CPAC explores new and provocitive ideas to bring the Republican party back to prominence.

Conservative Political Action Conference is the annual gathering of the conservative faithful. Leading conservative politicians, media personalities and really, really angry white people get together and discuss cutting edge issues that matter dearly to the conservative cause. This year it was in Washington D.C. One of the speakers was Mike Huckabee, who had this to say (via Washington Monthy):

"The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead," said Huckabee, "but a Union of American Socialist Republics is being born." Democrats, according to Huckabee, were packing 40 years of pet projects like "health care rationing" into spending bills. "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff."

I might point out that any comparison of the United States to the Soviet Union because of “pet projects” might have a bit more credibility if it weren’t for the fact that the Republicans held the purse strings for many years while the deficit ballooned, that no prominent Republican objected to budgetary items that benefitted their constitutients, and that no one, anywhere, is talking about health care rationing. And that if a prominent Democrat that ran for president said this about a Republican administration, where would have been much wailing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. But as Boone famously noted, “Forget it, he’s rolling.”

Here are some of the other items on the agenda.

Al Franken and ACORN: How Liberals are Destroying the American Election System

Because a poorly run voter registration outfit and an ex-comedian who wrote a book called “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” that actually won an election by a very narrow margin are, without a doubt, destroying the American election system. (Of course, if I were a conservative, I would be VERY careful about saying anything about voting irregularities and stolen elections. Because, if they do, then what might pop into people’s minds might be Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, the New Hampshire phone bank jamming scandal in which at least one person was convicted and went to jail, Diebold voting machines manufactured by a company whose president was quoted as saying that he would do anything to get Republicans elected, etc., etc.)

Building the Conservative Hispanic Coalition

Because this is something that Republicans certainly need to work on. One problem, however, is to figure out how to be virulently anti-immigration and vilify anyone with brown skin while building that very important Hispanic coalition.

The Key to Victory? Listen to Conservatives

Because Conservatives have really had their collective finger on the pulse of this nation in the last two elections.

New Challenges in the Culture War

Because no one paid much attention to the old challenges, such as the War On Christmas, Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist, George Soros is controlling the entire country with his shadow government, etc.

Sarah Palin Unplugged on the Media Video Interview

Because we all need a little more hilarity in our lives. Imagine, Sarah Palin unplugged!

Republicans hold a press conference regarding their plan to address the economic crisis.

"If we sit here long enough, things will eventually get better. Any questions?"

I love Michele Bachmann. She’s so cute when she’s insane.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand how some people get elected to public office. Michele Bachmann (R – congresscritter, MN) is a case in point. She’s the person, if you remember from before The Day The World Changed (i.e., 2008 election), who got herself noticed by calling on… someone to investigate her fellow congresspersons because they might harbor anti-American feelings. McCarthy, anyone?

Well, she recently went off on a tirade against the economic stimulus package that President Obama, most Democrats and a couple of less insane Republicans put together. Here is a bit of a summary of her statements, via HuffPo.

* ACORN is "under federal indictment for voter fraud," but the stimulus bill nevertheless gives ACORN "$5 billion." (In reality, ACORN is not under federal indictment and isn't mentioned in the stimulus bill at all.)

* many members of Congress have "a real aversion to capitalism."

* the stimulus bill includes a measure to create a "rationing board" for health care, and after the bill becomes law, "your doctor will no longer be able to make your healthcare decisions with you."

* the recovery package is part of a Democratic conspiracy to "direct" funding away from Republican districts, so Democratic districts can "suck up" all federal funds. Bachmann doesn't think this will work because, as she put it, "We're running out of rich people in this country."

* the "Community-Organizer-in-Chief" is also orchestrating a conspiracy involving the Census Bureau, which the president will use to redraw congressional lines to keep Democrats in power for up to "40 years." When the host said he was confused, noting that congressional district lines are drawn at the state level, Bachmann said Obama's non-existent plan is an "anti-constitutional move."

I can’t even begin to comment on this. “Making shit up” is now the normal operating mode of many Republicans.

Republican opposition to the economic stimulus plan mounts.

Happy President’s Day!

Go buy a mattress. I am sure that Abraham Lincoln would want you to.

Every once in a while, this blog gets a hit because of a rather disturbing search.

Here’s one example.

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=this%20country%20should%20exacute%20liberals&btnG=Google%20Search

In case you can’t find the search words in that, they are “this country should exacute liberals.” “Exacute…” That’s nice. A hateful SOB that can’t spell. I found it a little reassuring that of all the finds that this search came up with, it appeared to me that the vast majority were pointing out such lunacy, not promoting it.

I understand that there are really “Two Americas” out there, Rachel Maddow’s beliefs notwithstanding. There are a huge amount of people out there who really do think President Obama is the Anti-Christ, or that liberals really want to destroy the country. They actually believe that. But it is really sobering when you come across people who advocate violence. I had an earlier post about the hate mail that Jessica Lynch got because she started telling the truth about what happened to her.

I understand that the two sides are pretty much locked down in their positions, so that neither side is going to listen to the other or admit that they might have a valid point now and then. So, it’s rather difficult to argue that “my side” is correct and righteous and the “other side” is full of crap, because there is someone on the other side who is arguing exactly the same thing. Therefore, the argument should become (but usually doesn’t) one about demonstratable truths. Which side really was correct about thus and such (for instance, the presence of WMD’s in Iraq)? But in today’s society, facts do not seem to matter as much as loudly articulated opinion. Facts do not hold much sway anymore, and for that I hold the Bush adminstration responsible. Conservative talk radio certainly started this, but the Bush administration codified it. That is the way the conservatives of this country operate now. All basis for having a rational, reasoned discussion is now gone. I think that is probably one of the worst things that the Bush adminstration did to this country. But my point here is this. What else can we look at to see the difference in the two sides?

Here’s one. It takes no great effort for anyone who can use Google to find all sorts of threats, veiled and otherwise, made by conservatives. Against Obama, against liberals, against anyone who disagrees with the conversative world view. It is much more difficult to find that amount of venom and hatred in the form of actual threats coming from liberals. Our extreme radicals might go out and do stupid stuff like spike trees to keep loggers from cutting them down, burn down huge McMansions under construction to protest our society’s use of resources, let loose a bunch of minks from a mink farm to protest animal cruelty, etc. I cannot remember anything (the 60’s Weathermen aside) that comes close to threats of physical intimidation and violence that we see coming from the extreme right these days. And we have loons like Michelle Malking egging them on, and then have the gall to say that they aren’t responsible. No, it’s perfectly reasonable to publish the name, address and phone number of someone you disagree with. What do you expect is going to happen, Michelle? No, of course you didn't mean that your listeners should call up that phone number and threaten the person who answers. How could that every enter our minds?

I really do not see the two sides of this country coming together any time soon. The right has just become too ensconsed in their belief that everything that Democrats and liberals do is evil, and must be opposed with all their might. For our side, we have gotten pretty damn tired of being threatened and insulted with everything that conservatives can throw at us, such as “traitors”, “Saddam lover”, “terrorist sympathizer”, etc. Liberals and Democrats are now finally fighting back, after getting pummeled since the Nixon administration, and the conservatives and Republicans don’t like it.

I do believe one thing that the wingnut right keeps pointing out. Their side has the guns. If our society starts breaking down and everyone reverts to the days of the wild west where the gun ruled everything, I know which side is going to lose. And that does not make me feel very secure.

UPDATE: Here's more rightwing lunacy (courtesy of Sadly, No!) This guy takes it several steps further when he muses on what should happen next after all the liberals in this country are killed. And he is apparently quite serious about it, too. And here I thought openly advocating murder was against the law. The mindset of these people is absolutely amazing. This guy apparently wants to murder the 52% of the people in this country that voted for Obama, I guess, because he's upset that "liberals are destroying this country." Godzilla-sized irony, that.

Republicans are patting themselves on the back for not voting for the stimulus bill.

The modern Republican party is truly beyond me. I cannot truly believe that so many people elected to public office can be so small minded and self centered. Yes, sure, I know there are going to be many, many areas where Republicans and Democrats disagree with each other. But there really has to be a time when they stop playing games and work to find common areas where both parties can come together and help this county. And this would seem to be one of those times. See this post on the finanacial crisis.

