LEFTOVER CRACK ...a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself...

Now here is some provocative, political punk rock.  I found myself agreeing with a lot of the things they had to say, which you can get an idea of from the song titles, like "Clear Channel (Fuck Off)," "Life Is Pain," and even the album's title "Fuck World Trade." But the song "One Dead Cop" is where I have to take exception--it exhorts listeners to "Kill Cops..."

Granted, you can barely understand it as it's being sung, but it's right there in the lyric sheet. I do agree with them that the police are "protecting the money and out serving the state/crushing the people with the laws they create" (from the song "Gang Control"). But I can't agree with killing anyone, cops or criminals. Unless maybe the cops are the criminals and they won't be deterred any other way.

I don't know--I really found myself questioning my beliefs as I listened to the album. Leftover Crack really has some extreme left-wing politics, which I like, but I guess what makes me uncomfortable are the methods of bringing their politics to fruition that they advocate.

For example, I can relate to the sentiment of "Burn Them Prisons." It is very much of a piece with that favorite Eugene Debs quote of Kurt Vonnegut's:

"While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. While there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

 

But the lyrics of the song are "We'll bomb the police state/assassinate the magistrate/we'll go to every town and burn them fuckin' prisons down." Again with the killing.

And of course, the closest analogue to Leftover Crack that I'm familiar with is the Dead Kennedys (I understand they're very much like Crass also, but I'm not very well-versed in their stuff at all). The thing is, the DKs seemed to use much more hyperbole and satire ("Kill The Poor", etc.). Their lyrics were over the top politically, so you got their point, but they seemed less radical (by which I mean they didn't advocate killing people--I mean, they didn't like the cops, but they never said that cops should be killed--to my knowledge) than Leftover Crack.

That's why I'm kind of thrown off a little bit by Leftover Crack. There's not really any humor to speak of--maybe in "Rock The 40 oz." But if that's humor, it's slight and nonexistent for all practical purposes. Really, there's nothing reassuring about Leftover Crack, like I always kind of felt there was with Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Minutemen, etc.

Life is all blackness and hopelessness and the only way out of it is to kill cops, they seem to be saying. I generally would agree with the first part, but I have to take exception to the second part. That's one of the main problems with society, is that everyone is always trying to solve problems with violence.

Obligatory Michael Moore Section

It reminds me of one of the best Michael Moore ideas--I believe it's from "Downsize This." I can't remember exactly how he set it up, but it was something like an open letter to Arafat, in which Moore basically sympathizes with the Palestinian people. But he points out that the Palestinians cede the moral high ground with their suicide bombings.

So Moore asks Arafat in the letter if he's not familiar with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. He points out that they got what they wanted through nonviolence. He even goes on to say that war can and often has fallen short of helping nations achieve what they want, but he points out that nonviolent protest has never failed.

Back To Crack

So anyway, in any event, I wouldn't sit around and listen to Leftover Crack for pleasure. But I do think that they have an important, and desirable, anti-corporate message. I just wish they wouldn't talk about killing cops. I might just be missing the wink (hey, could someone start using that for someone who doesn't get something that's tongue-in-cheek)--you know, like maybe they're going "wink, wink, we don't actually mean for anyone to actually kill cops, we're just expressing the outrage of the oppressed in extreme terms." And that very well may be the case.

I would sit around and listen to Chumbawamba's new album "Un" for pleasure, though. They're basically just as lefty as Leftover Crack, but they're even more subversive because their songs are so pleasant and catchy, yet so crafty and just-subtle-enough that the message seeps into the brain of the unsuspecting listener bopping to the beat. And Chumbawamba's got a sense of humor about it.

And that's not to say that the literal plundering of the world and the literal sacrifice of the good of the world's people for higher profits by corporations is in any way funny. But what a coup (pun intended) to turn public opinion against such things with the cold, hard truth and a belly laugh now and again. Because we're all going to die, so why not have a chuckle once in a while?

CONTEXT COUNTS, PART THE SECOND ...a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself...
 
Just played a gig in Memphis at the Blue Monkey with Tucson Simpson (who were super nice and a great band), so spent Monday driving back and didn't read Raimondo's Monday column, "Do We Want A War Criminal As President?" until today.  I guess my "Context Counts" entry didn't change the national debate on Kerry's status as a war criminal.

Well, anyhoo, I had to respond, so here's my letter to antiwar.com's Backtalk section.

Dear Antiwar.com,

I look forward to reading Justin Raimondo's column every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I find antiwar.com to be an invaluable resource for countering the pro-war misinformation that taints other outlets.  I truly appreciate the fact that Raimondo's columns always challenge conventional wisdom, are exquisitely sourced, and display a level of acrid wit  and non-conformist intellectual honesty unmatched by few pundits.

Having said that, I don't always agree with Raimondo and sometimes take great exception to what he has to say.  His column of July 26 ("Do We Want A War Criminal As President?") is one of those.  In particular, he links to an mp3 of John Kerry supposedly admitting to "war crimes" in Vietnam.  The problem is that Raimondo, like the most of the rest of the media, quotes Kerry incompletely, missing the point of his remarks entirely.

The mp3 quotes Kerry thusly:

"I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages.   All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions..."

But the key second part of that last sentence is cut off--here's the full sentence (these quotes can be found here): " All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down." 

 

And then the rest that always gets left out in discussion of these particular remarks of Kerry's: "And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals."

Raimondo's column mischaracterizes what Kerry said about himself when Raimondo says "listen here as he [Kerry] confesses to what he himself describes as 'war crimes'."  Did Raimondo even listen to the clip?  Kerry never once utters the phrase "war crimes" or "war criminal" in reference to himself or anyone else--in that particular clip.  As you can see, he does eventually get around to accusing people like Johnson, Nixon, and McNamara of being war criminals--but not by name.

Now Kerry did refer to committing "atrocities," but that is not what Raimondo says he said.  Are "atrocities" the same thing as "war crimes"?  Maybe so or maybe not,  but either way, that's not what Kerry said in the mp3 Raimondo linked to.  And it's not in the mp3 because it's not what Kerry said back in 1971.

The point is that Kerry was explaining out how the Vietnam War itself was a crime which forced all who took part in it to be criminals because of the rules of engagement put in place by our government.  And he had the intellectual and moral honesty to acknowledge his own role in those events.  And then he had the intellectual and moral courage to try to atone for that role by helping (and I might add, succeeding) to bring an end to that tragic conflict.   Long story short, the fair way to interpret Kerry's remarks is that he was saying that anyone who fought in Vietnam committed atrocities--be they Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, liberal, conservative, or what have you.

I would think that John Kerry, of all people, might be treated to a tough yet fair-minded critique by Justin Raimondo, seeing as how he actually fought in a war and then worked to stop that same war.  That people now selectively use Kerry's words and treat them as though they mean the opposite of what they actually say is something that I would think Raimondo would be vigorously against.  He's howled in more than one column about how he's been misquoted and misinterpreted.

Kerry has not taken an antiwar position, and I wish he would, but I am afraid that if he does, he will lose.  And if Kerry loses, Bush wins and the country loses.  Like it or not, there are only two real choices in this election--Bush or Kerry.  I wish that were not so and I would work to see more parties built up and injected into the national debate--that's the main reason I voted for Nader in 2000 (Gore had no chance in my home state of Mississippi).

I hope Raimondo will keep up the good work.  Our country needs him, but it needs him to be accurate.  And to answer his question--no, we don't want a war criminal as president--we're in the process of trying to throw one out of the White House.

 

 

A THEOLOGY LESSON ...a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself...

If Bush wants to "preserve the sanctity of marriage," he should be proposing a constitutional amendment to outlaw divorce. After all, here's what our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had to say about divorce:

"Whoever divorces his wife, and marries another, commits adultery against her. If a woman herself divorces her husband, and marries another, she commits adultery." Mark 10

Sounds to me like Rush Limbaugh is an adulterer a few times over. So is Newt Gingrich. So is John Kerry, for that matter. And adultery is a sin--it's in the mothergrabbin' Ten Commandments, for the love of Pete.

