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.

Don’t the Christmas commercials seem particularly forced this year?

Several I have seen really are almost manic in the desire to impart that Christmas (read “shopping”) spirit. All you have to do is look at the retailers themselves and look at all the stores that are closing or corporations going out of business completely to see that things aren’t really that normal this year. Here is a list of some retailers whose Christmas (read “shopping”) season won’t save them.

- Circuit City stores... TBD

- Ann Taylor - 117 stores nationwide are to be shuttered

- Lane Bryant

- Fashion Bug

- Catherine's to close 150 store nationwide

- Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January

- Cache will close all stores

- Talbots closing down all stores

- J. Jill closing all stores

- GAP closing 85 stores

- Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January

- Wickes Furniture closing down

- Levitz closing down remaining stores

- Bombay closing remaining stores

- Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January

- Whitehall closing all stores

- Piercing Pagoda closing all stores

- Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.

- Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ (New Brunswick)

- Macys to close 9 stores after January

- Linens and Things closing all stores

- Movie Galley Closing all stores

- Pacific Sunware closing stores

- Pep Boys Closing 33 stores

- Sprint/ Nextel closing 133 stores

- JC Penney closing a number of stores after January

- Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.

- Wilson Leather closing down all stores

- Sharper Image closing down all stores

- K B Toys closing 356 stores

- Lowes to close down some stores

- Dillard's to close some stores.

I guess the "Magic Kingdom" isn't totally insulated from reality... And those are only the retailers. This is hitting all aspects of the economy. Boeing recently announced they may be looking at layoffs next year, even though they have a huge backlog in the commercial airplane orders. DHL is closing down its U.S. operations. Washington Mutual, or what is left of what used to be WaMu, announced massive layoffs here in Washington state.

It’s really difficult to get that Christmas spirit (read “opening up your wallet and spending your hard earned cash) given this environment. If you are one of the unfortunate many that have lost or may lose your job in the near future, I wish you luck and I hope that you land on your feet soon. But I have seen some recent predictions that unemployment in the U.S. may hit 10%. That’s a number not seen since the 1930’s. And even if you aren’t in danger of being unemployed, you might not be too willing to be a huge spender and run up a large bill on your credit cards this year, like so many people used to do in the past, given that your 401K is worth about 50% less than it used to be.

This is looking like a very large downward spiral, with negative feedback that continually reinforces itself. I guess I never really realized how interdependent everything is on a large amount of people going out and buying stuff, much of it they may or may not need. It’s a consumer society indeed. It’s all a very elaborate house of cards that was wobbly to begin with. The fact that a large number of fat cats in the banking and house loan “industry” wanted to soak the consumers and make as large amount of money as they could, and the fact that they had willing marks on the consuming end who wanted stuff (like houses they couldn’t afford and SUV’s they had to refinance their existing house loans to buy) for pulling out those few cards on the corner that started this whole thing on its way to collapse.

Let’s hope that this plays itself out soon and there’s something left to salvage.

I find myself fascinated by the fracturing going on within the Republican Party.

It’s kind of like staring at a car crash sitting on the side of the road. You know you shouldn’t be gawking. There are some people there who are having a very bad day. But still, there is this morbid fascination with the very fact of a crash, with all the bent fenders, flashing lights on the police cars and maybe even an ambulance or two. You think to yourself, “Wow, how did that happen? That’s terrible! I’m glad it wasn’t me.”

That’s sort of how I feel about the beginnings of what looks to be a crack-up of the modern Republican Party. It’s kind of amazing to watch, especially since the Republican Party under the “leadership” of George Bush and Karl Rove looked to be zooming down the freeway, unimpeded, at 80 mph, passing everyone in sight.

O.K., that’s enough of my car crash and freeway metaphor. After a while, it just becomes too cumbersome to keep up.

There are many Conservatives who are being pretty blunt about this. Chuck Hagel, retiring Senator from Nebraska, really let his own party have it the other day. While he was at it, he took a pretty nice shot at Rush Limbaugh as well. David Frum and Kathleen Parker have been sharply critical as well. The one person I have been following that has been very up front and articulate about the current problems of the Republican Party is David Brooks of the NY Times. This guy drives me nuts. Quite often, he is a very good read. I thought he did a terrific job as election night analyst on PBS. Other times, man, his ideology jumps out and pokes him in the ribs, I guess, and he comes out with some really astounding rationalizations and flat out false statements when he is trying to make a point about how bad Democrats and liberals are. This tendency has been what has earned him the nickname of “Bobo” among the liberal blogosphere.

Here is part of one of his more lucid moments.

It's only been a week since the defeat, but the battle lines have already been drawn in the fight over the future of conservatism.

In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed. George W. Bush was a big-government type who betrayed conservatism. John McCain was a Republican moderate, and his defeat discredits the moderate wing.

To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the GOP should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most prominent voices in the Traditionalist camp, but there is also the alliance of Old Guard institutions.

For example, a group of Traditionalists met in Virginia last weekend to plot strategy, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. According to reports, the attendees were pleased that the election wiped out some of the party's remaining moderates. "There's a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election," the writer R. Emmett Tyrrell told a reporter.

The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old GOP priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives must appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West coasts.

-snip-

The debate between the camps is heating up. Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the GOP. They are going to win, first, because congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists. Republicans from the coasts and the Upper Midwest are largely gone. Among the remaining members, the popular view is that Republicans have been losing because they haven't been conservative enough.

-snip-

Finally, Traditionalists own the conservative mythology. Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into the belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward and a sellout.

This narrative happens to be mostly bogus at this point. Most professional conservatives are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists. Their supposed heroism consists of living inside the large conservative cocoon and telling each other things they already agree with.
But this embattled-movement mythology provides a rational for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.

In short, the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats. Then, finally, some new Reformist donors and organizers will emerge. They will build new institutions, new structures and new ideas, and the cycle of conservative ascendance will begin again.

I left quite a bit of his original column intact, just because there are so many points in there that I think are quite valid. This really is an ideological battle for control of the Republican Party. But what I find amazing is Brooks’ statement, and I have seen this from many others as well, that the remaining core of what Brooks calls the Traditionalist camp feels they need to become more militant, more conservative, not less. As more and more of the less rigid ideologues of the Republicans are voted out of office or finally give up on their party and becomes independents or even moderate to right Democrats, the more the core of the Republican Party contracts. There is no “big tent” for the Republican Party. There isn’t even a “moderate to smallish-sized tent.” No, the Republican Party of the Traditionalists requires that all card-carrying members, without exception, hold to the edicts laid out. They must believe that abortion is the murder of innocent babies, brown people are scary and either want to blow you up, take your jobs or live off “the dole” here in the U.S., war is always preferable to any other option, that global warming is a myth and that Democrats are evil-incarnate and therefore cannot be correct about anything, ever. If anyone deviates from these stated principles, they are expelled from the Congregation of True Believers.

