, peoples!
Ugly as I mights be,
I AM YO' FUTCHUM!
Ain't that right, SISTER OB'DEWLLA?
Hmm hmm! Oh, oh yeah! Thass right!
Senator Gorton?
Mr. Zappa, I ah, am astounded at the ah,
courtesy and soft-voiced ah,
nature of the comments of my friend
the senator from Tennessee.
I can only say that I find your statement
to be boorish, ah, incredibly and ah,
insensitively insulting the people who were here previously.
That you could manage
to get the first amendment
of the Constitution of the United States
a bad name - if I doubt that you have the slightest
understanding of it - which I do not,
and have the slightest understanding of the difference between
government action and private action.
And ah, you have certainly destroyed any case
you might otherwise have had with this senator.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Is this private action?
I don't think this is constitutional...
The voluntary labelling is NOT censorship...
Bend up and smell my anal vapor!
The voluntary...voluntary...voluntary...
...is not censorship...
De-de-de-de-degradation...humiliation...
Is this private action?
In chains...
Listen you little slut...
There-there-there...
There's no absolute rock...
There's no absolute rock...
Well... ... Bend up and smell my anal vapor!
There-there-there...
There's no... There's no...
Mr. Zappa, thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you.
Next witness is John Denver...
Nothing scares the multi-national corporate governments than a rich man with a platform and a conscience. Clooney says "I think it's important to be on the right side of history." As another man with a platform and a conscience, Hunter Thompson, said:
"well, shit on that. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or the people I respect in this world. we did not vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today... Who does vote for these shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking halfwits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?
" they are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill "gooks". They speak for all that is cruel and vicious in the american character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us... I piss down the throats of these nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck Them."
"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly-mobile- and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together. Not necessarily to win, but to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep... but we owe it especially to our children, who will have to live with our los and all itsl ong-term consequences. I don't want my son asking me, in 1984, why his friends are calling me a "Good German".
And it doesn't hurt that Clooney helped carry the greatest movie ever made.
To the President and Trustees of Indiana University:
As an alumnus of IUB (2000) I am appalled and disgusted by the University's provision of a platform at the IU Auditorium for the rabble-rousing hate speech of Ann Coulter. This was not and is not a free-speech issue: this was hate speech inciting violence.
The President, Trustees, Union Board, and Campus Republicans have shamed themselves by permitting this event to go forward. I am disgusted that the stage on which I was privileged to witness so many great performances has been defiled by Ms Coulter's cheap, theatrical demagogics.
I am proud of the education I received at Indiana and have backed up that pride with donations. But I will never do it again until the University issues an acknowledgement, over the President's signature, that Ms Coulter's appearance on the IU Campus was a dreadful, shameful mistake for which the President, Trustees, Union Board, and Campus Republicans owe the entire IU community, past and present, their deepest apologies.
Sincerely,
Dr Coyote
All I can say is:
Damn. Too tall, too smart, too mature, too self-reflective, too brunette for Hollywood. She's a great argument for independent film!
Alternet can't figure out if DIY is a political act or just more conspicuous consumption. Note to editors: there is no way that making something for yourself, as opposed to buying it, can fail to be a political act.
As someone who has been teaching people how to make things for themselves for almost 40 years, I can say with reasonable certainty that Making is better than buying.
Here endeth the lesson: Selah.
...is like trusting Ken Lay or Dick Cheney to submit an honest tax return.
Can I just say that, anytime I watch a film from Netflix (tonight: Disc 2 of Smiley's People with Alec Guinness), I feel like I've put one over on the airheads who program my region's cable offerings?
California doctors are refusing to administer lethal injections in the scheduled execution of Michael Morales. If states shouldn't kill, then quadruply doctors shouldn't. They are brave and honorable, and they have the courage not to kill. How tragic that so few politicians have like courage.
That National Archives document that used to be public information? Well, it's not anymore, along with 54,999 other items. Note that the CIA accelerated the reclassification program after 9/11. Wonder why?
Rush assumed Sherrod Brown must be black because his name "sounded like it." That must be like assuming Rush is a drug addict because his name "sounds like it."
"huh-huh, huh-huh...dude, you said 'rush'".
Oh, wait--he is a drug addict, isn't he?
Representives of "more than 350 mainstream Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches. . . . includ[ng] the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, several Orthodox churches and Baptist denominations, among others" together condemned BushCo's Iraq war and the suffering it has created.
"We mourn all who have died or been injured in this war. We acknowledge with shame abuses carried out in our name."
Amen.
Philip Slater's inspiring article on the victory of "Connecting Culture." I would only add that Buddhism and the other contemplative traditions have recognized for millenia that patience, discipline, compassion, and a sense of detachment from fixed outcomes are essential to an lasting change for the better
FZ said it, Python demonstrates it, now Smirking Chimp puts it altogether: BushCo according to Mr Gumby.
Tom Ridge, the biggest Bush-fascist of them all after Ashcroft, is now Monday-morning-quarterbacking his former bosses. Must have a book deal in the works.
Good eye, TChris. He points out that the gutless Pat Roberts's plan to rewrite FISA in order to make Bush's actions legal retroactively is a tacit admission that Bush broke the law.
Republicans continue to back away from Sen. Roberts' suggestion thatGood insight. What this implies is that they'll have to leave the law to stand. And that means that Justice can still investigate Bush's authorizations as illegal.FISA be "fixed" to better allow court review ofNSA' s domestic wiretaps. "I'm not sure that's exactly what Pat meant,'' said Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, onCNN' s "Late Edition.''