How many times did Jesus mention homosexuality? NONE!!!

Case closed--this amendment will never pass, it's vile and purely political gamesmanship. Bush is a terrible president, the radical right is un-American, hateful, and both are about to get a major smackdown come November.

Being gay does not destroy society; gay marriage does not destroy society. There is absolutely no proof of that. But many studies have shown that the outrageous divorce rate in America is having an enormously negative effect on our society.

"Truth is not the secret of a few..." Lawrence Ferlinghetti

3 QUICK THINGS ...a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself...

1. Election postponement/cancellation:
Unnecessary, ill-advised, and scary as piss...it's as though Bush is begging to be impeached right away so as to keep something like this from happening before we can do anything about it. I mean, come on, if there's a terrorist attack in a major city or even several major cities, that shouldn't stop the rest of the country from voting. On 9/11, we down here in Mississippi went about our lives pretty much as usual but kept a close eye on goings-on up north.

Also, on that point, if Tom Ridge and his boys are able to detect "chatter" from terrorists, why can't they locate the terrorists? I mean, if they know their whereabouts enough to know where to listen for them, why can't they catch them? Do they not want to catch them? Are the terrorists and their vague threats useful to Ridge and Bush so that, maybe, I don't know, a terrorist attack could be faked, the election postponed, and then Bush automatically gets four more years since there's no way he'll be re-elected without such a scenario or something similar.

2. Stem-cell research:
This is a no-brainer--it should be legal. It promises to be the most significant advance in health care in a very long time if not ever. And Orrin Hatch was just on Hardball (this should be where the transcript will appear) condemning Ron Reagan Jr. and the Democrats for "politicizing" the issue. Bush politicized it almost 3 years ago when he issued an executive order against it. Does Orrin Hatch (on skis) really expect any citizen with half a brain that he is against politicizing issues?

3. Gay marriage:
I think John Kerry and John Edwards ought to run on a campaign of adding a constitutional amendment of outlawing divorce. If anything is ruining families and hurting our society, it's divorce. I mean, even Jesus said that if you divorce someone and then have sex with another person, it's adultery. Gay marriage hurts no one. Again, on Hardball, Chris Matthews was suggesting that homosexuals are more promiscuous than straight people and Orrin "Don't politicize anything" Hatch does nothing to counter that impression. Straight people are pretty damn promiscuous, too. And Hatch kept saying that gays shouldn't be allowed to "impose" their values on society, implying that it's okay with him if straights impose their values on gays. And he thinks that because a majority of Americans in a certain poll said that they disapprove of gay marriage, that's all the authority anyone needs to disallow it. But people's opinions about an issue aren't what should make our laws--what should form the basis of our laws is that which is fair and decent to all citizens.

Oh, and in a speech today, Bush said that invading Iraq was right even without the presence of WMD because he didn't want to run the risk of Saddam aiding terrorists. So, as my wife pointed out, he'd rather go after someone who might help terrorists and who was not himself a terrorist (to the U.S.anyway) rather than tracking down the known terrorists who attacked us. What a chump.

Not only that, but it looks the Filipinos are more humanitarian than we are. I guess maybe some of that "Christianizin'" we did about a hundred years ago paid off...what happened to us? We send people over to foreign countries to die for lies, then don't negotiate even though lives could be saved...

MY WHITE ASS CAN BE PRESIDENT...a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself...

G.(ee) W.(hiz) Bush, master of timing and put-downs, implied that John Edwards pales in comparison to Dick Cheney in terms of experience when Bush was asked what of thought of Kerry's VP choice. What Bush said was, "Dick Cheney can be president."

Bush's razor-sharp wit and biting, incisive commentary save the day! Except for two things: 1) Dick Cheney is the president, and 2) my white ass or anyone's white or black or brown or red ass can be president under the following circumstances:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

That is of course, from the U.S. Constitution, which I realize is a document that Bush and his pals don't take too seriously. But under those guidelines, not only could John Edwards be president, but I could be president. My wife could be president. My dog Skeeter could be president (in people years--oh wait, the language does say you have to be something called a "person").

Check This Out
Here's something interesting that I just discovered--if you go to Google and type in "bushcheney04" and then click on the first entry, it takes you to johnkerry.com!!! I looked up Bush's site so I could find out for sure what his experience was before he was installed as president by those goddamn activist judges he and his buddies hate so much. Apparently his only qualifications were two terms as governor of Texas, and he only served half of the second term even though he lost the presidential election in 2000 but again, was installed in the White House by the Supreme Court.


If I Were...
If I were a nationally known news personality, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity might be inclined to say "Look at this liberal bastard--he's helping to perpetuate the lie that Bush lost the election and only came to power through the partisan machinations of the Supreme Court." And they would be right about everything except the part about all that being a lie.

The only reason that George Bush is president right now is that even though Gore undisputedly won the majority of the popular vote, that majority did not take to the streets or storm the White House in order to morally or physically prevent him from taking the oath of office. Why? Because liberals and Democrats believe in law and order and in the orderly transfer of power, even if it doesn't seem quite right. Hey, no one can win all the time.

But as Buzzflash points out in this news analysis, the Bushies don't believe that and will stop at nothing to win elections. Let's not forget the the redistricting fiascos in Texas (nice summary and then final outcome)and Colorado (nice summary and final outcome). In fact, a sentence in the Washington Post article about Colorado from last year says it very well: "According to experts in the field, there is no precedent in modern U.S. politics for what the Texas and Colorado Republicans did." That applies generally to most hardcore Republicans--they like to violate precedents and pretend that the generally perceived understandings and unlegislated traditions (i.e., redistricting only once a decade instead of every time the balance of power changes) that keep our government somewhat in check don't exist. For example, they think nothing of handing out the largest tax cuts in history to the wealthiest citizens while waging an illegal, unprovoked war after losing an election and having been installed by the unelected Supreme Court (the conservapundits always love to point out that the Supreme Court and federal judges in general are not elected).

Bush Can't Win Legitimately--He Didn't Last Time
But, not to worry, because there is no way John Kerry will lose this election--the only chance Bush has is to cheat like last time. Kerry is the most qualified, the most dignified, the richest, the most benevolent, and the most rockin' candidate. In fact, I'm glad Kerry pointed out that of the two tickets, he and Edwards have the best hair. That means Kerry learned something from the 2000 election--and that is that substance means nothing to the American media, but image means everything to them. That remark showed he has a sense of humor and also that Dick Cheney is mean, fat and bald. And that he drinks orphaned children's blood from the hollowed out skulls of "liberated" Iraqis. And using Cheney's own standards of proof (fifth paragraph), what I just said must be true, because it has never been proven...or disproven.

IF YOU WANT BLOOD (YOU GOT IT)...a vote for bush is a vote against yourself...

Now the battle is joined...Kerry and Edwards. I'm glad on just last names alone that the choice is Edwards and not Gephardt or Vilsack. Those last two names are sort of anatomical and would probably be played upon--Dick has "heart" and will give heart trouble to Dick Cheney, and Vilsack would probably become "Vilnutsack" in graffiti.

I'd pontificate more, but what can you say? A Kerry-Edwards ticket is badass. Beats Bush-Cheney any day of the week, just like Gore-Lieberman beat it last time. And I'll say it again--I believe there is no way that Bush can legitimately win this election. He may end up "winning," but it won't be because he actually got the most votes. The only way Bush can win is if he gets his daddy's powerful friends to help him like last time.

At any rate, my fantasy is that the new campaign theme song for Kerry-Edwards would be AC/DC's "If You Want Blood (You Got It)," directed of course, at the Republican attack machine. Because we want them to bleed for us...in the metaphorical sense, of course. Maybe Audioslave or some other American band with a good shrieker could do a version. But in the meantime, "I Won't Back Down" will work.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11--PROPAGANDA?

And by the way, is Fahrenheit 9/11 propaganda or truth? I only ask because that is swiftly becoming the story line accepted/parroted by mainstream commercial journalists/pundits without much if any evidence to back that up. What the hell is propaganda anyway? An interesting website on the matter is here.

