Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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07:13 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/74210624/240226) [Link] |
The era of American exceptionalism is over (part 253 in a continuing series)
Massive earthquake shakes China [5/12/08]: Within the day, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao -- who is a geologist by training -- is personally on site to supervise rescue efforts and shout words of encouragement to trapped students.
Massive hurricane floods New Orleans [8/29/05]: Bush plays guitar, Condi goes shoe shopping, and the FEMA head jokes about being trapped in his office. (The timeline throws it into even sharper relief.)
--
I had to focus on China to draw the contrast, but let's not forget the crisis in Burma, either. The toll's in the tens of thousands and rising fast. Their leaders are useless, and pure dumb luck is also hampering relief efforts.
Both countries need significant and ongoing relief aid. ICRC, or Mercy Corps, or feel free to suggest other/better aid organizations in comments.
Current Location: ~journal
Current Mood:  depressed
Current Music: Bach, "Toccata And Fugue In D Minor"
Tags: politics
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02:29 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/46309021/240226) [Link] |
Hm
Random odd fact of the day: Two states share the smallest number of organized hate groups in the continental U.S. --
Rhode Island and South Dakota.
(Neither of them has any groups in the categories the SPLC tracks. At the opposite end, California and Texas have over 50 apiece.)
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EDITED TO ADD: Second map with actual numbers. Add Alaska and Hawaii to the honor roll. California loses, with 80 to Texas' 67.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood:  surprised
Current Music: "Earth," The Power Trio From Hell
Tags: politics
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01:55 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/33402467/240226) [Link] |
Terbo watch
The continuing saga of local political candidate Ted Terbolizard:
In one of those bizarre the-Internet-is-three-clicks-wide moments, I just stumbled across this post at the wtf_inc community. Shorter wtf_inc: "omg turbo lizard hahahahaha."
(Nothing that your humble author didn't make note of four days beforehand.* Although to be fair, if your only interest in the candidate is his name, my original post was teal deer.)
Apparently word got back to the candidate himself; Terbo e-mailed the instigator and, oddly, put a link to the wtf_inc treatment over in the "Recent Interest" section of his campaign website. I guess it's true -- in politics, any publicity is good publicity.
EDITED TO ADD: The candidate himself -- ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) terbolizard -- drops by in comments. Hi, Ted! :-) Also, a good profile from the local paper.
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* And now I find myself wondering -- based only on the timing -- if the wtf crowd originally picked it up from my journal. If the person who first posted that is from District 4 as they say, then they would have had any number of other exposure vectors ... but I still wonder. To the best of my knowledge, it's been a few years since the drama hamsters made a big deal of me, but the twitch reflex still occasionally surfaces.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  sleepy
Current Music: Galliano, "Cold Wind"
Tags: politics
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10:54 pm
[Link] |
Waffles and Terbos*
Amusing Craigslist post. Which I'm just linking because it's amusing. I have no interest in its outcome. Nope. None whatsoever.**
Meanwhile, back here in the hinterlands*** of California, the race is heating up in the primaries for the CA-04 House seat. Rep. John Doolittle, who is a venal, obsessive, science-hating, greedy shell of a man, finally threw in the towel on his lengthy congressional reign. The stink of the ongoing Abramoff-related corruption investigation was definitely a factor. Good riddance; he's been an unrepentant embarrassment since I moved here, and even replacing him with another rubber-stamp Republican would be a huge step for basic political decency.
Now the question is coming up: Who will run for his seat this year? The Democratic field is settled -- and Charlie Brown has my unqualified support in the general election -- but in the Republican primary, the horse race is just heating up.
The biggest names ready to jump into the fray -- Oller and Ose -- are carpetbaggers. Gaines, who was one of the few local Repubs willing to call Doolittle out over his scandals (and who got excoriated as a "weasel" for his efforts and nearly got censured by the county GOP), isn't running despite early speculation.
But, fortunately, there is someone in the GOP primary who I can wholeheartedly endorse.