That's sufficiently harsh that I bet they're trying make him roll over on others. Prediction: the Duke-stir will take other congressmen and lobbyists down with him.
Just in time to have been approved by the Supreme Court, eminent domain is now being used to seize homes around Dallas for the Bush Library. This kind of shenanigans is precisely why real Texans, and real conservatives, hate Bush.
Bethesda, MD librarian kicks the ass of two "Homeland Security" officers trying to police patrons' WWW usage. I love the following passage "A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library's work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men."
Reminds me of the "King of the Hill" episode in which, having been appointed to the Neighborhood Watch, Hank's daddy decides he's empowered to arrest and chastise at will.
Moral of the story: if all you've got is an ill-fitting hat and a tin badge that says "Homeland Security," don't fuck with a librarian who believes in the Constitution.
Rudepundit's odd, dark, and very sad meditation on how painful it must be to be Dick Cheney. Very moving: those who create evil inhabit the hell realms.
"Created by hate: 8 Hot Hells; 8 Cold Hells; 8 Crushing Hells; 8 Cutting Hells"
Dear Representative Campfield:
I write from Lubbock, the heart of Bush territory, to tell you that your comments on the Cheney hunting accident are absolutely appalling.
To make the following comments reveals the most callous disregard for the realities of this event:
You have made light, in the most contemptible way possible, of a life-threatening accident. Do you think Mr Whittington's family will find your comments amusing? Do you possibly imagine that such comments as these will ingratiate you with the Bush White House? All you have done is reinforce the public sense that Republicans are callous, obtuse, spoiled, and arrogant.
You had deservedly minimal media visibility to date, but I guarantee your stupid opportunism has deep-sixed your further political aspirations. Like Jean Schmidt, your attempt to gain the national spotlight by doing the White House's hatchet-work is going to backfire on you entirely.
I'll wager money your email is running at least 2-to-1 in condemnation of your cowardly, opportunistic, syncophantic comments. Good luck in the private sector.
Most sincerely,
Dr Coyote
He's a remarkable stupid M.D. and, damn, he's a an imbecilic politician. Frist actually thinks that pushing a Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage is a good political move.
Prediction: his party will bitch-slap him down and tell him he's not allowed to talk presidentially anymore.
Normally, when playing the music(s) I play, when someone asks if I'm from that music's ethnic community, I'll say "no," because I know the music demands learning and discipline, not a simple genetic inheritance. But when old-school conservative James Webb says that the Bush-lite Republicans have "lost the Scots-Irish", I might cop to that appellation:
These are the "red state" voters. They are family-oriented, take morality seriously, go to church, join the military, and listen to country music. They strongly believe that no man is obligated to obey the edicts of a government that violates his moral conscience. They once formed the bedrock of the Democratic party -- from Andrew Jackson until Vietnam -- but have been moving to the GOP ever since. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Webb called the Scots-Irish in America the "the secret GOP weapon."The only one of the above that even remotely fits me is "no man is obligated..." But I'll add to the above that persons of Scots-Irish character, even if not ethnicity, don't suffer chickenhawks gladly:
Now they're trying to shut down the 'Net, in the event of a "terrorist attack from blogs." I got news for you fellas: it didn't work against Gutenberg or the samizdat press, either. And the Pope and Stalin were both smarter and meaner than you guys.
Maybe if Cheney had served in Vietnam (instead of receiving 5 deferments) he'd know how to shoot straight.
David Horowitz's new book tries to intimidate professors into silence. I feel like HST felt about Nixon's enemies list:
"I would almost have preferred a vindictive tax audit to that kind of crippling exclusion. Christ! What kind of waterheads compiled that list? How can I show my face in the Jerome Bar, when word finally reaches Aspen that I wasn't on it... There is slim satisfaction in the knowledge that my exclusion from the list of "White House enemies" has more to do with timing and Ron Ziegler's refusal to read Rolling Stone than twith the validity of all the things I've said and written about that evil bastard."
I am deeply disappointed by Senior Analyst (sic) Jeff Greenfield's comments regarding the remarks by President Carter and Reverend Lowery at the Coretta Scott King funeral. Perhaps Mr Greenfield is unaware that it is solidly and appropriately within the tradition of African-American oration for a minister speaking at a funeral to address, not only the deceased person's life, but also their beliefs and their convictions about what "remains to be done." Reverend Lowery in particular acted very much in the spirit of both Dr and Mrs King when he "spoke truth to power." Perhaps Mr Greenfield has forgotten that the first duty of a minister is to defend his flock, which is precisely what Reverend Lowery did.
It was formerly also the case that journalists were expected to speak on behalf of the public and the disenfranchised, but Mr Greenfield has long since forfeited any claim to such a noble calling, in favor of shilling for the Washington power elite. I wonder if he misses his lost journalistic integrity?
Sincerely,
Dr Coyote
86 evangelical leaders have spoken out in support of efforts to reverse global warming. They are to be thanked. But, it begs the question: why would anyone who claimed to love God be opposed to protecting Her/His creation?
Here's what I do. I essentially have a zero-tolerance policy for unexcused absences, "because the work we do together in class is impossible to truly replace--if you miss it, it's gone." Absences are only excused if (a) there is contact from student to TA or professor *in advance* of the deadline (email works well for this, as it's time-stamped) and (b) if there is a doctor's note or other documented major emergency. I don't believe that permitting unexcused absences helps our students learn that choices have consequences.