No one can agree on what propaganda is, but everyone seems to agree it's bad. Or maybe everyone could agree that propaganda is relative--it's whatever I think is true but you think is false and vice versa. It seems that a lot of people think of propaganda as being untrue and dishonest, but if you go by the defintion at dictionary.com, which says:

Prop·a·gan·da
n.
The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.

That's a very non-judgmental definition and describes the actions of both Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh. So I guess Fahrenheit 9/11 is propaganda, but only to the degree that the programs of Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. are.


Q:TRIAL LAWYERS--SPAWN OF SATAN OR DEFENDERS OF THE LITTLE GUY AGAINST THE CORPORATE GREED MONGERS?

A: Defenders of the little guy against the corporate greedmongers that have been after the working people in this country since they first came into being. So Haley Barbour and Ed Gillespie and Governor Bush (George W., not Jeb--well, Jeb too, but I'm trying to make a jab at George W.'s unelected status) need to cool it with the tort reform talk.

Better a trial lawyer in the White House than a heart-attack-prone, foul-mouthed, war pig oilman. Yes, we're talking about he whose dick is in chains...

Oh, and one last thing...why is it OK in crazy Republican philosophy to be a billionaire if you're a dirty, underhanded CEO but it's an affront to voters if you married into money? The old line on Kerry was that he was a conniving sack of shit for marrying a fantastically wealthy heiress, and the new one that Beck and Limbaugh tried out today was that "Kerry is a billionaire." No comment or anything, just saying that Kerry is a billionaire, and therefore a sack of shit. Because he wants to be president instead of a labor-exploiting, exorbitant-salary-making CEO.

OK, this is the real last, brief thing...McCain had a chance to do something extraordinary by running with Kerry and turned it down to shill for the guy who cut him off at the knees in the 2000 primary. Is this the kind of thing that vast life experience brings you to? McCain is a war hero, he survived the Hanoi Hilton, and he's served in government for years. He gets an opportunity to really make a difference and stick it to Bush, and he ends up being Bush's warm-up act?

It reminds me of my father, who has a Ph.D in thermodynamics, has visited Europe and Africa, has worked with and taught people from all over the world, and who is one hell of an intelligent guy. He was liberal through my childhood and a lot of my youth, but admitted to me in 2000 that he's become a single-issue voter and that his single issue is abortion. I'm flabbergasted that after all that experience over 60-odd years, his mind closes. It closes rather than opens. His vote hinges on one issue that doesn't even affect him directly. If McCain and my dad are examples of what happens to a person once they accumulated years of experience and knowledge, then...that sucks!

My wife gave me a quote today from Tolstoy that kind of summarizes this situation:

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

BECOME THE MEDIA...a vote for bush is a vote against yourself...

Today Rush Limbaugh poo-pooed the idea of "the public airwaves." He said that the idea of public ownership of the airwaves is "poppycock." Then he went on to defend the FCC's fines of Howard Stern because of Stern's supposed violation of "decency statutes."

It's so typical of the dittohead mindset that Rush could simultaneously pronounce the public ownership of the airwaves to be null and void while at the same time upholding the right of the trustees of those airwaves to selectively enforce decency standards. What Rush is basically saying is that the airwaves are subject to market forces like any other commodity and that he and his blathering brethren have sewn up the market and the FCC should exist to intimidate and fine their competitors off the dial.

The idea that the airwaves should be subject to market forces culminated in the 1987 repeal of the "Fairness Doctrine" by Reagan FCC appointees. Of course, this paved the way for the rise of right-wing radio, discussed here with some good links.

It seems to me that Rush and his hateful, anti-American breed are guilty of the ultimate act of indecency themselves--promoting the pursuit of profit at any cost over the security and well-being of the majority of the American public. They're in favor of "free trade," "tort reform," "family values," etc.--anything that has a pleasant-sounding name but actually serves to diminish the rights and well-being of individuals while strengthening the military-industrial stranglehold on our culture. Oh yeah, and "deregulation" above all else. You know what a good synonym for their definition of "deregulation" is? Feudalism.

These guys try to serve up a big, steaming plate of horseshit to their mostly white, working-class, religious listeners while telling them it's filet mignon. If only these listeners would say "there is some shit I will not eat..."


I thought this story on self-made millionaires dovetailed nicely with this discussion...

LETTERS

By the by, my letter to the editor regarding "Fahrenheit 9/11" was printed in the Hattiesburg American along with another letter in favor of the movie. We both got taken to task by another letter writer. I present all the letters for your amusement below...

We're victims of mind control




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

LETTERS
Greetings from the mind-controlled state of Mississippi. Michael Moore's politically incorrect movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," opened on 1,000 screens nationwide to rave reviews - only one of which was in Mississippi (the Malco Cinema 10 in Tupelo). If people in South Mississippi want to see the film, they can go to Mobile or New Orleans.

It's interesting to note that the equally controversial "The Passion of the Christ" was shown everywhere in Mississippi; it was thought by many to be anti-Semitic.

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself," said Potter Stewart, former associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Robert R. Regl,

Hattiesburg


Originally published Tuesday, June 29, 2004

OK, then my letter again...

No need to fear 'Fahrenheit 9/11'




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

LETTERS
Michael Moore's new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" should be seen by every voter before the election in November, as it is a brilliant synopsis of what should have been in the major news media since 2000.

Unfortunately, Tupelo is currently the only city in Mississippi where the movie is playing, so I went to see it in New Orleans with my wife and some friends. Why any theater owner or distributor in this area would not want to make some money from this movie is beyond me - the showings in New Orleans were sold out Friday and Saturday (the night we went), and reports are much the same across the country.

The movie is as "fair and balanced" as any Rush Limbaugh broadcast, and it shows the ill effects the Iraq war has had on the Iraqi people as well as the toll it has taken on our country and our brave soldiers.

There is no need to fear "Fahrenheit 9/11" - unless your name is George W. Bush.

Clinton Kirby,

Hattiesburg


Originally published Tuesday, June 29, 2004

And then the brilliant response to both of these letters...

'Fahrenheit' twists truth




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

LETTERS
It astounds me to think that anyone ("We're victims of mind control," June 29) would find it hard to believe that people are as interested in a far left movie created by Michael Moore as they would be about Jesus Christ and his sacrifice.

Please understand that many people are aware of Michael Moore's poor credibility based on his past. He stated that his` movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," is based on facts, while time after time over the last several days, both liberal and conservative broadcasts have shown how statements and news were taken out of text to present a one-sided documentary.

For example, in the movie, Mr. Moore only inserted a portion of the president's response to a question about terrorism in Israel. Mr. Moore made it appear that the president was talking about Iraq instead of Israel, which completely changed the reasoning of his response.

The only reason Mr. Moore does this is to mislead those who are not educated on current affairs in hopes they will believe this garbage. He hopes to persuade people and turn votes towards the more liberal ticket.

In respect to Mr. Kirby's statement ("No need to fear 'Fahrenheit 9/11'" June 29) about how the movie shows the ill effects the war has taken on Iraq, I just saw the latest poll taken in Iraq that shows 95 percent of the people support the overthrow of the horrible regime.

Mr. Kirby also said the movie was fair and balanced. This movie has already been proven to be so unbalanced that it wobbles.

Please keep in mind that Mr. Moore makes a living by focusing on people who either don't know the facts or would rather ignore them. Don't fall into his trap and let Mr. Moore laugh all the way to the bank with your money.

God bless America and our leaders.

Gary Jackson, Poplarville


Originally published Friday, July 2, 2004

Oh, and one last thing...this blog is now located by Google...if you type in "lefthandedleftist" rather than "left-handed leftist"...

And a fellow blogger has taken notice of the Left-Handed Leftist...

FAIR FIGHT 9/11

Saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend in New Orleans (a 2 hour drive away). It was really good--very moving, surprisingly detail-oriented (statistically speaking), and funny and eerie all at the same time. The showing we attended (7:40 Sat. night) was sold out. A separate line had to be formed for just F9/11 ticketholders, and it must've stretched at least 50 yards around the mall food court.

