Blogging and the Unabomber

If a blogger blogs in the woods, and no one reads their post(s), does that make them the Unabomber?

Numerous folks have complained about the misleading and genuinely bigoted slant to a number of blogs out there. I have an extended list of folks I don't read (eg: caosblog.com and his/her misleading adverts on the BE banners), unless I am looking for a good laugh and to see what the reichwing is thinking. This leads me to the question posted above.

Anyone have an answer?

How did you Spend Your Childhood?

Found this via Porquoi Pas? Look at all the images and no doubt, tears will fall.

No Matter that it is One Lump or Two if they are Malignant

I was at a gathering of friends last night. Bad news. This is a good news/bad news story where it is challenging to be happy about the good news portion. Friends with a daughter that is a frequent playmate for our older son shared:

Good news - They are pregnant and expecting their second child.

Bad news - Two lumps on a breast were found to be malignant. The extent the Cancer has metastasized is unknown given that they were not able to perform an MRI becuase of the fetus.

Upside: They found it early and the lumps were small.

Downside: Anesthesia could affect both the mother and fetus.

Recommendation: Surgery - lump-ectomy. Follow the lymphnodes to be sure to remove all the cancer. This surgery has a high rate of succes. Happens this friday.

All around, hugs and tears. Just offered to sit their daughter any length of day on Friday should they need the support.

Any other suggestions on how to help when Cancer Hits would be greatly appreciated. This is my first close call with the stuff since my Sister had her thyroid removed about 10 years ago (still cancer free). Although it is not our family that is working through it, these are very close friends and we want to be supportive without being intrusive.

Sorry for the somber post, but thanks in advance for advice.

This a reminder that we are all mortal and politics don't always matter.

On Christian Kindness

Melville points to our thought for the day - on page 51 of my copy of Moby Dick:

"I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy."

Melville was ahead of his time on Same Sex Marriage

Also, from page 51 of my copy of Moby Dick, Melville reveals to us that Marriage is more a state of mind and a powerfully bonded relationship than some supposedly preverted sexual act:

"He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply."

on to page 52:

"How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair."

Academic Freedom and the First Amendment hang in the Balance

You may not like what Ward Churchill said or says, but that doesn't give you the right to oust him from his job.

Slice from the 4 March Chronicle of Higher Education ( page A48):

No less that Newt Gingrich said: We're going to nail this guy and send the dominoes tumbling....Mr. Churchill defiantly said he would fight for his job: "If they try to deep-six my ass, I'm going to butcher them in court."

End slice:

And he should win, that is of course, unless W, Rove and Co. win their push to insert reichwing Activist judges (read: those who were stopped in the last four years) into the courts.

Orphans

Mudered Italian security guards hold no candle to the newly generated orphans, thanks to the trigger happy folks at various US Military check points in Iraq.

What did these kids do to deserve two murdered parents?

Slice:

American and Iraqi officials say they have no figures on such casualties, just as they say they have no reliable statistics on the far higher number of civilian deaths in the fighting that began with the American-led invasion nearly two years ago. But any Westerner working in Iraq comes across numerous accounts of apparently innocent deaths and injuries among drivers and passengers who drew American fire, often in circumstances that have left the Iraqis puzzled as to what, if anything, they did wrong.

Let's replace W's penis with a uterus

Found a nice op-ed commentary today in anticipation of tommorow's International Women's day.

It long over due for legal and policy (federal, state or local) decisions made that only affect the female sex to be proposed and decided upon by women only. Given that women are the only ones who can know what it means to opperate and survive in the real world with female genetalia, it is time for men to step down and stop making wholesale decisions about what should be against the law for women.

Slice:

Tuesday is International Women's Day, a worldwide celebration of women's fight for equality and human rights. In light of this commemoration, it is especially disappointing that the Bush administration is working so hard to restrict women's rights.

Ten years ago, a landmark U.N. conference in Beijing adopted a platform seeking to establish global equality for women. Along with recommendations on issues such as domestic violence and education, the platform states women should be able to "decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality ... free of coercion, discrimination and violence." It also asserts that abortion should be safe in places where it is legal and criminal charges should not be filed against women who undergo illegal abortion...

...Only 8 percent of women in Ethiopia have access to contraception, according to Population Action International. They have little or no control over when or whether they will have sex and repeatedly face unplanned pregnancies. They bear, on average, seven children. The maternal mortality rate is among the worst in the world. Rates of sexually transmitted infections are extremely high. The World Bank reports that more than 2 million Ethiopian women have HIV/AIDS.

