Odds and Ends from Evernote

It’s a lazy day, and I’ve spent part of the afternoon cleaning up my Evernote files.  If I don’t do this occasionally, so much stuff accumulates that it becomes self-defeating.  Even doing it every couple of months, there are always a fair number of “What the hell was I thinking”s.  Here are some of the items I saved to blog about later:

On April 20, I clipped this gem from Steve Bennen writing in The Washington Monthly: 

What I find odd, though, is the underlying message. Leading Republicans make it sound as if America's stature is so fragile, it is easily weakened by casual courtesies at an international forum. President Obama, in contrast, acts as if America's stature is strong, and can withstand a handshake with a foreign head of state. Since when does the GOP find it useful to promote the idea of American weakness?  [Steve Bennen]

May 13, brought this whole post from Bernard Chazelle

Our Awesomeness in Numbers

from A Tiny Revolution by Jonathan Schwarz

By: Bernard Chazelle

The OECD report is out. Like a pack of hungry wallabies, the media pounced immediately on the only item worth reporting: the French eat and sleep longer hours than anyone, and yet they're among the thinnest. The Americans work the longest hours, spend half as much time eating as the French, and they're the fattest! No wonder everybody hates the French. Oh, and something the wallabies missed. The French (like most Europeans) are now taller than the Americans. No doubt the nativists will blame short immigrants, except that science has conclusively debunked that myth. Americans are shrinking (in height, not width) because of poor diet and lousy prenatal/infant care.

If you prefer, you can quit reading right here, and surf on to other sites that will tell you how the US is number 1 in all sorts of important things, like arms sales; bank transactions; billionaires; etc. GDP is high, too, and by the measures of classical economics, we're not doing too bad.

The difference with the OECD report is that it gives you numbers that actually matter to living human beings. You may choose to be shocked, shocked that such things happen in our advanced society. But when a rule has more exceptions than instances in which it holds, it's helpful to change the rule. Once you think that we live in a third-world plutocracy, then all of a sudden everything begins to make sense.

Also, after you read and weep, ask yourself why the only item that made the headlines was about the sleeping habits of the French. Maybe the French always sleep but the American propaganda machine surely never does.

Here are the US rankings out of the 30 OECD countries (1 is best; 30 is worst -- worst as in Somalia-like). The names of the countries even more Somalian than the US appear in parens.

Infant Deaths: 28 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey).

Life Expectancy: 24 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Czech & Slovak Republics).

Health Expenditures: 1 out of 30.

Poverty Rates: 28 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey).

Child Poverty: 27 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Poland).

Income Inequality: 27 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Portugal).

Obesity: 30 out of 30.

Incarceration: 30 out of 30.

Work Hours (ranked in ascending order): 30 out of 30.

Height (women): 25 out of 30 (Mexico, Turkey, Korea, Portugal, Japan).

Height (men): 24 out of 30 (Italy, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Korea, Japan).

OECD countries: Turkey, Mexico, Poland, USA, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Greece, Luxemburg, Australia, Netherlands, Slovakia, Korea, Czech Republic, UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Iceland, France, Austria, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

— Bernard Chazelle

June 10, I saved my own verbose but prescient response to the primary defeat of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia:

Being a flatlander out here in the flyover part of Illinois, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know enough about the the situation in Virginia to have any sense of what this means to Virginians, but boy, howdy! let me tell you how pleased I am to see McAuliffe knocked out of there. I only hope that it ends up to be, finally, a stake through the heart of his political career. But part of what's most seriously wrong about the guy also makes it highly unlikely that it will be: he's too well connected to power.

Our obstacles to making the best choices are no longer matters of Democrats vs Republicans. The Republicans have taken care of that one all by themselves. However, one of The Bear's First Principals of Conflict states that in an intense prolonged conflict, the likelihood that the complete, sudden collapse of one of the parties will trigger the subsequent collapse of the the 'victor' party is directly proportional to the length and intensity of the conflict.

In other words, since the Republican party's response to their electoral repudiation last fall has been to become a laughing-stock, there's a very real danger of the Democrats doing the same.

If you listen to America (and I most certainly don't mean the polls), you'll hear that it's not a good idea to rush to judgment on what voters were saying when they threw out the Republicans. I mean, who are you going to vote for when your choices are between an OK but probably not thrilling Democrat and a member of the Clown Party who, if an incumbent, was likely lurking somewhere near the helm cheering as the captain sailed the ship over Niagara. Saying 'No more!' to Republican insanity is not the same as saying 'Yes, please!' to not-a-Republican, whoever s/he may be, and "May I have more, please.'

So the Democrats won. Why is nothing meaningful happening? Well, if you go back to The Bear's Principles, you'll see that in group conflict, there's always an element of what the Bear calls 'group identity ambiguity', somehow proportional to the degree of singularity of purpose that brings the group together in the first place. In simple English, there are always a certain number of folks who are in the wrong group.

As long as both sides are healthy and going at it tooth & nail, this isn't anything that can't be worked out over time. Allegiances change, people drift to the more appropriate group, others are exposed as frauds and shunned by the group, and some try to operate outside of the groups. But when the opposition group is suddenly removed from the scene, watch out! And that's where we are today in our Nation.

As often happens when the bad guys are put away, today's Democratic Party is discovering that it doesn't stand for much of anything in the absence of opposition. McAuliffe, the Clintons, the whole DLC thing represent Corporate America (with varying degrees of 'social responsibility' sensibilities, as long as it doesn't exceed corporate policy on charitable giving). They do not represent what I think America voted for last fall, and I am delighted to see my judgment ratified by the voters of Virginia.

On August 20, ‘CanSoc’ wrote this is the comments section of a Salon article on the health care debate:

Dickens's Ghost of Christmas Present, speaking about the children that cling to him: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both; but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom for men, unless the writing be erased." Or at least doom for an equitable healthcare system, along with an equitable society, in the US.

And finally, in today’s column, Andy Tobias links to this depressing article by John Mauldin.  Sadly, I’ve gotta say it’s a must read.

Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler

My sentiments exactly!

Oh, Would You Just Put A Sock In It, Barrack?

Our President is on the teevee commenting on the violence in Iraq following the election.  Telling us Americans should be disturbed when they see a government using violence against a group of people peaceably gathered to express their dissatisfaction with the government. 

Where the fluck were you, Mr. Obama, when our government was doing just that in St. Paul last August?  Or should we only be disturbed when the government that’s violently stifling dissent is some pre-demonized Them. 

You, sir, are such a pathetic disappointment!

OMG

Olberman is eulogizing Tim Russert on ‘Countdown’ on the eve of the one-year anniversary of his death, and I’m sitting here trying to control my gag reflex.

According to absolutely everybody, Tim Russert, popular NBC political reporter and host of the venerable Sunday morning talking-heads spectacle ‘Meet the Press,’ was the nicest guy who ever walked the earth.  I have no argument with that.  We all feel and say that kind of stuff when someone we’re very fond of suddenly checks out, and if they could just leave it at that, I wouldn’t be fighting a gag. 