But no. Republicans are bound and deteremined to be “the opposition party” both in name and spirit. Anything the Democrats want to do is either bad, so they must oppose it, or else it might actually be good and if it works, that would be good for the Democrats, and they must oppose it as well. They have pretty much admitted that is their mindset these days. The last two elections have taught them absolutely nothing.

I must give President Obama a lot of credit for trying to get bipartisan support for this stimulus bill. There are many good reasons what that, in principle, would be a good thing to do. But the Republicans, after they initially made some hopeful signals, reverted to their true form. Zero votes from the House Republicans, three votes from Senate Republicans. And they are congratulating themselves on this! Michael Steele, the new leader of the Republican party, said “The big fat goose egg you laid on the president’s desk was just beautiful!” They are congratulating themselves for this, and are going around making statements like, “I hope the White House learned their lesson!”

You know what? I think that the White House may have indeed learned their lesson. However, it’s not the one that the Republicans may have desired. I found this quote from a post at Washington Monthly.

Advisers concluded that they allowed the measure of bipartisanship to be defined as winning Republican votes rather than bringing civility to the debate, distracting attention from what have otherwise been major legislative victories. Although Mr. Obama vowed to keep reaching out to Republicans, advisers now believe the environment will probably not change in coming months.

Rather than forging broad consensus with Republicans, the Obama advisers said they would have to narrow their ambitions and look for discrete areas where they might build temporary coalitions based on regional interests rather than party, as on energy legislation. They said they would also turn to Republican governors for support -- a tactic that showed promise during the debate over the economic package -- even if they found few Republican allies in Washington.

So, what it looks like to me has happened is that the Republicans shot themselves in the foot on this one. And it took them all of three weeks as the minority party! They are proud of trying to scuttle a measure that around 65 percent of the country wants! They have cut themselves out of future deliberations on controversial issues. The working assumption by President Obama might now be that Republicans are going to obstruct anything that he wants to accomplish, so might as well go around them. Truthfully, this is the advice that many progessive bloggers and columnists have been giving Obama since Day One. But it looks like he may have learned his lesson the hard way.

The Republicans may have also learned a hard lesson. However, I am thinking that the current crop of Republicans, except for a tiny minority, has such rock hard heads that absolutely nothing is going to soak in. Such will be the next four years, and most likely, eight. They appear, to me, to be working tirelessly to make themselves irrelevant. But, as long as they can feel all righteous and indignant while doing so, I guess that's all they want.

Question concerning Republican fixation with tax cuts.

Which do Republicans REALLY believe?

a) Tax cuts really are the cure to everything.

b) Tax cuts are a the best method available to throttle the government, so that Grover Norquist really can go "drown it in the bathtub."

c) Democrats are opposing further tax cuts, so it is my solemn duty to support anything that Democrats are against.

d) Tax cuts are beneficial to me because I, personally, don't want to pay any taxes.

e) All of the above.

Here’s a picture of Barbara Eden as Jeannie.

There’s not really any point here. I have had this photo in my memory stick for a while now, hoping to find a good place to use it. I never did, and with the (happy) demise of the Bush adminstration, opportunities to use fun photos like this in a topical way are getting to be few and far between. So, I’ll just leave it like this. Even as an 11 year old, I always thought Jeannie looked pretty cool, especially given that on a black and white television, you can’t really tell what part of her costume is fabric and what part isn’t.

According to someone who looks like he should know, we were about four hours away from losing our entire economic system here in the U.S.

I really hate the phrase “the end of **** as we know it”, and the person speaking is being perfectly honest. That phrase is fine when I hear it in a 1950’s era sci-fi film, like Them! For things in the here-and-now reality, no, I don’t like to hear that. It really gave me the heebie-jeebies, whatever those are, when I first heard a clip of this on Countdown. Here is a text version that I came across below was in a much bigger column in Sadly, No! (You should go read this post at SN. It’s hysterical and deeply, deeply depressing at the same time.)

Via C-Span, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), chairman of the House Capital Markets Subcommittee:

“I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on… Here’s the facts. We don’t even talk about these things.

“On Thursday [September 18], at about 11 o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic and there. And that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.”

“It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it.”

O.K., I would normally dismiss people who go around saying things like, “It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it”, as someone just going all over-the-top and hyperbolic in order to inflame whoever it is he is trying to inflame. Rush Limbaugh comes to mind. Or maybe he might be just an insane gasbag, such as James Inhofe (R-OK). In this case, however, I am pretty much inclined to believe what this guy is saying.

If this statement above is anywhere near the truth, then I have a severe case of sweaty palms. We are actually talking about how close we came to “the end of our political system as we know it.” That is a very scary thing to contemplate. Oh sure, there are quite a few Republicans that we could certainly do without, and I am certainly weary of the constant political games being played as if politics were some sort of game of Cricket in coats and ties. But about the only thing that could end our political system at this time is complete anarchy, which a complete collapse of our financial system could certainly precipitate. Anarchy is not a pretty thing to contemplate.

Painting of French Revolution from here.

Let's get back to government oversight where oversight is necessary to protect the American public, shall we?

This business about salmonella laced peanut products is old news by now. But the relevations about how this company in Georgia operated, with absolutely no regard for public safety, is intolerable.

Via Americablog:

A Georgia peanut plant knowingly shipped salmonella-laced products as far back as 2007, at times sending out tainted products after tests confirmed contamination, according to inspection records released Friday.

Food and Drug Administration officials earlier had said Peanut Corp. of America waited for a second test to clear peanut butter and peanuts that initially were positive for salmonella. But the agency amended its report Friday, noting that the Blakely, Ga., plant actually shipped some products before receiving the second test and sold others after confirming salmonella.

Federal law forbids producing or shipping foods under conditions that could make it harmful to consumers' health.

In 2007 the company shipped chopped peanuts on July 18 and 24 after salmonella was confirmed by private lab tests. Peanut Corp. sold products "on or after the positive salmonella results were obtained," the FDA report states.

In other cases, the company didn't wait for a second round of salmonella tests.

"In some instances, peanut products were shipped by (the company) prior to having assurance that the products were negative for salmonella," said Michael Rogers, head of field investigations for the FDA.

Jesus H. Christ. How could ANYONE actually operate a business like this, sending out product they know is tainted with something that could actually kill someone, or at least make someone very sick? And Conservatives of this country don't understand why Liberals and Progressives don't trust putting oversight of an industry, any industry, into the hands of the very people who are being regulated.

Amazing presidential press conference from President Obama

That was SO refreshing to be talked to as an adult, by an adult, with carefully formulated answers that actually supply information. This is in contrast to President Bush's approach, which was to bully, to confuse, to dismiss, to talk down to. I do not agree with everything that President Obama said. I am VERY upset that he has apparently decided that he isn't really going to look into the abuses of Bush administration officials about anything that went on that may have been illegal or unethical. But what a difference! I hope that the American people sat up and took notice that we actually have an adult in the White House that can articulate his vision of what he wants to accomplish in a way that most people can relate to.

And he can correctly pronounce the word "nuclear!" Amazing!!

A half million-dollar salary? Draconian?

This is how out of touch with “normal America” that some people on Wall Street are. All these poor people, whining about President Obama’s decree that executive pay be capped at $500,000 if their firms are getting federal assistance during these very rough times. For instance (via Salon.com), there is this guy:

"That is pretty draconian -- $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus," said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. "And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend."

You know, I can maybe see (but only just barely) someone’s point that, after making 30 mil a year, half a million dollars a year and no other perks might be somewhat difficult to take. I mean, there is that vacation house in the Hamptons to pay for, the yacht, the hired help to pay… Just like a law of garages (“You will accumulate just enough stuff to completely fill your garage”), so it goes, I guess, for the salary you get. You will find a way to dispose of that salary, even if it is more than the total sum of the average salary of 500 “regular people.” But to call this cap, “draconian” and “not a lot of money”, well… “Delusional” hardly does this justice. They need to take a look around outside their little bubble where they apparently only associated with other very rich assholes. All I can say is that I wish we could sentence people like this to work as a elementary teacher whose salary might reach 30K if they have been at it a few years. Let’s see how they manage then.