I am not a Republican. But, while I often disagree with their principles, I respect what the GOP is supposed to stand for. One CA-04 candidate is a proud, sane Republican -- a man who knows that conservatism is about sane foreign policy rather than belligerence; that our goal is to prevent terrorism rather than simply "fight" it in the drunken bar brawl sense; that hating taxes isn't a license to run up record-breaking debt; and that the First Amendment isn't just for fundamentalist Christians who whine about oppression because they can't proselytize on government time.
At their best, conservatives rein in excess spending, ground discussions from theory into science, and slow runaway social upheaval. They serve a necessary function in government. But today's national GOP has come completely unmoored -- the party of legalized torture, endless war, soaring deficits, faith-based policy, and corruption and incompetence. George Bush's GOP is fundamentally scary; a direct threat to everything America is supposed to stand for. So, even if it meant continued GOP dominance, this liberal would much rather see sane, principled Republicans ascendant than watch the GOP drift further into fascism and/or irrelevance.
Nationally, the best candidate to reclaim the GOP is Ron Paul. And in CA-04, one candidate clearly comes from the same mold.
I am proud to offer the Nevada County dragon community's endorsement for the GOP primary to ...
Ted Terbolizard.
... In other news, a guy named Ted Terbolizard is running for political office. Which is just freakin' cool.****
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* This would probably make an awesome song name. (Hey, it has precedent.)
** I also did not write it. Which, unlike the non-footnoted protestations, is actually true.
*** What a nifty word!
**** Not to mention ... Charlie Brown vs. Terbolizard. TUUUUUUR-BOOO-LIZARD!***** That's Pay-Per-View GOLD right there.
***** For full effect, scream "TUUUUR-BO!" in the Trogdor voice.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Mood:  TUUUUUUR-BOOO-LIZARD!
Current Music: Shpongle, "Behind Closed Eyelids"
Tags: politics, wordplay
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03:57 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/9461209/240226) [Link] |
Friends list vs. American public: ROUND 1, FIGHT!
Poll #1022009 Economics hypotheticals
Open to: All, results viewable to: AllWhich job would you prefer? All other things being equal, where would you rather live?
Once you're done, see how other Americans answer these questions. All I can conclude is that something is wrong with somebody, somewhere.
(Incidentally, the article's an insightful look at why the United States is the only -- only -- advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. That alone makes it worth a full read.)
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Current Mood:  meh
Tags: politics, polls, work
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05:50 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/30804254/240226) [Link] | I don't have anything useful to say about Jerry Falwell's death today. But I would like to offer some context to those of you who are shocked by the attitudes people are displaying at his passing.
If you think that people are being too disrespectful to the man, you owe it to yourself to read this. Think for a moment about what it was like to be one of his targets ... and at least try to understand the natural human urge to reciprocate.
After some deliberation, I'll leave comments open in this post in case people want to talk about it. I'd appreciate keeping this post a gloat-free (and eulogy-free) zone - but I'm not condemning anyone who wants to celebrate. It's just that I've been harsh on right-wingers lately, and I'd like to think that at least occasionally we can find common ground.
Tags: politics
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08:26 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/3864628/240226) [Link] |
QOTD
The scofflaw is the enemy of civilization itself. It's a bad sign for a country when scofflaws are seen as heroes. An outlaw is one thing, but even the "romantic" outlaw doesn't attack the very idea of having laws that apply to everyone; the outlaw doesn't defend the sociopathic claim that because of his money or his "talent" the laws that apply to the rest of us shouldn't apply to him.
-- bradhicks [here]
... Now, see, he gets the phenomenon exactly right, but I'd argue with the term he chose. "Scofflaw" is overly broad, and ignores why people are disobeying the rules.
A jaywalker is a scofflaw, but that has nothing to do with money or talent. A medical marijuana smoker is a scofflaw, but they are trying to improve their own quality of life in a harmless* way. A poly triad is a group of scofflaws, but if they had their druthers, they wouldn't want an exception for themselves -- they'd want laws that more accurately reflected the ways sentient beings can express love for one another.