I thought the reviews (even the relatively positive ones) were unfair at heart. Of course, Hitchen's attempted evisceration is clumsy, bitter, and quite long.

But here are some points in the movie to which he took exception:

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

Well okay, but...
1) This is widely documented and cannot be argued--and the relationship was not just through the Carlyle Group, it was through Harken and Arbusto as well.

2) Yes--see, it's generally not a great idea to have foreigners who have their own interests at heart (i.e., getting rich and promoting militant Islam) having a stake in roughly a tenth of a country's economy.


3) So before 9/11 it's perfectly okay to talk to the Taliban, to bring them into our country, even though we knew of their connections to terror, their oppression of women, and so on. It's only after 9/11, after we've let them have a good look around, fly on some planes, maybe check out the security situation, and given them the whole dignitary treatment, that we can fairly criticize the Taliban?

4) Of course, here is a favorite jab of the rightwing--"Oh, I thought you were anti-war, so why are you complaining about there being too few troops, huh? Maybe you really are a warmonger like us and just can't bring yourself to admit it." And of course it misses the point, which is, in the context of the movie, there was only a token effort made to "go after al-Qaeda" and this is demonstrated by the fact that, relative to say, Iraq (120,000 troops +), a tenth of the troops were sent to Afghanistan (11,000).

5) Right! How convenient that the installed president and former Unocal rep would be in favor of attacking a fellow Muslim country with our Army! That's ludicrous by any standard.

6) First of all, the film never says that. Moore is fair and sympathetic to U.S. soldiers and shows the human costs of the war on both sides. And secondly, when one is killed in a poorly planned invasion fighting people who were openly embraced by some of the most powerful and influential members of one's society before said invasion when one could've been doing anything else--feeding the poor, raising a family, painting a house, etc.--yes, that's a waste.




Here's the first draft of a letter I'm mailing to the Hattiesburg American, my hometown newspaper:

Dear Editor,
Michael Moore’s new movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” should be seen by every voter before the election in November, as it is a brilliant synopsis of what should have been in the major news media since 2000. Unfortunately, Tupelo is currently the only city in Mississippi where the movie is playing, so I went to see it in New Orleans with my wife and some friends. Why any theater owner or distributor in this area would not want to make some money from this movie is beyond me—the showings in New Orleans were sold out Friday and Saturday (the night I went), and reports are much the same across the country. The movie is as “fair and balanced” as any Rush Limbaugh broadcast, and it shows the ill effects the Iraq war has had on the Iraqi people as well as the toll it has taken on our country and our brave soldiers. There is no need to fear “Fahrenheit 9/11”—unless your name is George W. Bush.

CLINTON LIKE THE PRESIDENT...a vote for Bush is against yourself
(supposed to have been posted June 22, but computer was down)

Bill Clinton’s autobiography was released today to great fanfare. Even I fell prey to it and bought a copy of the book (along with paperbacks of “Rogue Nation” and “What Liberal Media"). I’ll probably never read the whole thing, but I did vote for Clinton in ‘92 and ‘96 and retain somewhat warm feelings toward him, even though I’m learning that some of the things he did contradicted the reasons that I voted for him. And I’m not talking about how Clinton didn’t “deal with the terrorist threat” either.

Rush Limbaugh had a substitute on today, and he was making that very point–how if only Clinton hadn’t let the terrorists get away, Bush wouldn’t have had to be so decisive and manly as to take us into an unnecessary war. If he got around to blaming Reagan and Bush for Clinton’s terror problems, I didn’t hear him. But he should have.

The conservatives are quick to give Reagan (undue) credit for the booming (for the rich) economy under Clinton–i.e., it was Reagan’s noble tax cuts that created the Clinton economy. But they never seem to bring up the Reagan and Bush policies of arming Iran and assisting Iraq and cozying up to Saudi Arabia. Might that not have had something to do with creating Clinton’s terror problem?

And might Clinton have been able to operate more freely and focus more intently on problems such as terrorism if the rightwing media and rightwing politicians not been hounding him from the second he announced his candidacy? One would think so. It’s really, really sick–the Republican media and politicians wouldn’t let him have a moment’s peace and called into question every missile strike Clinton did order and now they all sit and criticize him for not doing more and try to make it look as though Bush is finally fixing what Clinton broke.

Well, any fair person knows that terrorists did not pop up out of nowhere during the Clinton administration and he was just too much of a puss to do anything about it. Which is how the Rush wannabe was explaining it today.


Lying

And as I was reading the intro to “What Liberal Media” just a few minutes ago, I noted how Ann Coulter regularly referred to Clinton as a “liar.” Uber-conservative pundit Ann Coulter called the President a “liar.” And pretty much everyone in the media speaks freely about how Clinton lied under oath to the Starr people.

But no uber-liberal pundits refer to Bush as a liar, at least not without lots of qualification. Liberal pundits will say that Bush traffics in “half-truths” or title books “The Lies of George W. Bush,” but they rarely come out and say “Bush is a liar.” There’s some sort of bizarre consensus and understanding that calling Bush a liar is somehow beyond the pale. Like, okay, maybe he lies, but he’s not a liar. Chris Matthews says this when it comes to Bush–something along the lines of “To know if someone’s lying, you have to know their heart, and I don’t know Bush’s heart” or some rubbish to that effect. NBC’s David Gregory said on the Imus program that he wasn’t qualified to brand Bush a liar (when Imus came out and asked Gregory whether or not he could agree with the statement that Bush and/or Cheney are liars).

Well, I just want to make it known that if what the President of the United States speaks on matters of policy in contradiction of the facts, everyone is authorized to say he is a liar. Why? Because he is the best-informed person in the entire country. He gets all the information. He hears (or should hear) from all sides and is privy to information the average citizen or even the average reporter is not. He should seek to speak the truth on all matters at all times, and he should be more careful than anyone else in the world about his words, because they can have enormous effect...

However, Bush has never admitted to lying. Clinton has. So it’s OK to call him a liar, according to the Washington consensus. You can call someone a liar if they admit to it. But, according to the bizarre Washington consensus, if you don’t admit to lying, you shouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being called a liar even if it is obvious to everyone that you are lying. Dick Cheney, we’re looking in your direction...

Music

Today I heard the awesome second album from Canada’s Atomic 7...their jazzabilly surfstrumentals are bite-size twangfests, like incidental music to an indie cult Western about cowpokes hangin’ ten...

And the cover of the debut (?) album by Chicago’s Fort Rile Dog sure gets one’s attention–it has a mold of a dog’s upper jaw pasted onto it...the music is mathy emo, but in a good way...sort of like Rumah Sakit meets Chavez...

NO LINK, NO JUSTIFICATION FOR WAR ...a vote for bush is vote against yourself

So the 9/11 Commission says officially that there was no link between Saddam and Osama regarding the 9/11 attack, which was what we were supposed to be avenging and preventing in our preventive war. Well, we ran the prevent defense against the wrong guy--wrong in the sense that Saddam never attacked our country. And so friends, that makes the Iraq conflict officially an unjust war. It was not in self-defense, it was an act of naked aggression.

And fuck you if you think that calling a spade a spade (i.e., saying that America started an unjust war and acted with aggression) makes war critics "anti-American." We're pro-American--we don't want Americans killing or being killed in clear violation of everything good about America--freedom, democracy, speedy trials instead of summary executions, diplomacy, etc.

Those who still believe in this godforsaken, immoral war had better turn off "Fox and Friends" and "The Savage Nation" for two seconds and get a clue--judgment day's a-comin'. You better jump over to the right side of history--you know, the side that seeks peace instead of hostility, the side that embraces civil rights and justice for all people (including atheists, Palestinians, inner city children, and so on), the side that seeks to further what all of Western history has been steadily, inexorably progressing toward since at least the Magna Carta--true freedom and equality under the law for everyone, true protection of the weak against the strong, and on and on.

You better get right or get left.

Getting right involves going over to the left.