On second thought, we don’t want these kinds of scumbags anywhere near kids in their formative years. Maybe they should work as garbage collectors instead.

Sweet Jesus, I am tired of hearing about stories like this. I think we know why this country is in as much trouble as it is. Republicans helped remove any and all oversight on financial institutions, and these guys kept taking and taking and taking.

Meanwhile, we just learn that this country lost almost 600,000 jobs in January alone.

David Brooks of the NYT again earns his moniker of “Bobo” by defending multi-million dollar bonuses.

At least, I think that What Brooks is doing. This column is really confusing, so I am not certain what point he is really trying to make. Maybe you can figure it out.

The essence of the problem is this: Rich people used to set their own norms. For example, if one rich person wanted to use the company helicopter to aerate the ponds on his properties, and the other rich people on his board of directors thought this a sensible thing to do, then he could go ahead and do it without any serious repercussions.

But now, after the TARP, the auto bailout, the stimulus package, the Fed rescue packages and various other federal interventions, rich people no longer get to set their own rules. Now lifestyle standards for the privileged class are set by people who live in Ward Three.

For those who don’t know, Ward Three is a section of Northwest Washington, D.C., where many Democratic staffers, regulators, journalists, lawyers, Obama aides and senior civil servants live. Thanks to recent and coming bailouts and interventions, the people in Ward Three run the banks and many major industries. Through this power, they get to insert themselves into the intricacies of upscale life, influencing when private jets can be flown, when friends can lend each other their limousines and at what golf resorts corporate learning retreats can be held.

The good news for rich people is that people in this neighborhood are very nice and cerebral. On any given Saturday, half the people in Ward Three are arranging panel discussions for the other half to participate in. They live in modest homes with recently renovated kitchens and Nordic Track machines crammed into the kids’ play areas downstairs (for some reason, people in Ward Three are only interested in toning the muscles in the lower halves of their bodies).

Nonetheless, many people in Ward Three do have certain resentments toward those with means, which those of you in the decamillionaire-to-billionaire wealth brackets should be aware of.

In the first place, many people in Ward Three suffer from Sublimated Liquidity Rage. As lawyers, TV producers and senior civil servants, they make decent salaries, but 60 percent of their disposable income goes to private school tuition and study abroad trips. They have little left over to spend on themselves, which generates deep and unacknowledged self-pity.

Second, they suffer from what has been called Status-Income Disequilibrium. At work they are flattered and feared. But they still have to go home and clean out the gutters because they can’t afford full-time household help.

Third, they suffer the status rivalries endemic to the upper-middle class. As law school grads, they resent B-school grads. As Washingtonians, they resent New Yorkers. As policy wonks, they resent people with good bone structure.

In short, people in Ward Three disdain three things: cleavage, hunting and dumb people who are richer than they are. Rich people have to learn to adapt to the new power structure if they hope to survive.

Yeah… So, like I said, I think that Brooks is on some sort of “stream of consciousness” rant (Cleavage? Aerating one’s pond with a private helicopter?) about how some people that live in a place called “Ward Three” don’t really appreciate how fat cats on Wall Street and other the financial institutions of this country get multi-million dollar bonuses for running their companies into the ground by utilizing really stupid business practices and then coming to the government to get huge taxpayer funded bailouts, and those same fat cats continue to do stupid stuff like set up million dollar ad campaigns at the Super Bowl, buy million dollar corporate jets, or making renovations to their private corporation biffys to the tune of several tens of thousands of dollars? David, is that really who you are defending here? Or attacking, I mean? Or are you using some sort of “reverse snark” logic that I cannot comprehend?

Dat David, he suh hates them Ward Three people who resents them some rich, smart people that makes mo’ money that they do! Dat’s for suh! (That’s not intended to be racist. It is some stupid thing that just came to mind when Brooks was talking about the lack of hired help that these “Ward Three” people suffer from. It’s implied reverse racism of the people who object… Oh, never mind. It wasn’t that funny anyway.)

Jeez, Bobo. This is just about as weird of a column that I have ever read. Maybe he’s on some prescription that makes him go all wacky every once in a while. I get that way sometimes when I take a decongestant. My head starts feeling really light and I have really funny and interesting thoughts and I know, with some amount of certainty, that I should not drive heavy machinery or write a column for national publication. Sometimes, I really like what he says in his column. Other times, he sounds like your basic Grade A wingnut. Cause, the only thing I get out of this column is that Brooks is dissing the people who object to giving multi-millionaires more millions when the companies they run into the ground give them bonuses.

Can anyone else come up with a different interpretation of this?

Here’s a MUCH better column on the subject, from Mr. Eugene Robinson.

Blogroll Amnesty Day!

As Jon Swift explains here, February 3rd is Blogroll Amnesty Day, or B.A.D. Kinda catchy, eh? Anyway, just go to the link for the full explanation. But in short, it is a now-yearly event in which mid-sized blogs (like Jon) go out of their way to bring some attention to some of the smaller blogs out there which many people don’t even know exists (like this one). It’s quite a worthwhile affair. There is some very interesting stuff out there on the web, if one has the time and inclination to go looking for it.

Here are some interesting blogs that I have recently added to my list, or have been on there for a while that would not necessarily qualify as well traveled blogs. Go check them out!

Under the Lobsterscope

Donkey Punch

The Hunting of the Snark

Kung Fu Monkey

The Denialism blog

Canadian Common Sense

O.K, this one isn't really a blog, as such, but I find it pretty hilarious. Go check out The Sasquatch Militia. I was very sorry to see that The Canoe Society of Jupiter has been shut down. That one was pretty funny, too.

Yes, we can see what Republicans think about bipartisanship.

President Obama really wants to pass an economic stimulus bill and can do so just with the simple majority of Democrats in both houses. However, he would like some Republican votes while doing it. So, he talks with Republican members, waters down the bill, takes out many things that Democrats would like to see included (such as spending on the infrastructure), puts in more tax cuts (which seems to have been shown during the Bush years to not really help the economy or anyone not directly getting said tax cuts), and he STILL doesn’t get any Republican support. The bill passed the House easily but got ZERO Republican votes. Jesus.

These Republicans seem willing to marginalize themselves. Democrats don’t have to do it; Republicans will do it for them. They have absolutely no idea how to NOT play politics on any subject that comes up. That’s all they know how to do. John McCain was really criticizing a part of the original bill about making high-speed wireless internet access more available. Yet, what did Presidential Candidate John McCain support during his campaign? Investing in high-speed wireless internet access! Games! That’s all they are doing! Fiddling while Rome burns!

I guess I should not have expected the Republicans to have learned anything from being trounced in the last two elections. But I certainly hope that President Obama has learned something. You aren’t going to get help from the Republicans, so you might not as well even try.

I see Rush Limbaugh is STILL a big fat idiot.

Rush Limbaugh would rather have President Obama fail than have something good happen to the country, all in the name of ideology. That’s the only thing that matters to him, whether “his side” wins or loses. From HuffPo.

Saying he was "suspicious" of Obama, Limbaugh said the facial expressions of Obama supporters were "frightening" and slammed Republicans who've expressed hope that Obama succeeds:

"They're drinking the Kool-Aid... they're afraid of being called racists."

Limbaugh claims that Obama's race doesn't matter to him now that he's president, oddly comparing Obama's being black to being a Martian:

"He's not black. He's not from Mars."

Several things about Rush’s statements, besides the really, really strange Martian analogy… So, when have the Republicans ever been afraid of being called anything by Democrats? They have acted without a conscience for the better part of 8 years, they are going to be worried about being called names now? If Republicans were really worried about being called racists, then they probably should have done a better job after Hurricane Katrina. But the bigger issue here is that there are a huge amount of people out there in this country that are suffering real hardships. People are losing the jobs by the tens of thousands. Housing foreclosures are up all over the country. Food banks are seeing longer and longer lines while receiving less and less in the way of contributions. Families are still having their sons, daughters, husbands and wives come home from Iraq with traumatic injuries, if they are coming home alive at all, for absolutely no reason as far as I can see. And Rush wants Obama to fail for the next four years, so the Republicans can “win” future elections and (I suppose) do what they have been doing for the last eight years, which is to be total screwups all in the name of ideology.