Having said that, we still have a good ly number of absences--usually, because students at this Uni often have to travel for concert tours which are important to our recruiting. In the case of these or similar excused absences, I set a single makeup time, which is *outside the regular class schedule.* Typically this is a Tuesday or Thursday morning at 7am, as classes at the Uni begin at 8am.
This does a couple of things: it almost completely obviates schedule conflicts, which are the single hairiest part of scheduling makeups, and the thing I most resent doing--I don't think it's our staff's obligation to cater to idiosyncratic individual schedules. Moreover, it cuts down on "semi-voluntary" absences: if a kid knows that a makeup will require getting up at 6:30am in order to stumble into a 7am makeup session, s/he is much more likely to make the effort to get to the originally-scheduled class.
Moreover, it rewards the ones who truly want to excel: the hard workers are also, typically, the ones most likely to be willing to get up early.
Guess the Boy Wonder thought he'd get a free ride and a victory grin at Mrs King's funeral. President Carter and Reverend Lowery thought otherwise. It's a bitch when it's not a captive audience, ain't it George?
[update] And on top of that, CNN snipped out of their coverage the 23 second standing ovation which Reverend Lowery's remarks received.
Aw, Jesus. "Big Easy" is on cable. Whether you like Dennis Quaid or not. Gawd, they really did get that New Orleans was different. And it's all gone now.
Those bastards. Those fucking bastards. They don't even know what we've lost. And they never will--Dick Cheney wouldn't recognize Aaron Neville if Aaron was in the midst of kicking his ass--which Aaron no doubt would. And we'll never get it back.
When Aaron Neville can't bear to go back home, you know that home is gone.
'Cause, where we stand right now, FIFTY-NINE Repuglican Congressional seats are vulnerable. Tell yer friends!
If there were any question, not only would Jack Murtha, Viggo Mortenson, or George Clooney take the entire chickenhawk White House in a steel-cage death match, but so would Natalie Maines. Memo to the Preznit: she's a real Texan--she stands behind what she says, and she's not afraid. You go, girl!
Reverend (sic) Ian Paisley has been spewing racist, pig-headed, inflammatory, "zero-sum game" hatred for 40 years, allegedly in support of Ulster Protestants and Loyalists. My own understanding of the Troubles has been vastly nuanced by meeting people of good heart on both side of the sectarian divide, but can I just say that there would be a lot less hatred, and a lot better chance for peace, if the Rev would just go to Jesus already?
[Update: I've got it--let's just allow the Rev and the Rev to inhabit their own parallel universes, and would everybody stop listening to them?!?]
Originated in a comment to One Bright Star.
During evaluations (re-appointment, 3rd-year, tenure, etc, etc): staying away physically and mentally from the arena of your evaluation is a good idea, but here's an additional thought:
Part of what we have to do in academia is to sell the content, value, and interest of our research and teaching not only to the principle targets (disciplinary peers and students) but also to those who hold the purse strings and the appointments. There's nothing wrong with thinking about ways to clearly, engagingly, and collegially explain what we're doing and why to colleagues who may not otherwise understand it. In fact, it's a great opportunity to learn new ways to articulate our research to diverse and non-specialist audiences.
So, if you get dossier-comments that seem to betray lack of understanding of the content, value, and/or relevance of what you're doing, you can use that as an opportunity to think about new/more accessible/more direct ways of articulating that value.
Mostly, if the mentors and various-stage evaluators are doing their jobs, a candidate knows far *before* the watershed date if there will a problem, and most candidates therefore are fine at the actual date--but the feedback, *especially* if it is less-than-uninformed or "doesn't get" what you do, can be a useful tool for honing self-presentation.
Since 7:30 this morning, I've written one and delivered two lectures (in one of which I played tunes and talked while my students danced and sang, and in the other of which I spent 80 minutes talking about African aesthetics, social values, religion, and music as they were transformed in the New World), given two consultations to grad students, led an ensemble rehearsal, practiced for a couple of hours, watched the Mavs stomp the Bulls (sigh...wish it was still the MJ/Scottie/Rodman combination), written comments for 80+ student proposals which my Stunningly Brilliant TA's had prepared the ground for, and at 12:14 am writing this final post to articulate, once again (after working as a carpenter, oilfield mechanic, guitar teacher, data-entry tech, janitor, grocery-store clerk, bookstore manager, bouncer, guitar studio manager, university gymnasium security) that This Sure Beats Working.
Damn. Extra "Thank-you" prayers tonight.
Cartoonish cantankeroid Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has an iPod
In the "oh, God, I didn't need that image" department: what must be the PLAYLIST on Ted's iPod (shudder)?
ps: Dick Cheney's got one too.
The American Ireland fund is coming up with a lot of cash to pay Sesame Street to produce 26 episodes specifically aimed at combating sectarian attitudes in Northern Ireland. This is the same television show which the Republican Congress has tried to kill more than once. Nice to know that the Repugs are working against tolerance there too.
Clippers at Nuggets. Consistently, Bill Walton says the dumbest, most whiney, and most irritating stuff of any NBA commentator. Why don't they tell him to shut the fuck up about how much better your average 80s NBA player was and how "easy" Bill thinks the new generation have it--the sub-text being that almost nobody nowadays is as good as Bill was then. God what an idiot. How many boards have you crashed recently, you self-aggrandizing, monotonic, dipshit?