It is our duty as loyal citizens of this great country to evict George W. Bush from the White House this year. He was crooked in the way he got into office, he's been crooked in office, and we need to straighten him out about how things work here in this country that belongs to all of us--not only the rich, not only the well-connected, not only the oil companies, not only the successful, not only the smart, not only the rapacious capitalists who would deprive their fellow citizens of employment oppportunities just to make a few extra bucks.

They say Bush won Florida, and hence the election, by 537 votes, but he really won it by only one--that fifth Supreme. And then conservatives want to complain about "activist judges..." It's so outrageous, one has no idea where to begin in combatting the outrage...

...I'm getting off topic...

Anyway, the war is wrong and the whole world knows it was and is wrong and tried to tell us. And lots of us here in the U.S. tried to tell the War Pigs, but they did it anyway. And now they have to pay the price for their crimes. If not impeachment, removal, and jail sentences, they at least need to be removed from office, the whole lot, and never heard from again in public life. If anyone in a major position in this Bush administration ever again dares to raise his or her head to run for public office or offer themselves as a candidate for an appointment, they need to be laughed right out of the public square.

Why? Because they fucking blew it. They bit the big one. They squandered our treasure, they wasted our resources, they sent our young men and women to die under false pretenses, they destroyed our alliances, they made us into an evil caricature of ourselves, and generally mouthed the words about America's greatness while acting aggressively to undermine it.

STRONG/WEAK ...a vote for bush is a vote against yourself

...up feeding the baby this morning. Heard a Kerry speech on C-Span...I liked the part about "you don't make America strong by attacking the weak" referring to cutting social spending and cutting taxes. These left-leaning pundits that constantly criticize Kerry are not really helping. I mean, it's not only the Republicans who try to paint him as boring, communistic, and out of touch, it's also Democratic sympathizers. I don't often hear the Repubes downing Bush, not even over procedural, nitpicking issues like whether or not his slogan is sassy enough. That makes the Repubes look like drones, because they defend Bush utterly, even when it's clear to everyone (even them) that he has done something terribly wrong or just stupid. However, these rightwing pubic hairs do control all three branches of the government...maybe occasionally looking like a pre-programmed drone will
help our side. Why should we admit to doubts about Kerry when the other side acts like the ground their guy walks on belongs in a special Republiban wing of the Smithsonian and he's not even out of office or dead yet?

I guess my point is, let's build Kerry up, not kill him with a thousand pricks...because he's the only hope for our side, for one thing, but he's also the only hope at this point for our country and the world...

In fact, the Kerry I saw in the speech from yesterday at the New Jersey AFL-CIO convention was clear, concise, witty, moving, sincere, articulate, and passionate. If and when the American public gets a really good look at him, there's no way Bush will legitimately win this election. I mean, they're already trying to steal it again...

MEET DEPRESSED

I can't watch Meet The Press anymore. I like Russert okay, he does ask tough questions (for a mainstream guy, anyway), but the interview subjects get away with lame non-answers. Not because I think he necessarily wants to let the subjects get away with non-answers. But the show is only allotted an hour.

And maybe that's the problem. Maybe there should be a political show like Meet The Press that doesn't stop. I mean, in a sense, the political show never stops. You can hop from Hardball to Charlie Rose to Hannity to Scarborough and then all over again and see the same interview subjects in the same clothes on all these shows. It's really kinda like one long show...like a pundit tag team...

But when I say it doesn't stop, I mean that the show can go long if necessary. Then maybe Chomsky would start appearing on some mainstream shows because he won't have to be shushed. At least, that's what I heard were his objections to being on mainsream shows. I mean, if you think about it, on these pundit shows, half the time is taken up with one of three things: 1) talking over each other, 2) interrupting each other (or getting indignant about being interrupted), or 3) reminders of how little time is left in a segment--"in ten seconds, Ann, tell me why you think John Kerry
will destroy America..."

So anyway, I didn't watch Meet The Press this past Sunday with Colin Powell, but my friend and colleague Mik Davis did and emailed me these pithy comments:

Uh..Powell on Meet The Press. Offering the 'good
soldier' line of reasoning. Countering the European
criticism that our presence in Iraq has fueled
terrorism and destabilized the Middle East with the
whole 'Well, we removed Saddam and his regime' line..
forcing it down our throats again..it's like they
killed a housefly with a flamethrower. Sure there's
no fly bothering us anymore..no house either.

Anyway, one startling revelation that you may/may not
know about..we are not only paying for this unjust war
(latest poll figures are now 49/49 just/unjust) with
taxpayer money. Now, while gasoline prices soar to
nearly 2 dollars a gallon..weare also paying for the
subsidies that allow Iraqis in their unstable economy
to pay only 5 cents per gallon for gasoline there.
Another place where US taxpayers are paying more than
90% of the cost for a new democracy.

The good soldier routine is getting tiring. Maybe Powell should try the valiant, courageous soldier routine. Or maybe he forgot it...

But seriously folks, isn't that fucked up? Isn't that one fact reason enough to throw Bush out? I mean, we were told that oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction! By "liberating" Iraq, we're enslaving ourselves and our children to debt! Who thought this was a good idea? Morrissey was right on the money!

In fact, I'm going to take a cue from Lou Dobbs, the hellhound on outsourcing's trail. I need to have a mantra, a hook, a haiku of a reason to get Bush out and print it with every entry I make to this blog that no one will ever read. Something like, "a vote for Bush is a vote against yourself." That'll do for now--I'll refine it, I'm sure. But this whole pointing-out-how-Bush-is-fucking-up-America-and-the-world situation has got to be boiled down so it's concise, memorable, and catchy!!!

Every day, people should see "A VOTE FOR BUSH IS A VOTE AGAINST YOURSELF." Even if they don't believe it, it will stick in the backs of their minds. Because if there's one thing the Rush Hannities and the Republiban party has taught these rightwingers, it's that you gotta look out for yourself above all else. But the fucked up part of it is that they say tax cuts and social spending cuts are the way for people to do that, when in reality, those things are what the superrich want so they can continue to fuck over people like you and me.

Nighty night...

WHERE TO START

Where do you start in thinking about the horrible, insane mess that President Bush has gotten this great country into? Do you start with the unnecessary and illegal war about which has now been revealed that many civilian casualties were incurred because we got the opposite of what Bush suggested for months (years) was "good, solid intelligence"? Or should you start with the supposedly now booming economy in which any jobs that have so far been created are only taking us halfway (so far) to where we were before Bush hijacked (yes, that's like what terrorists do) our country and meanwhile college tuitions are going up, jobs are being shipped overseas, child-care costs and health care costs are increasing, and Bush's answer for it all is more tax cuts for the wealthy?

I mean, it's a fluid situation, and every damn day, there's some new study released by some just-formed group (usually with a name that describes either the opposite of the group stands for or explains it's nefarious purpose in doubletalk code) which claims to debunk the conventional wisdom. Or claims to reaffirm the conventional wisdom. At any rate, enough studies are done and released about enough topics that everyone who talks to a newspaper or a tv pundit has an expert-conducted study to cite that supports their side, no matter what their side is.

Prime example, global warming. Rightwingers say it's junk science, leftwingers say it's happening right now. Who's right? Well, let's go to the experts. Whaddya know, the experts all disagree. So it would seem there is no objective reality.

Except that they just disagree about certain things on the surface, even though they all agree that the climate is definitley changing. The WMD situation is another example--David Kay says "we were all wrong" about WMD because he hadn't found any, then just this morning, Glen Beck starts talking about how WMD shells with UN inspection stickers have been found in junk heaps in Turkey and Jordan. OK, maybe so, but we can all agree that the WMD are not now and have not for some time been in Iraq.

But, back to what I was saying. The situation in America is fluid, the economy does "a little better than expected" and the Republicans all stand up and cheer on every radio and TV show and then when first-time jobless claims "exceed expectations", they all harrumph about how employment is a lagging indicator. And it almost makes one's head explode.

And so everyone knows what the large, overarching truth is, i.e., global warming is happening, there were no WMD in Iraq at the time of invasion (esp. no nukes), the economy is in the crapper, and so forth and so on. So, not that this is any original observation or anything, but this is where, as the Cherokee proverb goes, he who bullshits best eats most.