There is, however, a group of people that habitually agitates for laws which they personally feel free to ignore. This group cheers as their media darlings and political superstars denounce the moral outrage du jour, then leaps up to defend those same superstars when they indulge in some of the same vices they decry.
They talk about the sanctity of marriage while stumbling through a series of divorces that would make Britney Spears blush; they hide narcotic habits and cry out for punitive measures against drug dealers; they exhort godly living and drop millions of dollars at gambling tables; they talk about the sanctity of life while the state they govern executes a record number of death row inmates, or*** while painting in exceptions to anti-abortion laws for their own family members.
To most people, this group is not called "scofflaws."
Please, call them "hypocrites."
Or Republicans.**
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* Read this as "mostly harmless", if you must; I'm not trying to force an argument here about drug use. The point being that, while there may be nebulous and tenuous ways in which pot smokers are threatening society, none of them deserve mandatory-minimum years-long sentences and the rabid monomania that federal law enforcement seems to focus on the drug war with.
** Okay, this is a low blow ... but I think a fair one. All the spoiled members of the modern nobility -- and this includes most prominent politicians of both parties and all corporate officers -- suffer the same "freedom for me but not for the masses" conceit. The difference is that, while Democratic politicians may occasionally, accidentally vote for something that benefits the public, the GOP party platform is to actively fight for policies that maintain the elites' privileges.
*** Edit: I'll retract this particular example; see comments. George W. Bush hypocrisy is easy enough to find and further examples are left as an exercise for the reader.
Current Location: ~calorg
Current Mood:  cynical
Current Music: Disco tunes. (Good taste scofflaw!)
Tags: politics
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04:18 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/4335707/240226) [Link] |
In which I disagree with previous LJ reviewers
kadyg and I saw the movie "300" today, after seeing several people raving about its awesomeness on our friends lists. Can't speak for Kady, but I sat through the movie and ... meh. It did nothing for me. And after a little more reflection, I simply can't recommend it to anyone.
 I saw Sin City and liked it, so it's not just a Frank Miller thing -- it was this movie specifically. (Granted, there are legitimate reasons to dislike the Frank Miller style; I'm just not going to cover them here.) Three main factors, in order of increasing importance, made 300 a more painful experience than I'd have liked:
( 1 - a cinematic nitpick; 2 - yay stereotypes )
3. Painfully Republican.
300 is not a subtle movie.
The very first thing Kady and I agreed on as we left the theater was that it was painfully heavy-handed. And the lessons it tries to draw are at once simplistic, convenient, and very dangerous.
Leonidas' 300 -- and more broadly, his city-state of Sparta -- are repeatedly shown as the sole beacon of freedom, justice, and the Greek way in a world of invading Persian faggots (see #2) and their liberal Athenian surrender-monkey allies. The Persians are an existential threat to all of Greece, but weak-willed politicians and a decadent populace are too blind to see it (especially after being infiltrated by a fifth column of false prophets and bought-and-sold governmental traitors). The Greek politicians initially united against Xerxes (remember the reference to those boy-loving Athenians telling him to sod off?) but have now sold out and would rather throw meaningless festivals and be bribed by bad guys than defend the homeland.
Any of this sound familiar?
It should. It really should. This movie is the argument, in a nutshell, that Bush loyalists have been jumping up and down and screaming at the top of their lungs since 9/11, and are still sticking to in the face of the Iraq war's disintegration. It's Ann Coulter and Michael Savage's shrill denunciations of all liberals as traitors and fifth columnists. It's right-wing blogs' insistence that Islamic terrorism is a threat to the very foundations of civilization and neocons are the only ones with enough clarity to do what must be done. It's culture warriors' denunciations of Teh Gay (see #2) and promotion of an idealized hypermasculinity and strict warrior culture.
