Health Care

via Wes

Somebody ideological choices survive...their hosts do not.

Slick Willie

Yikes...are things really that desperate in the Clinton camp that Bill comes out with a whopper like this:


"'Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning', said Clinton, 'I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers'[...]

I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq', said Clinton in 2003 while delivering commencement remarks at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss."

I actually remember being thoroughly disillusioned as, one by one, everybody bought Bush's bullshit. I wondered "Doesn't anybody read the paper? I was contacted about relief efforts in Iraq-they were looking for money, there was a humanitarian crises as a result of the sanctions from the first Gulf War. The No Fly Zone. Why the fuck is everybody (except for Blix, who was there) saying this guy has the bomb?"

They back away now, hoping that nobody will notice. I noticed. We noticed.

See...revisionism isn't just a Karl Rove/NeoCon thing...

And people wonder why I'm tooth and nail against another Clinton...

John Edwards

Iniatially, I was excited about John Edwards's campaign. He was, and remains, the only candidate really running on the idea that we have become enslaved to corporate interests, that the bulk of us are becoming poorer, and we haven't a hope in hell of ever reaching our parents level of wealth and comfort.

The question is, perhaps, at this increasingly late hour, whether he can go over the top in Iowa. Is his message resonating, or is he saddled as a loser? Is his message genuine?

Small Favors

You know its gonna be a good week already:

"Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, plans to resign his seat by the end of the year, congressional and Bush administration officials said Monday."

The Swan

...think I'm goin back

Seventeen years ago, the world lost one of its guiding lights-

It's the idea of an ugly duckling growing into a beautiful swan-

a bucky persian kid with a certain taboo proclivity and an outsized imagination

a messenger for you all

come to save you, save you

brothers and sisters, are you ready for salvation?

are you ready to do anything and everything bigger louder prouder

ready to stomp and drink and fuck in feather boa, prance and preen

and dream?

are you ready, Freddie?

are you?

-shortly after, I painted this information on my black BC Rich Warlock bass guitar, the kind you might of seen Nikki Six playing in 1984, in white nail polish, wrote more poetry, wore what I imagined would be a more appropriately blousy shirts, and formed a band, some how sad that, because I was so young, I had missed out, realizing that everybody, everywhere, had suddenly become young like me, because they now had to miss out, too.

We all miss out in the end.

Thanksgiving Prayer

Thanks.

Apropos (that's for you, Charles...) of Justin Munro of Scranton,Pa

via Wes:

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, the single stupidest human being ever spawned.

Wonder what genius he studied under?

The Stakes of the Election

On my way to campus this morning, I saw a late model Volkwagon idling, its driver presumably inside, waiting for the car to warm up.

On the back of the car was a sticker that said 01.20.09, reminding us when this dreadful historical nightmare of BushCo corporatism, and its cryptofascist neocons, might be over. Might...Be...Over...

See, the stakes of this election are far greater than just the end of Bush: We have to insure that it really is the end of Bushism.

We, as a nation, need to be sure that whoever we elect to undue the kind of autocracy that has tipped the balance of powers firmly in the direction of a kind of "elected" Imperator. Right now, none the presumptive front runners for both parties pass the smell test.

It is not a matter of one party or the other. It is a matter of the survival of this republic. Think it through, and remember: There is no good reason for unchecked executive power, for suspension of habeas corpus, for shadow governments, for torture, for wiretapping. I don't care who's doing it.

The Epistemology of the Annointing of Hillary Clinton: A Reader Response.

Stanley Fish, still suffering from a chronic and certainly fatal emeritus (a affliction exclusively among intellectuals where by the afflicted disguise declining intellectual vigor with what is know as being a smug prick) has decided everybody is being too mean to Hillary Clinton in light of her less than stellar moment during the debate:

"She could have then proceeded in a straight line to make her point and protected herself from the accusation – made by John Edwards on the spot – that she was talking out of both sides of her mouth. She wasn’t. It was a bad rap, although one she invited by failing to get the parts of her answers in the right order and thereby allowing her rivals to treat points that went together to form a whole as if they were separately, and inconsistently, made. "

Epistemologically speaking, if Fish weren't such lazy shit for brains, he would know that the socially constructed reality, which he has made his career with, would dictate, in this case, he is shill- a point I will work through in a little bit. Some of us still deal with actual students, Stanley...

later...

The socially constructed reality, in this particular case, is, in fact, not socially constructed at all, unless you are drinking buddies with Stan, who has managed to devolve the idea of a public intellectual, a la Edward Said, or Noam Chomsky, into just another pundit, a la Alan Colmes.