There is a group of people who understand the actual truth and understand that if the public realizes that a given thing is true, they won't support the policies that this group proposes that will only benefit this group and even then only in the short run. So they break out the bullshit--case in point, we don't Iraq to switch to euros in oil trading, because that'll make it difficult for our buddies at Halliburton and Shell and Chevron Texaco to get a rich as fucking possible, so (and this is the bullshit part)--SADDAM IS BUILDING NEW CUELER WEAPONS and RAH RAH WE'RE THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH! The first part is false, the second part is mostly true, and...

My god, going through all this, I just don't know if I have the energy...long story short, get Bush out!!! I mean, his very family name is short for bullshit...

Saw Jan Schakowsy, Democrat of Illinois givin' 'em hell on C-Span a few minutes ago...stick it to 'em...

INCENTIVE THEFT

The Reagan Memorial Lionization Propaganda Parade goes on...and it brings some thoughts about tax cuts and incentive to mind. Over at David Brock's Media Matters, he and his people are doing a great job at setting the record straight about what these right-wing media hellhounds are doing to our country. I was glad to see some corrections and clarifications on programs I had heard with my own ears, especially this one, from Bill O'Reilly's radio show:

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

O'REILLY: All right, so it's income redistribution. It's basically slapping more tax -- and remember, if you were earning $500,000 or more, you're paying your property tax already. You're paying a federal income tax. You're paying a state income tax. You're paying all the other taxes that come along.

Now, is this good? Is this what we should be doing here in America? Now, remember -- remember how the country was founded. So this is a deviation, because the Founding Fathers didn't want any federal income tax at all. That only happened around the turn of the 20th century. And they said OK, leave it to the -- leave it to the locals to tax and take what they need.

[...]

So it's basically a kind of quasi-socialist mentality. Remember, in the socialist countries, it's basically leveling off -- if you make a lot then we take it from you and we give to the bottom so that nobody has too much. That's communism, that's socialism, obviously got a lot of appeal. Got a lot of appeal.

It doesn't work because it robs incentive. I mean, that's why it doesn't work, but in this country, income redistribution is a hallmark of the Democratic Party and the Liberal bent of it. Hillary Clinton loves it. All right. And McGreevey obviously loves it, but is it morally right? Is it what this country was founded on? See, there's the question.

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


I find the part about how income redistribution supposedly "robs incentive" particularly interesting. Now, if you're wondering why I bothered to bring up Reagan, it's because until this current administration, he held the record for the biggest tax cuts ever. And tax cuts supposedly return incentive to entrepreneurs--as if by magic. Of course, no one likes paying large chunks of their income in taxes. But I don't think (and I hardly ever hear anyone say this) that the idea that taxes kill incentive is true at all.

The idea that taxes are the death of incentive was obviously born out of the widely held misconception that the only thing that motivates anyone to do anything is profit, especially financial profit. It's an idea that we are all basically chimpanzees, and the biggest banana is the only reward that will get us to perform tricks for the cameras.

A BAD AND LENGTHY ANALOGY

I do find that comparison of human beings to base animals is a useful analogy in some respects, but like all analogies, it breaks down eventually (i.e., if a is always analogous to b, then a is b and no analogy is necessary). To continue the chimp analogy, suppose the zookeeper brings out a bunch of bananas to feed the whole chimp colony. There is one that is obviously bigger, even to the chimpanzees. Let's suppose for analogy's sake, that every chimp in the colony wants to have that banana because it's the biggest. They don't want any of the smaller bananas, they must have the biggest one.

But the zoo's rules are one banana per chimp, and the chimps have learned this over time. Well, what can the chimps do? They are all equally deserving of receiving nourishment, they figure, and that gigantic banana would be nourishment beyond belief. So when the zookeeper starts to tear bananas from the bunch and throw them to the chimps, they ignore all the bananas but the biggest one. When there's only the big banana left, they all clamor for it and a chimp riot ensues. The zookeeper barely escapes with his life, and the chimps literally begin to kill each other over this banana. Eventually, one chimp ends up with the biggest banana, all the other chimps are dead, but even the victorious chimp is so badly wounded he won't last long enough to finish the huge banana that he fought so viciously for.

Now, humans wouldn't do that. Humans would settle for a banana that was almost as big, or at least be happy to have a banana at all. When the bananas are thrown out, humans would think "here comes my banana" and morre or less take what was thrown their way. They might be a little bit resentful, but the human that wound up with the big banana would try to convince them that he was the most deserving and that's why he got it. And the other humans wouldn't really believe him deep down, but they aren't all that concerned because at least they got a banana and think that one day, they too will be the recipient of the biggest banana.

END OF ANALOGY

And that's because humans are rational beings. They understand that they shouldn't always have the biggest banana, or the largest slice of pie, or the biggest return on their investment. They in fact cannot always have that unless the system is rigged in their favor.

A human might feel that if he or she doesn't have the biggest salary, at least I've got my lovely spouse and my kids, while that billionaire lives all alone. A human would be willing to find the cure for cancer in order to stop people's suffering, not just to make billions of dollars from it. We've all heard stories of people like Van Gogh, who created great art but never received recognition or remuneration for it in his lifetime. So if he and millions of others like him will do great work without necessarily getting a lot of money for it, why do they do it?

Well, they do it because they like doing it--it gives them pleasure, it makes them feel better, it makes them feel connected to society, and on and on. In this respect, humans are not beasts--they are capable of doing a thing for its own sake.

The cynic might agree and suggest that those do-gooders can just feel great about their work and the rest of us will take the financial rewards they generate. The realists would say, no, let's assume that all but the most psychotic and sociopathic people have this capacity to do a thing for its own sake--whether it's medicine, art, sports, writing, politics, soldiering, etc.--and let's create a situation in which they can really pursue such things, and their reward can be the work. King Crimson's Robert Fripp has a great saying with regard to this idea: "The reward of the musician is music." You can use this for any profession "The reward of the doctor is healing people," "The reward of the governor is providing for the general welfare of the citizens," etc.

Now, this idea supposedly has been thoroughly discredited because it sounds suspiciously like the Communist Manifesto's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That idea is a thorougly Christ-like one ("Do unto others...") and is not discredited just because Lenin and Stalin and the rest of them screwed it up. The trick is to create a system that is neither wholly, rapaciously capitalist, nor woefully utopian socialist. The answer to a question is almost never either/or, it's somewhere in the middle.

And a system that rides that line is what we've been progressing toward for the entire history of this country. But Reagan-worshippers and Bush and their amen corners would like to change that direction entirely. You can hear it every single day on conservative shows like Limbaugh's and O'Reilly's. They think people are evil creeps whose only interest is their own personal gain. What they may or may not realize is that every single day, there are people working for non-profit organizations, writing books and songs and poems that may never be on any best-seller chart simply for the love of doing it. And one thing that allows these people to do these labors of love is a fair tax system that allows their government (which is actually the people themselves--when the right-wingers talk about wanting "less government" what they're actually saying is they want less control by the people and more control by the corporations) to provide a certain standard of living for them.

So if a certain tax rate makes a person want to stop being a venture capitalist, then maybe they should stop doing that and do something they really love. They should work toward actualizing themselves as human beings, rather than doing anything and everything only for its profit potential.

...AND GOOD RIDDANCE

I am not a historian. I do have a BA in history. I have taught history in junior high schools, but our focus was always either early world history or American history until 1877. I am an American citizen, and I had the (mis)fortune of my own junior high and high school career taking place during the Reagan administration.

I point out these things to say that I have very few facts on which to base my negative opinions about Ronald Reagan. I mean, I came of age during his presidency, I studied history in college, and taught history as an adult, but I have never intensely studied the Reagan years, either as a requirement or simply for my own edification. Unless you count hours of listening to Minutemen and Camper Van Beethoven records as intensely studying the Reagan years.