Like those blowhards, the movie also suffers from a promotion of rhetoric over reality. On numerous occasions, Leonidas and/or other Sparta mouthpieces repeatedly promote how they stand for freedom, etc. However, look at what the movie (and the history) shows and it's a different story. Sparta is (correctly) shown as a harsh, totalitarian culture, where insufficiently strong children were killed and military strength was emphasized. And contrary to the movie's mythologizing about freedom, ancient Sparta was actually a slave society (those who weren't descended from Spartan blood were called "helots" and were officially serfs belonging to the state).*
In the movie, the only actual instance of Sparta defending freedom of any sort was their stand against the invading Persians. And even there, in reality, the Spartans were hardly alone -- they were certainly the heroes of Thermopylae, but not as the clear-eyed sole defenders of liberty the movie (and graphic novel) paints. The entire scene with the stupid council ignoring the Persian threat was, shall we say, entirely made up. So the movie got progressively more painful every time the rhetoric blasted in.
Look, I'm not the sort of guy who injects politics or ivory-tower lit-crit into everything. (For instance, I'm on record as saying that reading racism into Tolkien is absurd.) But "300" is such a huge, blunt talking-points instrument that it's in a category of its own.
This movie was a barrage of violence between ultramanly good-guy soldiers and demonized Middle Easterners intermixed with heavy-handed right-wing talking points. I've gotten enough of that from the news in the last several years. No, thank you -- won't be seeing this one again.
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* To Sparta's credit, they had attitudes toward women that were incredibly enlightened for the time. Wikipedia's notes on Spartan women and adultery are an interesting counterpoint to the movie's treatment of the queen.
Current Location: ~calorg
Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Yngwie Malmsteen, "How Many Miles to Babylon"
Tags: films, politics, reviews
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06:59 pm
[Link] | I'm beginning to feel like a patient on "House." (Hell, the doctor I've been seeing even looks a little like him.)
... It's back.
I've been taking metronidazole faithfully for eight and a half days, as well as probiotics (though skipping a day here and there) -- and just as quickly as the intestinal problems went away, they've returned. I had to take some time off of work today to go home and lie down; I used the opportunity to call the specialist that I had been hoping not to have to see.
At this point I'm giving up. I can't get this resolved easily. It (still) could be anything ... from a persistent bacterial infection up to and possibly including colon cancer.
And that's what scares me.
... No, not the possibility of a life-threatening illness. If this means a medical intervention that forces a lifelong change in habit, fine; if it means I have six months to live, I'll try to use it well. But what does scare me is the fact that I now have run out of options for dealing with this cheaply.
American health care is great ... when you can afford it. I can't. A scary number of Americans can't. I'm working class. I'm holding down two part-time jobs while my wife is changing careers. Neither of us has had employer-provided health insurance since my hike last year.
There's a possibility that the private care we bought to fill in the gaps might cover everything after the deductible. There's a certainty that this means $3500 out of pocket; all I've gained myself is a crapshoot against a deep-pocketed and many-lawyered corporation that may or may not violate me up the nether orifice with a huge spiky stick labeled "pre-existing conditions." As much as I don't want to be sick, I am afraid to deal with this. I have already been screwed once that way.
I am afraid of the next several weeks, and the next few months. I am afraid because I don't know how deep this goes. I am afraid because the longer this drags on, the deeper in the hole I go -- while I'm still juggling the debt from my hike and my commitment to help kadyg through school.
I am afraid because medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in this country -- and because the GOP president and his GOP cronies just fucked America's poor, again, by tightening bankruptcy rules so that I might not even be able to dig out from whatever five-figure medical debt I might accumulate. I am afraid because I don't qualify for Medi-Cal and because California has no catastrophic care coverage (not that Washington state's, when I lived there, helped any).
I have a little credit. I have good family. I don't have any kids to support. I am in a much better position than the average workingman would be in my shoes.
But I still feel alone and helpless.
Right now, I am our household's only income. If Kady has to go to work, she has to give up cooking school; and if this illness forces me to take any more sick days, my income isn't enough to cover basic expenses. And at any rate none of the calculations take into account medical expenses, which -- again -- I just don't know what they'll be.
