Have a nice cup of schadenfreude!

Joe the Plumber goes off on McCain, says he 'screwed up my life' - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

In praise of What You See Is What You Get by Chumbawamba

Ah, WYSIWYG. My copy of this CD is 11 years old and well-worn, mistreated, lost and found. It ripped nicely though, and sounds better than ever. It's incredibly well-produced. It is better than Tubthumping in spots. It was a commercial failure, which was probably good for Chumbawamba as artists. It's a scathing critique from the reluctant inside of techno pop culture. "Politics doesn't exist. Automobiles screetch when they come to a halt." Noteable tracks--all of them, but check out "Ladies for Compassionate Lynching" and "Pass It Along."

up down turnaround please don't let me hit the ground

Maybe my favorite song from the 1980s?

having what it takes

From a recent conversation about this silly, silly person.

XXX: One does not need to be 'anti-gay' to advocate against gay marriage.

Me: You're right: one merely needs to be incredibly, unbearably boring.

Shared Sacrifice Weekend Dissident Soldiers with special guest Jeff Paterson 2/13/2010 - Shared_Sacrifice on Blog Talk Radio

Shared Sacrifice Weekend Dissident Soldiers with special guest Jeff Paterson 2/13/2010 - Shared_Sacrifice on Blog Talk Radio:

We will explore the story of Marc Hall, Fort Stewart soldier and Hip Hop artist, who wrote an angry hip hop song about stop-loss and is being court-marshalled for it (the Army will actually ship him to Iraq or Kuwait for the trial). We will play the song, 'Stop Loss,' on the podcast. Jeff Paterson is a former dissident soldier himself, and is project director of Courage to Resist. He will talk to us about Marc's case, and his own refusal to deploy in the first Iraq war in 1991. During livestreaming, please share your opinions in the chat room or give us a call at (347) 327-9615.

What's in a name?

I'm sorry, but any movement funded by FreedomWorks, dontGO and Americans For Prosperity, and which pays Sarah Palin $100,000 to give a speech at a convention, isn't a "grass-roots movement."

The convention, by the way, is a for-profit event.  Sort of like a boat show or a tupperware party rather than a political convention. 

McCain and DADT: latest in a pathetic history of lies, opportunism, and betrayal

It's not that John McCain hates the military.  It's just that, like everyone else around him, soldiers exist to be exploited for his own political ends.  Three years ago, John McCain stated that, should the military's top brass support repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, he would be behind the change. Now, tainted by three years of divisivenes, a Republican Party that has surrendered to racists, conspiracy theorists and fundamentalists, clinging to national party status when a majority of its members are not sure Obama was born in the U.S., (while a fat majority believe the president should be impeached for...something), times have changed. McCain is like the unpopular boy at school who, desperately tagging along with whoever will accept him, changes his beliefs more often than his underwear. McCain's behavior in front of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense was as disgraceful as it was opportunistic:

with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen testifying to senators after President Obama's announcement that he would seek a congressional repeal of the 15-year-old policy. Mullen called repealing the policy, which bans openly gay men and lesbians from serving, "the right thing to do" and said he was personally troubled by effectively forcing service members to "lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens." Gates told the Armed Services Committee, "I fully support the president's decision." In response, McCain declared himself "disappointed" in the testimony. "At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," he said bluntly, before describing it as "imperfect but effective."

Pathetic and ethically indefensible, this latest unpredictable growth in McCain's brain calls into question the entire McCain narrative. Since he knows that, in his own military career, he served alongside brave soldiers of all sexual orientations, he is basically taking a giant whiz on veterans, the joint chiefs, and the Commander-in-chief. It's time to remind readers that, whatever the authenticity of McCain's actual suffering during Vietnam, there is strong evidence that he has since told a series of whopper-quality lies about that ordeal.  He plagiarized Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story about the "cross in the dirt" episode that allegedly occurred during his imprisonment (Solzhenitsyn himself, never above embellishment, likely lied about the episode in the first place). McCain has been particularly nasty on the Senate floor to Vietnam veterans, perhaps thinking he is in some way qualified to judge them and their life experiences. And obviously, he has never shown qualms about exploiting his POW history (whatever it may objectively be) to score political points. It's understandable that he thinks he's entitled to do that; he's enjoyed a life of government-supported privilege for all but three years of his life. But his unwillingness to share that privilege with other soldiers, when he knows deep down that his opposition to the repeal is just another McCain BS story is inhuman and, by the rules he purports to subscribe to himself, unpatriotic.

It's time to write John McCain's political obituary. More philandering than John Edwards, more profane than Dick Cheney, more deceptive than Richard Nixon, and a bigger political whore than Max Baucus, John McCain is everything we don't like about old politics.

Wheatland School Officials: Leave Us Alone, Outsiders! (and all the people in Wheatland who also think we're wrong...)

So the anti-anti-hate contingent in Wheatland is getting fed up with the national attention.  They can't be happy about the local attention they are receiving either--student and community dissent within and around Wheatland that should come as no surprise to those familiar with Wyoming culture and politics.  While I alluded in an earlier post to a creeping Colorado-style evangelical conservatism making its way into the state, and while some Wyomingites who were ignorant before 1999 are still ignorant, there are plenty of people in the Cowboy State who, regardless of political affiliation (quasi-Christian dominionists excluded) will stand up for coexistence and (though this may not be good enough all the time) tolerance. 