At the Uni where I work, prior to the Great Renovation, the Student Union building was reminiscent of a 1960s-era Soviet boarding school: asbestos tile, industrial brick, and linoleum floors, and with food options to match: bad barbecue, worse mini-pizzas, and best-of-a-bad-lot sub sandwiches.
Since the renovation, the fast-food courts for the kids remain, but there is also a bistro-style sandwiches, grill, and soup place, and a "healthy choices"-style salads-and-pitas place. Professor Spouse and I do 90% of lunches in the latter (comes of being old and sedentary). It's interesting to observe the different demographics and demeanors not only of the patrons but also of the folks who work in the various joints. Many are local people, many others are international students working extra jobs--as so many international students do. But uniformly, the workers in the healthy-choice place are often in a better mood, enjoy nicer interactions with the customers, and are kinder to one another.
Working fast-food is hard--I've done it--and it can be both physically and emotionally debilitating. It's interesting (and would be encouraging, if the US government cared more about mandating healthy options in public institutions; see Fast-Food Nation) to note that just being around, much less consuming, healthier food actually makes both patrons and workers happier.
Ann Coulter is also going to hell.
Coulter:"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media." She drew more boos when she said the crack cocaine problem "has pretty much gone away."
Simon Crowell, Ryan Seaquist, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson are all going to go to hell. Which, in each of their cases, means that their utter lack of artistic talent OR of human empathy will doom them to an eternity of having actually Work For a Living.
Buried in the new Patriot Act (extended only until mid-Feb despite screams from the right that it be made permanent) is the Bush White House's intent to create a permanent, uniformed, Federal police force empowered to arrest without warrant and imprison without trial.
They called it the Geheime Staatspolizei in the Thousand-Year Reich.
The Donald's home state decides that a repeatedly bankrupted and failed real estate speculator may not be the person to create the model of the "new corporate university." If the CEOs running the country, killing hundreds of thousands, wasting billions, and who are so stupid and short-sighted that they can't even commit crimes competently are any indication, maybe the corporate model is the wrong one?
Alberto Gonzales, say hello to Edwin Meese and John Mitchell. Welcome to the Hall of Shame.
Considering that the adolescent whale lost in the Thames probably got lost because our addiction to fossil fuels has continued to pump carbon monoxide into the atmosphere sufficiently to burn a hole in the ozone layer and raise the temperature of various oceans enough that currents which have been running consistently (and thus providing roadmaps for whales) for the last 13,000 years to shift course or disappear altogether and that THIS is probably the reason the poor little bastard got lost swimming upstream against the current through The City, airlifting him out is the fucking least we could do.
Followup from Reuters, 6pm London time: it looks like the poor little guy is going to die. Jesus. How many billions of needless deaths, of all kinds of sentient beings, because of human greed?
Friday night, back from the gig, having just been through the roll-call of worries, frets, late assignments, queries, etc from the various online component of the various courses.
If there were ever any question:
I love my students.
We shedding a tear tonight.
He never, ever, ever knuckled under. Chris Rock: “’Nevah EVAH?!?’ Nevah EVAH!!!’”
The Wicked One is gone, but not forgotten. The baddest of the bad.
Wilson lives.
In the "most gratifying response" department:
Last October, after a successful (e.g., PASSED) tenure vote by faculty colleagues, I was on my regular Friday happy hour gig. Which is usually a time for a lot of people, not just me, to come down from the adrenaline and frustration of the week and transition into the weekend. This particular Friday, Very Many People were buying Very Many Congratulatory Drinks for yours truly.
Well, in such situations, you don't want to give offense by refusing, right? So I was throwing them down-including the shot of poitín the barmaid brought, saying "I don't know why everybody's congratulating you, but I thought I should buy you one too."
I didn't know what it was, but sniffed it, and said "Damn, that smells like the Quare Stuff". Teetotal Teenage Fiddler (who went with Professor Spouse and myself to Ireland two summers back) said, "You're right, it is."
Afterward, Fluter Friend thanked the barmaid and she said, "Why's he celebrating?" FF said "He just got tenure." Barmaid said, "He got TEN YEARS?!? What the hell was he arrested for?!?"
I love it when my worlds collide.
It’s been hard to write in the wake of the opening semester, the Great Laptop Crash, and Alito, but here’s one nugget:
“
From a review of Jerry Weinberger’s new biography.
In the Stalin/Brezhnev years, the annual May Day march by Lenin's tomb in Moscow was an occasion for marking power shifts: those who appeared to wave to the crowd, standing next to Stalin, were seen as occupying the upswing, while previous attendees no longer participating were seen as on the outs. Associations with these or similar appearances became so predictable that in the great purges the Soviet government would doctor photos to make it seem as if discredited persons had never been present.
Now Bush is doing the same thing vis-a-vis Abramoff. If the Dems are smart, they'll publicize these photos as widely as possible.
Washington Post editorial delivers to Pat Robertson the smack-upside-the-head he's so richly deserved. Best line:
"It's sufficient to know, we suppose, that at a time when messages of hope are flowing from around the world to the bedside of Ariel Sharon, Pat Robertson and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still have each other."
Does anybody seriously believe any more that the Bush White House wouldn't do this?