In any other industrialized nation, I wouldn't have to fear dealing with my insurance company. I wouldn't have to fall asleep with the possibility of an illness I can't afford to treat (gods forbid this IS something like cancer). I wouldn't have to deal with the sinking feeling in my stomach when I think about how I might be saddling the woman I love with bills for the rest of her life.
I wouldn't have to drag myself to work when I've got cold sweats and need to go to the bathroom every half hour because I can't afford to call in sick. (Well, to be fair, that could happen anywhere. But if I didn't have such panic at the big bills to come, I wouldn't be scraping furiously for every penny I could earn ... as I've said, I have a little credit, and I could afford to sit out a paycheck or two a lot easier than I could afford the $3500 deductible that now stares me in the face.)
I wouldn't have to panic about how more insured people file for medical-related bankruptcy than uninsured people -- or how their debts are on average 50% higher. I wouldn't be paralyzed with indecision about whether to keep paying the insurance premiums on the chance my condition is expensive, or let it lapse and use that extra $100/month to pay the bills.
Gods help you if you're American and poor. You're only one crisis away from the choices that are now scaring me witless. Our leaders have decided that the social safety net isn't worth paying for ... and this is the price, and worse, much worse, that some Americans are paying for their decision.
And I hate how I know the fear won't go away . Being poor in America is not just about giving up desires (like that dental work I've been putting off or that six-year-old computer I'd love to upgrade) -- it's about giving up stability, about knowing the slope down is even slipperier than the slope up. Even with a stable job, you're one crisis away from juggling bills, which then puts you one crisis away from maxing out credit cards, which then puts you one crisis away from payday lenders, which then puts you one crisis away from homelessness.
When you're poor, you learn to fear bad luck. You learn to live with that fear, all the time, because you're always looking down at the precipice, knowing that once you start sliding there's precious little you can rely on to keep you from hitting bottom.
"Dear gods, I hope this one isn't the slide that sends me there."
If you have some time today, please write a letter to your congressman (assuming he isn't some corrupt kool-aid drinker like my district's John Doolittle). Every American needs guaranteed health care. It won't solve the problems of American poverty, but it's a necessary start -- and given the country's bankruptcy statistics and the demonstrated success* of other countries' universal plans, it's the place to start.
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* Look, I've spent an hour writing this post and I don't have the energy to go through every single one of the arguments again. Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly and John Cole at Balloon Juice have both spent a great deal of time documenting our system's comparative failure; here's a representative sample.
Current Location: ~calorg
Current Mood:  upset
Current Music: Scott Peeples, "Gerudo Valley OC Remix"
Tags: american health care is a piece of shit, politics
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07:33 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/9758787/240226) [Link] |
A study in contrasts
Good Internets: Second Life sics lawyers on Internet parody. Why is this in the good Internets category? Because they complimented him and gave him a license to use the derivative logo he mocked up. HELL YES. I have no real opinion on GetAFirstLife.com but my respect for SL just went up eight notches. (via kadyg)
Bad Internets: Meanwhile, in that First Life of which we speak, a teacher is facing 40 years in prison ... for having a malware-infected computer that spewed porn ads at a bad time.
Forty years.
For an adware infection.
Forty years.
Current Location: ~yuba
Current Mood: speechless
Tags: geekery, politics
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01:02 am
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/32112278/240226) [Link] |
ow
So, our cat decided to celebrate Appreciate a Dragon Day by ... politely waiting until after midnight to freak out and savagely bite my arm.
I've had cat bites before, but this one was a lot worse than I'm used to. At least one fang left a gap the width of a pencil eraser and tore down into muscle. I tried to tough it out by cleaning the area and irrigating the wound*, but after a night of bleeding and a day of increasing pain and restricted range of motion, I went to the hospital.
The doctor wasn't at all helpful, but I did at least get a prescription for antibiotics. (If the bite made it that far down, I'm not taking any chances.) And after spending probably about $200 on medical care, I was relieved to see that our friendly local drugstore had a special deal on the drugs I needed: Buy ten boxes of macaroni and cheese for $105, get the cefuroxime free.