Rush Limbaugh is a prick.

Photo from guntotingliberal.

My thoughts about today’s inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Every blogger in the country must have a similar post up by now. I am certainly not going to add anything new or insightful. But this joyous and historic occasion really calls out for a post.

What I am thinking and feeling is no different than 75 to 80 percent of the rest of the country. I am extremely proud that this country has made one significant step beyond the overt racism that has dominated the cultural landscape since the country’s inception. Electing an African-American man to the highest office in the land is something truly amazing. I am old enough to remember the assassination of John and Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. I can remember, although comprehension on my part was not really there, the race riots, the civil rights movement. I also had a closer look, as my family (my protestations notwithstanding) moved to Alabama in 1970 when I was a freshman in high school. Rural Alabama... Extremely rural Alabama... My step-father, who was responsible for this abrupt move, bought a drive in restaurant that had walk up order windows. The one in front was prominently labeled “Whites Only.” The one around the side of the building was labeled “Blacks Only.” And what’s more, this was no anachronism, no holder from some bygone time. These were “here and now” signs of the time that were expected to be obeyed. The high school close to mine went through some upheavals when adults found out that some of the white cheerleaders were dating a couple of black kids on the basketball team. I don’t really know what happened, but it was made VERY clear to the girls that, under no circumstances, they were going to go to the prom with the black kids. This town was on the Alabama/Mississippi border, and was only about 70 miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi. I don’t think I need remind people what happened there. In 1970, I was only 6 years removed from those horrible events.

I saw, for myself, the hatred and distrust from very hardened individuals. My step-father turned out to be a drunk, ignorant, racist bastard. To my everlasting shame, I even bought into some of the hateful rhetoric of the time. I remember once, probably just after I had moved there, the white kids in my school asking me if I was “a nigger lover.” I rapidly and strongly disagreed, as I was conscious of which way the river was flowing and I wanted to “fit in.” I don’t remember ever feeling any dislike or animosity toward any of the black kids. I think some of them treated me more fairly than did the white redneck kids. I think I just didn’t know how to relate to them and had no idea what to say.

So, given my rather peculiar personal history, I can truly say how proud I am that Barack Obama is taking the Oath of Office today. In many ways, this country has come a very long way. Many parts of the country, however, still remain mired in the 1930’s. But there is progress. I can’t tell how many times I have choked up a little or gotten teary eyed when I see a picture or video of black people, young and old, cheering or overtly crying from sheer joy. I cannot imagine what these people must be feeling now. Maybe they are thinking that this country isn’t quite as bad as they thought and that maybe the deck isn’t so stacked against them that they can’t overcome the barriers that still exist. The celebration in Chicago during and after Obama’s Election Day victory still is one of the highlights in my memory.

But what is even more significant than the fact of the first African American president is the fact that his race, although vitally important, is not the biggest amazement to me. Barack Obama was not elected because of his race, nor was he elected in spite of his race. He was elected because he represents the best hope at this time when the nation is facing about five severe crises simultaneously. He truly wants to bring people together and work with people on all sides of politics. He is one of the first politicians I remember who really seems to believe that scoring political points off your opponent is nowhere near as important as actually solving the problems of this country. People are tired of the Bush years, and yes, of the Clinton years before that. The country, as a whole, wants to move beyond all that and really get problems worked. Couple this with the fact of his race and that’s where all the joy, hope and pride come from.

This really is an amazing thing to see. I truly hope that President Obama can follow through on his promises and inclinations, and that this country gets behind the hard solutions that will be proposed for very tough problems. I sincerely hope that the bad old days of playing political games to try to ensure a “permanent majority” for either party is over and that politicians will just shut the hell up and work together for once.

The End Times are Near!!

Ancient civilizations looked upon comets as harbingers of some future catastrophe. Our science and technology has advance considerably since those benighted times, so that comets (unless they are on a course to slam into the Earth and send us humans the way of the dinosaurs) are now just an interesting astronomical phenomenon. The upshot of this is that we must look elsewhere for our prophecies of doom. So, if the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl was a statistical long shot, what do you think the odds were of having the Cardinals reach the Super Bowl immediately after the Tampa Bay Rays were in the World Series?

I am very, very fearful for our civilization.

From the Department of Very Small Blessings.

I’m amazed that George Bush hasn’t pulled several hundred muscles in his stretching to find rationales for his actions and silver linings in a huge wall of black clouds. For instance, who could forget his hyping the “benefit” from global warming, that it will make ship traffic through the Artic easier?

Here’s one via Dan Froomkin:

And in yet another exit interview, Bush tells Tara Wall of the Washington Times about the upside to the current economic crisis: "One aspect of these recent times that has been overlooked is the fact that the price of gasoline has gone down from near $4 to under $2, which is stimulative, because people have got nearly $2,000 on an annualized basis in their pocket -- that's $2,000 per family -- as a result of gasoline going down," Bush said. "That's stimulative."

Is this really something to be bragging about? The economy of this country seems to be collapsing around us. There are numerous and varying reasons why this is occurring, but many of them seem to stem directly out of the free market (read, “no regulations”) economic policies that are the cornerstone of the modern Republican party. To scale that down a bit, you also might say that one positive aspect of having the engine in your 1987 Volvo blow up is that you won’t have to buy gas for it anymore. You aren’t able to actually, you know, GO anywhere. But you don’t have to pay those pesky gas bills. Lots more money in the pocket!

Sheesh. After next Tuesday, I am hoping we all hear very little from George W. Bush.

Could the future transportation needs of the U.S. be met with trains?

I just finished reading a really informative feature story on the Washington Monthly blog. It covers a lot of ground, but it is mostly advocating a radical increase in spending on railroad infrastructure. Transporting freight by rail is much more efficient than by a fleet of trucks. It has the additional benefit of being also much safer, as it takes a significant amount of truck traffic off our already congested and sometimes unsafe highway system.

The significant downside of increasing the use of rail traffic for our transportation needs is that the current system is pretty maxed out right now, and railroad infrastructure is very costly.

However, when all aspects are considered, it would appear that the United States ought to at least consider a large-scale jump in our railroad capacity. Expecting the railroads themselves to fund this expansion is not terribly realistic, although many are already laying new tracks with their own funds.

The feature in the Washington Monthly discussed one very interesting point that I had not really considered before. That is, what would power this next generation rail system? Diesel locomotives, although they are getting better all the time, are still based on internal combustion engines that consume petroleum products and emit pollutants. Because all industries should be considering how to “go green” in the 21st century where energy is going to become more and more precious, the railroad industry should stop and think a bit about this. The proposal laid out is to use wind power, especially in the central plain states, to power electric locomotives. Windfarms could be built alongside the tracks, which would have a couple of positive benefits. First, the transmission lines would not need to be very long. Electrical grids lose quite a lot power just by energizing the system. These losses can be rather substantial if the grid is not well maintained. The other benefit is that the trains themselves could just bring all the materials for windfarms and dump them by the side of the tracks. Modern windmills are very high-tech and rather massive. By having the windfarms set up shop in very close vicinity to railroad tracks, transporting the windmill components becomes less challenging than by trucking in large components to out-of-the-way locations.

Electric locomotives are not widely used in the U.S., except for the Northeast corridor (Boston, New York, D.C.) and other metro areas. However, at one time, electrified rail lines, such as the one shown in the picture above, were commonplace. They are able to generate a significantly larger percentage of pulling power over diesel-powered locomotives, since diesels must carry large reciprocating engines, electrical power generators and diesel fuel. Electrically powered locomotives pull power directly from the grid above and send it directly to the electric motors that drive the wheels. They also have one other added benefit. Train locomotives use a braking technique to slow down called dynamic braking. The electric motors that usually drive the wheels are used instead as brakes, which generate electric power. In diesel locomotives, this generated electricity just goes into big radiators and is lost as heat. With an electrified rail line, however, this electrical power can be put back into the electrical lines above for use by another train.