But all this crap about what a fine reporter he was is more than I can handle.  Tim Russert was a horrible reporter and a literal icon for what is wrong with corporate media today.  His ‘Meet the Press’ was an uncritical platform for the Bush administration to make its case to the country without fear of criticism or fact checking of even their most absurd and obviously false assertions.  His famous interview with Cheney in the leadup to the unprovoked invasion of Iraq is the most shameful moment in modern American journalism.

So let’s pause and fondly remember Tim the nice guy and super dad, and let’s skip all the bullshit about what a fine reporter he was, eh? 

Virginia Says ‘No’ To Corporate Democrat McAuliffe

Last night, the tubes were full of the news that a relative unknown, Creigh (pronounced ‘Cree’—I woud have guessed ‘Cray’) Deeds had won the Virginia Gubernatorial Primary.  The headlines ran the gamut, from “Deeds Wins Primary,” to “Mr. Deeds One Step Closer to Going To Richmond,” to my favorite, “Anybody but McAuliffe.” 

Being a flatlander out here in the flyover part of Illinois, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know enough about the the situation in Virginia to have any sense of what this means to Virginians, but Boy, howdy! let me tell you how pleased I am to see McAuliffe knocked out of there.  I only hope that it turns out to be a stake through the heart of his political career. But I think he’s too well connected to power for that—a big part of what's most seriously wrong about the guy.

Our obstacles to making the best choices are no longer matters of Democrats vs. Republicans. The Republicans have taken care of that one all by themselves. However, one of The Bear's First Principals of Conflict states that in an intense prolonged conflict, the likelihood that the complete, sudden collapse of one of the parties will trigger the subsequent collapse of the the 'victor' party is directly proportional to the length and intensity of the conflict.

In other words, since the Republican party's response to their electoral repudiation last fall has been to become a laughing-stock, there's a very real danger of the Democrats doing exactly the same.

It's not a good idea to rush to judgment on what voters were saying when they threw out the Republicans last fall.  I mean, who are you going to vote for when your choices are between an OK but probably not thrilling Democrat and a member of the Clown Party who, if incumbent, was likely lurking somewhere near the helm, cheering as the captain sailed the ship over Niagra. Saying 'No more!' to Republican insanity is not the same as saying 'Yes, please!' to not-a-Republican, whoever s/he may be, and "May I have more, please.'

So the Democrats won. Why is nothing meaningful happening? Well, if you go back to The Bear's Principles, you'll see that in group conflict, there's always an element of what the Bear calls 'group identity ambiguity', somehow proportional to the degree of singularity of purpose that brings the group together in the first place. In simple English, there are always a certain number of folks who are in the wrong group.

As long as both sides are healthy and going at it tooth & nail, this isn't anything that can't be worked out over time. Allegiances change, people drift to the more appropriate group, others are exposed as frauds and shunned by the group, and some try to operate outside of the groups. But when the opposition group is suddenly removed from the scene, watch out! And that's where we are today in our Nation.

As often happens when the bad guys are put away, today's Democratic Party is discovering that it doesn't stand for much of anything in the absence of opposition. McAuliffe, the Clintons, the whole DLC thing represent Corporate America (with varying degrees of 'social responsibility' sensibilities permitted, as long as they don’t exceed corporate policy on charitable giving). They do not represent what I think America voted for last fall, and I am delighted to see my judgment ratified by the voters of Virginia. (Thus, the dancing bears.)

Brave Sir Robin Blue-Dog

Thank you Eli at FDL for renewing our acquaintance with this wonderful Python clip.  The timing was perfect for my semi-depressed frame of mind.  (Time to lay off the news for a while I think.)  I may just have to find a torrent for a whole Monty Python movie.  I had completely forgotten how much fun it is, and it's gotta be cheaper than Prozac.

But the real fun is in the post that goes with it, in which Eli lays bare the manner in which the Blue-Dog Dems are beating a very brave retreat on the “public option” aspect of healthcare reform.  Please read and enjoy The Courage of the Conservadems at Firedog Lake.  And may the gods and godesses of delight and absurdity continue to entertain Eli for eternity.

More Random Thoughts (cont.)

Public campaign financing, anyone?

I’ve been reading a lot of posts and hearing and seeing a lot of discussions in the media recently along these lines:  The 2008 elections were an overwhelming repudiation of the Republican party and the principles for which it stands.  Americans stood up last November and literally shouted “No more!” to Republicanism, wars of choice, and corporate control of the government.  So, if the good guys won so big (and they did!), why aren’t any of the big changes happening?  Why are Obama and Congress tippy-toeing around on things like universal health care and saving people’s homes and nationalizing and breaking up the banks as if the other guys still had the power and we can only accomplish that which has bipartisan support?

I think the answer is pretty obvious:  The “other guys” do still have all the power and bipartisanship has nothing to do with it.  Whether the officeholders call themselves Republicans or Democrats, with a few wonderful exceptions, the corporate interests still own our government.  And they’ll continue to own it until Americans demand that our political campaigns by financed by public money, and only by public money. 

An overwhelming percentage of Americans (I’ve seen polls ranging from 56% all the way up to a whopping 87%) want the country to change to a European-style, single-payer public health system.  But does single-payer have a chance in hell of even being seriously considered?  Not on your life!  Nor is it likely to be, as long as the health profiteers put billions and billions of dollars annually into the reelection coffers of our nation’s congresscritters.  Ditto the banks.  Ditto Wall Street (whatever that means). 

As long as it costs more than the GNP of a mid-sized country to be elected to public office, and as long as corporate interests are permitted to give game-changing sums to political candidates, we’re never going to have a government that’s interested in the needs of the working people they’re supposed to be looking out for.

With the Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination, we’ve been seeing Obama on teevee a lot talking about how important it was in the selection process to pick a candidate from the most highly qualified whose decisions reflected a philosophy of standing up for the little guy against the forces of the big and powerful.  I guess that’s only for judges, eh?

Before the election, I responded to several polls about what should be the highest priority for the new administration with “None of the above:  Restore the constitutional balance of powers and roll back the whole unconstitutional ‘unitary presidency’ idea.”  After seeing what’s rolled out in the four months since Obama took office, I have a new answer for those pollsters:  Stop the corporate stranglehold on the American government.  Support public campaign financing now!

Credo, please leave me alone!

Seems like a day doesn’t go by when I don’t receive something from the Working Assets cell phone subsidiary, Credo.  They want me to switch my mobile service from AT&T to their politically correct correct Credo brand.  Today’s message came via snail mail in an appeal that compared Credo to AT&T and Verizon.  Did you know that AT&T and Verizon both support war, laugh about global warming, favor criminalizing abortion, oppose campaign finance reform, and are opposed to free speech?  Not a word about call or network quality.

There are three reasons why Credo isn’t for me:

1. There are only two carriers whose very best phones receive a marginally acceptable signal in all the rooms of my ancient brick apartment, and Credo (Sprint) ain’t one of them.
2. I spend 4 to 6 months of most years either at home in Spain or traveling elsewhere in Europe or Asia.  If I want to own one telephone with all my contacts and data and bookmarks and calendar and personal junk in it, it needs to operate on a GSM network, since they don’t (for the most part) use the U.S. CDMA standard that Sprint—Credo’s actual network provider—uses.  I’m stuck with AT&T or T-Mobile.
3. The whole credo thing is about 90% hype.

