Supporting Some Friends

I have some very close friends who sometimes feel as though they are surrounded by bigoted fanatics, and sometimes they really are. Unfortunately, fascists have allways used fear-mongering and denegration of 'The Other' to rally support for their own power. Hitler used the Jews, Milosevic used Muslims, and right here in the USA the Christian Right is using gays and lesbians as a 'threat' that they can use to rally ignorant people, including the President. Some might protest the comparison to Hitler, but I don't see much difference between the tactics of the Brown Shirts' pogroms and Focus on the Family or the 700 Club.

There is nothing either Christian or right about bigotry.

I also don't see what the fuss is about. Personally I don't feel that my marriage is threatened by the mere existence of a legally recognized gay couple, and I've never felt compelled to join the club simply by proximity. It is so unfortunate that ‘Live and Let Live’ is deemed to be quaint and naïve. This is a non-issue. It is just stupid.

At any rate, my friends have pointed out to me the Senate is about to vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment. This is a particularly onerous attempt to actually use the United States Constitution as a discriminatory weapon so jackasses like Jerry Falwell can sleep well at night knowing that gay men and lesbians can't share healthcare benefits, or have any legal rights and obligations towards each other.

The organization Human Rights Campaign (www.hrc.org) has put together a little video here of some of the primary suspects in this little drama. Take a moment to watch it and I hope you'll take a minute to raise your voice.

http://www.hrc.org/voteno/voteno/video.htm

Remember, this kind of stupidity only happens when the common-sense center takes leave of its responsibility to act and allows extremists to fill the vacuum.

GOP Biblical Passages

Luke 5:12-16 - While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean." And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean."

And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but "go and show yourself to the receptionist, and make a co-payment for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them that you have private - not public - insurance."

But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But they were not enrolled in the Medicare prescriptions drug plan so he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Casey's at Bat!

The subject of the upcoming Pennsylvania Senate race came up - The ol' Casey vs. Santorum thing - with questions about whether Casey is worth voting for based on his support for restricting access to safe and legal abortion.

Dangerous topic, I know.

Well, I guess that depends on whether you are a single issue voter, whether you can look at the candidate as a whole, or even whether you think Rick Santorum is the anti-Christ. Personally, I fall to the later. I'd give Satan a second look if he was running against Little Ricky. At least you know his motives really are greed, ignorance and destruction. Then again I feel that way about a lot Republicans. I’ve met the guy. He really came off like a smiling bobble-head doll when a group I was with stopped at his office last year.

Mind you, it isn't necessarily philosophical conservativism - there are arguments for limited government, etc. – that really isn’t my beef. What I really despise is the tactics of Santorum’s brand of the GOP; the slash and burn political malice, the 'swift-boating' and all of those vicious, bullying attacks. This current crop of Republicans is the first in my memory that treated the minority party not as the loyal opposition, but as a contemptuous enemy worthy of ridicule and scorn, if not utter destruction. Santorum’s, and the broader GOP’s type of politics assumes that the public is stupid, and they bring discourse down to about the same level as watching Jerry Springer. It’s disgusting.

My other problem with the GOP – and Ricky really shines through here - is the so called 'religious right'. You want to be a fanatic? Go ahead. Practice whatever you believe in your own home. That is what this country is all about. You think abortion is bad? Don’t have one. You want your kids to believe that evolution is a fraud? Teach them ignorance at home. You think the EPA is a socialist front? Let someone build a chemical plant in your back yard. Whatever you want.

You want to start legislating it; enforcing your particular moral view on every man woman and child in this country? Get bent you derainged freak….

…. and stay the hell out of my house.

Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Rick Santorum has to go.

So back to Bob Casey: A moderate Democrat who happens to be stoically pro-life. What do you do with that? Can you respect that the guy really might think abortion is a bad thing? I’ve never heard anyone say that it is a good thing, just a necessary evil. If you are a single issue abortion-rights Democrat do you hold your nose and pull the lever for Casey because he’s not Santorum?

I don’t know. Personally, I think the Democrats have become too bound by NOW orthodoxy on this issue, much the way the GOP is too bound to the lifers. It isn’t healthy for either party. It drives everyone to the extremes.