Here in Washington state, electric locomotives made quite a bit of sense. Both the Great Northern Railroad and The Milwaukee Road made heavy use of electric locomotives in the early and mid-20th Century. Hydroelectric power was cheap and plentiful. There was also the presence of an imposing tunnel through the Cascade Mountains at Stevens Pass. The Great Northern Railroad suffered a potentially catastrophic accident when one of its trains powered by a coal burning steam locomotive got caught in the tunnel. The crew and all the passengers could have easily asphyxiated. Luckily, the train was able to back out of the tunnel. This event caused Great Northern management to reconsider this approach. The Great Northern ended up installing an electrified rail line from Skykomish, on the western slopes of the Cascades, to Wenatchee, near the Columbia River in eastern Washington. The dam built by the Great Northern across the Wenatchee River up from Leavenworth, Washington, that was used to house the electrical generators that powered this section of GN track still remains today.

Electrically driven railroad locomotives are not some vast leap in technology. It is technology that was in use from the 1930’s, and is still in use to today. The building of such a transportation infrastructure would be costly, but it would generate a not insignificant number of new jobs and well as address the country’s growing transportation needs. I would hope that there are some forward looking people in this country would might consider this proposal as something more than just a pipedream. Given the looming shortages in fossil fuels and the need to develop more “green” industries, the U.S. could do a lot worse than spend some resources in this area.

(The picture above is of the Milwaukee Road electrified rail line through the town of Renton, Washington. The picture is from 1971, and comes from the website, rrpicturearchives.net. This is from the collection of Martin Burwash. I hope that he won’t mind me using the picture, as I am providing a link. For train enthusiasts, this is a very cool web site and includes a great deal of historical railroad photos.)

There is so much that I don’t understand about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

My one huge reaction is this. Yeah, I understand why Israel must respond to rockets being dropped indiscriminately into their towns, killing civilians. But the Israeli response, to me, has been so unsymmetrical. We are talking about innocent men, women and children being killed that had nothing to do with the rocket attacks. Schools are being blown up. If indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians is unacceptable, how is the killing of many more Palestinian civilians acceptable?

And I will also add this. The Gaza Strip has been walled off from the rest of Israel, and the reports on the living conditions within Gaza paint a horrific picture, even before the latest round of Israeli attacks. To me, this sounds very much like a ghetto, where the undesirables have been banished. After what happened to the Jews in Poland in the 30’s and 40’s, I would think that Israel would be very careful of role reversals here.

I am not saying that I support, in any way, Hamas firing rockets at Israel. That is just flat out terrorism. There is no other word for it. Even if the rockets don’t kill anyone, the emotional and physical reaction still achieves the same goal as if it had killed someone. But I cannot get over the feeling that Israel has lost any moral superiority they may have once had in their conflict with the Palestinians. What they are currently doing in Gaza is nothing short of inhuman.

Here is an excerpt from a column in the Washington Post by President Carter on this issue.

After 12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.

I am just so weary of the brain-dead stupidity of the human race. If we all go the way of the mastodon due to global climate change, I really believe that would be a just punishment for all the inhumanity our species exhibited in the last 4000 years or so. “Civilized peoples”, indeed.

Shih-Tzu blogging

Rough New Year's Day morning.

(Personally, I think Nina, with her pink nose and lips and white mustache and beard, sort of looks like an adolescent Yeti. Or maybe an Ewok.)

"But Mr. President! This is a perfect way to burnish up your legacy!"

If the GOP is going to do some “soul searching”, they need to admit a few things to themselves.

Namely, they need to understand the difference between personal attacks and political criticism. Republicans have so blurred the distinction between these two very different things that they actually do not understand there is a difference. Catch the last quote in this bit from HuffPo.

In private, GOP officials admit to being at a politically dangerous crossroads when it comes to minorities. Reaction to Chip Saltsman's distribution of a CD including the song "Barack the Magic Negro" has been mixed. James Richardson, a former RNC staffer, called it "political suicide." Current RNC chair Mike Duncan said he was "shocked and appalled." But Ken Blackwell, the African-American former Ohio Attorney General and another candidate for the chairmanship, dismissed criticism as "hypersensitivity in the press."

"Look, the GOP needs to be inclusive and more sensitive," a high-ranking Republican explained to the Huffington Post. "On the other hand if we are going to fall apart in pieces every time someone yells racism than we are going to lose the next four years.... Because that means that the left is allowed to talk about race but we are not. There has got to be a way to talk about the president's agenda without falling into this trap."

This guy seemed to be talking about whether or not something gets tagged as racism. Fair enough. If I were him, I wouldn’t like it if a valid criticism of the Obama administration was met with cries of “racist!” That would sort of be like what the Republicans do now with cries of “class warfare!” in response to any criticism of their social policies, such as, oh, any attempt to privatize Social Security. That kind of knee-jerk response is classified as an “inappropriate red-herring” in my mind, no matter which side is doing the freak-out cries of victimization as a way of clouding the issue. So, as far as this goes, I am with this guy. But then he says this.

“There has got to be a way to talk about the president's agenda without falling into this trap.”

Uh, excuse please? It seems to me there are unlimited ways of talking about (soon to be) President Obama’s agenda without bringing race into it. It’s called “discussing the issues.” Republicans really ought to try it some time. It actually might work and we might actually get something done here for the actual good of the country that isn’t being tallied as scoring political points off one’s enemies. And a debate about whether or not a political “joke” song titled “Barack, the Magic Negro” is or is not racist is not “discussing the issues.”

Jerk... Even when a Republican is trying to make sense and make a good point, they usually seem to screw it up.

A homophobic fundamentalist pastor gets bashed by a really insane fundamentalist pastor.

Boy. I am just so amazed that so many fundamentalists seem to have a direct pipeline in to God, such that they know exactly what He is thinking on any particular subject. Sarah Palin seemed to have an understanding that God wanted her to get a pipeline built that would go from Alaska to the lower mainland, through Canada. Up until that, I wasn’t sure that God was really that interested in energy projects.

Rick Warren has been in the news a lot lately, due to his views on many things and also by the fact that he will be speaking during President Elect Obama’s inauguration. Lots of gay and lesbian people are not very happy with that choice. It turns out that some people on the extreme right are none too pleased, either. This is from the Orange County Register, via The Washington Monthly.

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake bashed Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren this week, saying "God will punish" Warren for agreeing to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration next month.

"I pray He is kind to you in this punishment that is coming," Drake wrote in a widely-released e-mail. In it, the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park pastor criticizes Warren's "recent plan to invoke the presence of almighty God on this evil illegal alien," a reference to Obama.

-snip-

Drake said Warren, also a Southern Baptist minister, is "hurting our denomination, and the Lord's work."

He continued: "God will deal with you on this … God will not wink at this."

Warren did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

"It's an abomination before God and God's going to deal with that," Drake, in an interview, said about Warren's role in the inauguration. "I've gotten several e-mails in response, and overwhelmingly, they have been supportive."

I always get a little thrill of excitement when I see someone from the extreme right turn upon their own. It just shows how little tolerance these people have for anything that doesn’t conform, exactly, to their own points of view. “What goes around, comes around”, I always say. And they deserve it. But it is also interesting to note that Drake, while calling on God to blast Warren into sub-atomic particles, throws in this. "I pray He is kind to you in this punishment that is coming." Uh huh. Yep. That proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Drake is really a caring and compassionate person.

It is just so disheartening to think that idiots like Wiley Drake actually have a pulpit and people listen to him. I swear, people like this would sound at home during the 16th century, going around the countryside and condemning people for consorting with Satan and denying God’s Will. It’s a good thing that accusing people of witchcraft and burning them at the stake or crushing them with rocks has gone out of style, because the mindset behind those actions is still alive and well. Anyone that gets out of line, well then, God is going to take care of you, and fast!

I am not a believer in God, Christian or otherwise. So, as long as the ravings of these lunatics do not affect me or the people and ideas I hold dear, then they can do whatever they like. If they were to all suddenly turn into Whirling Dervishes , that would also be entertaining and just about as useful. But really, if I were a moderate Christian who really cared about my church, I might start fighting back against these fundamentalists. They are really giving God a bad name, you know?

Hey, global warming was great for the Vikings! So why should we worry?

Jeez. I cannot believe some people can be so obtuse. And this isn’t in some fifth tier conservative blog. This opinion column was in the LA Times!

Via the Denialism blog.