Credo Mobile is not a telephone company.  It’s a mobile phone service reseller for Sprint, a company that’s no more ‘progressive’ than AT&T or Verizon (or any of the others).  If Credo had added a ‘Sprint’ column to the comparison chart they sent me today, it would have been just as dirty as the others.

If consumers ever looked beyond the shiny surface of crap like this, they’d realize that the more important message here is that the profits in the telecommunications industry are so obscenely huge that a reseller like Credo Mobile—a company that doesn’t own one stick of real telecommunications equipment—can afford to buy somebody else’s product and turn around and not only sell it to me at a competitive price, but also give me a $450 phone for $60, and give me $200 to buy out my AT&T contract and make generous contributions to good causes (they’re Planned Parenthood’s largest corporate contributor), and spam me by email and snail mail several times a week, and earn a decent return for their investors.

I grew up in Springfield, IL, one of the few municipalities left in the country that still has municipally owned and operated public utilities.  Springfield’s progressive Republican fathers, led by the amazing V.Y. Dallman, saw the wisdom of municipally-owned public utilities and oversaw the creation of City Water Light and Power Company, and still in 2009, Springfield has OK water and electricity (about all anybody can claim these days), and the lowest electric rates in the country.  It’s one of the few places where it’s actually less expensive to heat your home with electricity than with natural gas. 

A mobile phone provider that did that for its users would have my business in a second.  Until you do that, Credo, please lose my addresses.

And finally

One last thought on congregational animal names:  I was tickled to learn that the correct name for a congregation of bears is a sloth—further evidence that I am, indeed, a member in good standing of the bear family. 

More Random Thoughts (incomplete)

Naming the beast

I’d been trying to come up with a clever name for collectively referring to the Bush insiders (Bushco) without hitting on anything that stood out, when it occurred to me that there are some really wonderful names in the world of wildlife for groups of the the same kind of animal (‘herd’, ‘flock’, etc.).  Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a delightfully ironic or comical name for a group of some disgusting and/or deceitful/mean/nasty wild critter, like a “slither” of shitsnakes or something?  (noi to my herptophile friends)

Looking for a place to start, I turned to one of my favorite wildlife sources of info-for-idiots, the US Geological Survey web site, where I learned that in educated-speak the generic word for groups of the same animal is ‘congregation.’  So let’s see if we can’t come up with a good animal avatar for the congregation of Bush insiders whose shenanigans brought our country to a point where the jury is still out on whether it will survive in recognizable form.

Right away, I discovered that if I’m going for a name that includes the whole gaggle, the project is harder than I thought it was gonna be.  I started by excluding all the names that were too generic:  most people are turned off by snakes, but there’s no punch in the name “nest” by itself.  The “Bush nest”?  Meh.

Then the task was to find the ones that were generic enough:  A shiver (of sharks)   evokes a delicious image of Chaney and his fellow dark warriors, and while a shrewdness (of apes) takes irony into uncharted territory when applied to Bush himself and his equally clueless department heads who loaded up our federal bureaucracy with ignorant, incompetent Liberty University graduates, where’s the animal family whose name both evokes the right kind of image and is general enough to include both the slick operators and the bumbling ideologues.

I love the idea of an obstinacy (of buffalo), but the animal has zero ick factor.  On the other hand, I kind of like the (biblical) ass for political metaphor, but the Bush Pace just doesn’t do anything.  A cowardice of curs is good, but nowhere near destructive enough.  I like the idea of a bloat of something, but the animal it names is the noble hippopotamus, capable of violence when provoked but otherwise pretty mellow fellows. 

My favorites so far are a cackle (of hyenas), a sounder (of swine), and a crash (of rhinos).   A deceit is tempting but I don’t have any idea what a lapwing is about.  Also attractive but either inappropriate or too obscure are an unkindness (of ravens), a murder (of crows—too obvious?), and a prickle (of porcupines).

But I think if I had to pick the official Grumblebear nickname for the Bush insiders right this very minute, I’d  go to the creepy place and start referring to them as the Bush Intrusion. 

“Intrusion” just kind of sums up the whole Bush nightmare, and in the animal world when you’re talking about an intrusion of something, you’re referring to an intrusion of cockroaches. 

I don’t know.  What are your thoughts?  Rather than insulting our friends in the animal world, maybe we should be throwing around candidates for an original name for a congregation of Bushies.  An ignorance of Bushies?  A failure of Bushies?  An arrogance . . ?  Wait, I’ve got it!  A frathouse of Bushies.  I think one of the rules for naming congregations is to try to stick to one-word names, but it’s damned difficult to come up with one word that even begins to express the soulless, venal, depraved, corrupt malignancy of George W. Bush’s presidential team. 

Cast your vote or offer your own suggestions in comments.

The Ugly Truth

Sometimes my brain does some really weird stuff—especially right now while I’m coming off my antidepressant—but tonight it threw me a strange curve ball: 

I serve on the steering committee of the local ACLU chapter, and it’s ‘that time of year’ at the ACLU when our representative to the state board has the unenviable job of hitting up the local major donors for some extra bucks.  It’s a job I’ve done quite a few times over the years, and for me, it’s the only really unpleasant part of representing the chapter to ‘Chicago.’ 

This evening, our current rep sent the committee members some information about the most recent meeting of the state board, and mentioned that he’d soon be contacting each of us individually to do the squeeze.  I hit reply and kind of went on autopilot, as I sometimes do when firing off a polite reply-type note, and explained that my finances were screwy and I wasn’t going to be able to make a pledge this year, but that for now and the foreseeable future, the ACLU was my first priority for both any extra pennies I found in the sofa and whatever time and energy I can come up with for the cause.  And then I said “. . . Obama is many times more dangerous [to civil liberties] than BushCo ever could have been.”

Holy shit!  Did I write that?  Where’d that come from?  Do I really think that?

To which the answers are – indeed, yes, I’ll explain, and sadly, yes.

For me and many like me in the civil liberties community, the single most important issue in the 2008 presidential election wasn’t the war or the economy or immunity for telecommunications companies that assisted the government in illegal spying on innocent American citizens or even the torture memos.  For us, aside from wresting control of the country from the hands of an apparently completely insane Republican Party, the 2008 election was about restoring the United States Constitution and the rule of law.

Since taking office, Obama’s record has been mixed.  But Bush left one hell of a mess, and Obama is a constitutional scholar fer krissake, and surely when the dust settles, he’ll get this stuff sorted out.  Or at least, that was my illusion until Thursday’s speech on Gitmo in which he introduced the concept of “Prolonged Detention.”  I think Rachael Maddow said it best:

The only difference between Obama and Bush is that this level of rape of logic and of the United States Constitution is not something an inarticulate, bumbling fratboy with ADHD could pull off without the absurdity being so obvious that even Aunt Martha’s cat Puddin was scratching its head there at the end.  A constitutional law professor, on the other hand . . . .

More on this soon (or not)

Technorati Tags: Obama,Civil Liberties,Constitution

Odds & Ends

100 Years of The Progressive
I'm just back from a wonderful weekend in Madison, WI, celebrating 100 years of The Progressive magazine.  It was everything I expected and more.  How's this for a lineup?  Howard Zinn, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, Amy Goodman, Delores Huerta, Naomi Klein, Jim Hightower, Tammy Baldwin, Keith Ellison, Katha Pollitt, John Nichols, Bob McChesney, Will Durst, and Robert Redford.  And the whole thing was held together by the unassuming miracle worker Matt Rothschild, Progressive editor.  Extended thoughts (and pics) on the conference later this week.  For now, I'll just say that it was a great weekend with wonderful people, and I came away from it with my spiritual tanks refilled to the brim and my physical energy supply running on empty—just the way they should be after a good weekend house party.