See, for those of us out here in what can be called "society", we are not really as in love as Hillary as Stan is. The problem with interpretative community, and the Fish's reading of this political text, and the rest of the pundit class as well, is that the assumptions which Fish basing this on are the assumptions of an elite corporate hegenomy, or in his case, a form of WASP deragement which is symptomatic of emeritus. Of course Hillary is the front runner, of course she should be president because she best represents their interests. Ideas of social and economic justice are meant to be facile. Universal Health Care is a Hillary brand, which, like Budweiser, proclaims it self to be beer when it is clearly not.

Hillary Clinton is the polite, safe way to show opposition to the disasterous, cryptofascist polices of George Bush and his NeoCon gangsters, with out the actual discomfort of really doing anything about this mess. Hillary would never make you confront the inconsistencies of your imported car, parked at Wild Oats, while you listen to some nominal world music on NPR and spout some "liberal" platitudes with your organic toothpaste...Yes, Hillary is a way to be progressive without all that progress. Wow, a aristocratic, hawkish white yuppie woman. That'll show'em...

For Stanley, being progressive without progress has always been the way to fly, because, at its core, his entire intellectual enterprise is pinioned to the ostensibly radical notion of reader response. On the surface, it would certainly appear to free literacies; however, in praxis, reader response merely piggybacks on other critical theories, because each brings its share of cultural assumptions, and, what is more, even having a articulated critical framework signifies a certain academic bearing which would privelege the ivorytowerism over a truly egalitarian reading of any text. Reader response is not a theory so much as it is a parasite on critical theory-kind of like its fat headed avatar.

Certainly, it would be interesting to see what Stan made of the Vegas debate, with Blitzer's hackneyed questions, the booing of Edwards and Obama-certainly, a sign that is criticism is correct, because the interpretive community, the audience, reacted accordingly.However, in my reading of that text, it is impossible to ignore the Fish/Clinton paradigm which framed the text, because it was so naked in doing so, especially with the semiotic plants working the textually field, all to get you to come to the same conclusion: Hillary is future. Stanley Fish knows more than you. Go with a winner.

But who wins in this narrative? The same guys who always win.

Islamic Extremists

Can somebody remind me who the bad guys are if these folks are the "good guys":

"A Saudi court has increased the sentence given to a gang rape victim to 200 lashes of the whip and six months in prison..."

"Huck"

Matt Taibbi's fascinating expose of Mike Huckabee.

Turns out, not too many people who know him 'heart' him.

???

"In a dramatic turn of events on Capitol Hill today, the State Department inspector general recused himself from all Blackwater-related issues after admitting to Congress that his brother served on the private security contractor's advisory board.

After initially rejecting allegations that his brother, Alvin "Buzzy" Krongard, was a Blackwater board member, Howard Krongard later told lawmakers that his brother was in fact on the board. "

As fast as you can say 'Halliburton', we find yet another backslappin', backroom, example of how BushCo does business.

"Socialized" Medicine

John Edwards threatens Congress's Universal Healthcare, because we do not enjoy the same. Ezra Klein reports that "...arguing about John Edwards' plan to strip members of Congress of their health care if they don't pass comprehensive reform. I'm always astonished at how bizarrely literally pundits act when they approach this idea. It's true that, in the strong form, its; unconstitutional. Edwards cannot, with his pen, deprive anyone of their health care. The Edwards Campaign, by contrast, says that it will take the form of a bill sent to Congress, which seems constitutional, though everyone says it would be impossible to pass. "

ZAPPADAN!

Aristocrats reminds us of the reason for the season...


"Yes, we're calling out to you - you over there with the hair on your head - step on up here and tell us what you can do to contribute to The Festival of Zappadan. What? You're not sure why you should give us presents? Well, I suppose it has been a whole year, and as American children you can't be expected to retain information that's not key to survival or plot continuity. So sit on back as Uncle Paul reminds you of the reason for the season.

Zappadan, like all good traditional winter festivals including Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, and Christmas (and even the more recent ones like Kwanzaa and Festivals of The Lights), are a celebration of death and rebirth. The winter solstice, the day with the shortest period of daylight for the unlucky bastards living in the northern hemisphere, is what gave the ancients their first clue that something important was happening around them. It got cold. Their gardens quit growing, the trees shed their leaves, and 'indoors' was invented. Every day, things got a little worse, colder and darker, really dismal, and a lot of the young ‘uns would be ready to give up hope entirely except some of the old farts who’d been around a while had been through it all before. They went off and got drunk and bribed their kids with presents to keep them quiet and everybody weathered the whole ordeal'.