David Brooks says as much in his column. If this column and many others like it aren’t evidence of the coming crack-up, I don’t know what is. What I find fascinating about this, I guess, is that this is so self-inflicted. For a political party, this is very self-destructive behavior. This is not based on any rational logic, at all. It is tribalism at its worst, driven by raw emotion and hatred of anything new or different. The Traditionalists of the Republican Party seem bound and determine not to learn any lessons, at all, from the elections of 2006 and 2008. If any political party had experienced the worst back-to-back defeats since the 1930’s, I would assume that a little self-introspection would be called for, and sooner rather than later. But all this seems to have done is make the Traditionalists angrier and more determined to be “right.”

I, for one, cannot understand how any rational human being can listen to Sarah Palin, especially in her unrehearsed moments, and come to the conclusion that this person should be in charge of anything, much less this country. She comes across as a total doofus, someone you might see as someone’s ditzy neighbor in a bad 1970’s sitcom. Yet, in the Traditionalists view, she is the new leader, the standard bearer for the Republican Party. Talk about self-destructive behavior. If this last election should have taught them anything, it is that, not only does most of the country think that she is not qualified, they also think she is a joke, something to be parodied on Saturday Night Live. And yet, several weeks before the election, I heard one person, just dripping with so much certitude that it made his socks damp and gathered in puddles around his shoes where he was standing, state that he wished that he could vote for Palin for President, since she was “obviously the most qualified of the four candidates.” I could only shake my head.

I am not a psychologist or sociologist. I have no training that would help me identify such illogical behavior by so many supposedly intelligent people. The willingness to buy into self-delusion on a massive scale, however, does seem to be at the heart of the Traditionalists’ “World As They See It.” My only response is to shrug my shoulders and quote that most famous rational yet fictional character, Mr. Spock. “That is not logical.”

This behavior does reinforce the notion that I have had for quite some time, that self-preservation is not always the highest priority for individuals of our species. Self-destructive behavior can be seen all around in our society, such as that exhibited by alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, cheating husbands and wives, etc. I suppose we can now add the Traditionalists of the Republican Party to that list. They may be quite content with their ideology and hatred of everything “other”, but they are surely driving the current edition of the Republican Party to second-tier status as a purely regional political entity that has some very difficult litmus tests for their member to pass before they can be called one of the “true believers.”

I’ve decided to become a Minimalist Blogger.

Beyond the fact that “Minimalist Blogger” is a bit of an oxymoron, and therefore very humorous in an absurdist sort of way, I find the concept refreshing new and new; something that fits in exactly with the newly invigorated mood of this country. Blogging based on volume alone (either definition of “volume” will do, thank you very much) is very passé. That’s just not good enough anymore. A good blogger must show restraint coupled with just the right amount of subtlety, but still having the presence to make a dynamic statement when one is called for. This is not unlike a good jazz vibes player. A good vibes player selects his or her moments where the contribution to the overall artistic effort will be maximized. Vibes, even when played with gusto, are rather understated instruments. No loud, bellicose trumpet for me. I will strive to be the Lionel Hampton of blogs! Artistry will out!!

That said, boy, don’t those Seattle Seahawks suck canal water? Jeez.

Vibes photo from Wiki.

The economic crisis keeps gathering steam.

As I have said many times before, I have no training, or even understanding past the basics, of our economic system. But I do read a number of people who do. Paul Krugman of the NY Times just won a Nobel Prize for his work in economics, and he continues to be very concerned that the governments of the world are not adequately addressing this now global crisis. If he is worried, then I am worried.

The United States tried to do something several weeks ago with the $700 billion bailout package that was rushed through Congress. Oh, you certainly can’t fault anyone for not being enthusiastic enough in the response. There were a few words of caution put forward by politicians of both sides concerning this bailout package. Why this particular amount of money? Who was it to go to? What was the money to be used for, exactly? What kind of oversight was going to be provided? But the predictions were so dire that politicians gulped several times, crossed their fingers that they were doing the right thing, and pulled the trigger. The consequences of this action, both the good and the bad, are yet to be determined. All that seems apparent is that, even though $700 billion is a very large amount of money, it isn't going to be nearly enough.

What bothers me about this is not the fact that the government of the United States is rather embracing socialism, without ever saying so. Our society is based on many of institutions of this country, and it appeared to me that several of them were about to get their legs kicked out from under them by the fact that credit was drying up, quickly, on a global basis. Credit, whether we like it or not, is the grease that makes our economy grow. (It’s not really a coincidence that George Bush asked everyone to “go shopping” in response to the events of 9/11 and our subsequent invasion of Iraq.) No, I believe that we needed to do something. And something we did.

What is really under my skin is the continuing reports about how many people out there seem to think that this sudden influx of money, lots of money, is somehow a declaration of an open season for “getting as much as you can”, whether you deserve it or not. Reports of AIG executives having “retreats” at very posh vacation spots keep trickling out. Maybe, just maybe, one of these might be expected out of fat cats who think that “avarice” is synonymous with “good business practices”. But after they got toasted in front of a Congressional hearing, you would have thought that would have been an example to both AIG and the rest of the industry. No, reports, including those about more AIG executive outings, continue to leak out. The bailout money is reportedly being used by corporations to give their executives large bonuses, to pay stockholder dividends and, amazingly enough, to finance the purchase of other companies.

These people are the ones that really upset me. These are the people who are running our economy, and they are treating it like their private playground. They see no larger purpose in anything they do other than to continue to enrich themselves. Even being caught and castigated in public, by Congress, doesn’t really reach their stunted psyche. They have no understanding, no concept, that this is not about them. They fully believe that it is their right to grab as much as possible for their own. I actually think that they do no understand why anyone might be upset with this behavior, that’s how far gone they are.