Stuff I learned on the trip (unrelated to the conference content)

First of all, I learned that my much-loved new do-everything smartphone has a seriously crappy camera.  The shot on the left is John Nichols.  Nice, huh?  Better ones of Zinn and Redford, but not very.  Next time I take the Nikon.

Then there were the roads.  Somebody please tell Pat Quinn that when Illinois gets that extra highway money from the stimulus, he needs to make sure not one penny gets diverted to anything but repairing our interstate highways!  There are holes in I-39 between Bloomington and Rockford you could lose a Mini Cooper in, and there are no signs, no orange cones, no warnings—just gigantic holes in the pavement, and you're on your own, thank you very much.

My Prius is not my Saab.  And that’s a subject for another diary or two (one on stupid things about the Prius, and one on the auto industry).

There are crazy people and assholes on the left as well as the right.  The right has no monopoly on this one.  The most obnoxious were the single-issue folks who used public discussion time to push their agenda, regardless of the topic.  But for me the most annoying were the self-absorbed (and they're at every conference) who spent the entire presentation time formulating their clever little statement, totally missing that the speaker(s) had just spent 20 minutes either supporting the point in great detail or blowing it out of the water. 

There is sadness in seeing movement heroes from one's own salad days suffering the physical deterioration of age.  Howard Zinn, 24 years my senior, will be 87 on his next birthday, and it shows.  But, oh, the mind!  If I were 1/10 as sharp at 63 as Zinn at 87, I'd still be grateful for the intelligence boost.


Replacing David Souter
They say that Team Obama has been thinking about a replacement for Souter since even before the primaries.  Obama, himself, has been quoted as saying that Souter is an example of the kind of Justice he would like to appoint.  Me?  Not so much.  Souter certainly has been better than we expected when he was appointed, but he's sure not my idea of the kind of forward-thinking progressive that I'd be looking for to help restore what Rehnquist and Roberts and the Scalia-Thomas ideology have done to the SCOTUS.  I'm prepared to be disappointed by the appointment.  But I'm also aware of the long history of ideological surprises that have followed Supreme Court appointments.  What progressive Senator gleefully would have voted to approve nominee Earl Warren in 1963?  We'll see.    

 

Torture and Spying on Americans: A Real Republican Opportunity

I grew up in a family of Democrats in a very Republican neighborhood.  For all of my life with my parents, I remember my mother going to the polls every election to be an election judge because there were only two families in our precinct who were democrats.

In thinking about politics today, what seems most significant in my memories from that era is that our Republican neighbors were people pretty much like us.  We shared very similar ideals, although we disagreed somewhat on the ways to achieve them.  Our relationships with our neighbors were downright friendly.  The most notable Republican leaders in Illinois were for the most part intelligent, honorable, highly respected people - people like Ev Dirksen* and Chuck Percy and Bill Stratton.  Everybody liked Ike, and nobody liked Nixon.

I like to think that those top Republican leaders of that time would have been absolutely horrified if they had learned that the American government had been conducting a clandestine torture program and regularly and widely reading the mail of American citizens without warrants.  And had the Administration then dilly-dallied around about a thorough investigation of the torture and spying the people who planned and authorized it, there are a number of them who would have risen in Congress and not sat back down until a thorough investigation was begun.

Today, a friend who has contacts in some key congressional offices on both sides of the aisle reports that Obama's recent endorsement of the Nuremberg Defense for the people who carried out the torture sparked a nearly unprecedented amount of constituent support for the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute whenever appropriate.

One of the Republican staffers reportedly told our friend that her boss especially had been impressed by the "quality" of the communications -- meaning that he was hearing from a lot of old-line conservatives whom he considered the soul of his constituency.  

I don't know if there's a Republican of that old principled party left in American Politics, but if there is, the Obama Administration's mishandling of the whole war crimes issue has presented them with a wonderful opportunity to stand up and demand a special prosecutor, and thus begin the process of returning their party to some level of credibility.

While this whole pile of post-Bush detritus is loaded with political implications, the issue at hand is one of criminality, not politics, and the first principled Republican to stand up and demand an investigation wins.  (and I think, wins big)


*Yes, I know Ev Dirksen was a horrible hawk on Vietnam.  That makes him wrong, not dishonorable.  And yes, I'm aware that the CIA and State Department were committing horrible attrocities in Central- and South America on our behalf during that same time I'm so nostalgic for.  Different times.

Oh, Really?

Sign the petition telling Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture here.

O'Reilly: I Take FULL Credit For Spain Backing Off Torture Prosecutions

Think Progress has a great article on this video here

I highly recommend you read the T-P article.

For me, the funny part was his claim that the unemployment rate in Spain is nearing 19%! Anybody who claims to know the unemployment rate in Spain is either a liar or delusional. There’s a huge black economy in Spain (some say as large as- and some say larger than the white one), and a whole lot of people earn their livings off the books.

I have a home there (where I sat out most of the Cheney/Bush years) and I can assure you there’s no question that the Spanish economy is in serious trouble, but that is equally true in France & GB, and to a somewhat lesser extent in the rest of the EU countries.

When I was in grade school in the 50s, we learned that one of the really evil things about the Soviet Union was that they locked up dissidents in mental institutions. Too bad they ruined that for us, ’cause from what I can see, most of what’s left of the right sure belong in one!

Tea Bags, etc.

Today's News-Gazette reports that several hundred people attended the tea party in West Side Park yesterday.  The featured speaker was some ex-marine from Bellville who according to the story quoted every wingnut talking point Fox News has spouted in the last 3 months.

Some thoughts:  These people don't seem to understand that the taxes they were protesting this tax day were were for 2008, when George W. Bush was president and set the budget and the tax rates (with congressional rubber-stamp approval).  On April 15, 2010, they'll be filing their first "Obama" taxes, and all but a couple of them will be paying less taxes than this year, thanks to Obama having presented us with the biggest middle class tax reduction in the history of America.  Commenter "mattstan" on the N-G website said it very well:  "We obviously need to increase taxes. This 'movement' is pretty stark evidence of our failing education system."

But my favorite comment of the day was made by a reader who signs himself "BillD":

I have no problem protesting the way taxes are spent. I do have a problem with the way these protests are being organized and characterized. These "tea parties" are being pushed by partisan interest groups and sold through FoxNews and talk radio. The whole thing about "taxing those who make it to give to those who don't" is a load of crap. Most of our tax dollars go to corporate welfare and bailing out bigshots. Money is being sucked out of this country from the top. Check out the "L-curve" if you don't believe that. The only thing working in this country is the "divide and conquer" strategy employed by the left vs. right crowd. The sooner we all get on the same page, the better. I just don't know when the News Gazette is going to get on the side of people and off the side of moneyed interests.