Zappadan, unlike some of the other festivals, does not start the day Wal-Mart puts out the decorations. It starts on December 4, in honor of the sad day in 1993 when the modern day composer, Frank Zappa, refused to die for the last time. It ends on December 21, in honor of the day he was born. There is no messy Advent, no Lent, no Passover, or any of those complicated events that entangle the Christian calendar for the whole fucking year. Its end is closer to the Winter Solstice than Christmas and you can forget about it after that. No ashes on your forehead, speaking in tongues, or silly rituals involving not enough wine to get you ripped and silly dry wafers that stick to the roof of your mouth.

And, during each day of Zappadan, a miracle will happen..."

Whoops...

Wait...so Newscorp is supporting a Republican President Candidate?

Oh, they got it on tape, too...

This might be important.

Norman Mailer Dead

Always outspoken. Surly. Drunk and/or high. Ladies man. A little too macho: The world of arts and letters is a little poorer today.

I first read Armies Of The Night as an undergraduate. To that point, I had imagined the Anti War marchers to be something of material saints, and while I definately sympathized, why would such austere, sincere people, would want anything to do with a debauched low life hippy baiter as myself.

Then Mailer talked about puking bourbon on the march.

At the end of the day, movements such as this are about people taking a stand together, regardless of whether they are saints or sinners.

And sometimes, sinners like Mailer can resemble saints.

From the Times UK 2003:

"We went to war just to boost the white male ego

With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in...

Exeunt: lightning and thunder, shock and awe. Dust, ash, fog, fire, smoke, sand, blood, and a good deal of waste now moves to the wings. The stage, however, remains occupied. The question posed at curtain-rise has not been answered. Why did we go to war? If no real weapons of mass destruction are found, the question will keen in pitch.

Or, if more likely, such weapons are uncovered in Iraq — not a tenth, not a hundredth of what we possess — but, yes, if such weapons are there, it is also likely that even more have been moved to new hiding places beyond Iraq. If that is so, horrific events could ensue. Should they take place, we can count on a predictable response: “Good, honest, innocent Americans died today because of evil al-Qaeda terrorists.” Yes, we will hear the President’s voice speaking before he even utters such words. (For those of us who do not like George Bush, we may as well recognise that putting up with him in the Oval Office is like being married to a mate who always says exactly what you know in advance he or she is going to say, which also helps to account for why the other half of America loves him.)

The key question remains — why did we go to war? It is not yet answered. In the end, it is likely that a host of responses will produce a cognitive stew, which does, at least, open the way to offering one’s own notion. We went to war, I could say, because we very much needed a war. The US economy was sinking, the market was gloomy and down, and some classic bastions of the erstwhile American faith (corporate integrity, the FBI, and the Catholic Church, to cite but three) had each suffered a separate and grievous loss of face. Since our Administration was probably not ready to solve any one of the serious problems before it, it was natural to feel the impulse to move into larger ventures, thrusts into the empyrean-war!

Be it said that the Administration knew something a good many of us did not — it knew that we had a very good, perhaps even an extraordinarily good, if essentially untested, group of Armed Forces, a skilled, disciplined, well-motivated military, career-focused and run by a field-rank and general staff who were intelligent, articulate, and considerably less corrupt than any other power group in America.

In such a pass, how could the White House not use them? They could prove quintessential as morale-builders to one group in US life, perhaps the key group: the white American male. If once this aggregate came near to 50 per cent of the population, it was down to . . . was it now 30 per cent? Still, it remained key to the President’s political footing. And it had taken a real beating. As a matter of collective ego, the good white American male had had very little to nourish his morale since the job market had gone bad, unless he happened to be in the Armed Forces. There, it was certainly different. The Armed Forces had become the paradigmatic equal of a great young athlete looking to test his true size. Could it be that there was a bozo out in the boondocks who was made to order, and his name was Iraq? Iraq had a tough rep, but he was old and a blowhard. A choice opponent. A desert war with no caves in sight is designed for an air force whose state-of-the-art is comparable in perfection to a top-flight fashion model on a runway.

So Iraq was chosen. Our good people on high would rush to claim that our putative foe possessed a nuclear threat. Along the way, they presented President Saddam Hussein as the closet architect of 9/11. Then they declared that he ran a nest of terrorists. None of that held up on close examination but it did not have to. We were ready to go to war anyway. After 9/11, and the absence of Osama bin Laden’s body in Afghanistan or anywhere else, why not choose Saddam as the evil force behind the fall of the twin towers? We would liberate the Iraqis. Wantonly, shamelessly, proudly, exuberantly, one half of our prodigiously divided America could hardly wait for the new war. We understood that our television was going to be terrific. And it was. Sanitised but terrific — which is, after all, exactly what network and good cable television are supposed to be.