In my mind, these are the monsters in our society. These are the villains. It isn’t the people who would like to marry other people of the same sex. It’s these assholes in charge of the corporations of America. Oh, yes. They do provide the cogs that run our economy and have given us our high standard of life here. But I believe that the “industrial magnates”, to use a term from the Gilded Age, only see this as a side benefit. Their main purpose is to continue to enrich themselves. We may not have the same high-profile robber-barons of that era, such as J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. But we certainly have the same mindset prevalent in leaders of today’s industry. Their mantra seems to be, “Get as much as you can, and it doesn’t really matter how you do it.”

I really don’t know how some people live with themselves.

The messages I am receiving from advertising on television.

I haven’t picked on television commercials for a while. That was somewhat of a staple of this blog when I first started. It’s an easy target, and I get so annoyed at the basic message being sent out. So, maybe to try to get back into doing something other than politics, I’ll give it a bit of a go here.

These are things that I have learned about our society from watching television commercials. Based on the regularity with which I am subjected to these nuggets of American Culture, I suppose these points are vitally important. I figured that I better write them all down before I forget them all. Then where would I be?

- When a person is drinking coffee, they must grasp the cup firmly with BOTH hands, tilt their head back with their eyes closed, and take a deep breath and sigh contentedly. I assume that this is a method of clearing clogged sinuses. When a person is drinking coffee with friends (usually three total), not only must everyone hold their cups firmly with both hands, they also must all hold the cups very close to their faces and all three must have their heads very close to each other. A group sinus clearing, I suppose.

- Many of the same things that apply to drinking coffee also apply to eating soup. When eating soup with friends or family, no one is allowed to set their bowl of soup on a table. No, the proper way to eat soup, apparently, is again to hold the bowl very close to one’s mouth (most soup eaters are excessively messy, as everyone knows) and keep their heads very close together. And everyone must smile a lot. That is a by-product of the large amounts of MSG consumed, I believe.

- If you are a male that has, shall we say, “performance issues”, there are several things you must do. The first is that you should be very proud of this and the fact you are relying on some pharmaceutical assist, so much so that you should get together with your over-50 buddies that play in your rock and roll garage band and play and sing songs about your drug-enhanced experience to the tune of old Elvis Presley songs, which may or may not be in the public domain. You should also schedule a vacation with your wife or girlfriend to a vacation resort that will let you move two “his and hers” bathtubs out on the beach, so both of you can sit out on the beach, in bathtubs, while watching the sun go down. Where the water comes from to fill these bathtubs out on the beach is unknown, as there may be no obvious source. It may be that you don’t really need water and you and your wife/significant other can just sit around in dry, empty bathtubs in your undies. And finally, if your “exuberance” lasts for more than four hours, you need to go find a doctor to schedule immediate emergency surgery.

- In order to buy really cool tires for your all-terrain vehicle (which probably doesn’t ever get more “off-road” than the local Food Mart parking lot) or hopped up muscle car, you must be really young, good looking and have rock and roll music blasting at full volume. Buying the right tires is obviously the most important, coolest thing any young person can ever do. It will get you dates with really hot chicks that have a thing for tires equipped with all-weather treads. Or it may be this is just some sort of very obscure metaphor for something else entirely. But, big tires obviously matter!

- Everyone, no matter his or her station in life, must have a broker or financial consultant. If you don’t have one, you desperately need to find one. If you already have one, you must be very dissatisfied with him. If you don’t have one and aren’t looking for one, then you must be a person who handles his or her investments without such such aid on the web, or with minimal help from consultants who are available to assist you 24 hours a day but otherwise let you do whatever you damned well please but won’t ever let you lose money, ever. You must spend a lot of time on this activity, and must never be satisfied, ever. If you don’t have large amounts of money in stocks, mutual funds, foreign currencies or other such investments, there is something seriously wrong with you and you will probably die penniless and alone, without anyone to take care of you.

- The smaller something is that you are eating, the more important it is to grab it with both hands and hide the fact exactly how small it actually might be. You don’t want people to see your really tiny chicken sandwich and start laughing at you.

- Speaking of which, it is always acceptable to demean and ridicule someone based on the fast food they are eating at lunch. Cheeseburgers and fries are very laughable items. Original recipe chicken strips are MUCH more honest, believable and grown-up.

- Drinking too much beer causes hallucinations, such as large horses playing football, talking Dalmatians and beautiful young women who desire to rip the clothes off any male found drinking, in large quantities, the correct brand of beer.

- And finally, only elitist rich a**holes drive Cadillacs, so you better go buy one right now so you can be an elitist rich a**hole too!!

So, can we now discard this notion in this country that science is something not to be trusted?

I really want to blog about something other than politics. It was always my intention to have this blog be about a whole lot of different things, a place on the web that a few people might stumble upon once in a while and say, “Hey, that was kind of interesting. I wonder what else is on here?” Lately, though, unless something has just fallen in my lap, it has pretty much been exclusively about politics. I don’t suppose I can blame myself. It’s been a pretty brutal, thuggish, surreal and ultimately inspiring and history-making two years. I’m so tightly wound about the whole situation that it will probably take some time for me to unwind and be able to actually concentrate and write something worthwhile. Hopefully, I will get there.

One of the many things that I hope will change for the better in these United States is the view that science is suspect and not to be trusted. It seems as if the United States, as a whole, has come to the viewpoint that ignorance is not something to be ashamed of, but to actually be celebrated. It’s those pointy-headed intellectuals who are causing all the trouble, such as pointing out that the Earth, our Earth, is in trouble and the human race may suffer from our neglect of the only planet we have, or by observing that religious fundamentalists who insist on a 6000 year-old universe are at odds with every scientific conclusion in every realm of science (e.g., geology, cosmology, genetics, archeology, etc.) Somehow, the people who promote logical thinking based on scientific facts and reasoning have become “the enemy.” I find that beyond comprehension, and that must change if (in the short term) we want to remain competitive with the rest of the world and (in the longer term) want to survive as a species.

Knowledge, and the ability to act upon that knowledge, one of the few things that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Oh sure, opposable thumbs really helped. Willful ignorance, on the other hand, is likely to sentence us to irrelevance, if not total oblivion. I hope this distrust of science and the conclusions about the universe we inhabit that have been reached by using the scientific method is discarded as a primary motivation in our country.

Sitting in a hotel room on the evening after a historic election in America.