Good question, Bill.  No, the demonstration was not about taxes, although that was their proffered excuse.  What it was was an opportunity to bash Obama.  I love the way the corporations manipulate the least educated, most poorly informed members of the working class to do their dirty work for them!

More Random Grumblings

What Obama Doesn't See
Back in mid-March, I wrote this piece on what Obama saw that Hillary didn't, and promised a followup posting on what he doesn't see and what that might mean for the future.  I am now so over the idea that I have any idea what Obama might see or not see. 

Back sometime in the '70s, I read a novel the "message" of which left a lasting impression.  I don't remember its title, and I've just discovered I don't remember its author either.  I would have sworn it was by Paul Theroux, but I think that was because it was about railroads, since I can't find anything in his bibliography that comes even close to the story I'm thinking of.

In any case, the story line goes something like this:  Guy invents time machine.  Guy wants to be JPMorgan-rich.  Guy travels back in time to before locomotive was invented with detailed plans for locomotive and enough gold to kick off development of first transcontenental railway.  Meyhem ensues.  As I recall, it was a decent read, and the lesson learned has stayed with me:  There can't be a railroad until it's time for there to be a railroad.

In other words, change is a process and because of the interconnectedness of "it all," simple knowledge of a different (better?) way is insufficient without everything else being "ready" for the new way.  Bearing this in mind, and having watched Obawan in action over the last few weeks, I'm now convinced I have no idea what he gets and doesn't get; sees and doesn't see. 

My criticism of him has to do with my wanting him to go a whole lot farther than he seems willing to go in almost every program he's proposed.  What's keeping my mouth closed about it most of the time is that I'm pretty certain that what I want him to be doing pretty much falls into the category of trains whose time hasn't come yet.  Still, I do think he's being overly cautious, but we're coming off 8 years of no caution whatsoever, so Mr O can't be blamed for taking things very slowly.

Other Random Stuff
MSNBC rolled out its third player, Ed Schultz, in its nightly left-leaning trifecta of Olberman, Maddow and now Schultz.  Schultz comes to MSNBC from talk radio and brings with him everything I hate about talk radio.  If tonight was an example, he does it well, and while I'm not a part of his target audience, he's a welcome voice to MSNBC lineup.

Why do we call it "Adult Language?"  And while we're at it, what about "Adult Content?"  I'm an adult, and while I play host to an inner potty-mouth on a par with the very best, there's nothing particularly adult about him.  He, along with everyone else who's titilated by "dirty" language and necked bodies, is every inch an adolescent and the only times the adult me lets him out is to add his shock value to the discussion.  (He's also my resident expert at verbal shorthand when I'm feeling lazy and impatient.)  Maybe I'm overly sensitive to this because I live on two continents and regularly see BBC programs first on the BBC and then on BBC America with all it's beeps and screen-fuzzying, but please America, it's time for us all to grow up!

Things About Me
The other day, I was filling out a registration form for a web site, and it got me thinking in lists.  Here are some that I came up with that pleased me:

Some labels I wear with pride:  Fundamentalist Civil Libertarian, Socialist, Progressive, Agnostic, Communitarian, Gay Rights Activist, and Realist

Some other labels I've worn with minimal embarrassment at various times and with varying degrees of success and accuracy:  Son, Grandson, Student, Teacher, ADHD Patient, Friend, Enemy, Hippy, Auto Mechanic, Clerk, Secretary, Alcoholic, Paralegal, Radio Announcer, Journalist, Editor, Author, Educator (see "Teacher" + gravitas), Counselor, Mediator, Programmer, Boss, Employee, Landlord, Tenant, Victim, Perpetrator, Leader, Follower, Stage Manager, Director (theater, corporate, & charitable), Musician, Guru (lol), Author.

Some unarguable rules in my playground:  1) The U.S. Constitution means exactly what it says.  No exceptions.  2) Each consenting adult being free to marry the consenting adult member of the opposite sex of their choice does not satisfy the equal protection requirements of the first section of the 14th Amendment.  Each consenting adult being free to marry the consenting adult they love does.  3) "The Bible says . . ." is not a valid argument for any purpose.  Neither are tradition, historical precedence, conventional practice, nor any other appeal to authority unless it has a firm constitutional foundation.

Not bad for a start, eh?

My apartment in Spain raised $4,200 for the Campus YMCA at its annual dinner and auction Friday night.  One of the things that's been bugging me about the recession is that I've had to cut way back on my little efforts at philanthropy.  Being able to do something like this with an asset that's just sitting there doing nothing feels really good!!!

Travel plans are in the works.  I had been keeping the latter part of April and all of May open, hoping I'd get over to Spain for a few weeks this Spring.  Now that I know that's not going to happen, I'm playing with plans for a road trip here in the states.  For sure, I'm dropping down to Atlanta to meet the newest Snook once John's had time to recover from his little adventure.  I'd like to visit the newest Klugs, too, but that's a lot of miles.  We'll see. 

Random Grumblings

With all of the incredible tech bargains out there right now, I've caught myself wishing I needed something. Fortunately, the lack of ready cash has kept me from discovering a new "need."

When am I going to learn that the shortest distance to Menard's or Home Depot does not include making a stop at Lowes to learn that what I need 1) is out of stock and 2) if it were in stock, would have been priced 125% to 150% higher than other stores. Like that annoying haiclub guy on TV, I'm both a shareholder and a customer, so it disappoints me doubly when the empty bin represents both the most economical alternative for its item class and the most popular and therefore would be selling like hotcakes if the bin weren't empty. Their shareholder reports are full of complex spin explanations of why their business sucks right now, but I can't help but think that fixing their stock-flow system would probably be a giant step in the right direction.

Why do people call realists "cynics?" Or are we just usually both? Is there a causal relationship in there somewhere? Inquiring bears need to know.

Obama's Press Conference
I don't know if Obama is going to fix things or make them worse, and I think anybody who says they do know is either delusional or lying, But there's one thing about our president that's undeniable: the man could sell wood-stoves in hell! I know that I'm not in his target audience, but even I came away from it with my spirits lifted. It wasn't anything he said, but it is just so incredibly reassuring and refreshing to have a guy living in the White House who's articulate, brilliantly intelligent, and can think on his feet, that even my cynical ol' bear self can't help but feel better after seeing him bat the hostile questions from Fox news right out of the park.

Every time I saw Bush on TV, I couldn't help but think "There goes a guy for whom finding his own way home from the outhouse in the dark describes the outer edge of his intellectual capacity."

Updates on some previous posts
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about our wonderful media watchdogs that progressed into a Bear's Brief History of the 2008 Election and ended with a teaser for a continuation on those thoughts. It's still coming. It's in there. But I'm currently hooked on the political soap opera in Washington, and it seems like at the end of every day's adventures, current events have caused my thoughts to morph a little. I hope I'm not unconsciously waiting for the story to end before I post my next chapter. Ha!

In that same line, about a month ago I wrote about a personal project I was working on that sounded like it all was about to burst into flower. It's coming along, but . . . (see preceding paragraph) I got some good tips about hosts and have picked one and registered. Thanks for your help. As for blossoms, when there's something to read there, I'll post a link here and you can take a look if you want.

Media Matters and the Importance of Reality (A brief history)

Addendum added (see below)
It's only March 13, yet we already have a pretty sure QOTM winner.  The provisional designation goes to Paul Krugman, as quoted in an article by Jamison Poser sent out in a Media Matters email.