The vikings clawed their way back into the national conversation recently, and for those of us who believe they have never gotten their historical due, it was not a moment too soon. Last heard from when they unexpectedly popped up on horseback in last winter’s anachronistic, factually suspect action film “Pathfinder” – a rip-roaring affair that sadly found only a negligible audience – the Vikings often go whole decades without being talked about in any meaningful way on these shores.

All that changed a few weeks back when the Wall Street Journal published an essay on the subject of global warming by environmental sciences expert Daniel B. Botkin. Throwing down the gauntlet in the wake of the Nobel committee’s surprise decision to award Al Gore its coveted Peace Prize, Botkin kicked off his piece with this plucky assertion: “Global warming doesn’t matter except to the extent that it will affect life – ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.”

To buttress this admittedly controversial theory, Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UC Santa Barbara, cited studies proving that global warming would not result in huge numbers of species disappearing, would not result in an epidemic of tropical diseases and would not result in a catastrophic change in the way humans lead their lives. While not denying the reality of global warming, Botkin said that its effects have been vastly exaggerated, and that people should worry more about species disappearing forever because of deforestation in the rain forest rather than global warming in the Arctic.

But the real haymaker, coming right out of left field, was his contention that global warming would not necessarily be a disaster for humanity. Citing Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s “Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000,” one of those books that we all have on our nightstands but never seem to find the time to read, Botkin pointed out that it was the warming that occurred between 750 and 1230 that encouraged the Vikings to break out of their harsh climate and sail west. Particularly impressive were Erik the Red’s voyages, resulting in the colonization of the previously inaccessible and inhospitable Iceland and Greenland. Chortled Botkin: “Good thing that Erik the Red didn’t have Al Gore or his climatologists as his advisors.”

Those of us who adore Viking lore, those of us who never cease to marvel at their daring exploits, those of us who resent the way the first Europeans to set foot in North America have been completely upstaged by Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Ponce de Leon and the rest of those over-praised Johnny-come-latelies cannot help feeling a frisson of glee – nay, vindication – now that Botkin has gone where no Op-Ed page contributor, not even in the Journal, has gone before and singled out the voyages of the Vikings as a reason to stop being obsessed with global warming. Never in our wildest dreams did any of us seriously expect the Vikings to enter the global warming debate, not only because they have not been heard from for almost 1,000 years but because of their behavior.

Ah, yes. That’s a great argument. Vikings were the first people to discover North America, but were later upstaged by Columbus. That proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that global warming isn’t harmful.

Um, I’m searching for a word here… It’s on the tip of my tongue. Oh, yeah. Dumbass. That’s it.

Well, at least many people have stopped denying that the phenomenon of global warming is real. However, the lame excuses about why it doesn’t matter are even more bizarre than the rationale for the non-existence of global warming. And boy, if someone can get in a shot about Al Gore, or even two, then that REALLY proves their point!

I swear, if Al Gore and a bunch of liberals ran in to one of these people’s house, yelling at them that they need to get out because their house was on fire, they would sit there in their jammies, arguing with them and pointing out that Al Gore is fat.

You know, I am beginning to doubt evolution. Strict Darwinism should mean that all these idiots died out long ago.

Dick Cheney; Worst Vice-President ever?

I have seen this story a couple of times, based on a survey from CNN. Here is part of the story from the Nation.

Twenty-three percent of Americans surveyed by CNN say Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in history.

Another 41 percent say Cheney has been a poor No. 2.

So, as the draft-dodging, corporation-coddling, obscenity-spewing, torture-sanctioning shredder of the Constitution prepares to leave the position he should have been forced from by Congress, almost two-thirds of Americans rank Cheney as bad or worse than Spiro Agnew.

But that was before Cheney acknowledged on national television that he had violated his oath to defend a Constitution that bars cruel and unusual punishment by promoting the use of waterboarding.

I am glad that Cheney is getting the recognition he deserves. In my estimation, he is a monster. This guy ran a shadow government, declared all sorts of things that are not supported by any sort of rational reading of the Constitution, and I firmly believe that he was responsible for pushing for “normalization” of torture as an everyday tactic. I believe that the last eight years would not have been as disastrous as they have been, except for the presence of Cheney and his legal attack-dog David Addington. He deserves all the negative accolades that he gets.

However, I am unsure about the validity of such a question. Outside of Spiro Agnew, who most people under 50 don’t really remember, there haven’t been any memorable Vice Presidents in our collective memories by which we could make such a comparison. Sure, there’s Dan Quayle, but he was memorable only because of the fact he came across as a doofus. He was most certainly not evil. My point is that most Americans have no frame of reference of past Vice Presidents by which to judge Cheney. That’s the relative judgment, i.e., a judgment is being made on the basis of a comparison. However, there is also an absolute judgment. No comparisons are being made. Without any sort of comparison to any past VP, Cheney is certainly the most devious, malicious, paranoid, hard-hearted anti-Constitutionalist that I would ever hope to see again in my lifetime.

"I double dawg dare you, George, to invade Iraq!"

Photo from here.

Ah, geez!!

It's Christmas, dad is running around acting like an idiot, everyone's really happy, and all Santa brought me was this stupid roll of toliet paper.

Photo from here.

"Dick Cheney, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past...."

I have several hundred things that I would like to show you.

Wall Street Rogue Fund Manager: There goes another 50 billion dollars, more or less.

More investors, large and small, lose billions of dollars of investments.

From the NYTimes:

But on Friday, less than 24 hours after this prominent Wall Street figure was arrested on charges connected with what authorities portrayed as the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history, hard questions began to be raised about whether Mr. Madoff acted alone and why his suspected con game was not uncovered sooner.

As investors from Palm Beach to New York to London counted their losses on Friday in what Mr. Madoff himself described as a $50 billion fraud, federal authorities took control of what remained of his firm and began to pore over its books.

But some investors said they had questioned Mr. Madoff’s supposed investment prowess years ago, pointing to his unnaturally steady returns, his vague investment strategy and the obscure accounting firm that audited his books.

-snip-

Now thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of investors confront losses that range from serious to devastating. Some families said on Friday that they believed they had lost all their savings. A charity in Massachusetts said it had lost essentially its entire endowment and would have to close.

According to an affidavit sworn out by federal agents, Mr. Madoff himself said the fraud had totaled approximately $50 billion, a figure that would dwarf any previous financial fraud.

At first, the figure seemed impossibly large. But as the reports of losses mounted on Friday, the $50 billion figure looked increasingly plausible. One hedge fund advisory firm alone, Fairfield Greenwich Group, said on Friday that its clients had invested $7.5 billion with Mr. Madoff.

I find it very interesting and coincidental that this is just about the same figure, or even more, that was being bandied about to help save the domestic automobile manufacturing industry. That’s a topic for another post, of course. But this one is just staggering, especially coming on the heels of all the bailouts on Wall Street and the out of control governor of Illinois.

It really is beginning to seem as if there is not a single honest person who controls the power and wealth of this country. All of them are out to get as much as they can for themselves, without regard to what happens to anyone else. Now, of course, this is a vast oversimplification. There are many honest, hard working people out there. But it is getting increasingly difficult to emotionally believe that. It really is beginning to feel like the entire “ruling elite” of this country (both political and corporate) are a bunch of bald faced lying thieves.

I can only hope that this absolute deluge of bad news recently causes the entire country to rethink how things have been done in the last 15 years or so. Regulation and oversight are not evil; they are absolute necessities. There is an old saying (I can’t remember the attribution right now) that goes something like, “Great powers are not destroyed from the outside until the are destroyed from within.” Unfortunately, that is what I think is going on right now in the country. Unless we do something to reverse this trend, the history of the United States of America is going to be documented in books and placed on the library shelves, right next to “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Interesting photographic perspectives

Governor Blagojevich of Illinois: The new “Stupidest Man of the Face of the Earth.”

Douglas Feith has relinquished his crown. I am not going to try to summarize all the revelations about this asshat. This statement from an editorial from the NYTimes summarizes everyone’s feelings about him, though.

We have seen a lot of political hubris, scratch-my-back politics and sheer stupidity over the years. But nothing could prepare us for the charges brought Tuesday against Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois.