And I guess I do kind of count those hours. I first remember my father voting for Carter in 1980 (or maybe that should say "voting against Reagan" in 1980) and telling me and my sister what a whack-job "Ronnie Ray Gun" was. My dad was studying for his divinity degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (my mother also took some classes), and my sister and I would hang out on the campus while my parents were in class. I remember us being on campus when the election was called in favor of Reagan, and my father in particular convinced us that Reagan's election was undesirable and I in particular shared his disappointment. He explained to me that Reagan would be bad because he wanted more "nukes" and really was not fit to be president.

A brief aside
I'm struck now by the fact that my father, as a would-be Southern Baptist minister, would vote for Carter instead of the icon of today's conservative movement. Of course, my father is also a scientist with a Ph.D in thermodynamics and mechanical engineering, and his view of the world had been very much influenced more by his experiences in science at that point than by his relatively new Christian views (which he'd acquired a mere five or six years prior). Now his pendulum has swung entirely in the opposite direction, when he told me in 2000 that he'd become a "single issue voter" and the single issue his vote hinges on is a candidate's opposition to abortion.

Resuming...
So anyway, that was my first impression of Ronald Reagan, handed to me as an earnest sixth grader. Of course, my interest in politics would soon be overshadowed by an obsession with the Beatles, as John Lennon was killed the very next month.

I remember hearing about Nicaragua and contras and Sandinistas during all these years, but I never really tried to sort such things out at the time. But I also remember starting to get into "Bloom County" and "Doonesbury", both of which I remember as being no friends of the Reagan administration. And as I got older, The Clash, U2, The Police and R.E.M. started to inform my thinking, and even if I couldn't completely understand every reference in their lyrics, they were always pretty clear about their politics in interviews.

And even during the Iran-Contra hearings, I was still more into music than into politics. I think I felt that a young kid from Mississippi had very little chance of really sussing out the truth of such things, much less being able to make a difference about any of it. And let's face it, when I started college that fall, I didn't really even want to go. I wanted to play guitar in a world-famous rock band and only went to college when it became apparent that wasn't going to happen right away. And I only majored in history because advertising, my original major, began to disgust me and I had always enjoyed stories about Andrew Jackson, Jean Lafitte, and the Alamo as a kid.

I am only now beginning to understand the unsavory nature of America's policies toward Central America during the Reagan administration. I am only now beginning to understand the implications of Reagan's tax cuts and deficits. And of course, let's not forget our arming of Iraq AND Iran during the eight-year war between those two countries (and let's not forget the 1983 picture of Donald Rumsfeld smilingly shaking Saddam's hand). I can only anticipate my horror at what I will perceive as my current naivete after another ten years has passed.

So my impression of Reagan is not a favorable one. From the get-go I didn't think much of him and am now beginning to fill in the blanks in my understanding about why. And the irony of the current Hollywood bashers lionizing actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan is, well, ironic.

So when we got to the club where my current band was playing this past Saturday night, they had the TV on and some channel was going into Reagan memorial overdrive. The bartender confirmed that Reagan had died, and we began to discuss our reactions to his death--mine was "Good riddance" (which I felt a little bad about saying at the time, until I heard Cuba's reaction).

TENET'S FREE FOR TENNIS...IN TENNESSEE!

Oh, George Tenet...goodbye. I wish I had a name that meant something else, like our dear departed CIA chief does. Maybe my name could be Clinton Principle or Clinton Precept. You know, I've never really ever heard anyone remark on Tenet's name. If Clinton Doctrine was on TV every day defending himself about how he got billions of dollars for his agency but couldn't stop a few unassuming people from blowing up some buildings and how he thought that basketball metaphors were an excuse for invading other countries, people would probably remark on that name.

"DCI Doctrine...that's an intriguing name for a government
official, wouldn't you say, Howard Fineman?"

"Oh yes, Chris...especially when the doctrine Doctrine seems to follow is one of screwing up all the time."

But just because I've never heard anyone remark on Tenet's name doesn't mean it's never happened. I just haven't heard it. And just when I was starting to think Thomas Friedman might be all right after all, I see him all over TV yesterday and today promoting some claptrap about outsourcing. He was probably on Lou Dobbs and I missed it.

Friedman was quite passionate about his love for outsourcing. But he was even-handed, boy lemme tell ya...he's one helluva straight-shooter. He was all like "I don't support or not support outsourcing, I'm just saying it's here to stay" and like "hey man, it's just all the shitty jobs that most people could do and would be hired for that are going overseas--all the good-paying jobs in management that only a handful of people in a small circle of jerks with MBAs will ever get hired for are staying here, dude." And he actually used the guys that started Google as an example of what everyone in America should be doing instead of being a phone person for a computer company. It's like, hey man, if you want a good job, just invent something that changes the world. You know, don't be poor--that's for trashy dumb people. All the smart people who deserve to make a living and support their families invent sophisticated technologies that really take off in the marketplace--I mean, isn't that what the majority of people do these days?

Hey Thomas Friedman--piss off with your olive oily mustache and your sexless Lexus. We all know how the world really works--protectionism for me, free trade for you. Socialism for the rich, free markets for the poor. And then one of these jackass TV hosts brings up John Kerry, saying "Oh Kerry's a staunch free trader--all this stuff about 'corporate Benedict Arnolds' and what not--that's just for the election." Well, of course they're right (I think it was Howard Fineman on Hardball yesterday. I mean, Kerry is just a taller, smarter, older, wiser, braver, more talented, more experienced, less privileged, less holier-than-thou, less delusional, less full of himself version of Bush. And that's unfortunate, but reality is usually a series of misfortunes that add up to nothing. Or something...

Oh whatever...

Oh one other thing: So I heard Rush Limbaugh today reading a story about some transexual getting a divorce. It was a man who became a woman, and, commenting on the article, Limbaugh said the person in question had had "the opposite of an 'addadickotomy" (which he pronounced "ADD-UH-DIK-OTT-UH-MEE). Rush Limbaugh, Mr. Conservative Values, said "Add a dick otomy." Get it? When a woman wants to become a man, Rush and his pals say she's having an add-a-dick-otomy because they're putting a DICK on her. For those precious, unstained, cleansed in the spirit, uber-churchy types out there--DICK is a slang word for that thing you shouldn't put a condom on because every time you have sex you should create precious, precious life. The Penis!!! Now I'm not sure, but I'd bet that's a violation of the new FCC standards. I know I wouldn't go on the air at the station where I work and talk about attaching DICKs to women. And if I or anyone else did, it would be solely in the context of an educational discussion about sex changes and I'd use the term "penis".

I'll have to look up those FCC standards and maybe make my first ever complaint to the FCC...

Hey Rush, piss off ya damn drug-addicted, un-"screw"led, conservataliban rat bastard...

THE LAST LAUGH

My entry for today...a forwarded email joke and my response to it...


THIS JOKE HAS GOT TO BE NOMINATED FOR JOKE OF THE YEAR!!

George Bush and Bill Clinton somehow ended up at the same barbershop. As they sat there, each being worked on by a different barber, not a word was spoken. The barbers were both afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to politics.

As the barbers finished their shaves, the one who had Clinton in his chair reached for the aftershave. Clinton was quick to stop him saying, "No, thanks, my wife Hillary will smell that and think I've been in a whorehouse."

The second barber turned to Bush and said, "How about you?" Bush replied, "Go ahead, Laura doesn't know what the inside of a whorehouse smells like."



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

MY REPLY

OK...
Here's a real knee-slapper...

Bill Clinton was president of the U.S. for 8 years during which the budget was balanced, the economy saw unprecendented growth, and the U.S. didn't undertake any expensive occupations while cutting taxes for the wealthy. His would-be successor and vice-president got 500,000 more popular votes than the man who became president.

George W. Bush has been president of the U.S. for a little more than three years and has already created historic deficits, gotten the U.S. bogged down in an unnecessary war and occupation in Iraq, supported the outsourcing of American jobs, and proposed writing intolerance into the Constitution in the form of an amendment against gay marriage.

Here's the hilarious punchline--Clinton was impeached because he lied about having sex while George W. Bush's lies about WMD (among other things) have led to the deaths of thousands of people yet he will never be impeached. Oh, and one can debate all day long about whether or not Hillary Clinton is a whore, but at least she's never killed anyone (hey, as long as we're taking cheap shots...).