I can say this about Casey. He’s got a very progressive position on family planning – aside from abortion – advocating more and earlier access to information and contraception with a goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies. This is not a bad thing and far better than Santorum advocating that women hold an aspirin between their knees. Casey supports more public funding for health care coverage, including contraception. He’s also opposed to discriminatory homophobic marriage amendments. He’s ok on a lot of issues.

In today’s political world both parties have a script that candidates are supposed to follow to keep their bases happy. There never seems to be any room for individualism. Casey has taken seemingly contradictory political positions, in particular running the risk of alienating female voters over abortion when Santorum is so vulnerable on these kinds of social issues. He’s actually neutralizing what should be a big advantage for a Democratic candidate in this race. I might not agree with his policy position on the issue, but I have to give him credit for sticking to his guns.

Am I crazy about him? No, but I am going to vote for him. What choice do I have? The alternative is another six years with Ricky.

New Review on Unconscionable Music!

Yes, I finally wrote one. Check it out!

http://unconscionablemusic.blogspot.com/

Hang 'em With Their Own Words!

Vacant Girl presents a conversation with the President. Muchos Gracias:


Bush Explains Medicare Drug Bill -- Verbatim Quote

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: 'I don't really understand. How is the new plan going to fix the problem?'

PRESIDENT BUSH: 'Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases.There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices.Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, howfast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

Well, it would be hard to elaborate on that, no?

Bush in Freefall

Many thanks to Peace Corp Marie down in our nation's capital for passing this link along.

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Endless fun for hours!

Personality Disorder

A Friend from college currently hiding in in the hills of West Virginia, living only as 'Raoul', tosses out this remark about W.

"The thing that gets be about Bush is that I think in order for a guy to have such a cult of personality, he should, you know, have a little personality."

Raoul is an old drinking buddy with the distinction of outlining a history of 1920's American literature on the inside of a closet door and making the professor come to the dorm to read it for a grade. He also once set himself on fire.

Anyway, Raoul has a Blog as well, with some interesting stuff.

http://oldnumberseven.net/bricolage/

He, like our friend Billy, is a better writer than I. There is good stuff here, as well as links to some unusual articles.

Since I have a mixed readership, for those of you not interested in the more racy content the web has to offer, stay away from the tab marked 'Frontal'. It is what it says.

HUD Secretary Demands Loyalty Oath for Contracts

This is an interesting little nugget from the Texas Herald-Democrat about a speech HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson gave to a Dallas business group. Good blood-boiling stuff.

http://www.heralddemocrat.com/articles/2006/05/14/Texas_news/state01.txt

The synopsis is this: According to the article, the Secretary told the group business leaders about an African American businessman who was awarded a contract with HUD. The fellow had the opportunity to meet Mr. Jackson and took the opportunity to thank him for the contract. In the course of their conversation the man revealed that he did not like Bush. The article goes on to report that the Secretary actually boasted to the business group of canceling this man's contract over his political preferences.

Following a number of inquiries, including questions from U.S. Senators, the Secretary recanted saying that he made the whole thing up AND that he still had the confidence and support of the President.

Well, as long as the President still likes him....

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh Studies Itself

A friend of this esteemed literary institution sent along an article from yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about yet another major study on how to transition Pittsburgh from an old industrial economy to a new high-tech one. These studies are bloody expensive and there have been five or six of them completed in the past five years.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06132/689583-28.stm

For me, the two killer lines in the article are "This time its going to be different" and "Pittsburgh isn't over studied. I think we are under-implemented". And they're paying this guy right? This thing cost $425,000!!!!!!

At any rate, the suggestion has come up that we should do an additional study to determine what effect anything implemented from all of these studies has had on regional redevelopment. Yes folks, a study to study the studies. While we're at it, we are going to need a committee to monitor the progress of the study to study the studies. We love committees here in Pittsburgh. This way we will know whether our money has been well spent.

And then, this time it will be different.

I love this town.

NSA Wiretaps a Blueberry Cobler

You know that character in government espionage movies, the one who is freakily paranoid with dangerous apocalyptic visions? This is the character who delivers lines like, “This isn’t a game son!” with an earnestness that makes you believe that Armageddon is only seconds away. Usually he’s in charge of some sort of black-ops mission that would be completely illegal if it were discovered by those namby pamby idealists who are still naïve enough to believe in a rule of law, transparency and the U.S. Constitution.