From my knothole, “hubris” doesn’t even come close to it. Although I have no training from which to judge such things, I would say that this guy is a sociopath. No, he doesn’t go around killing people, but from all indications, he has absolutely no moral compunctions at all. None. Even armed with the knowledge that he has been under investigation by the authorities for about three years, this guy STILL tries to make money for both him and his wife by selling political “favors”. He tried to shake down Warren Buffet, which doesn’t sound like a really great idea to me. He thought that he could just appoint himself to the open Senate position vacated by Barak Obama, if he got into trouble, as he would have access to more tools to keep his butt out of jail.

Where do these guys come from, and how come they end up with power and money? To be honest, this guy was probably just missed his window of opportunity. He would have gone far in the Soviet Union, circa 1970.

I hope Fitz throws his butt in jail for 800 years.

Is the Earth’s magnetic field getting ready to flip polarities?

There is some very interesting and somewhat alarming data being collected on the Earth’s magnetic field. Here are a couple of items that fit into that category. The Earth’s magnetic field is about 10% weaker now than it was 150 years ago. That’s pretty staggering. 150 years in geologic time represents a blink of the eye, and 10% of anything is a pretty significant percentage, especially something as powerful as the planetary magnetic field. That change represents a huge amount of energy. The other interesting data point is that there is a very weak spot in the magnetic field over the southern Atlantic off the coast of Brazil where the local magnetic field about 30% of the normal strength of rest of the field.

I have discussed the importance of the Earth’s magnetic field before, in the context of how crucial it was for the formation of life on Earth. It protects the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and all the life on the surface of the planet from the solar wind. The term “solar wind” is a pretty benign sounding, given how much havoc it can wreak on anything left unprotected. The solar wind consists of massive amounts of highly energized particles streaming off the sun’s corona. Normally, the Earth’s magnetic field funnels all these particles into the polar regions, which results in spectacular displays called the Northern Lights. A planetary atmospheric system left unprotected from the solar wind for millions of years would result in the atmosphere blasted off the surface of the planet and into space. The oceans would eventually evaporate. The result would be a dead, barren planet like Mars. In fact, that is exactly the scenario being discussed among planetary scientists to explain why Mars obviously once had large amounts of water flowing on the surface. Evidence is showing that Mars may once have had a magnetic field protecting it, but it does not now.

If Earth’s magnetic field continues to decay, it could suffer the same fate as Mars. Put on a liner scale, given the present rate of decay, the entire magnetic field could be gone within 1500 years. Global warming and widespread climate change would be a minor annoyance compared to this apocalyptic scenario. Global climate change might be catastrophic to mankind, but many of the current species on Earth would adapt and survive. The Earth, as a living entity, would survive in some form. However, the loss of the protective magnetic shield and the subsequent loss of the atmosphere and oceans would result in a dead planet.

Thankfully, many scientists are predicting that this doomsday scenario is unlikely. Fluctuations of the magnetic field appear to be the norm. Another scenario is that the Earth’s magnetic poles are getting ready to flip. That is, what used to be the “+” magnetic pole on the northern axis of the globe, after some rather wild fluctuations, will end up at the south pole. This has happened many times in the past, and will undoubtedly happen again in the future. The instability of the field before this occurs could lead to loss of radio and satellite communications, the possibility of intermittent failures of power grids, etc. for possibly years. However, compared with the possibility of the slow death of the entire planet, these effects should be considered relatively minor.

Photo from here.

Wal Mart employee trampled to death during Christmas rush. I see the poor economy hasn’t reduced shopper’s insanity.

I am serious. There really isn’t any word other than “insane” to describe this.

NEW YORK - Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday's video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.

Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

Police said about 2,000 people were gathered outside the Wal-Mart doors before its 5 a.m. opening at a mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. The impatient crowd knocked the employee, identified by police as Jdimytai Damour, to the ground as he opened the doors, leaving a metal portion of the frame crumpled like an accordion.

"This crowd was out of control," Fleming said. He described the scene as "utter chaos," and said the store didn't have enough security.

Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help Damour were also getting trampled by the crowd, Fleming said. Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store.

Damour, 34, of Queens, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 6 a.m., police said. The exact cause of death has not been determined.'

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital, where she and the baby were reported to be OK, said police Sgt. Anthony Repalone.

Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like "savages."

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."

I read about these kinds of events every year. It happens with depressing regularity. And what’s really strange and unnerving about this is that you realize that a large majority of those early Christmas shoppers every year are women. These are women doing this, who I would like to imagine have a bit more humanity and compassion to them than men. That is a bit of a reverse-sexist opinion on my part, but that has how I have always thought of it. I find it very unnerving that rational thinking processes can be halted and raw emotion substituted by nothing more than a early Christmas sale at a place where you can buy all sorts of junk already at a very low price (which is the subject of a different post altogether).

The mob mentality is a really funny thing. You see it at political rallies and old Universal horror films where the townsfolk are whipped up into a frenzy and storm the castle with pitchforks and torches. But shopping? This is especially indefensible when you stop to think that the same items are going to be available for the next month. Yes, you might save a few bucks, but is that really worth all this? What I find even worse is that the shoppers became very angry and some refused to leave when they were asked to leave because of the death of the employee. That's doubly insane. Just think about that. This poor man isn't going home anymore. He went to work in what you would think is a very safe environment, and he ends up dead. I doubt his family understands. I certainly wouldn't.

I guess I am of the opinion that an event like this is really a peek inside the psyche of our society. It isn’t just a one-off “damn, who would have ever thought that?” kind of event. It is a demonstration of our base, primitive nature. If our society devolves, at some time in the future, to the point that food and water are scarce commodities, I will be very scared. Add angry men with abundant attitudes and guns to the mix and the situation described above, and it won’t be pretty.

Schadenfreuden, NBA style.

Well, I guess I can only get wring a dab of pleasure from seeing the news that the Seattle Supersonics, er, make that Oklahoma City “Thunder” (what a stupid name, sounds like something you would see in the Arena Football League, not the NBA) is something like 1-12 and have just fired their head coach. Aw, geez Loiuse. You wanted a GOOD team, then, one that might actually win some games? You should have gone out and raided some other city, like the LA Clippers. LA has two teams, and the Clippers seem to win a game now and then.

Clay Bennett is a major league asshole. Rich, but an asshole nontheless.

Anime review: Scrapped Princess (including a rather lengthy aside about Hayao Miyazaki)

Now, the first question that might pop in to someone who has looked in on this blog before is, what is a blog that has been almost exclusively about politics for the last eight months doing writing about a Japanese anime? Isn’t that sort of far-afield from politics, not to mention rather adolescent, especially for a blogger who posting name is “zeppo”, rather inferring someone in the 50+ age group (which would be a correct inference, but not by that much)?

Well, I do like to do a number of different things with this blog, for no other reason than to keep myself interested. Many well-established bloggers seem to do this as well. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly just posted this.

As you've probably noticed, plenty of political bloggers occasionally tackle unrelated subjects. Yglesias writes about basketball; Ezra writes about cooking; Drum writes about cats, football, and his unusual computer problems. And what do I do when I'm not obsessing over the political news of the day? I'm obsessing over the science fiction news of the day (TV, movies, comics, video games, you name it).

So, a post about a Japanese anime on what is primarily a political blog isn’t that unusual, really.

O.K, I am into anime. I admit it. At least, certain ones. Big deal. I like to try to keep myself from getting stale and try new things now and then. Plus, I have never really fully grown up anyway. And finally, I need some pure escapism in my life. Work isn’t doing it for me and the world situation is pretty depressing, when you get right down to it. I need a relief valve.

I really became aware of Japanese animation when I started watching the works of Hayao Miyazaki, the brilliant animator. His films are, in my estimation, vastly superior than anything Disney ever put out. The storylines and characters in his films are significantly more interesting than anything ever put out by Disney, including Pixar. The plots are complex, the characters are definitively not two-dimensional, and the soundtracks are incredible. Spirited Away remains one of my favorite films. Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke and Porco Rosso are also incredible films that I would recommend without a moment of hesitation. The imagination behind these films, and the amount of detail in the sets and characters are truly astounding. I would recommend anything by Miyazaki or his studio, Studio Ghibli. The DVD’s, although kind of pricey, would make a great Christmas gift for some family with kids. Yeah, the kids could be the excuse for the gift, but I bet the parents would be hooked as well.