Jan 9:
Statement below confirmed:
"At one point last year, the Mine Safety and Health Administration fined a coal company a scant $440 for a ''significant and substantial'' violation that ended in the death of a Kentucky man. The firm, International Coal Group Inc., is the same company that owns the Sago Mine in West Virginia, where 12 workers died earlier this week. "
1305, next day after that:
The former director of the National Mine Academy says lack of Bush administration oversight and enforcement led directly to the conditions that killed the twelve. Sean Hannity (gutless Fox-News shill) attempts to deny.
0745, next day:
Oh, Jesus.
Sometimes miracles happen. Prayers for the family of the 13th man, Terry Helms.
But, Goddammit, this shouldn't let International Coal Group off the hook:
Some of the trapped miners had said long before the explosion that they were just waiting for a disaster.The Sago Mine has a long list of safety violations -- and an injury rate in 2004 three times that of other, similar-sized underground mines, according to data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The Sago Mine was cited about 200 times over alleged safety violations in 2005, up from 68 citations the year before, according to the administration.
Recently surfed past a fragment of The Patriot. I had the misfortune to see it first one July 4th with a bunch of typically-dweeby-and-abstract libertarians who cheered at the tomahawk scenes.God, I would have loved to see them in 18th-century hand-to-hand combat.
Why is it that libertarian theory (smaller government, fewer laws, personal responsibility), which seems so reasonable in the abstract, is perpetually manifested by geeks who think memorizing the Constitution and refusing to pay taxes for infrastructure makes them Minutemen?
Ayn Rand's philosophy is egocentric, self-mythologizing, ill-written gobbledygook.
[updated 2 Mar 06, from NRO online: "It's okay to think Atlas Shrugged is the greatest book you've ever read until you're 18. Then you should stop."
And I was reminded again that, long before Passion of the Christ, Gibson was already a messianic asshole.
Reflecting on the craft of memory after cooking New Years brunch (orange-cornmeal pancakes, home-fries, shirred eggs, mimosae) for a bunch of folks w/out using recipes:
I spend, compared to a lot of folks I know (and the vast majority of students I meet), an awful lot of time committing information to memory: instrumental tunes pre-eminently, but also song texts, Internet information, instructional technology, sources for teaching and research, etc. Yes, I'll consign them to a Windows folder or a blogroll, but I also try to commit them to memory.
Partly this is for professional reasons: the medieval band plays everything from memory, as we believe that both conveys a more apt impression to an audience, and also permits us a degree of musical interaction we couldn't have if we were reading. Part of my contribution to that tends to be the recitation of very long semi-spoken, recited, or chanted pieces: in Latin, old English, or Irish (to date). So I have to memorize not only lengthy and complex accompaniments (and the texts I'm accompanying) but also lengthy and complex texts, some in languages I don't speak.
Similarly, I much prefer in class (and even more in working with graduate students) to be able to pull references, citations, dates, chronologies, titles, performers out of my mental database, as I think it makes the teaching experience much more immediate.
I work on these skills, seeking not only to maintain but also to expand them. Here's why:
Part of the training that we received (the Professor Spouse and my med-band colleagues formally, and myself informally and by osmosis) was in the old techniques of the memory, the kind that Cicero taught in De Oratore Book III (essentially a method for memorizing speeches): how to associate a text with an architectural facade, a statue, or a route traveled. This connected with some other techniques I'd encountered in various folk traditions, especially N European, W African, and E European: alliteration, verbal formulas, musical mnemonics.
But I've also come to believe that in the digital age, the degree to which these arts become superfluous is mostly a bad thing. If we don't have to remember because the machines do it for us (and because the range and complexity of material is so great), then our ability to remember erodes.
That erosion, I think, can lead to loss of certain perceptual capacities, both as speaker and as listener. I think, for example, that the performance of a lengthy spoken-word piece, or a song, or even a concerto, from memory is powerful for an audience partly because that experience--the information pouring out of the performer without any visible technological or textual support--is unfamiliar in the modern world but so archetypal in the history of human culture. We have been listening to singers, storytellers, and oral poets for many centuries longer than we've been reading texts or hyper-linking web-pages. I know from observation and experience that listeners have a visceral response to memorized performance, even if they don't know where that response comes from.
So doing things from memory, and expanding or recapturing the capacity to work with the memory, is to recover perceptual modes which have been part of human culture for millenia, but are currently in remission. It reconnects both performer and listener, not only to those modes of perception, but also to the literal millions of memes that have been carried in oral, folk, and vernacular traditions, through the craft of memory.
That's also howI like to cook.
The Old Powder House on Green Street in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Used as a powder store during the American Revolution, the same sorts of stores the British Army was seeking at Lexington and Concord.
I walked past this building 3-4 times a week on my way to-and-from my grocery store job.
It brings up complicated memories. That was a long walk--a good mile and a half, from my house on Sunset Road, uphill and cutting through a neighbor's yard into Waterside Cemetary, across West Shore Drive and past the grade school, to Turner Road and onto Green Street, down Mugford Street past the Me & Thee Coffeehouse to the Old Town Hall, right on Washington Street to the market.
Back the opposite route--and the recollection I have is of sadness and alone-ness. My dad's business had already failed and his drinking accelerated, he'd moved out and my brilliant elder brother was off in Europe--and I was slogging back and forth to this dumb job when I wasn't sitting bored stupid (and exuding resentment and disdain, no doubt) in high school classes.
A lot of memory attaching to that little building.
Tom Paine
Malcolm
Gary Snyder
Fight for justice.
Mevlana Rumi
Suzuki Roshi
Katagiri Roshi
That's all there is.