I’m in Ft. Worth, Texas, for a business meeting. I’m not really sure when I will have the opportunity to actually post this, as I am not equipped for wireless. “Where were you, granddad, when President Obama was elected?” “Ft. Worth, Texas, grandson. I remember it well, never forget it. I had the greasy pork chops.” You might guess that this is not the place I would have chosen to be during such an amazing evening. But, that is where I was. I could have been glued to the television all evening at home as well as here. My only real annoyance is that my hotel (in Texas, remember) did not have MSNBC. I ended up flipping between PBS and CNN. I really wanted to hear what Rachel had to say.

What an amazing thing we just saw. I was just in awe at some of the pictures that were shown and some of the numbers as they coming in. Obama won the District of Columbia something like 97% to 3%, and he carried some traditional “red” states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. I am not black, so I know, without a doubt, that I don’t have any clue about the emotions that black people in America were feeling last night. I had some tears in my eyes when I saw pictures of black women, young and old, jumping up and down, hugging each other and crying. I had a broad smile that lasted for a long time when I saw pictures of people of all shapes, sizes and colors, celebrating their victory, our victory, or listening in rapt attention to President Elect Obama’s speech. The fact that he is a black man both did and did not matter, at the same time, which is quite an accomplishment on his part.

This is a historic moment in American history, and not too many people are trying to dismiss it as anything less than one of the more important events that have happened in this generation. I lived in Alabama and Mississippi during the 1970’s. There was a restaurant in my little town that still had “White Only” and “Black Only” signs over its outside service windows. White girls going out on a date with black boys at the high school in the town next to mine was a cause for not just concern, but out and out panic and a demand for immediate action. I missed the terrible events of Birmingham and Philadelphia, Mississippi by only a handful of years. So, I feel I have a little understanding about just how historic last night was.

We grew up a bit as a nation yesterday. Oh, I have no delusions about the sorry state of race relations in the country. However, this may go a long way to working those issues out. This is Jackie Robinson playing for the Dodgers raised to the nth power. Many people are saying much about what this means, and I am not going to pretend I am adding anything to that conversation. These are just my private thoughts. But watching the statements of both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, both Republicans, was quite amazing. They knew what this meant, and were not shy about saying it. I swear that Dr. Rice’s voice was quivering. (On a tangential thought, I am sure she will make a fine President of Football Operations for the San Francisco 49’ers. You go, girl!)

Here are some other random thoughts, in no particular order.

For all the joy and feelings of good will that was bouncing around last night, there are still some very unhappy people in this country. The person I rode into work with this morning is one of them. He was saying how upset he was and how stupid the people of this country are. He predicted “dire things” will happen, but never really specified what these might be. My only response was something along the lines of, “Hey, given how strong your feelings are about this, I am not about to change your mind in 30 seconds. But given what George Bush and the Republicans have done to this country in the last eight years, I would have thought that you might be happy with a change.” But some people are so set in their ways, all they can see is “socialist” or “tax and spend liberal”, or even “terrorist sympathizer.” I am very discouraged that there are so many people like that in this country. I feel sorry for them, really, which would no doubt really piss them off further. But really, how closed minded do you have to be to still think those things of the President Elect if you have ever watched a single speech or debate? Where are these outlandish opinions coming from? Well, I know where they come from, but why do people still feel that way after almost two years of campaigning?

Television coverage… Well, like I said, I really would have rather watched MSNBC. PBS was O.K. It certainly was more low key and less high tech than CNN. CNN, just like most of our society, seems to be all about splashy, attention demanding high tech glitzy… diversions. CNN is much too enamored of their cute graphics, touch screens, whizzing in-and-out captions (with very loud sound effects). That 3-D “holographic interview room” was just incredibly lame. Jeez. We want to know the details about the election, not how cute your graphics department boys can get. Wolf Blitzer really is a dope sometimes, and he doesn’t ad-lib very well at all. At one point, he got all excited with the next round of states where the polls had just closed, and he said something like “now here are the latest projections of our projections.” Yep, got a little tripped up there, Wolf. I was actually impressed that PBS had David Brooks of the NY Times on as the conservative analyst, opposite the liberal analyst Mark Shields, and “Bobo” Brooks was actually very good. He doesn’t have a very good reputation among the progressive bloggers, as he is known for putting forth some pretty specious arguments and for being, at times, very intellectually dishonest. But last night, he was great. He was very up-front about what a great night it was for Obama and the Democrats and how many problems that the Republican Party faces. I may have to reassess his columns in the NYT. At least, until he turns into a twat again. Then, I reserve the right to, once again, change my mind.

I thought the concession speech by John McCain was very gracious and sincere. Where has this guy been for the last eight months? I don’t believe that a gracious concession speech is enough to clear his name, after all the things he tried to fling at Obama in this campaign. I hope John McCain does some long, deep soul-searching in the next few months. Perhaps he might start asking himself questions like, how he ended up so far astray from the values that he says he cherishes. Even George Bush said some very nice things about the President Elect and his family. Again, that in no way excuses what he has subjected this country to, but it was nice to hear him say something gracious and not say something really stupid like “nook-you-lar” or “the Democrat Party.”

Here’s another off-the-top-of-my-head thought… If the networks are reporting that the wife of one of the two candidates in a presidential election are reporting was seen in tears a few hours before the first polls have closed, then perhaps it probably is going to be a long night for that particular candidate. Wife… tears… not a happy time. They probably weren’t arguing about whether John keeps forgetting to put the toilet seat down.

Here’s another one for you. I really, really, REALLY hope that Sarah Palin becomes the most visible face of the Republican Party. If she does, I think the party will fracture into two pieces. I don’t think the big business, small government types in the party are going to let the lunatics run the asylum. Oh, they’re fine to rile up when they need the “value voters” to come out in force on Election Day. But they really don’t want them to actually set the agenda for the party. If that happens, I think the Republican Party is doomed, as it currently exists. Now, I am of the opinion that this country needs two strong political parties, if for no other reason than to keep each other in check. A country with only a single strong party is just asking to become the next Soviet Union. But this concept really only works well if both parties really sort of play by some sort of established rules and don’t really try, like the Karl Rove-led Bushies did, to smash the Democrats and cast them into the political backwaters of this country for years to come. That ain’t kosher. But, it won’t bother me in the least if the current brand of Republicanism is totally discredited. Let them spend a generation in the hinterlands, a regional party made up of the old Confederacy and a few other sparsely populated Rocky Mountain states. They can be the Party That Says Not Only No, But Hell No!! Let’s see how that suits them for a while. Maybe they will eventgually get their act together and start acting in the best interests of this country, rather than to enrich themselves and to gain total political domination in perpetuity. Go, Sarah, go! See how much of an embarrassment you can actually be at the TOP of the ticket, instead of as number two!