Those rates are worsening because of the Bush administration's position on women. In 2001, President Bush reinstated the global gag rule restricting funding for family planning. Under the gag rule, family planning agencies that receive U.S. money may not offer abortion counsel or refer women to abortion providers, or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country, even if they use separate funds not provided by the United States. Providers are forced to make a cruel choice: Give up vital assistance and try to afford to continue to counsel women on all pregnancy options, or withhold critically important information.

The gag rule restricts the simplest ways to improve the status of women: funding birth-control supplies so they can avoid unintended pregnancies and care for children they already have. In Ethiopia, abortion is illegal. Because most nongovernmental organizations that provide family planning have refused to abide by the gag rule, the resulting lack of U.S. funds has restricted the contraceptive supply, which means that abortion is also very common. Women take their lives into their own hands when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. If they cannot adequately care for another child, they try to end pregnancies with herbs, poisons or wire. Complications from unsafe abortions are the second leading cause of death for women, after tuberculosis, in Ethiopia.

As long as the Bush administration restricts women's rights by blocking access to contraception with the gag rule, unintended pregnancies will occur. So will abortion. The Bush administration's global gag rule and political posturing last week only exacerbate the situation. Women in all countries should have the right to make responsible decisions without coercion, discrimination or violence. They should have access to comprehensive information and health care. They should be able to own property, pursue an education, decide who and when to marry, and whether and when to have children...

...Rather than taking into account the harsh realities of women's lives and working to provide real solutions for women and girls, the Bush administration is playing politics with women's lives.

Bloody Oil Wars

Obviously, no post on Saturday. Hope you didn't miss me. Had a friend in, visiting from Boston, so we were doing the usual tourist junket.

Found this when we were gassing up her rental - the irony of the action hit me, so I took the snap.

While I don't condone vandalism, I thought the blogsphere might enjoy this style of freewayblog.

Is Separation of Church and State a Myth?

I've been wrestling with this one for a while. The reichwingers seem to think that the ideal, set down concretely by our founding fathers, of the separation of Church and State is unattainable, at best, and undesirable, at the very least.

I submit to the flaws of men, and realize many have failed at the goal. This is not to say that our leaders, past and present have been or need be agnostic. Even so, perhaps our forefathers were smarter than we give them credit for as they were much closer to governments operated when states and church entities were so entwined, they were one and the same.

Certainly, in the days when thinking over preaching prevailed, the drafters of our great Constitution were smarter, and prescient.

We may have failed. And in the W. Rove and Co administration, where Attorneys General drape statues for their offenses, we most certainly have a quasi-theocracy. But does this mean we should not strive to avert the disastrous shortcomings of the fornicating Church & State governments?

Hence my questions for the weekend. Is the separation of Church and State a myth? If so, which God should be installed in the Whitehouse; Allah, Buddha, or yours?

Sentimental Nihilism at its Finest

With all the brouhaha over Jeff Gannon/Guckert, or whatever his name really is, I had to pull out one of my favorite passages from Conel West's book Democracy Matters:

On page 36:

The political nihilism in America today is not limited to the arena of party politics; it has infiltrated our media culture as well in the form of sentimental nihilism. While an essential mission of the news organizations in a democracy should be to expose the lies and manipulations of our political and economic leaders - and surely many meadia watchdogs devote themselves to that task - too much of what passes for news today is really a form of entertainment. So many shows follow a crude formula for providing titilating coverage that masks itself as news. Those who are purveyors of the bastardized form of reporting are sentimental nihilists, willing to sidestep or even bludgeon the truth or unpleasant and unpopular facts and stories, in order to provide an emotionally satisfying show. This is dominence of sentiment over truth telling in order to build up market share. Our market-driven media have become much too constrained in the coverage of unpleasant truths, much too preoccupied with the concerns and views of middle-class and upper-class white people, and much too beholden to the political persusasions of the media moguls.

Hence we have witnessed the breakdown in media ethics - going after "good" stories even if the truth has to be stretched or outright fabrications are condoned. The overwhelming dominance of market-driven pressures has also lead to the blatant partisan punditry. And even the supposed do-gooders in the media often limit the depth of their analysis and the range of their truth telling so as not to offend advertisers and mainstream opinion...

...but our mass media are dominated by the ambulance chasers and the blatantly partisan hacks, mostly on the right. Many newspeople are deep believers in the principle of the free press and the special role it's meant to play in our democracy, and yet that belief all too often amounts to sentiment becuase they fail to act more consistently on that principle.