( Go figure, I leave the wound description in the open and lj-cut the political rant. )
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* "Irrigating" a wound is the technical term for taking a syringe, filling it with water, aligning the syringe with the puncture, and OW OW OH MY GOD OW HOLY SHIT THAT FUCKING SON OF A COCKSMOKING OW PAIN. It is important because sometimes you can wash bacteria out this way. Or else you can shoot jets of water at your bodymeats until they bleed, and the blood washes out bacteria too.
Current Location: ~/computer_desk
Current Mood:  ranty
Current Music: U2, "Where The Streets Have No Name"
Tags: american health care is a piece of shit, politics
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12:21 am
[Link] |
Notes on the run
In case you somehow blinked and missed the news, Science* has spoken: soybeans make you gay.
(I'd include a punchline here, but I'm getting post-traumatic stress flashbacks to Orson Scott Card's latest novel. Maybe there was tofu in Malich's MRE that morning ...?)
In entirely unrelated news, elynne is brewing up some plans for a " LJ-based, freestyle, write-your-own-adventure Tomorrowlands roleplaying game." If people are interested in this, I'm willing to put on my Wise Universe Moderator shoes and help out. So, as the famous bloggers say, "follow the link."
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* Science*, as in, science with an asterisk (and maybe a few pairs of "ironic quotes"). You know. Kind of like Barry Bonds' "home-run record"* .
Current Location: ~/computer_desk
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Divine Moments of Truth," Shpongle
Tags: politics, ttu
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09:12 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/1895417/240226) [Link] |
*twitch*
Dear Orson Scott Card,
You're fired.
As a member of the Super Secret Cabal of American Liberals Who Control All Media Everywhere, I'm demanding that you turn in your Professional Science Fiction Writer license. Your hideous political opinions might once have been forgivable, but now your descent into the foam-at-the-mouth wing of the Right has brought you to the unpardonable sin of writing prose that makes people go blind:
Reuben Malich knelt over the body and cried out in the keening wail of deep grief, the anguish of a soul on fire. He tore open the shirt of his uniform and struck himself repeatedly on the chest. This was not part of his training. He had never seen anyone do such a thing, in any culture. Striking himself looked to his fellow soldiers like a kind of madness. But the surviving villagers joined him in grief, or watched him in awe.
Within moments he was back on the job ...
Once I've got my snazzy new artificial eyes in, I plan to search the Internet in hopes that someone is giving you the Left Behind treatment1 you so richly deserve. Until then, please refrain from writing anything more, ever.
Let us pretend all you ever penned was Ender's Game, and think of you fondly as that one-hit wonder who immediately vanished back into obscurity in late 1985. Let us never speak of your wingnut alter ego again.
Signed,
Me
Current Location: ~calorg
Current Mood:  nauseated
Current Music: Some DJ Tiesto mix on di.fm
Tags: politics, writing
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01:21 am
[Link] |
Turn, turn, turn: A blogosphere schadenfreudaganza!
Dear fellow progressives:
The voting is over. The tidal wave has struck.
Liberals, conditioned by over a decade of pre-election optimism and subsequent slapdowns, found their wildest projections exceeded and the voting results climbing to the level of their secret and unvoiced dreams. Not only was there a seismic shift in the House (did we hit 30 pickups, or am I speaking too soon? I know that +29 has been called for certain), but the Senate appears to be at worst 50-50. (And at best, um ... about 50-50, since new Bush buddy Joe Lieberman is #51.) Democrats now control 28 out of 50 governorships and made broad pickups in state-level legislatures.
These elections were a victory. A clear, unambigous, victory for sanity. A repudiation of the crimes, lies, greed, excess, divisiveness, pettiness, and destruction of American ideals that we've suffered through continuously for the last 2,119 days. This is the beginning of the end of Bushism.
... A victory? Hell no, a rout! Not a single Democratic incumbent lost their House or Senate seat. This is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics.