He was a dark, depressed, maybe-masochistic, endlessly-cynical, and remorselessly courageous man.
He grew up in colonial India (tall guy, 3rd from left in the back row--as a member of the Burmese police) and he saw it for what it was--and he rejected it:
Burmese Days
He hated what the fascists were doing in Spain in '36 (basically war-gaming for WWII)
and he went to Spain to fight (he's the cadaverous tall guy with the mustache and cigarette):
and then he came back and wrote about the way that bothRight and Left would propagandize what had happened there as he arrived back, wounded and disillusioned, into Britain:
“the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.” [from Homage to Catalonia]
He saw the nightmare beyond the Socialist Utopia:
and he called it out by 1948, when the rest of Britain's Communists were trumpeting Stalin's heroism:
[Animal Farm]
Here's what he said about Bush 43's "war on terror":
"WAR IS PEACE."
"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY."
"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."
Those scoundrels and villains will not escape the verdict of history.
God, I miss Frank Zappa.
Patron saint of the bloggers, or should be: he figured out decades ago that finding and promulgating information--and then laughing about it--was the most effective weapon against fascists. A song is the ultimate meme:
He nailed Dick Nixon:
["Dickie's Such an Asshole"]
One 'n one is eleven!
Two 'n two is twenty-two!
Won't somebody kindly tell me,
What the government's tryin' t' do . . .
Dickie's just too tricky
For a chump like me to use, oh use
You take that sub-committee serious, boy (and I'm serious)
You just might get a seizure from the evenin' news
Millions 'n millions of dollars . . .
Much as he might need . . . (good work!)
He could open up a chain of motels, people,
On the highway, yes indeed!
Quadrophonic desperation! (oh, pinch that loaf now!)
There might be confinement loaf up under your bed (well . . . )
You know if you just might pinch a little loaf in your slumber (pffft . . . NURSE!)
The FBI is gonna get your number
GONNA GET YA
GONNA GET YA
GONNA JUMP UP THE SUB-COMMITTEE AND GET YA!
THE FBI
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER
THE FBI
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER
THE FBI
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER
THE FBI
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER
THE FBI
THEY ALREADY GOT YOUR PICTURE
THE FBI
AND YOUR FINGERPRINTS TOO
THE FBI
THEN THEY GOT A GUY IN VIRGINA
THE FBI
WHIFFING UP A LITTLE SOUP JUST FOR YOU
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER
GONNA GET YOUR NUMBER
Tryin' not to worry
Tryin' not to care
But you know, I get so excited
When that soup goes over there
Can't have no private conversation
Nowhere
In the USA
Can't wait 'til the rest of the people all over the the world
Find out that their confinement loaf
Is just the same ol' way
Every day . . .
(Pinch that loaf now!)
Let me tell you about this right now
Let me tell you about this right here
Let me make this formerly clear
Let me tell you about this right here
You know you put me in office
So you must have wanted me in office
I've did you no harm
I used to have twenty-five tapes
Now I only got ten
Can't remember what happened to the rest
Musta gave 'em to a friend
Gave a couple to Bebe Rebozo
Gave a couple to Pat Boone
Gave a couple to Ronald Reagan
Gave a couple to the new vice-president
He said he'd stick with me through thick and thin
Even if I invaded Nicaragua
You know I'm not a crook
You know I'm not a crook
I just wanna lie about one more thing right now . . .
(Say yeah yeah . . . )
The gangster stepped right up,
'N kissed him on the lips good-bye
Made him a cocksucker by proxy, yes he did,
An' he didn't even bat an eye!
The man in the White House -- oooh!
He's got a conscience black as sin!
(Yeah, maybe I . . . I don't know but, it's just a training exercise)
There's just one thing I wanna know --
How'd that asshole ever manage to get in?
You're all the same, so sing right along now:
DICKIE'S SUCH AN ASSHOLE
Sincerely, Dick, we mean it
Sincerely, Ron, we mean it
Sincerely, Dick and Ron, we continue to mean it
Wee-ooo
Now let's bring the Republican Party up to date . . .
(Pinch it good!
You know, that confinement loaf is real good stuff
Hey, you oughta try some!)
They got lies so big
They don't make a noise
They tell 'em so well
Like a secret disease
That makes you go numb
With a big ol' lie
And a flag and a pie
And a mom and a bible
Most folks are just liable
To buy any line
Any place, any time
When the lie's so big
As in Robertson's case,
(That sinister face
Behind all the Jesus hurrah)
Could result in the end
To a worrisome trend
In which every American
Not "born again"
Could be punished in cruel and unusual ways
By this treacherous cretin
Who tells everyone
That he's Jesus' best friend
When the lies get so big
And the fog gets so thick
And the facts disappear
The Republican Trick
Can be played out again
People, please tell me when
We'll be rid of these men!
Just who do they really
Suppose that they are?
And how do they manage to travel as far
As they seem to have come?
Were we really that dumb?
People, wake up
Figure it out
Religious fanatics
Around and about
The Court House, The State House,
The Congress, The White House
Criminal saints
With a "Heavenly Mission" --
A nation enraptured
By pure superstition
Do you believe in the Invisible Army?
(Yes, indeed!)
When the lie's so big
And the fog so thick
And the facts kept forgotten
Then the Republican Trick
(Ketchup is a vegetable!)
Can be played out again
People, please tell me when
We'll be rid of these men!