There were, however, even better reasons for using our military skills, but these reasons return us to the ongoing malaise of the white American male. He had been taking a daily drubbing over the past 30 years. For better or worse, the women’s movement had had its breakthrough successes and the old, easy white male ego had withered in the glare. Even the mighty consolations of rooting for your team on TV had been skewed. There was now less reward in watching sports than there used to be, a clear and declarable loss. The great white stars of yesteryear were for the most part gone, gone in football, in basketball, in boxing, and half-gone in baseball. Black genius now prevailed in all these sports (and the Hispanics were coming up fast; even the Asians were beginning to make their mark). We white men were now left with half of tennis (at least its male half), and might also point to ice-hockey, skiing, soccer, golf, (with the notable exception of the Tiger) as well as lacrosse, swimming, and the World-Wide Wrestling Federation — remnants and orts of a once-great and glorious centrality.

On the other hand, the good white American male still had the Armed Forces. If blacks and Hispanics were numerous there, still they were not a majority, and the officer corps, (if the TV was a reliable witness), suggested that the percentage of white men increased as one rose in rank to the higher officers. Moreover, we had knock-out tank echelons, Super-Marines, and-one magical ace in the hole — the best air force that ever existed. If we cannot find our machismo anywhere else, we can certainly settle in on the interface between combat and technology. Let me then advance the offensive suggestion that this may have been one of the cardinal reasons we went looking for war. We knew we were likely to be good at it. In the course, however, of all the quick events of the past few weeks, our military went through a transmogrification. Indeed, it was one hellion of a morph. We went from a potentially great athlete into a master surgeon capable of operating at high speed on an awfully sick patient. Now, even as the patient is being stitched up, a new and troubling question arises: have any fresh medicines been developed to deal with what seem to be teeming infections? Do we really know how to treat livid suppurations we were not quite prepared for? Or would it be better to ignore the consequences? Mightn’t we keep trusting our great American luck, our faith in our divinely protected can-do luck? We are, by custom, gung-ho. If these suppurations prove to be unmanageable, or just too time-consuming, may we not leave them behind? We could move on to the next venue. Syria, we might declare in our best John Wayne voice: You can run, but you can’t hide. Saudi Arabia, you over-rated tank of blubber, are you out of gas? And Iran, watch it, we have eyes for you. You could be our next real meal. Because when we are feeling this good, we are ready to go, and go again. We must. We have had a real taste. Why, there’s a basket-full of billions to be made in the Middle East just so long as we stay ahead of the trillions of debt that are coming after us.

Be it said: the motives that lead to a nation’s major historical acts can probably rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of its leadership. While George W. may not know as much as he believes he knows about the dispositions of God’s blessing, he is driving us at high speed all the same. He is more of a white male by at least an order of magnitude than any other boyo in America, yes, we have this man at the wheel whose most legitimate boast might be that he knew how to parlay the part-ownership of a major-league baseball team into a gubernatorial win in Texas. And — shall we ever forget? — was catapulted, thereafter, into a mighty hymn: All Hail to the Chief!"

The Difference between a Patriot and a Scoundrel

See if you can figure out the difference...

Of Land Based Invertebrates

As if the opposition party would actually stand up against the Inquisitors tell them what a five year old knows: Waterboarding is torture, and only bad guys do that stuff.

The question begs: Who would support such a nominee? Why, its, as Jello phrased it, banker butt licker Feinstein. And Schumer suggested him.

Nice work, folks. Nice.

FLETCHER THROWS IN THE TOWEL

As if you didn't see that one coming.

Congratulations, Governor-Elect Breshear.

Stein? Stein?

Yay! A Pro Creation film!

I'll bet you didn't know, but Ben Stein is taking on "big science" ?!?!?

Having your yellow cake and eating it, too.

In case you have forgotten that the Bush sold the war based on bullshit that anyone who had picked up a newspaper or watched the news knew was, in fact, bullshit (anybody remember Hans Blix practically begging), and because I don't want Hillary Clinton, the smartest woman in America, or any of the other candidates to get fooled (again) by the crafty masterminds currently in charge...

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT IRAN IS PURSUING NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Can we notch down the dick waving now?

New Poll finds

everything still sucks: Hillary, the war, the Republicans Candidates, energy prices, the economy... and Justin Munro, of Reading, PA, is a fucking idiot:

"'I'm pretty confident that time will prove that maybe going into Iraq was the right thing to do,' he said.

He also believes that Bush has not gotten enough credit on the economy: 'I think we'll look back on that, too, and see that the tax cuts were the right thing to do'."

Pull your head out of your ass, man. Really. What's wrong with you?

Obama

I'm still hurt and/or pissed, but Andrew Sullivan (!) has an interesting take on why Obama may be the man for the job:

"The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do. And a Clinton-Giuliani race could be as invigorating as it is utterly predictable."

Hmmm...things do suck right now, that's for goddamned sure...