 The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

And if Poser's quote of Krugman is my favorite so far, his own introductory paragraph to the same article is the current leader for Simile of the Month:

For weeks, the news media have been buzzing about earmarks in the recently signed omnibus spending bill. We've been told over and over that the bill is "loaded," "filled," and "stuffed" with earmarks. Since earmarks made up less than 2 percent of the bill's total spending, this is a little like saying Alaska is "filled" with people.

Way to go Jamison.  Great double-bagger!  And while I've got your attention, I want to tell you folks over there at MM how much I appreciate the work you do and how important I think it is.  You guys have been a nearly lone voice in the wilderness for so long, and you're consistently the best documented and most thoroughly detailed of the voices out there.

My own belief in people (even the ones who live in America) includes a fairly non-cynical section that is pretty sure that when people in a democracy (albeit a corporate-democracy) begin to understand the enormity of the disconnect between the realities of the world around them and the fantasy world the corporate press has had  them living in for - let's face it - all of their lives, they'll do the right thing.   They'll find themselves a reality leader and throw out the fantasy leaders and demand that their government become a reality government which makes decisions that benefit the people first and not the corporations.

Thanks to MM and friends (greatly aided by the Fratmeister nearly driving daddy's car off the cliff) the American people see the enormity of the disconnect more clearly every day.  They've picked their reality leader.  They've thrown out the Fantasy Leader, all of his cohorts and/or puppeteers, and a good-sized chunk of his most obvious enablers in Congress.  More to come.

Obama has some very significant limitations, but he is the best that we could do.  His own view of reality, although uniquely clear for a member of the corporate political class, is limited by tunnel vision.  He sees the parts of reality that he sees (however he got there - I have no idea).  So, although he is dedicated to do the right thing, he can see only a part of it, and understands neither the full scope of the need for change nor how far that change has to go in a direction very different from the one we've been on until now.

. . . . .

The best that we could do?  Yes.
 As the candidates for president lined up, Americans loved John McCain and Hillary Clinton.  Other candidates had their followers and their detractors, but America loved John and Hillary. 

While the media were amazed by there being so much support for Obama in the early primaries, Americans who had their eyes open to reality weren't surprised in the least.  We saw that Hillary, while well intentioned, was still living in the fantasy paradigm.  She believed that the old system of corporate government had merely been mismanaged by the Bush years and had become "ill".  Her proposed policies were designed to restore proper management and thus "heal" the system back to its former, proper functionality.

On the other hand, Obama has a world view that sees very large, very important parts of reality.  His campaign preached the message that what he saw didn't need to be fixed; it needed to be changed!  Replaced by something that really worked.  This is what he meant when he talked about "change you can believe in" -- not merely tweaking the "system", but stopping it and replacing it with something that works.

Hillary Clinton warned us that Bush's abandoned car had been left dangerously close to the edge of the cliff and assured us that she would be a responsible driver and back it up the road until it was on solid ground again.

Obama on the other hand assured his supporters that they weren't the only ones who could see that the car had gone a lot farther than close to the edge; that in fact the front wheels had gone over the edge, the car was teetering in a delicate balance and was in danger of falling, and that it was going to take a mighty big tow truck to drag it back onto solid ground.  He said that there were parts of the car that had been so badly broken by Bush's joyride that they had to be completely redesigned and replaced before it could be driven forward to any kind of safety.

As events unfolded and the collapse became more obvious every day, more and more independently-minded voters were not only waking up to the fact that we'd been living in a fantasy world, but realizing that Obama was talking about leading us out of it.

While America still loved Hillary, the bank failures and rapid decline of the economy and her responses to them, made the differences between Clinton's vision and Obama's painfully obvious.  The moment that the number of independents who realized the unfixability of the old way and that Obama was the only candidate who was not only talking about it but also proposing different-direction solutions reached a majority, his election became inevitable.

In all of this, Media Matters and their fellow reality based truth-speakers played the most important roll, tiredlesly calling out the liars and distorters of the truth again and again and again.  Kudos folks.  Thank you and keep up the good work.

Next time:  What Obama doesn't  see and some speculation about why and what the consequences might be.

Addendum 
Mike Kernagis points out in a private comment that the context of "They've thrown out the Fantasy Leader, all of his cohorts and/or puppeteers, and . . . . " is far from clear.  I agree.  The preceding paragraph is a no-frills statement of what I believe happens in a democracy when the people wake up.  The next (which contains that sentence) is meant to be nothing more than a macro illustration of how recent events in this country relate to the premise of the preceding paragraph.

Real life political change in a democracy (just like the rest of real life) is a process that moves at a rate that for the most part is determined by the degree to which the majority of the voting electorate is aware of the dysfunctionality of the status quo.  So, of course, what actually happened in the 2008 elections fell far short what the people thought they were doing - consistent with their still limited awareness of the dysfunction of the system.  It's the first step in a truly different direction, and as its consequences roll out, the shortfall will become obvious, and various corrections will be tried out until the ones that work are in place.  That's how change happens in a peaceful transition from idiological to practical government in a democracy - a process of evolution, not a switch we can just throw and make everything different at once.

Rachael Maddow at the ACLU of Wisconsin's 2009 Bill of Rights Celebration

The ACLU of Wisconsin was kind enough to make available (in three parts) the entirety of Rachael Maddow's address to their annual meeting in February. The introduction ends and Rachael takes the stage about 3 minutes into the first clip.

(Please note that by playing this clip You Tube and Google will place a long-term cookie on your computer. Please see You Tube’s privacy statement on their website and Google’s privacy statement on theirs to learn more.)

D.L. Hughley: Frank Schaeffer Author of Crazy for God on What's Left of the GOP

This seems to be turning into You Tube day here at Grumblebear, but this clip of Frank Schaeffer on D.L. Hughley (one of the few watchable programs left on what has become of CNN) is worth the space and time.

h/t Ben Cohen at The Daily Banter

Samsung SSD Awesomeness

Ok, this clip is promotional material from Samsung, and nobody I know could afford a setup like this at the current price of SSDs. Never mind all that. Watch and be amazed!
h/t Gizmodo

Announccing an Arrival

Meet Ms. Mary Jane Klug

Congratulations, guys!

Announcing a Project

New stuff is happening in my life almost faster than I can process it, and I'm Taking Action to help myself with that. I'm starting two new blogs and asking for your help to keep me going (no $ involved). I've got two things that I've got to get out; one as in "out of my system" and the other as in "out and into the world." I'm going to try to pull off the process without coming off like any of the following:

• a pompous asshole
• an out-of-control crank
• a disaffected scholar with a wacky pet theory
• that red-faced old man with the cardboard sign covered with multi-colored, hand-scribbled lines from the Bible who used to hang out around the Illinois state house in Springfield.
• Donald Duck

Here's what's going on:

I've been going through some of what the Chinese call Interesting Times in my interior life. As I wrote to a younger friend the other day, at 62 I've reached a point where I no longer have the stamina to continue to ignore the pain and the grief that I've carried around all my life about what was done to me as a child and the grief I feel about the loss of the entire life I didn't live as a result of it.