This just in, from West Texas:
"King of the Hill" is not a comedy. It's a documentary.
Have recently been catching up with more-wired colleagues and discovering the numbers of educators out there in the blogosphere. A lot of interesting insight out there--not least, confirmation that some of the trends/syndromes we notice Around Here also crop up Out There. But on a very preliminary run, there are two things I notice:
Whether we like it or not, gender makes a huge difference in classroom discipline AND the amount of ridiculous crap students will try to pull. One of the reasons for this has to do with perceptions of authority, and what fosters authority can be completely different for male instructors than for female.
First of all, sadly, no matter whether it should be true or not, I believe it is simply not possible for a 5’2” woman (me) to have the same kind of physically authoritative and challenging effect on a young testosterone-ridden undergraduate male that a 6’5” male with a commanding voice can have. I am no expert on gender issues or socialization, but frankly I think this is hard-wired cave-man stuff. The latter punches very primal “rival who might kill me” buttons, and the former seems kind of like Mom. Not that Mom has no authority – she does, but it’s a very different authority from the Alpha Male, and it’s an authority that after a certain age is regularly circumvented with a whole bag of manipulative tricks.
The difference in accepted social behaviors between genders is also a huge factor. One of the most obvious examples of this seems to occur in students’ perceptions of identical behavior in male and female professors. Male teachers who are strict, good class disciplinarians, abide by the rules and boundaries they set in their syllabi, and inflict consequences for student irresponsibility are often described as “tough” or “demanding,” whereas I have repeatedly heard students describe analogous female teachers as being “mean” or a “bitch.” In our culture, the socialization, and hence expected behavior, of women requires us to accommodate, commiserate, forgive, and compromise. If we do not, we invite the very disrespect that we are trying to discourage by being “tough,” and the disrespect actually comes from our refusal to conform to the expected social norms. To add insult to injury, female students can sometimes be even worse culprits in this department than male students – if they have to spend so much time accommodating, commiserating, forgiving, and compromising, then they expect female Professor So-and-So to bloody well do the same.
Male and female students also exhibit very different patterns of trying to “get around” a professor. In my experience, undergraduate male students who are trying to avoid the consequences of their own bad decisions or irresponsibility usually just call upon some combination of lame excuses, obvious lies, and retroactive sicknesses, and then sit back and see what they can get away with. (I had a stomachache three weeks ago and therefore couldn’t do the 40-minute exam that was available on the class website for 9 solid days.) If they don’t get what they want, they will persist, usually by repeating the same excuse multiple times. Female students, on the other hand, tend to write long involved emails, trying to appeal to the female professor’s emotions, and pleading technical / computer imbecility, emotional meltdowns, vague “family problems,” and grueling, incompatible work schedules – in other words, the kinds of things that they think will elicit the expected reaction that has been socialized into them: that the female professor will commiserate with them, forgive whatever ridiculous irresponsibility they’ve exhibited, accommodate to the consequences of their bad decisions, and usually compromise on a grade issue. If they don’t get their way, they will also persist, but in a different way, often ramping up the emotional tenor of the phone calls and e-mails to a degree that is almost embarrassing. My conversations with male colleagues over the years would suggest that most of these same female students would never in a million years engage in this same style of communication with a male professor, or persist to this degree.
I myself certainly don’t have the answers for any of these issues. So far the formula I have tried to use with students of all genders is this:
1) model the same behavior you expect from them,
2) treat them all with equal respect,
3) don’t answer every addle-brained e-mail that comes over the transom;
4) insist on consequences;
5) always speak authoritatively about your subject, and
6) make it so abundantly clear that you know so much more than they do, that you scare the crap out of them (and the respect *into* them.)
As for hating or disliking them– sure, we get angry at them sometimes. And sometimes their complete lack of responsibility and sense of consequence is extremely frustrating. But it’s very important to keep a sense of humor about it, too.
And frankly, I think that people who find themselves consistently hating their students should find another line of work.
Great essay from Pedablogue on classroom geography.
It's amazing that even as stolid a source as Newsweek can run a story describing the extent to which Bush is a case of "lights on and nobody's home" and the balance of the MSM still can't articulate the fact that he's disengaged, incompetent, wilfully ignorant, a bully, a mama's boy, and out of his depth. Of course we're in an unwinnable, unnecessary war. Of course no one saying anything remotely critical of 43 was willing to be identified. Of course he does what the "older, smarter kids" tell him to do; that's what he's always done. But the job he's doing now matters a little more than cramming/cheating his way through a Gentleman's C at Yale.
Putz. He's an embarassment. I suspect that historians will look back and ask themselves how 51% of Americans could possibly have believed the man was competent.
Science Online reports that dogs laugh when they play.
When are we going to outgrow the Puritan vision of nature as "given to man by God" and start treating sentient beings as if they actually are?
" The Pilgrims justified their conquest by appealing to the Bible, Psalms 2:8:
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
The use of force to take this “inheritance” was justified by citing Romans 13:2:
“Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
William Bradford, called a man of “more than ordinary piety, wisdom and courage” by no less an authority on Godliness than Cotton Mather, wrote in 1642:
“Wickedness Breaks Forth—Marvelous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow and break forth here, in a land where the same was so much witnessed against and so narrowly looked unto, and severely punished when it was known, as in no place more, or so much, that I have known or heard of; insomuch that they have been somewhat censured even by moderate and good men for their severity in punishments. And yet all this could not suppress the breaking out of sundry notorious sins.. Especially drunkenness and uncleanness. Not only incontinency between persons unmarried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some married persons also. But that which is worse, even sodomy and buggery (things fearful to name) have broke forth in this land oftener than once. I say it may justly be marveled at and cause us to fear and tremble at the considration of our corrupt natures, which are so hardly bridled, subdued and mortified.....But one reason may be that the Devil may carry a greater spite against the churches of Christ and the gospel here,....I would rather think thus, than that Satan hath more power in these heathen lands, as some have thought, than in Christian nations, especially over God’s servants in them.”"