Stopping the miss use of the Suffix -Gate

Is it just me, or are we done with the use of the word -gate as a suffix?

Watergate is a hotel and apartment complex in DC. The embroglio involved Nixon and other corrupt politicians in 1972. This was a long time ago. There is no need to slap the term -gate at the end of some word to indicate the emergence of some kind of scandal.

Perhaps we should tax every person who coins or uses the term instead of calling a scandal just what it is. Put the money toward paying down the national debt that W. Rove and Co have gotten us into.

There are many offenses, including this one in San Francisco.

Please, let's just stop it.

Don't Misunderestimate W

Found an interesting quote that is pertinent to our times, even though it was written by Melville in the late 1800s. This from page 29 of my copy of Moby Dick:

So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

W Should be Quacking Like a Duck

Can anyone say Lame Duck yet?

This just in from today's NYTimes pollsters:

Americans say President Bush does not share the priorities of most of the country on either domestic or foreign issues...

...Four months after Mr. Bush won a solid re-election over Senator John Kerry, 63 percent of respondents say the president has different priorities on domestic issues than most Americans. Asked to choose among five domestic issues facing the country, respondents rated Social Security third, behind jobs and health care. And nearly 50 percent said Democrats were more likely to make the right decisions about Social Security, compared with 31 percent who said the same thing about Republicans.

"There are so many other things that seem to me to be more critical and immediate: I think the national debt is absolutely an immediate thing to address," said Irv Packer, 66, a Missouri Republican. He added, "Another one that I'd really like to see people working on is the environment."

End slice:

Even some of my republican friends have turned off Bush and have reverted to watching American Idol instead of the news.

What was that Timothy Leary said: "Tune in, Turn on, and Drop out?" Perhaps the message to our wayfaring president should be: "Clue in, Clue on, or Get Out!"

Is Bush Insane? It Can Get Worse

Just checked out the smirking chimp and a post from yesterday - on a tip from a friend.

If you haven't seen any writing by Ray McGovern (ex CIA), you may want to keep an eye out for his work.

Slice:

The notion that the Bush administration would mount a pre-emptive air attack on Iran seems insane. But is proof of insanity needed?

By Ray McGovern, AlterNet

"'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.'

(Short pause)

"'And having said that, all options are on the table.'

"Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: '(Laughter).'"

-- The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin on George Bush's Feb. 22 press conference

For a host of good reasons the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran's ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters the notion that the Bush administration would mount a "pre-emptive" air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective includes overthrowing Iran's government again, as in 1953 this time under the rubric of "regime change."

But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men, yes, only men who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the crazies." I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.

According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, former Secretary of State Colin Powell added an old soldier's adjective to the "crazies" sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in the early 80s, was overheard calling them "the f -ing crazies" during a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination to attack with or without UN approval. Small wonder that they got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for him.

If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the unnecessary carnage in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful foreign policy blunder in our nation's history ... so far.

It Can Get Worse

"The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate folly obscure their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like a fox," with a value system in which "might makes right." Operating out of that value system, and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker "neoconservative," they are convinced that they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a geopolitical strategy, which leap from papers they put out at the Project for the New American Century over recent years.

The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs with the added bonus of possibly causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.

... An earlier American warned:

"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. ... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country." (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this administration's lash-up with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or distorted in our domesticated media.

End slice:

The whole article is worth a read, but you get the idea. These are smart, intelligence professionals, who think our leadership has gone off the deep end. Don't you trust these people more than swift boat veterans for "truth?"

One Iraqi Viewpoint

I found this on a link from Moxie Grrrl's blogroll. If you haven't seen Porquoi Pas? you should check it out.

I am pasting the last lines from the post there of a letter from a US Educated, Iraqi citizen. The whole letter is very powerful. But the last paragraph should make some weep:

We do not hate America for its "freedom or democracy." We don't hate America. We hate the crimes, the destruction, and the devastation committed by America against the innocent people in our country.

End slice:

On whom should the shame and blame be placed?

Greenspan's got Chutzpah - Sub title: What's the difference between "Tax and Spend" and the Current practice of Spend and Spend?

At least someone is saying that the emperor has no clothes:

Slice one:

"We owe future retirees as much time as possible to adjust their plans for work, saving and retirement spending," Greenspan said, suggesting an urgency that dovetails with Bush's call for action this year on Social Security before its financial situation worsens.