You know that character?

I think that guy is now running the country...

... or at least controlling the guy who is supposed to be running the country.

In addition to monitoring overseas calls by people who might actually be terror suspects it has also come to light that the administration has engaged the NSA to track tens of millions of domestic phone calls, although acording to those who got caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, 'without listening to them'. After all, “tens of millions” is a lot.

This is where we’re heading folks. Mabel and Betty on the phone discussing a recipe for blueberry cobbler, with the help of the Department of Homeland Security:

Mabel: ….. so then you mix in the blueberries.
Betty: Oh, that sounds so good
DHS: Achoo!
Mabel: Bless you Betty
Betty: I didn’t sneeze, I thought it was you.
Mabel: No, it wasn’t me…… you don’t think…..?
Betty: Is there someone else on the line?
DHS: No. Go about your business. Shopping is good for America.
Mabel: Oh, ok. Well anyway, like I was saying, then you mix in the blueberries….

Do they really want to listen in on my dangerous conversations with my mother about gardening and the doings of retirement in Florida? Do they want to know about the bloody Begonias?

Jesus, these people are stupid.

Oh Hell's Bells....

Arriba, Arriba, up with the bottle...
out with the boss and up with bottle...
bad influence that one
thank goodness for the good wife
takes us home in one piece

Amen

Pax

7:00 am the next morning - See this is what happens when you try to type after a few too many drinks. POETRY for chisake????!!!! And worse, its not even original. Got Hemmingway in the first line, Bukowski in the fourth..... oh my stars and garters.

Say it With a Straight Face!

Still trying to write that damned speech. You know, the one Bush should have given after September 11th.

Here's the problem: every time I get to a lofty line about the great strength and purpose of America, our indominable will of freedom brushing aside these imbecilic terrorists, I remember who would have been reading the speech. Then the idea of a lofty and inspiring phrase just seems pointless.

The other problem I keep having - despite my best intentions - is that I keep deleting lines like, "We will not rest until we've publicly impaled the leadership of Al Qaeda - their intestines baking in the hot summer sun for all to see - on the Capital steps." Not very progressive of me, I agree.

You have to remember that New York is my home town and the whole thing still really burns me. This of course did not mean that W was supposed to go off corrupting our response with tangential military adventures.

Oh well, I'll keep plugging..... For a while.

Well, We've Tried Everything Else

Many thanks to LR - the Executive Director of Doom for such a fabulous photo.

Sorry its a little blurry, but you get the idea.

OK, Someone complained that they couldn't read the sign. It says, "Will someone please give Bush a blowjob so we can impeach him?"

Tougher Than It Looks

Anyone who actually read the recent post 'Four Score and Seven Years Ago' knows that I'm trying to write a better speech than the one Bush gave to Congress following Sept 11th.

I've been re-reading Bush's remarks and despite missing some of the things I would have liked to have heard, it was a pretty darned good speech. The errors were of character and ommision, but certainly not of poor writing.

The other thing that is interesting about the excercise is that I've remembered how pissed off I was about the attacks. I suppose everyone was, but writing about it almost five years later some of those feelings have resurfaced.

We'll see how it turns out. If anyone is curious, here is a link to the text of Bush's original speech on September 20th, 2001. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript/

Check out Unconscionable Music!!!!

Folks,

I've added a new link to the Objector. I'm going to do music reviews on a separate page. Please check out the first review - actually of a movie about music - Its a good one.

http://unconscionablemusic.blogspot.com/

If anyone - CK example - ever wants to contribute a review, please let me know.

C'mon! We're building an empire here!

Slow Night

A Rabbi walks into a bar with a giant frog on his shoulder.

The bartender says, "Holy shit! where'd you get that?!"

And the frog says, "Brooklyn. They're everywhere."

HA! GET IT?!

Too Good Not To Pass Along

Special thanks to RB the lawyer for passing this along. If you haven't had a chance to witness the dramatic spectacle of Stephen Colbert gently needling Baby Bush at the Washington Correspondent's Dinner you really are in for a treat.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=3&entry_id=4791

Enjoy!