Above compiled and quoted from ManticEye
This time it's a mother otter and her pup at the Seattle Zoo.
Excellent Richard Reeves article unmasking the latest "Plan for Victory" in Iraq--which is the same thing as "Vietnamization", strategic hamlets and all. As John le Carre put it in "The Honorable Schoolboy": "This is how they tried to win it--in air-conditioned rooms, behind smoked glass. And this is how they would lose it, as well."
The criminal tragedy is that hundreds more Americans and thousands more Iraqis will probably die while Bush/Cheney seek some non-existent (read: politically-secure) "peace with honor."
So they (Egyptians following US orders) tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi until he told them what they wanted to hear: that there were links between al-Qaeda and
NYT: “The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between
I grew up across the harbor from Salem Massachusetts, and at the age of 11 attended the Salem Witch Museum for the first time, in which the testimony--both false and later recanted, and true—was induced from the accused by torture: pressing with huge stones, strangulation, starvation, immersion in icy water, and so on (timeline and testimony here. Even for children, the stupidity, inhumanity, and injustice, caused us horror. 300 years ago (in 1692), Governor Phips acknowledged that torture could not be used to extract confession, and we learned the evil of its usage in 1968—the year Dick Cheney had “other priorities” than service in
Dick Cheney and Condi Rice haven’t learned torture’s elementary lesson yet—that the suffering inflicted upon its victims is matched only by the condemnation heaped upon its practitioners. What kind of government with any pretense toward justice, legality, or humanity says “We’re going to torture you until you tell us the lies we want to hear”?
The evil they are practicing in the name of “protecting
Just heard on a Sundance documentary on Christiane Amanpour:
"If you are aware of the reality of a situation--of genocide, of the depths of human suffering--and you do not report it, you are complicit."
Are you listening, embedded journalists?
A small minority of Republican negotiators hammered out a “compromise” to extend the Patriot Act—under which all manner of unconstitutional domestic surveillance is legitimized to “fight terror”—for “only” 4 more years, instead of the 10 originally sought. This is bad law and intentional erosion of civil liberties, under the guise of “keeping us safe”, at which the Bush Administration has proven singularly incompetent—see the findings of the 9/11 Commission. It’s no consolation that the Act is supposed to expire in 4 years instead of 10—that 4 years still gives the Bush White House the opportunity to target political opponents for domestic spying (shades of the “ratfuckers” of CREEP), and another year during which they can guarantee pardons for themselves—shades of Ford pardoning Nixon.
HUAC under McCarthy in the early 50s used “domestic security” as excuse for all manner of illegal and unconstitutional invasion of privacy; Nixon did it in the early 70s; now Bush/Rove are doing it. It’s always the same: external threats are magnified in order to justify internal spying, repression, and illegality. Now we’re including torture and character assassination. Those bastards are going to have a lot to answer for, and I’d guess there will be multiple indictments, on both the Hill and in the White House.
This is really very articulate, thoughtful, and accurate commentary about the sociology, cosmology, and thinking processes of hard-core conservative, fundamentalist, Bible-literalist Texans. What’s not so clear is that a lot of them are actually decent people…but they’re very very provincial, the big outside world (diverse, contentious, changeable, skeptical) deeply intimidates them, and they are comforted by cynical politicians who will mouth insanely simplistic platitudes to reassure them. DeLay is just the same kind of selfish, cynical, nepotistic, opportunistic, greedy, hypocritical asshole as the city fathers in
There’s not much question that NYT wants Mel Gibson’s new project on the Holocaust to seem like the work of a fanatic. Gibson’s acting offends me, his opportunistic pandering to the White House for We Were Soldiers and Passion of the Christ disgusts me, and his gutless, whiny, and spiteful response to those who tell him he makes bad films amuses me, so I’m not sorry they’ve chosen a shot designed to make him look like a homeless street preacher (with top-class hair-piece). But it seems cheap.
I’d expect it from CNN, but NYT should do better.
Now the radical fundamentalist right is pissed at the Shrub because his Xmas cards leave off any reference to Jesus. But it’s all bullshit really: they’re not really angry: they’re just sending a message to remind him that he has to pander to their agendas if he wants their continued support.
He’s exploited cynical fanatics to get into office; he can hardly be surprised when the fanatics turn on him.
A German national of Arab ethnicity, represented by the ACLU, is suing the CIA (including George Tenet) after he was allegedly detained without indictment, denied legal counsel, and tortured. The war crimes are coming home to roost. Here’s hoping Tenet (and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Gonzales, at the very least) are brushing up on their Dutch and building their legal defense funds.
This is heart-breaking. One prays that cowardice, if not conscience, will push these criminals to reverse criminal and inhumane policies.
Donald Rumsfeld, the self-described “toughest man in
One-armed pushups don’t make you tough, Don. And whining doesn’t make you right.
A doctor and an old