But, come to think of it, John Kerry has killed people. In Vietnam. When he volunteered to go. That reminds me of another joke:
Q. What did Dick Cheney get for each of the five medals John Kerry earned in Vietnam?

A. A deferment!

Wait, one more...
Q. What would cause half the country to say they would vote for George W. Bush even after the unnecessary war in Iraq, the prison abuse scandal, the tax cuts for the wealthy, the detention of American citizens without charges or access to attorneys, the lies about WMD and so forth?

A, A character flaw.

Stole that last bit from a Janeane Garofalo comment on the Daily Show...and now a response to my response...starts off kind of reasonable and then...
----------------------------------------
I found this political forward a bit more amusing than most... It's funny how individuals can twist their opinions into their own sense of warped fact - that's the problem with the majority of history books in the school system today.

Clinton was not a bad president; he could have been much better - in my opinion - had the media and a handful of beaurocrats not spent his entire presidency crucifying him for getting some head from an intern...

Bush isn't perfect, either. He's had a lot to deal with though - I do not for a second envy his position and responsibilities. September 11th changed the world socially, politically & economically. I believe the President has done the best
with what he's had to work with, and he stands by what he believes in. The queers have already invaded my television most evenings... maybe as long as Bush is president, there won't be a Joe & John Doe moving in next door to me. That's enough to get my vote in November.
------------------------------------


Now I hope that's a parody of the stereotypical right-winger, but given this particular email list, I kind of doubt it...

BUSH: TOO LAME FOR RIDICULE

Thank God for the Center for American Progress. Every day, they call bullshit
on the Bush administration. I couldn't even watch Bush's waste-of-everyone's-time-and-money speech last night--I figured, correctly,
that all the pertinent bits would be dissected to the nth degree today.
Apparently, it's more of the same--unbelievable, I know.

Why don't we just get the bloody hell out of Iraq? And I mean yesterday! Watched "The Fog Of War" over the weekend. Regardless of what one may think of
McNamara, his insights were dead-on. It's amazing to think that when the USSR had actual missiles 90 miles away from us, we negotiated a peaceful settlement but when Iraq "possessed" fictitious WMD thousands of miles away, we invaded and
took over their country. Still haven't found any, except that "sarin" shell that they've apparently tested 50 million times and still don't want to say for sure if it's sarin or not (OK, today they say it is. I liked when Kucinich held up a picture of the shell on "Meet The Press" and asked "We went to war over this?"

And frankly, now that I think about it, the Republican mouthpiece on that episode of "Meet The Press" talked about how he kept a photo in his top drawer that showed dead Kurdish women and children, killed by poison gas. That's mighty white of him, I suppose, by why doesn't he keep a picture of the uninsured babies and adults and/or un-or-under-employed people in the United States and really focus his attention on fixing that?

It's like the churches one sees down here in Hattiesburg and all over the South--they have rows upon rows of white crosses on their grounds that represent the "Holocaust" of the unborn. They usually have some kind of explanatory sign saying words to the effect of "This is wrong and these crosses should prick your conscience about abortion." Well, la-di-da...why don't they ever seem to care about living people and erect a sign that says "Hungry people can come here and eat for free" or "If you need money, come see us, we'll give you some" or "If you can't pay your medical bills, we'll help you pay them or pay them for you."

Why don't they put up such signs? Because then they'd actually have to do something. They'd actually have to do what Jesus said and help people. When they condemn abortion, it doesn't really do anything but make them feel self-righteous and holier than thou. Jesus never said jackshit about abortion, but he sure as hell said that if someone asks you for something, you should give it to them. He didn't make a qualification, like, "you can give them what they ask for if it doesn't inconvenience you too much" or "give 'em what they want but charge 'em interest" or what have you. Just give to people. OK, tangent over...

Reading a really good Chomsky book at the moment, "Profit Over People." As always, he breaks down the self-serving corporate rhetoric that is still flying over the airwaves today. I found this collection of essays to be somewhat more direct and less dense than some of his other stuff. Or maybe I'm just getting used to his writing style. It's unbelievable that poor people will let Republicans get away with scolding them for wanting government assistance while making sure that the biggest corporations in the United States and indeed, the world, are the recipients of big government bailouts. My favorite statistic so far was that a study (search on page for "The Logic Of International Restructuring") showed that "at least twenty companies in the 1993 Fortune 100 would not have survived at all as independent companies, if they had not been saved by their respective governments."
And then as Bill O'Lie-ly asks whether "income redistribution" is "morally right" (insinuating it isn't) on his radio show last week, he and his ilk choose to ignore or divert public attention from the fact of large-scale income redistribution from the middle and bottom to defense contractors and the Pentagon (i.e. this "Profit Over People" observation--"bear in mind the domestic role of the Pentagon system: to transfer public funds to advanced sectors of industry, so that Newt Gingrich's rich constituents, for example, can be protected from the rigors of the marketplace with more government subsidies than any other suburban district in the country...while the leader of the conservative revolution denounces big government and lauds rugged individualism"). At this point in his career, how can O'Reilly possibly expect anyone
to take him seriously when he starts asking rhetorically whether a thing is "morally right"? It's obvious he wouldn't know morality if it magically bleached his age spots--I guess that's why he feels the need to ask about morality.

Oh well...it's hard enough to read a blog every day, much less write in one
every day...

I used to hate "Mad TV" but now that Comedy Central has replaced "SNL" with it, I think it's actually pretty smart, sexy comedy...my favorite sketch so far is the psychiatrist skit with Bob Newhart and Mo Collins...I'd write it out, but it's funnier if you see it, so just watch for it...

And one more thing...is it just me or are lyrics to current country songs purposefully mundane...I mean, it seems to be a trend in current country lyrics to deal with very specific and very run-of-the-mill situations as a sort of badge of honor or as something...the only example I can come up with right now is the song "Back Of The Bottom Drawer" by Chely Wright...more on this topic in the future...

TERRORISM IS TERRORISM

So it's "terrorism" if a Palestinian suicide bomber gets on a bus and blows up innocent Israeli civilians, but somehow it's not if Israeli helicopters and tanks fire on a crowd that is on its way to stage a peaceful protest? That's the problem with throwing around the term "terrorist"--any political group can say it about any other political group and it will be essentially true. So the word doesn't even really have any meaning, except to demonize a group of people or to excuse retaliation ("but they were terrorists, so we had to respond").


That's Bush's way of thinking. Speaking at the AIPAC gathering yesterday, he repeated his insane mumbo-jumbo about how "Israel has the right to defend herself" from terrorism. Every country, indeed every person, has the right to defend themselves. But firing on peaceful crowds from the air is not defense, it's offense. Or, in a word, "terrorism."

So the Palestinians are terrorists, the Israelis are terrorists, the good ol' U.S. is a terrorist nation, and so forth. Let's face it. We've all got blood on our hands. We need to stop the finger-pointing and try to figure out a way for us to stop killing each other and blaming each other.

Not brilliant, I know, but it's all I got...after watching the aftermath of the helicopter raid this morning, I just wonder how long we'll let this "terrorist" blame game go on. People are people, for Christ's sake...

OH, I FORGOT...

On my post from yesterday, I forgot to mention the fact that when I was teaching at Hawkins Junior High School in Hattiesburg, MS, I could count the number of white students in my classes on one hand. And I mean that literally. It was so strange to me that I finally asked the other teachers where the white kids went to school (I had just moved there with my wife). They apparently went to Rowan, in the largely black part of town. All the teachers talked about the Hattiesburg school district being under some kind of court order. They weren't that sure of what it was about, but apparently it had to do with school segregation.

Anyway, I was only there three months, but in that time, the court order was lifted and Hattiesburg schools were granted "unitary" status, meaning that its schools were finally integrated. I found this odd in a school that was at least 90% black...

And good riddance, Mr. Chalabi...$340,000 a month? For leading us astray? While 44 million of our own citizens have no health insurance?