Still, there were fresh indications of the difficulty confronting Bush as he tries to build support in the Republican-controlled Congress for remaking the Depression-era program — including a nationwide poll that shows support for his plans dropping as they become better known.

Slice Two:

"You cannot continuously introduce legislation which tends to expand budget deficits because down the road the impact of an ever-rising deficit, especially as a percent of the GDP, creates some significant weakness in the structure of the economy," Greenspan told the House of Representatives Budget Committee. "

Addressing the government's own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes. However, tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base," he said.

End slices:

Well, there has to be a big difference between what conservatives call the Tax and Spend Mode of Democratic leadership and the current death spiral we are in at the behest of W, Rove and Co. For all intents and purposes, it looks a lot like: "Hey, let's spend and spend, and screw our children" modus operandi for the current administration.

An 80 Billion here, an 80 billion there...

...Meanwhile in Iraq, the death toll for our GIs breaches 1500. That's a very large number of some very sad families.

Gay Marriage Versus Sirial Polygamy.

Looks like another celebrity marriage is going into the great heterosexual hitch and unhitch dung heap.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again: I stand before you to testify that there are large numbers of gay/same sex couples that have been together in a monogamous, mutually loving, committed and caring relationship longer than many heterosexuals. These people are much better role models than Charlie Sheen and whichever starlet he necks next. Why must homosexual couples suffer the indignity of not being official recognized because some bigots still follow biased segments of the bible?

Again, let's not ban same sex marriage. Let's ban celebrity marriage, smokers and obese people from marring each other. It would serve their offspring better.

Couldn't the Republicans find a better way to spend 100 Million Dollars?

With all the shit goin' down, why are W, Rove and Co. having their friends spend 100 million dollars on pushing their Social Security reform ideas down our throats?

I am wondering, how much, if any of that 100 Mil will be derived from US Tax Payer Dollars?

I don't have any flashMedia expertise, but I am sure we will find a grass roots way to knock down this Goliath.

From Move on:

The Republicans are running a $100 million public relations blitz to convince Americans to privatize Social Security. Paying for private accounts would require benefit cuts for future retirees—with younger workers hit the hardest—while gutting a sound program and burdening the next generation with trillions in debt. All this to line the pockets of the Republicans' friends on Wall Street, who stand to make millions off the deal.

Well, we don’t need $100 million dollars because we have the creativity, intelligence, and talent of the American people, who know how to spot a scam and, better yet, know how to expose one in Flash! Hence our latest contest: Bush in 30 Years—A Flash Contest to Stop the Republican Social Security Scam.

End Slice:

Anyone with such skills should have a go. Could be fun. ...now I have this Buffalo Springfield tune running through my brain..."Stop, hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's goin' down..."

It's getting Drafty!

As Jim Hightower points out, the trouble with lying is that once you start, you can never stop.

Rolling Stone has caught W, Rove and Co with their lying pants on fire one more time.

Slice from today's Hightower commentary:

In last year's presidential run, young voters were wary that Bush & Co. was quietly preparing for a military draft. The concern was spreading so quickly that George himself was rushed out to denounce what he called "rumors on the Internets," and he flatly declared: "We're not going to have a draft – period." Donnie Rumsfeld went even farther, offering this absolute statement: "The idea of reinstating the draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered, or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration."

The problem for political liars is that they don't know when to stop. They keep piling it on until the lie becomes too extreme and too big to be true. Rumsfeld's denial, for example, was incredible when he issued it, and now we learn that it was patently untrue – ie, a bald-faced lie issued for political purposes.

Rolling Stone magazine recently unearthed an internal selective service memo that reveals the lie. It details a meeting with two of Rummie's top aides early in 2003, specifically to debate, discuss, ponder, and otherwise consider reinstating the draft. Indeed, the head of the selective service later testified before congress that, following "consultations with senior Defense manpower officials," the agency began preparing a plan to draft Americans who have special skills that the military needs, such as nurses and doctors....

End Slice:

Are the reichwing youth, of a draftable age, now shaking in their boots? Will Jenna and Barbara Bush be required to register with selective service when it happens? If they do, will they get a nice plum assignment like their daddy before them?

I went to the Rolling Stone location to try and find the memo that Hightower speaks of, and found a nice set of memos that point out some of the torture hypocrisy Rummy has shoveled us. And the reichwingers continue to eat up the fabricated truth, for whatever reason I cannot comprehend... Are they not paying attention?