Of course, this is not the end of the movie; there won't be any credits rolling after the good guys' overwhelming and improbable victory. There is plenty of work left to do. But we DID win, and this is a time to celebrate.
And more than celebration ... it's a time for schadenfreude. (* mp3 link)
As the song says: "That's not very nice!" "... Nope, but everybody does it!"
Because I love this country -- and its ideals of freedom; economic and social equality; and responsible governance -- the vocal mainstream of the right wing and its elected representatives have unloaded an unending stream of vitriol at me and my fellow progressive Americans since 2001. So, if sore losers on the radical right want to get a bug up their ass about a day or two of open gloating from our side of the fence? Fuck them. I would feel a little bit more guilty about my behavior if the same people complaining could go longer than, oh, two weeks without casually flinging diagnoses of "Bush Derangement Syndrome" [1] in our direction or trotting out the tired "aid and comfort to the enemy" line whenever the media offers critical stories about Iraq [2]. And it's not just the blog wingnuts who have spent the last five years equating Democrats and liberals with terrorists. Thanks for your years of middle fingers, guys; now sit. and. spin.
I'll get this out of my system in a few days, and I'll be perfectly happy to return to my usual political maturity after that, but in the meantime, pop the champagne cork and hum along with the mp3 that should by now have finished downloading. Gloating at the misfortune of others begins ... NOW:
And, extra credit bonus gloat:
- Has anyone ever bothered to point out that, according to the Rapture Index, the closest we've gotten to Armageddon was under Republican rule and near-universal Bush popularity; and the farthest was back when Democrats controlled all three branches of government?
Ahem! Anyway.
Savor those links. Let them sink in for a week or two. There's a lot of hard work up ahead on a political, ideological, and cultural level ... but there will be time to get to it after the giddiness dies down.
If we want to truly save this country, we have to vaccinate the public (and, especially, the media) against the wholesale construction of false realities by GOP propagandists (edited to add: Bonus link) and corporate flacks. We have to fight to victory in the existing constitutional crisis. We have to build, probably from the ground up, an enduring and appealing liberal vision to inspire a mass movement behind our idealism and keep a public from falling back into the pseudo-fascists' arms once the inevitable disillusionment with the current crop of political winners occurs. We have to clean house of the ugly and disproven mindset that Democrats can only win by being Republicans-lite. We have to solidify the grassroots advantage that liberal bloggers and online communities have begun to build.
With a big victory under our belt, and a chance to finally set the agenda after a decade of invective and exclusion, maybe it's a challenge American progressives can handle after all.
Current Location: ~calorg
Current Mood: exuberant
Current Music: AMERICAN Internet radio! With ROCK!
Tags: link roundup, politics
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05:19 pm
[Link] |
The die is cast
Good luck, America.
Current Location: ~yuba
Current Mood: anxious
Tags: politics
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10:41 am
[Link] |
A glum, dark prediction
I'd just like to take a few seconds here for a digression into politics.
Largely, I haven't said anything about politics lately because I've had other things on my plate. (This isn't to imply that politics isn't important. It's just that, as I once observed, there's no international crisis so major that it can't be interrupted by a small, stupid crisis close to home.)
This has been true even though one branch of my government has just debated and passed a bill that freaking legalizes torture and the indefinite disappearance of anyone the president considers a terrorist. Or perhaps even more true: After all, what the hell is there to say? How far have we fallen that Americans of good conscience have to specifically state, "I don't think our country should be legalizing torture and secret extrajudicial detention of suspected enemies"?
Ah, but now we have a scandal threatening to tear the GOP apart -- the whole Mark Foley sexual-pursuit-of-pages thing. Now that's worth my time to comment on!