Lastly, I am sooooo glad this election is finally over. I was so burned out, and yet, so scared at the same time. I just could not imagine what this country would be if McCain and Palin were in charge for four years. I am so relieved that it is over and the outcome has been all that I could have wished. Oh, there were several races that I sure wish had turned out differently (e.g., Michelle Bachman and James Inhofe), but for the most part, this was pretty good.

I am just wondering how Medgar Evers and Dr. King would have felt today. Pretty damn good, I would think.

I am very proud of this country today. I can actually believe that maybe, just maybe, brighter days really are ahead of us.

I'm out of town for a couple of weeks...

I'm not too fond of business trips, and especially not fond of two of them back to back. So, there won't be much in the way of new posting activity here until... after election day! At which point, I may have quite a bit to say. I'm going to be in Texas on election night, so it is going to be a somewhat interesting experience, to say the least.

Sarah Palin has apparently gone completely off the deep end!

Yeah, I know that, in politics, hyperbole on the campaign trail is to be expected, and you really need to paint your opponent in the most unflattering light possible. But, you know, it seems that if such as strategy is to be effective, it needs to be at least somewhat plausible. This... This is just ridiculous.

From HuffPo:

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put our trust in you."

She has made that “next step” in the progression of accusations; from wanting to “redistribute YOUR wealth” to “socialist”, directly now to “communist”. “Barack Obama is going to gather up YOUR income, YOUR property, YOUR television set, YOUR pickup truck with the gun rack in the rear window, and give it all to someone else! You will be left with nothing!” That seems to be what Sarah Palin is saying in the above quote.

Communist? Communist!?!? The strategy that the Republicans seem to have settled on these days involve using plays from the 1930 playbook about race and the 1950 playbook about the Great Red Scare. They may be really stoking the fires that burn within the hardcore 35% that will always go with whatever wingnuttery they hear, so long as it accuses a Democrat of something they don’t like. But winning over any undecideds that remain? I am pretty dubious. To me, this makes Palin look like one of the screaming Blue Meanies.

I really did enjoy this story from the Daily Telegraph in the U.K. It appears that some Republican strategists are much more willing to talk to an English daily than an American one, in some pretty upfront terms. I’m not resting easily until this is over, but boy, if all the Republican insiders can do is worry about the Democrats not having the 60-40 super-majority in the Senate, this is all looking really good.

It can’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people.

Thoughts on McCain/Palin “supporters”, racism and the worst run presidential campaign ever.

The last few months have been excruciating. Even though I am a terrible cynic, I still seem to be enough of an idealist that I end up being crushed when Republicans and conservatives throw away all pretense of playing fair and ethical. As a person who really believes in rational behavior and fact based logic, I am just astounded when I see "adults" act like spoiled twelve year olds who will throw tantrums when they don’t get want they want or think they can get away with outlandish lies and they won't get caught.

I was going to say something about the strange, sad case of Ashley Todd, the McCain campaign worker who came up with a pretty outlandish story of being assaulted by a “six foot four black man” who robbed her at knife point, carved a “B” (a backwards one, interestingly enough, like something one would do when looking in a mirror and not really think about what it is going to look like to someone else) into her cheek and told her that she would be an Obama supporter, all because this guy supposedly saw a McCain bumper sticker on her car. As everyone now knows, this story was a complete fabrication on her part.

Now, what bothers me about this is not that one psychologically troubled person can make up an absurd story for whatever reason. She probably honestly thought she would be helping the McCain campaign, plus she would be getting some media attention out of it as well. What she really needs, at this point, is some professonal help. And I don’t believe for a minute that McCain campaign, at the beginning, had anything to do with staging this. However, what I am extremely bothered by is how the right wing nut jobs (I’m talking about YOU, Drudge), including some local officials in the McCain campaign, latched on to this and pushed it in order to…. And that’s the rub. What exactly were they trying to accomplish? Scare the electorate about black men in general? The idea is that a big scary black guy is just waiting around every corner to jump out and accost young white women?

If that’s the idea behind all this, then these morons have just shown themselves for the racists they truly are. They have apparently dropped trying to relive the 1960’s. They have traveled further back in time to the 1930’s and 40’s, where all one had to do was accuse a black man of anything, and everyone, including law enforcement, automatically assumed the guy was guilty. No real evidence was needed. More often than not, the accused was grabbed out of his home, hogtied and then lynched. That seems to be the images these racist a**holes were trying to conjure up by pushing this story.

Fox News seemed very interested in pushing this. From a story at HuffPo:

Earlier today, John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

This is just extremely bizarre logic, if one could even refer to it as logic. Even if this were true, why would a single attack on a McCain worker, regardless of how horrendous it was, make Obama supporters suddenly “feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee?” What has that got to do with anything? I certainly never saw Fox News say anything of the sort about the reported violence against reporters and Obama supporters at Sarah Palin rallies. To Fox News, those alleged incidents (even though a number are on video) are something beneath notice. But one attack on a McCain (white female) worker by a (scary black) Obama supporter is somehow supposed to alter the thinking patterns of a nation? And this guy is an executive vice-president of the network!?! And now that this ridiculous story has been shown to be a complete fabrication, with Todd facing some punishment over giving false statements to law enforcement officials, where is Drudge? Where is Fox News? Where are the McCain campaign officials who pushed this story to the media? Are we going to hear any apologies, heartfelt or otherwise? No, probably not. That’s not the wingnuts’ style. Just go on to the next big “story” and pretend that the last one never existed… That’s how Republicans and conservatives operate these days.

Truly, I do not understand how these people can live with themselves. Yes, I desperately want the Democrats, MY team, to win this election. I cannot stand what the power mad crooks and thugs have done to this country in the last eight years. But I would never think about stooping to the depths that these people do, on an every day basis, to try to achieve those goals.

“Repugnant” doesn’t even come close.

Cassini comes within fifteen miles of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

The picture and following text are from the Oct. 20th issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology. Sorry, no link, as it is a subscriber-only web site.

NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft imaged Saturn’s moon Enceladus from only 26,000 mi. as Cassini climbed away after passing within only 15 mi. of Enceladus’s surface Oct. 9. The daring dive was made to sample the geysers of water and other contents that explode from fissures in the surface such as the giant canyon that cuts across half of the 330-mi.-dia. Enceladus. The resolution of this raw unprocessed image is 1,650 ft. per pixel. A second dive is planned Oct. 31. Enceladus is one of several areas around Jupiter, Saturn and Mars where the search for water is intensifying in relation to the search for alien life (see p. 56). NASA/JPL/SSI image.

The Enceladus flyby down to 15 mi. is enabling the Cassini fields and particles teams to start indentifying specific constituents, like more complex carbons, that had not been seen in the plumes before an August approach down to 31 mi., says Cassini project scientist Bob Pappalardo. During the earlier flyby, the dust analyzer instrument could tell that the plumes form a fist-shaped structure at higher altitude above Enceladus. But this time, flying much lower, the instruments could detect “individual finger-shaped plumes” making up the jets as Cassini zoomed through at 40,000 mph., Pappalardo told Aviation Week & Space Technology.

-snip-

Cassini scientists are elated, Pappalardo says, because this new information could help build evidence that Enceladus may harbor a subsurface ocean, warm enough to host a stew of living organisms a billion miles from Earth.

These are just absolutely astounding photos. I just can’t find any appropriate words about how amazing I find our ability to explore our solar system. Just think, for a moment, about how many brilliant minds have contemplated might what actually be out there and what it might look like. And now, we are finding out!

It’s amazing how many people and places in America, according to Republicans, do not represent “true America”.

Here is just a smattering of what some Republicans have said this week.

We have the brother of the Republican Presidential candidate calling northern Virginia “communist country.”


One of McCain’s staffers apparently agrees, saying of the same area of Virginia, “it is not real Virginia.”


The Republican Vice-Presidential candidate said that she really enjoys coming to those places that represent “real America.”

Here’s a good one from North Carolina.

Warming up a crowd in North Carolina on Saturday, Republican Rep. Robin Hayes offered the diagnosis that "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

His remarks came shortly after he had said he would "make sure we don't say something stupid, make sure we don't say something we don't mean."

And then, this guy had the actual gall to deny he had ever said something like this. Nope, never said that. Lie-bural press! And then, a recording of the whole thing turned up! Ha, not only is he an idiot, he's a liar as well! Boy, I bet he felt like a complete tool.

But the winner of this week’s award for over-the-top “us vs. them” award goes to Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who had the following gem:

In a television appearance that outraged Democrats are already describing as Joseph McCarthy politics, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed on Friday that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle held anti-American views and couldn't be trusted in the White House. She even called for the major newspapers of the country to investigate other members of Congress to "find out if they are pro-America or anti-America."

Hoo Ha!! I am SO tired of Republicans telling us that anyone that does not agree with the are not “real Americans” or “communists” or whatever other thing that pops into their pointy little heads they think they can use to insult Democrats. But I have noticed something about this exclusive (dual meaning there, if you think about it) universe the Republicans have constructed for themselves. It’s like that episode of Star Trek TNG, where people keep disappearing off the ship, galaxies and then star systems disappear. The entire universe keeps shrinking until it only encompasses the Enterprise and Dr. Crusher. Then, parts of the ship starts disappearing, like the engines. Smaller and smaller it gets, until only a single person lives in the entire universe.

That’s sort of what is happening to the Republican party right now. The more and more people decide that the current Republican party is, essentially, full of bull crap and endorse Obama or criticize Sarah Palin, the more that small, hard, hot core of tribalism redraws the line around their universe, the “true America.”

Isn’t that funny? The more exclusive you want your universe, the more exclusive it becomes! You are certainly going to be hanging out with a lot of people (although less and less every day) who share exactly the same opinion as you do, but you probably aren't going to win a lot of elections that way. Waiter, table for a party of one, please.

Todd Palin really shows his class.

The sign says, in full (since it is cropped a bit on the bottom), “Charles Manson was a community organizer.”

I see… So, the attempt now is to link Barack Obama to Charles Manson, since they were both “community organizers”, by the husband of the Republican nominee to be vice-president. Because, you see, “community organizers” are anti-American fascists if not downright terrorists and mass-murderes. Nothing good can EVER come of trying to organize communities of normally disenfranchised people to make them part of the system and actually try to better their situation.

It’s amazing what conservatives attempt to do to the English language. Long ago, they succeeded in turning the word “liberal” into a dirty name. When the name “San Francisco” is uttered, you know that can only mean one thing: gay! The same goes for “Hollywood.” Liberal elitist snobs that might as well live in a separate universe from “real Amuricans.” And they have gotten away with it for decades.

Now, however, it appears that they are overreaching JUST a bit. “Community organizer” is now something that needs to be loathed and ridiculed? These people are so unhinged that they do not realize how completely idiotic they look and sound. I suppose a couple of reasons are 1) there are many, many other unhinged people out there that will agree with anything anybody says, so long as it denigrates their “enemies”, i.e., liberals and Democrats, and 2) the media continually lets them get away with it. They rarely, if ever, get called on their completely insane behavior. After some time, this kind of behavior becomes “normalized”, such that complete and utter buffoonery is expected. Not only is it not worthy of criticism, it (no matter how ridiculous) is required behavior. Rush Limbaugh and the rest of “the gang” have taught us that.

I just want to finish with one question. What would have happened if Michelle Obama had been photographed holding up such a sign, trying to link John McCain with one of the most infamous, insane mass-murderers this country has ever known?

IOKIYAAR. (It’s O.K. if you are a Republican.)


Photo and story from Balloon Juice.

Newsflash! Barack Obama “pals around” with Bat Boy!

What does it say about Barack Obama when he consorts with known sub-humans with a penchant for drinking the blood of helpless animals, like newborn calves, lambs and kittens? Of course, my friends, I don’t care anything about Bat Boy, who is a washed up vampire wanna-be and who is just about the creepiest looking thing you have ever seen that should have been put out of his misery at birth, which would have saved the rest of the world from ever having to look at him so that we don’t have to all turn away in disgust and loathing. No, I don’t care about Bat Boy at all. But, my friends, I think Senator Obama should come clean, immediately, about his “relationship” with this freak of nature, of which I do not care about in the least. My friends, why won’t Barack Obama tell the American public the truth? He says that he doesn’t know Bat Boy personally, only that he saw him on the cover of the National Enquirer while waiting in the checkout line of his supermarket. But how do we know that is the entire truth? Senator Obama has had his picture in newspapers before. Bat Boy is in the newspapers. There is an obvious connection between the two that has yet to be explained! My friends…

No, no. Please put down that wooden stake and mallet. Senator Obama is a kind and decent man. Except he just might be in league with Satan, if you know what I mean. But I don't care about that.