At the same time, and on a totally different subject, I've got what I think is a really important "message" that I'm going to try to write about (with your help) as clearly and concisely as I can say it -- to the point that it actually becomes a publishable book (or something). Wow, "message" is a heavy word. Very portentous. But the message itself isn't. The message itself is incredibly simple; so simple that in the history of mankind it's been universally ignored by nearly everyone except "crazy people."

We're at a point in the world, and in America specifically, where if we continue to ignore this simple fact, we have the ability to screw this poochie to a point beyond repair. There really are two Americas* and they exist in very different realities, and between those realities exist critical irreconcilable differences.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's a paragraph from the foreword to the book. First I'll expose the simple reality, and then I'll explain how to use it to save the world (starting with America). But this post is about revealing the project(s), the difficulties that stand in my way of pulling the whole thing off, and the kinds of things I'd like you to do to help me do that if you're interested in coming along for a crazy ride.

Mechanics

I'm not going to try to do all that in this space. The Grumblebear is going to keep grumbling and posting occasional current stuff here. To facilitate The Project, I'm going to start two new blogs: one that will be a mix of dumping the shit about my childhood trauma and how it's impacted my entire life and also some writings about the process of writing the second blog. Most of the readers here are personal friends and many have similarly screwed up family backgrounds. You're invited/encouraged to participate in this blog (working name: Blog P1). I'm pretty sure parts of my story (both my autobiographical shit and the part about writing the book) will resonate with parts of yours, and if that happens, please join in. The second blog (Blog P2) will be the book itself in working-draft form and your participation via the comments section there would be equally welcome.

Help!

Something you can do right now to help is to share any information/experience you've got about a good place to host this stuff. I'm looking for a space with tools a whole lot less basic than what I've been able to figure out on Blogger -- or at least any of the blogger templates I've been able to find. I've got a blog tool on my personal web site and I'll fool around with it a little bit and also dig a little deeper into blogger while I'm waiting for feedback in comments or email. When I've got the right host and/or template, I'll post the URLs here.

I don't intend to go into a big deal about my ADD in this post, but I've written a bit about how it trips me up elsewhere on this blog, and ADD is the reason I'm asking for your help. I've learned to accomplish stuff in spite of the roadblocks it throws up, and an essential part of what's necessary for me to do that is interaction with friends (or friendly strangers). So if any of this sounds like it might be interesting to be a part of (or you just love me enough to give it a try) I'd be honored to have you along for the ride. I promise you can get off the wagon at any time, but I can't promise to return you to where you started. ;-)

(More when the blog sites are up.)

Best 'Shaving Cream' Also the Least Expensive

For whatever reason, I'm one of those guys who can't shave with an electric shaver.  I've tried them all, and they all tear my face to shreds, with little red spots all over (especially on my neck) quickly followed by so many zitts that you'd think I was the world's oldest adolescent.  I've got a really tough beard that grows at bizarre angles to my face and skin that's so tender that a mere touch leaves a mark that lasts for hours.  Gotta love those Celtic genes, eh? 

For years, I've been using a manual razor and shaving in the shower, which softens my beard even more.  A few weeks ago, I was out of my favorite shave cream (Edge for sensative skin) and desperately needed to knock the whiskers off my face.  Being an inventive sort, I grabbed a bottle of hair conditioner someone had left behind (I've got nothing to condition) and slathered it on my face.  All I can say is 'WOW!' 

Plain old generic (store brand, in this case) hair conditioner gave me the smoothest shave I've ever had and left my skin feeling like a million bucks.  Who knew?  An 88-cent (for 32 oz) bottle of generic hair conditioner beat the hell out of the $3.50 (for 8 oz) shaving cream!

I can't certify that this stuff works as well for non-shower shavers, but I'll bet it does. 

Why I Hate O'Brien Auto Park

When I moved 'permanently' to Spain, I sold my wonderful old 1999 Saab 9-5 Sportswagon to a friend. After all, why should I keep a car in the states and pay for insurance, parking and keeping it maintained? I was living elsewhere, and if I needed a car for the month or so I was here, I could rent one for a whole lot less than the cost of insurance alone.

Last spring, when I knew I was coming back to the states to live (and gas was around $4/gal), I researched the current market and decided on a Toyota Prius. As time for the move drew closer, I began hunting for one somewhere near my home on the internet. What I discovered was that a) there were none available for immediate delivery and b) the wait for delivery would be somewhere between 3 and 6 months!

In desperation, I called an old friend who's a manager at the local megadealer that handles Toyota in the Champaign-Urbana area: O'Brien Auto Park. He had one (and only one) available for sale, and although it wasn't a color or a feature package that I wanted, I arranged to buy it over the phone from Spain.

The color wasn't all that important. I've lived with other white cars before and survived. It pissed me off to pay an extra $2500 for features I didn't want--the most expensive of which was Toyota's absolutely worthless navigation system. (Incidentally, features that I didn't know I wanted until I had them turned out to be the proximity entry/ignition system and the premium sound system which apparently is the only way to get built in bluetooth for my mobile phone--standard equipment in the EU where hand-held mobile usage has been illegal for several years. The other worthless feature that cost quite a bit is Toyota 'automatic' climate control, which is anything but.)

I say I called Pat Hos in desperation because although I've bought cars from Pat (and the wonderful Jim Stephens) several times before, my experiences with the O'Brien service department is an entirely different story, and the idea of laying down $28,000+ for a new car that (due to the hybrid technology) was going to be tied to O'Brien for service made my skin crawl.

I totally love my Prius. It performs as advertised and then some. Until this weekend, it's been faultlessly reliable and I've even learned the work-arounds on the climate control (things my Saab took care of automatically that have to be adjusted manually on the Toyota 'automatic' system). The navigation system continues to baffle, but a $300 Garmin dash unit will take care of that next time I venture into unfamiliar territory. And until this weekend, I haven't had to deal with O'Brien service.

Sunday afternoon, I went out to make a run to Lowe's and found the car totally dead. No power anywhere. A quick jump, however, and Steve and I were rolling again. The hybrid battery system reported 'full' and the car performed beautifully on the engine or the battery. At Lowes, it wouldn't go again. A jump and it's fine back to home. Today, it's dead again, and I call O'Brien's service and tell the woman what's happening. She asks when I can bring it in. I tell her I can't bring it in because it's dead (Steve, the designated jumper was at work.). She tells me she can give the number of a tow service. I tell her I'll call AAA, and thank her for the wonderful Warranty service. (If this had been my Saab, they'd have had somebody out to start it within 20 minutes.)

So I drive the car out to O'Brien, follow the signs to the Service Department, park the car and turn it off to go inside. Whoops! This is the service department for everything except Toyota, which is 100+ yards away. The car is dead again, so I trek the distance (14 degrees outside) and am met by a chirpy service 'consultant' to whom I tell my story. He sends me back to the car (on foot) with a 'porter' to get the VIN and mileage (inaccessible since it's all digital and digital is dead along with everything else). We trek back and chirpy Douglas tells me to sit down and wait while they figure out what's wrong with it. I ask him if Pat or Jim is on the premises (wanting to vent to a friendly face) and he tells me he couldn't tell me that.