... In a meta sort of way, anyhow. See, here's the thing. The nonstop Foley coverage has crystallized something that's been bouncing around in my head the last few weeks: I now have to say, with some regret, that ( I expect America as we know it to end within my lifetime. )
Current Location: ~computer_desk
Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Radiohead, "Go To Sleep"
Tags: politics
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03:09 am
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I can think of a lot of things I'd do with $1000
Fun fact of the day No. 1:
The Iraq war -- our grand adventure into toppling a dictator that had nothing to do with Sept. 11; a war which has distracted us from finding Osama bin Laden for five years; and a war which has pinned us down in the Middle East and weakened our posture in negotiations with the world's real nuclear and WMD threats -- has cost every single American over $1000 each. And growing.
Fun fact of the day No. 2: (unrelated, we swear!)
"CEOs of corporations with extensive defense contracts are getting paid about double what they made before Sept. 11, 2001.
CEOs of other large corporations - without big stakes in the war - have averaged pay gains of 6 percent during the same period, the study said."
(-- Associated Press. h/t Crooks and Liars.)
Current Mood:  cranky
Current Music: "Shape of my Heart," Sting
Tags: politics
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09:02 pm
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If it walks like a chicken, and quacks like a chicken ...
The world's least funny comic strip* recently unloaded the L-bomb upon us all:
That's right. Mallard Fillmore is a Libertarian. The comic strip that bellwethers movement conservatism -- with its endless stream of personal jabs and caricatures of liberals that seem pulled out of a time vault (seriously, the figure most satirized so far this year is Teddy Kennedy, with four Chappaquiddick jokes in two months), with its approving citations of Michelle Malkin and regular paeans to William F. Buckley, with its complete lack of criticism of any right-wing figure anywhere, with its blurb proudly proclaiming its "conservative bias" -- has found a new word to replace the label "conservative". Chantel is a liberal, and Mallard is the opposite -- a "libertarian."
Given that the strip has shown no other sign of disagreement with GOP-talking-points positions (except to chastise GOP politicians for behaving too much like Democrats!), what this boils down to is that Mallard, despite believing all the same things they do, is ditching the label "Republican" in order to go over and stand with the Cool Kids. And rest assured that's all it is, political camouflage. For example, actual Libertarians think the government has as much business lecturing Americans about Mallard's beloved "moral values" as it does about Mallard's despised political correctness.
Man. When even Gipper the Talking Points Duck is too busy ducking the label that best describes his political stance in order to go stand Over Here Away From Bush And The GOP, you know that the party is political damaged goods.
As a minor side note, the strip where Mallard "liberals, liberals, democrats, democrats, liberal democrats" Fillmore chides a coworker for conflating Republicans and conservatives is (I'm sure unintentionally) the funniest strip he's ever done.
--
* Granted, the competition is very fierce.
Current Music: Old Soul - "Falling"
Tags: politics
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03:41 pm
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Uncomfortable in his shoes
Left-of-center political blogger Kevin Drum today quotes the National Review, which offered the best one-sentence summary of last night's State of the Union speech that I've heard: "Whether you love or loath[e] George W. Bush, you can not deny that he has learned how to read a teleprompter."
That's true. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the SOTU was only moderately painful to watch (I was at work, and of course we had to have it running on the newsroom TV). But it wasn't how Bush handled reading his hour's worth of lines that really struck me last night.
I was reading the transcript last night while his speech was playing. The final line of the speech was supposed to read: "... confident of victories to come. / Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America."
He got through "victories to come," the penultimate applause line, and as folks started clapping, he threw in an immediate "God bless America" and practically leapt away from the podium.
Whether or not he's learned to read teleprompters, he still really doesn't want to be behind them.
Current Mood:  working
Current Music: "Too Hot To Think," Boom Crash Opera
Tags: politics
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04:01 pm
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/3864443/240226) [Link] |
'A Very Beazley Christmas'
The Bush White House may be destroying America from the inside out, shredding our international reputation, and stealing billions of dollars for their industry and lobbying buddies ... but I am forced to admit, they're pretty darn good at making Christmas videos about the unethical behavior of White House pets (click on the "BarneyCam" link).
The production values on that thing are really quite professional. Note especially the fake news broadcasts at the beginning of the 10-minute show. (We know by now, of course, that they're quite good at that.)
Current Mood: amused
Tags: politics
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