McCain: "One of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country..."

The other night at the (mercifully) last presidential debate, John McCain came up with a doozy of a line. It’s in the title, but I will repeat it here for full effect.

“ACORN is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Well now. That’s frightening. Wow. “Maybe destroying the fabric of democracy” certainly sounds pretty damn scary. I’d rather they didn’t, if it’s all the same to them. I kinda like the fabric of our democracy as it is. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, et. al., picked it out, you know. I think we should keep it. What the hell is ACORN, anyway? I imagine that whole delivery would have helped McCain out a little more if more listeners had a clue about what McCain was on about. A sloppily run voter registration organization represents one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country? He can’t really have said that, right? I mean, there was Florida in 2000 and possibly Ohio in 2004. There are proven cases, like the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming “incident.” Maybe these are not truly examples of “voter fraud”, but if I were McCain, I don’t think I would really say much about irregularities that occur on Election Day.

Really, John, were you just practicing your hyperbole? ‘Cause you really suck at it, you know? Maybe you need to put a little more topspin on it.

News Flash! Either Sarah Palin is an out-and-out liar, or she cannot read.

BYLINE NOTE: Originally posted on Oct. 13. Something about Blogger is putting everything under Sept. 29th.

Well, I was wrong. I had hoped that I wasn’t going to post anymore about Sarah Palin, the Caribou Barbie of the wingnuts of the world. She really is an orange juice squeezer in the universe of intelligent discourse. After she’s done, all that’s left is sort of this fetid husk, devoid of everything that an orange is really about, that only slightly resembles the piece of fresh fruit it once was. Only bits of pulp and a few seeds are left. Everything meaningful about the orange has been sucked dry.

I think that analogy is worthy of a post, all by itself.

The report out of the Alaska legislature makes it very plain that Sarah Palin abused her power as governor. The following quote is from a piece by John Cole at Balloon Juice.

Despite the finding of a legislative report that she had broken the state’s ethics law in the scandal dubbed Troopergate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Saturday that the report actually cleared her of any “legal wrongdoing or unethical activity.”

***

The investigation said she violated Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which states, “… each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

Palin said she’s happy the report affirmed her right to fire Monegan. But she said she still doesn’t think she abused her power like the report says she did. In fact, she said she considered herself vindicated.

In a brief conference call with press reported by the Anchorage Daily News, Palin said, “I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.”

And here is John’s reaction to this.

I don’t know how to react to this. I really just don’t. When someone is that willing to look at you and just flat out make shit up and reject facts, there really is nothing you can do without driving yourself insane.

I totally agree. I guess, with that kind of thought process, one could possibly come to the conclusion that the Earth, contrary to ALL immediately available evidence, is only 6000 years old and that George Bush is a great president. Facts no longer matter to these people, even facts that have JUST been published in just about every major newspaper in the country. To go around and say something that is 180 degrees opposite of what the report actually says is, to me, a symptom of something pathological. As I said in the title, she is either flat out delusion or that she has absolutely no qualms about telling lies that can be immediately proven incorrect. What kind of rational person does this? This is George Bush raised to yet another power. Or lowered, which may be the more apt description. And this is the person that a significant number of people in this country think is not only ready to be President, but that she is the best of the four candidates (Pres., and VP)!

I guess John Cole is correct. If someone tries to analyze this from a logical perspective, you’ll drive yourself crazy. There IS no answer that makes sense. And I find that very, very disturbing.

I would like to wake up now, because I’m not enjoying this dream at all.

This IS all a dream, right? I mean, all this crap cannot really be happening in the United States of America.

The Dow Jones had its worst week in history. Billions and billions of dollars of wealth (at least, on paper) have been wiped out. People are now worth about 20% less than they were ago a few weeks ago. The financial markets look to be really melting down, and it has turned into a worldwide epidemic. England has just frozen all assets belonging to Iceland, after that country took some pretty drastic action to save itself from bankruptcy, and England doesn’t like the fact that they may not get all their money in Icelandic institutions back. This is getting really scary, and a lot of very smart economists are very worried.

And what have we got going on in the race for the most important political office on the face of the planet? We have John McCain and his Caribou Barbie doll, Sarah Palin, essentially whipping their crowds into a frenzy, calling Barack Obama all sorts of names and trying to tar him with some very dubious associations. And their crowds, taking their cues from those two, are going Full Monty. Catcalls of “terrorist!” and “kill him!” are being shouted out at Republican rallies. It has gotten so bad that McCain now has tried to tamp down the outright hatred and fear of his supporters. He took the microphone away from one lady (who looked and spoke like she had about a sixth grade education) who said the Obama is “an Arab.” He said that Obama is a decent human being and a good America who he had very deep political differences with, and McCain’s supporters at this rally actually booed him! They were booing their own party’s presidential candidate for, I guess, not agreeing that Obama is a terrorist.

I saw one clip on MSNBC, either Countdown or the Rachel Maddow show, where someone with a cell phone camera were asking questions of people streaming into a Sarah Palin rally. Many people, not just one or two, flat out stated that Obama is a terrorist. Not a “terrorist sympathizer”, but a “terrorist.” It’s funny, but I had thought that to actually be a terrorist, you have to have blown up a building or a car, and actually tried to do physical damage to people and/or property. It appears to me that these nutcases have totally lost track of the meanings of words. Anyone they dislike enough, they can label as a terrorist. It used to be that they just called their enemies “liberals.” Granted, there was a lot of venom and hatred associated with that name, but I guess that is no longer good enough. No, they have to now call their enemies “terrorists.”

It appears to me that John McCain has totally lost control of his campaign. He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t win on any of the issues, and his attempt at character assassination has blown up (pun not intended, or maybe it was) in his face. It has gotten so bad that very conservative columnists like George Will and David Brooks have written extremely critical columns of how the McCain campaign is being run.

I believe that McCain was trying to show what an untrustworthy and untruthful person Obama is (good luck with that), but he didn’t count on the outright lunatics of his faithful taking that one step further. No mere character assassination is good enough for them. No, they have to actually think the candidate from a major political party of the United States of America is an actual terrorist. “Obama doesn’t respect the flag?” Pfft. Small potatoes. Let’s go for the gusto!