Make the World A Better Place

An old friend and learned fellow sends along this little pearl:

The world would be a better place if people who have difficulty communicating would have the courtesy to shut the hell up.

Hail to the Gang!

I've just totaled the readership of the Unconscionable Objector and to the best of my knowledge there are six of you!

That's kind of cool, Thanks guys!

Four Score and Seven Years......

If there was one thing I learned from Gary Kappel it was how to look at history as a continuum of events. One event leads to another and there are no isolated incidents. History is the ultimate Rube Goldberg contraption. One minute you’re reading about Lothar, and fifteen steps later a Serbian Anarchist is popping Franz Ferdinand, and so on.

Never the less, there are two places in time that I can think of, both within recent memory, where it seemed that history did actually stop, if just for a moment. It didn’t actually stop of course, but the events were so significant, so seemingly unique, that they seemed to break the continuum, leaving the powers of the world looking at each other along a new starting line, trying to size up who would be the strongest in the new race for an as yet undefined goal.

The first event was the end of the Cold War, which today still seems - at least to me - to have brought at least a measure of closure to a thousand years of European conquests, colonialism, cultural dominance and political ‘isms’. I think history will show that the end of the Cold War marked a shift from an almost iron clad dominance by the European world view and its associated conflicts to a world where a newly emboldened southern hemisphere asserts itself at the expense of the old first world powers; old powers that are now in relative decline.

The second event - and really where I’m going with all of this - was the terrorist attacks on September 11th. The attack was an evil, gruesome and vulgar assault on our country, perpetrated by ignorant fanatics of the worst kind, and I wouldn’t want to downplay that, but I think there has been a tendency in the United States to define the event simply as an attack on America that required a simplistic, militaristic solution.

Al Queada is bad. We are good. Let’s go get those mother fuckers.

This approach was unfortunate because the events of September 11th brought forth much more fundamental questions about the country that, to my knowledge, have not been widely acknowledged in a meaningful way. Yes, we’ve addressed the tactical challenges, whether real or perceived, in the post 9/11 world and yes, we’ve marched off to war in an effort to protect the country, but none of those actions really highlight the real significance of the attacks. Namely: How does the United States of America respond, in an adverse situation, to an opportunity to either reaffirm or redefine itself – for better or for worse - in its leadership role in the world for the 21st century? In essence, before we defend ourselves we have to define what we are defending.

Needless to say, I wasn’t especially satisfied with the answers I received from our political leadership. I felt very strongly that in the days following September 11th, the President had an opportunity - a truly great opportunity - to reaffirm the United States' most positive attributes. It seemed like a good time to take the moral high ground and reaffirm the benefits and privileges that come from living in an open society and why, in the face of such a horrific attack, it was more important that ever to uphold those values. The country was envisioned as a beacon on the hill for the aspirations of free people, and in the darkness following September 11th I personally felt we needed to reaffirm that context and follow a course based on those ideals.

Needless to say, that never happened.

Maybe I wasn't listening hard enough, but the majority of the words, and later the actions, of the leadership seemed to focus on vengeance and agendas rather than on the characteristics that make the nation worthy of protection and defense. Hitting someone back simply because they had hit us, or because we thought they were thinking about hitting us, without any larger context or vision just seemed like playground logic.

I’m not suggesting that we should have turned the other cheek to the attacks, but simply that we needed to establish a greater context for our response to them.

At any rate, as I thought about this I started to consider the things that I would have liked to have heard but did not. And what exactly did I want to hear? Well, I’m still working on the exact details. In fact, this has now morphed into a little project to write the speech that I think the President – any President really – should have given to the nation following September 11th, 2001. We’ll see how it turns out.

Before I close though, I will say that I have new found respect for good speech writers. Everyone wants to strike the big chords like FDR, or capture the perfect vision like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The problem is that it becomes difficult not to sound like you’re aping someone else’s grand oratory style. I know what I want the speech to say, I just haven’t figured out how to say it without sounding grandiose and high-falutin’.

I’ll post updates as this little project goes on and naturally the final result.

Wish me luck.