Given my enthusiasm for Miyazaki, I suppose it wasn’t that much of a leap for me to start sampling Japanese anime, as well as some other feature length films. I am fortunate in that my television cable provider has a free On Demand section that is pretty well stocked. There are a couple of places that have anime content. I was just poking around one weekend and stumbled across them. I found a few that I liked, mostly for the off the wall humor. There are many others I have watched an episode or two that don’t interest me at all. Many anime series seem overly pretentious and very superficial. I think it is obvious who the target audience for those is. But then I found Scrapped Princess. Luckily, I caught the first episode before On Demand rotated it out for the next installments. (I am very glad that this On Demand section exists and most of this stuff is free. I certainly wouldn’t have spent a lot of money with this type of experimentation. If I don’t like something, the only thing I have lost is a few minutes of my life.)

I initially got hooked on Scrapped Princess because the quality of the artwork is fantastic. It’s not quite to the same level as Miyazaki, but it is very close. The amount of detail in the background scenery is fantastic, and some are only shown for several seconds before the story moves on. The voice actors for the English version are very good. The depth and range of emotion they exhibit really bring their animated characters to life. I found the second and third episodes were full of some very funny bits, which is always guaranteed to catch my attention. But by the time the story got really rolling, I was really taken by the incredibly interesting and compelling storyline and the depth of the characters. Now, for those who are not fans of anime, you might be saying, “Come on. Depth of characters in a cartoon?” Yeah, really, there is. Trust me on that one.

I am not going to say a lot about the actual anime itself. Here are some things Wiki has to say about it.

Scrapped Princess is notable for high quality animation, its music, which is composed by Masumi Itō, and its themes. It begins as high fantasy and then quickly mixes into varying degrees of post-apocalyptic and science fiction elements through the application of Clarke's third law. The atmosphere has undertones of sadness, though many of the characters and situations are superficially light-hearted.

The story takes place in a fantasy world and revolves around a 15-year-old girl, Pacifica Casull, who is a girl child born in a set of twins into the royal family of the kingdom Leinwan and then abandoned. The 5111th Grendel Prophecy predicts that she is the "poison that will destroy the world" before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday. As a consequence, she is dropped off a cliff as an infant. Believed to be dead, no one realizes her continued existence until after Pacifica is already 15 years old.

Pacifica is rescued by a court wizard and adopted by the commoner Casull family. Her foster siblings-Shannon, a loner swordsman, and Raquel, a motherly magician-became her protectors. Both siblings are extremely powerful, and more often than not they easily break out of whatever difficult situation they face.

Her siblings travel with her throughout most of the story, protecting her from the numerous attempts on her life by people who fear the outcome of the prophecy, should she survive. Both siblings' skills see constant use. By contrast, Pacifica is a mostly typical fifteen-year-old, and her inability to defend herself is a recurring source of self-doubt for her. As the series progresses, the truth about the prophecy slowly comes to light, and even as the more of the truth is revealed, more questions arise. Pacifica must discover her hidden destiny, even as powerful beings that are not human who are supposedly the gods of this world - continuously fight against each other, over her fate, seeking to either protect or destroy her. It turns out that Pacifica is not in fact "a poison who will destroy the world" in that sense...but in fact mankind's last hope, and all part of a plan. A plan that was set in motion a long, long time ago by not primitive humans but highly intelligent and advanced ones, at that. Can destiny be written beforehand? The answer lies deep in the past, five thousand years ago during the Genesis Wars...

I just found the character of Pacifica very sympathetic. It’s not every 15 year old that could put up with constantly being on the run from people trying to kill them, and being constantly told that they are an abomination and should have been destroyed at birth. That could do some pretty serious damage to a person’s psyche, for real. But throughout all, she remains an exuberant, moody, tempermental teenager. What started out to be a standard mythical kingdom “sword and sorcery” storyline has taken a decidedly interesting turn into the realm of futuristic, post-apocalyptic science fiction, where science, magic, technology and biology are not individual things but are all blended together. I also think some very interesting statements are being made about organized religion and the structure upon which societies are founded. There is a multi-layered plot with multi-dimensional characters.

Another thing I liked about this anime is something I find attractive in some of my favorite films. Unlike American cinema and television, Japanese cinema, and this anime in particular, doesn’t always spend a lot of time filling the audience in with the backstory and getting everyone up to speed before they feel they can go on with the current story. I can always tell the “exposition” part of any plot, and I find it rather annoying. This anime just jumps in with both feet what could have easily been the middle of the storyline. It tells the audience, “Here we go, and it’s your job to keep up with what is going on here.” Truthfully, I had to watch these episodes several times before I really understood all the underlying story lines and themes. I rather like that. It makes you use your imagination and thought processes to figure out what is going on. It involves the audience, rather than making them passive spectators.

I readily admit that, to really become a fan of anime, you really need to overcome a few obstacles. First, as I stated above, you really need to find the right one. All anime are not created equal. Then, there is this thing that Japanese have for their animated female characters to have really big, creepy eyes and overly large breasts. Some of the characters have really irritating voices, as you can tell they are adults speaking with children’s voices. Like I said, irritating. It actually took some time for me to get over those things. And finally, you need to be able to admit to yourself that animation can be interesting on a level at much higher levels than your average Bugs Bunny/Road Runner cartoon. Animation, both of the television series and feature films, can have very interesting, compelling storylines, if they are given a chance.

I would highly recommend Scrapped Princess to anyone already into anime, but also anyone who is interested in trying something new, or just looking for a good Christmas gift for that family with some older kids in it.

Photo from here.

UPDATE: I have finished watching the entire series of twenty-four episodes. I’m still taking it all in and trying to figure out a few things. I don’t want to insert any spoilers here, in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen or completely finished the anime.

The plot certainly had a fair share of twists and turns, many of which I didn’t see coming. It kept jumping around from a Medieval sword and sorcery yarn to a post-apocalyptic science fiction story, and then back again. One interesting thing about Japanese animation in general (at least as far as the ones I have seen) is that the bad guys are never truly evil and the good guys are not always knights in shining armor. The characters are usually multi-layered and are always conflicted as some point in time. That tendency certainly makes for a more interesting story, but it also can throw the viewer a curveball now and then. Characters you might have believed were part of the good guys turn out to do some pretty horrible things. Characters you are certain are evil turn out to have some really interesting reasons behind their actions. Some terrible things happened to some very nice people. The next to last episode really shocked me, actually. I was beginning to feel rather betrayed and upset that I had invested all this time in watching this series and then THAT happened. But everything changed, once again, in the last episode, and I ended up feeling better.

All in all, the story was very compelling but full of some pretty big holes, if you start to think about it. But then, this is an anime, after all. If you can’t use your artistic license in an anime, then you are never going to be able to use it. And Japanese animation certainly doesn’t use the standard Hollywood formulaic recipe for their stories. Even a film like Wall-E, which I enjoyed a great deal, turned out to be pretty predictable in the end. Wall-E wasn’t going to stay a vegetable robot without character forever. He was going to return to his usual loveable robotic self eventually. Wall-E and Eve were going to get together in the end. The humans were going to come back to Earth. The “evil” computer onboard the spaceship was not going to win out. It was a very nice, funny story that actually had a message contained in it. But I thought it was still rather formulaic and predictable. Scrapped Princess was anything but.

There was one very interesting animation technique that I noticed they used that I haven’t ever seen before. The animation is multi-level, of course, which gives the illusion of depth to an otherwise two-dimensional picture. But the director of Scrapped Princess chose to mimic an optical aspect of live action film. Because camera lenses cannot focus on every object in their field of view, the cameraperson has to chose what object he is focusing on during each shot. If he focuses on objects rather close to the camera, then objects in the background are going to be slightly out of focus. Likewise, if he chooses to focus on an object in the distance, objects closer to the camera will be slightly blurred. The animators of Scrapped Princess put that aspect of optics and lenses, which is actually not always that beneficial, into the animation. Additionally, the synthetic “focal length” is changed occasionally, such that the focus of the picture changes from a character speaking in the background to a character speaking in the foreground. I have never seen that in an animation before. It is just one more aspect of Scrapped Princess that makes it very interesting to watch.