If this were really happening, of course, I might be pretty worried that some crackpot might get so wound up that he might just try to act on all this hatred that is being whipped up in the name of winning an election. I mean, it isn't like this country doesn't have a history of violence, especially toward black men. Right? And given what we are seeing out of the run-of-the-mill McCain supporters, I would imagine that there might be some nut out there who likes guns enough and dispises Democrats in general and Obama in particular to actually maybe try to take a pot shot at him. Like those three people arrested in Denver a couple of months ago, armed to the teeth, on a "mission" to take out Obama? I mean, in a sane world, politicians would be very careful before trying something like this.

This is on the same day, of course, that the investigative report from the Alaska state legislature came out that concludes that Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office. This is the same Sarah Palin that has been the main attack dog, accusing Obama of being untrustworthy. From HuffPo:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report to a bipartisan panel that looked into the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The inquiry looked into her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce and custody battle with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

Monegan's firing was lawful, the report found, but Palin let the family grudge influence her decision-making _ even if it was not the sole reason Monegan was dismissed.

--Snip--

The report notes a few instances in which Palin pressed the case against trooper Mike Wooten, but it was her husband, Todd, who led the charge. Todd Palin had extraordinary access to the governor's office and her closest advisers and he used that access to try to get Wooten fired.

Gov. Palin knowingly "permitted Todd to use the governor's office and the resources of the governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired," Branchflower's report reads.

I am wondering just what Todd Palin would find to keep himself busy if he became “The First Vice-Dud.” And people thought Jimmy Carter’s brother was an embarrassment.

So, I guess I have concluded that I have been dreaming. Reality just cannot be this weird. I really have to stop eating that cold pizza before I go to bed.

Unpleasant Dream photo from here.

You know, I am starting to get REALLY worried about this financial mess.

It’s beginning to look like one of those domino things you set up as a kid, where you push on the one at the end and it eventually causes every single domino set on its edge to tumble down. Oh, it was pretty while it was all in motion, but when it was all over, you were left with quite a mess that took a while to clean up.

If Paul Krugman is saying stuff like this, we all better hope that someone intelligent does something intelligent very soon.

The question now is whether these moves are too little, too late. I don't think so, but it will be very alarming if this weekend rolls by without a credible announcement of a new financial rescue plan, involving not just the United States but all the major players.

Why do we need international cooperation? Because we have a globalized financial system in which a crisis that began with a bubble in Florida condos and California McMansions has caused monetary catastrophe in Iceland. We're all in this together, and need a shared solution.

Why this weekend? Because there happen to be two big meetings taking place in Washington: a meeting of top financial officials from the major advanced nations on Friday, then the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting on Saturday and Sunday.

If these meetings end without at least an agreement in principle on a global rescue plan -- if everyone goes home with nothing more than vague assertions that they intend to stay on top of the situation -- a golden opportunity will have been missed, and the downward spiral could easily get even worse.

What should be done? The United States and Europe should just say "Yes, Prime Minister." The British plan isn't perfect, but there's widespread agreement among economists that it offers by far the best available template for a broader rescue effort.

And the time to act is now. You may think that things can't get any worse -- but they can, and if nothing is done in the next few days, they will.

Taxi to the Dark Side.

I would like to make clear that this is not a movie review. I sometimes do movie reviews at this website, and this isn’t one of them. This is about the content of Taxi to the Dark Side, and what it says about us as a nation, our ideals, our morals, our souls.

The wingers of this country are so calcified in their politics and views of the world that this movie, if they were forced to watch it, would probably be viewed with the same scorn and distain as something from Michael Moore. But for those Americans who are still sentient beings, this documentary is something that should make you sick to your stomach.

I won’t go into the details of the film. Take a look at the IMDB entry here, if you want to know what the film is about. Let’s just say it lays out how the United States of America, that beacon of freedom for the entire world, has come to view torturing people, many of them who are not guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and of having a different skin tone than ivory white, as not only acceptable but mandatory. This film lays out in great deal how the U.S. ended up torturing and ultimately killing an innocent taxi driver. That is how his death certificate was signed by the U.S. military. “Homicide.” That’s what his death certificate says. And this unfortunate person is only one of over 100 people who have died while in the custody of the U.S. military.

As I said, I sat there through the entire film with a white-hot knot in my stomach. Anguish, anger, depression, you name it. It was all there. I was not sure what I was feeling when listening to the actual prison guards (M.P.’s, they were called) in describing how they treated prisoners in general and this guy in particular. They felt like they were under orders to do this, and they didn’t want to be see as “going against their buddies.” I have taken enough psychology courses to know that human beings, when put in very crazy and stressful situations, can end up doing things that they would have never considered they would be capable of doing. Still, I felt little remorse for the fact that they received a dishonorable discharge from the military. But the overwhelming feeling that I came away with is that Dick Cheney is a monster. Absolutely. He was behind it all, and said as much on some interviews he gave to people like Tim Russert. John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales are shown to be slimy little toadies who would do anything their masters called for them to do, including fabricating nonsensical legal judgments that do nothing else than protect their masters from legal jeopardy. All of them should be subjected to exactly the same treatment they decided to perpetrate on others.

Make no mistake about this. The Bush administration has done incredible damage to the United States of America that will take decades to repair, if we even can repair that damage. Politicizing every single department of the government, including the Department of Justice, is just one of their transgressions that will almost certainly go unpunished. But legitimizing and “normalizing” torture under the guise of “protecting” our country has changed the fabric of what this nation is and has proudly stood for since 1776. We have voluntarily brought ourselves down to the same level of the worst third world dictators and Soviet-era police states. We have no moral credibility left with the rest of the world. We cannot even morally object if some other country picks up one of our citizens or soldiers and tortures them. On what rational basis could be possibly object?

I absolutely cannot understand how these people can go to sleep at night. Aside from the fact that it is a proven fact that people being tortured will tell their interrogator anything to get them to stop, including very, very incorrect information, torture is morally wrong. Any country who aspires to be called “civilized” should not condone it; much less actively pursue new ways to administer it. What the United States has been doing for the last eight years is repugnant and sickening.

Morons like Rush Limbaugh wonder aloud (while getting very well paid for it) why some citizens of this country “blame America first.” Jesus Christ. Open your f*ckin’ eyes once in a while, and maybe you would understand.

Photo from here.