I trek another 100 yards or so to another building where Pat and Jim do their stuff (and where Pat is the boss) and recount my adventures to Pat, who drops his jaw, gets on the phone to the big-boss-in-the-sky to bitch about the lack of 'service', and gets me a Camry to drive while they screw with my car. An hour later, I get a call from chirpy Douglas telling me they've charged the battery and everything seems to be fine. When I arrive in person, he can offer no explanation of why the battery would be dead other than the cold.

On reflection, I'm willing to allow that for weeks I haven't driven the car further than to the grocery store and maybe hadn't run it enough to charge the battery fully, and that the cold weather is certainly a contributing factor, but for the thing to be totally dead, I'm still dubious about there not being something else wrong. Chirpy Douglas assures me their diagnostic computers say not. OK, we'll see. I'm certainly willing for everything to be OK now, and I'll make a point of taking it on the road for a charge-up in weeks where it goes no farther than the grocery store.

On the other hand, O'Brien's service department gets an F- for the way they handled this, from my initial call for help to Chirpy Douglas's "I wouldn't be able to tell you that" response to my question about whether Pat Hos and/or Jim Stephens was on the premises.

This is not the way to run a business that depends on customer goodwill--or it certainly wouldn't be if it were my business.

Reaction to the Burris Appointment

Mencken famously noted that "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." As I recall, at the time he was writing about the advertising industry, but current events confirm its general applicability. Or maybe it's not intelligence but ignorance that's the problem.

The ignorance of the American public regarding our history and our government and how it operates has been thoroughly documented, and no better proof can be Found in today's headlines than the reactions to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to fill the senate seat vacated by President-elect Obama.

I'm a huge fan of exploring all of the different shades of gray, but in this case there is no gray there. There is absolutely nothing to discuss, other than that Blago ought to have done the right thing and stepped aside to let Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn make the appointment. Period. The end.

The U.S. constitution requires that when a senate seat becomes vacant between elections, the governor of that state must appoint a replacement*. Until Blagojevich is impeached by the House (accomplished!) and tried and convicted by the Senate, he is the Governor of Illinois. End of discussion.

As for the Senate declining to seat Burris, this question has also been asked and answered by the seminal decision rendered by the Supreme Court in the 1969 case of Powell v. McCormack. Harry Reid should know better!

Blagojevich is an incompetent, immature, unstable, unpopular failure of a governor. His popularity ratings were in the low teens before the federal indictment--the Illinois version of George W. Bush, but without W's "charm." I think it's highly likely that he'll be found guilty of any number of criminal acts when his case finally gets to court (if Federal Prosecutor Fitzgerald's early leaking of the indictment didn't screw the pooch for the prosecution). And, the standards for an impeachment trial being being different from and less stringent than for a criminal trial, there's no question in my mind that he'll be removed from office by the Illinois Senate.

But none of that has happened yet. In the meantime, like it or not, Rod Blagojevich is still the Governor of Illinois and still required to appoint a successor to Senator Obama, and the Senate is still required to seat his appointee.


UPDATE:  As several friends have pointed out, actually the Constitution prescribes a special election to fill Senate vacancies unless the state has passed a law allowing for appointment by the Governor, which Illinois has.  The statement should have read "The U.S. constitution and Illinois law require that . . . ."  Sorry for the sloppy writing.  

Gideon Levy on the Israeli Invasion of Gaza

Haaretz reporter and editorial board member Gideon Levy, a strong critic of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians in general and Gaza in particular had this to say in today's paper:

This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The "inclination of the commander" in the Israel Defense Forces is now "to kill as many as possible," as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling.

The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as "exercising caution": the frightening balance of blood - about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn't raising any questions, as if we've decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement[SIC] of our inherent racism.

Read the whole commentary. I think you'll also find the comments interesting. Also good comments where Levy's piece is cross posted at Common Dreams.
(h/t: MKB)

Bush The Liberator

Olberman has this commentary on the Bush legacy:

My favorite Bush quote from the whole thing:

And for those who claim that we're "teaching to test," Unh hunh. We're teaching a child to read so he or she can pass the test!

And Americans "elected" this moron not once, but twice!

(h/t: Jenifer C.)

Armed Security Guards

There's a disturbing story by Linda Milazzo at AlterNet relating her near-fatal encounter with an armed Brinks guard at her local Albertson's store in California.  She nearly bumped into the guard as she was on her way into the store as he was coming out with his gun in his hand, pointing approximately stomach-height at whatever and whoever happened to be in its line of sight. 

California law allows licensed security guards to carry their weapons unholstered only in high-risk situations, and even then the gun must be pointed at the ground in the absence of immediate armed threat.

The comments section is at least as unsettling as the story itself.  I had no idea there were so many libertarian assholes out there.  Yes, the majority of the commenters were as outraged as the author by the behavior of the guard and the indifference of the Albertson's manager to her complaint.  But there were also plenty like this:

You obviously weren't looking where you were going. Just because you live in some tony suburb of L.A. doesn't mean you're immune to danger, in fact I wonder when the truly poor will start amassing in the neighborhoods of the truly wealthy instead of slaughtering each other.  It's L.A., for crying out loud.

or this gem titled "Come On"

Oh gosh, someone pointed a gun at you! Oh heavens! Not that! You must have PTSD! How awful! Sue them! Sue! Sue! Sue!

I don't patronize businesses that employ armed guards. And I make a point of telling the manager why: Any business that believes that its money is more important than my life is not for me.

I'd never thought about this issue until Menard's (a midwest based version of Lowes or Home Depot) opened its first store in my town.

They had two armed guards in the store and another on the exit gate from their lumber yard. I didn't think a whole lot about it until I purchased some stuff that I had to drive into the lumber yard to load into my back seat.

When I got to the gate to exit, the guard stepped out of his booth, checked my receipt and looked at the merchandise in the back seat. Fine so far. Then, he asked me to open my trunk. I refused, and the SOB put his hand on the butt of his gun! I told him that if he removed the gun from the holster I was going to call 911 (cellphone in hand).

He backed down on the gun, but he refused to open the gate until I opened the trunk, and I refused to open the trunk. We sat there for about 10 minutes with cars and trucks lined up behind me honking their horns.

Eventually a minor manager came out, and I explained Illinois law to him. The gate was opened (but not the trunk) and I drove to the front of the store, parked, and went inside where I explained to the general manager that I would never shop there again and why.

I'd like to say that I've never been back, but it's not true.  Since friends have told me that the armed guards were removed, I've popped in for the occasional sale item or when there was something I couldn't find elsewhere.*  On the other hand, I made my point with the manager, and who knows?  Maybe my bitching about it contributed to Menard's deciding to remove the armed guards from their stupid "home" store.

Since that experience, when I see an armed guard in a store, I find the manager, explain that I don't do business with companies that believe their money is more important than my life, and leave. 

Call me a crank, but the odds on there being random flying bullets in a place where there's already an armed guard is one hell of a lot greater than when there isn't, and it's not a risk I care to take for myself or my family.
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*My little town, Champaign, Illinois, has got to be one of the most frustrating mid-sized towns in the world to buy building supplies.  Our Home Depot is too small to be useful, and our Lowe's is so badly managed that half the time they're not only out of the item I'm looking for, but it can take as long as three or four months for it to come back into stock.  (We also have the world's worst Target store -- for the same reason).