Of course, I also alluded to Wyoming stubbornness in a previous post.  Sometimes that stubbornness is so thick that no real deliberation seems able to pass through it.  Take the comments from Wheatland school superintendent about who, exactly, he has heard from in Wheatland.

Stuart Nelson, the superintendent, said the only negative comments he has heard about the board's decision are from out-of-towners, special-interest groups and former residents. He said all the local parents he's spoken with have supported the board's decision.

Not even that insensitive, arrogant claim can get through the reality gate. Three board members, after all, voted the other way; Wheatland High Principal Maureen Ryff has made no secret that she disagrees with the decision; the article points out that "On lockers at WHS and a gymnasium door are 'No Place for Hate' fliers that students printed and posted" and the article contains quotes from residents of Wheatland who disagree with the decision. That makes Nelson's comments especially irresponsible and, pardon my blatancy, stupid.  He's either not listening, or he's being dishonest with the media.  Neither trait will deliver a better image for Wheatland. 

Obama as Albatross?

Jonathan Martin reports that the GOP has a grand strategy to tie Obama to their mid-term Democratic Party opponents.

Some Democrats are hoping that, after the GOP Q&A last week, Obama will be an asset to Democratic candidates. I think that remains to be seen. Republicans have been able to covertly and overtly mobilize Teabaggers (revealing the lie in the TBs' claims that they are "independent" --their ultimate destination remains the GOP) and crush Dems so far. All the Obama-haters will keep coming out of the woodwork, while disenchanted progressives will stay home (or better yet, vote Green). Disinformation and disenfranchisement will take a chunk out of Democratic numbers, including Obama loyalists. The Democrats haven't developed a plan to win back those progressives (and don't seem terribly interested in doing so). And they have never been able to deal with disinfo/disenfranchisement.

There's still a lot of anger (much of it, yes, unconsciously racist) that Obama even won the presidency, and this is configurally, metaphorically, symbolically, and ultimately psychologically transposed into a hatred of the centrist Democratic agenda.

And all of that is in addition to those who concluded the first time around, or are coming around to a fresh conclusion, that conservatism deserves another chance. Progressive Democrats ignore all these facts at their peril. Independent progressives (including those who stare uncomfortably at their Democratic Party membership cards*) and those struggling to build third parties are already aware of these things, and should continue to debate conservatives on their own terms, taking the long view of political history whenever possible.



*I'm speaking allegorically of course, I know nobody actually carried Democratic Party membership cards...do they?

Where to go in Laramie on a Friday night

It's 10:50 PM on Friday night and I'm sitting in the studio at KOCA 93.5 with 15 other people, hanging out at the weekly broadcast of Meg Lanker's "Cognitive Dissonance." There are always a few students hanging out during the show, but tonight Meg has invited those who have an opinion on the recent Wheatland School Board debacle to stop by and share. So there are people of all ages here tonight, from all over Wyoming, with stuff to say. Progressives in the state are eager to let each other know, and to let the rest of the country know, that what happened in Wheatland is an abberation even in Wyoming.


A man known only as the Angry Malcontent delivers an editorial lamenting Obama's bipartisan naivete. The room bursts into applause at its conclusion. Shy around all the new people, I refrain from dropping the Marxist ordinance. 
I am impressed by how we find our spaces...from the protest of Dick Cheney's buying a name at UW's international center to the persistence of environmentalism in the state to a group of patient lefties of all ages hanging out at the community radio station on a Friday night. Will we forge enough space to be a home for people like the kids in Wheatland who now feel like they have nowhere else to go? To the poor people in Wyoming who feel as forgotten as the subway beggars of Seoul?  Only if we keep expanding the space.

For my progressive friends in New England--Peace Conference in Cambridge

Meredith Vieira, Ted Haggard, and Stupidity

Tanya Melendez, a friend of a dear friend, encourages everyone to write to TODAY@nbcuni.com and take Meredith Vieira to task for calling Ted Haggard's alleged journey away from homosexuality "inspirational."


Her letter reads:

I am writing to you to register my deep disappointment with Meredith Vieira's conduct during her interview with Gayle Haggard this morning on The Today Show.

Ms. Vieria ended her interview by saying that she thought that others going through similar situations might find Ms. Haggard's journey inspirational. I was horrified and offended by such a statement.

Mr. Haggard claims that he has been “cured” of his homosexual urges. And yet, the American Psychological Association warns against “conversion therapies”. From Psychiatric Times on October 10th: “The APA report stated that there is little evidence to suggest that efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay or lesbian to heterosexual are successful. In fact, the report found that such efforts can cause harm. The findings indicate that efforts to switch a person’s sexual orientation through psychological interventions not only don’t work but also can lead to loss of sexual feeling and to depression, anxiety, and suicide.”

Mr. and Ms. Haggard can believe what they like. But Meredith Viera is a journalist, she should not let The Today Show be a voice for medically inaccurate and dangerous information. Matt Lauer is famous for challenging Tom Cruise on his scientifically inaccurate information about psychiatry on the show. Ms. Viera should have done the same thing.

You cannot “convert” from therapy. It’s simply not scientifically true. Your show should say so, and say so clearly in a report aired during the same time slot as the valuable one the interview with Ms. Haggard held.

writing to the white house about student loan debt

At Education Matters, Cryn Johannsen launches another writing campaign: "With the overall response from the White House - when I participated in the telephone conference with Biden's Middle Class Task Force - it is clear that they are expanding IBR and trying to focus their attention on recent grads. That's perfectly fine, but I am more than convinced that they are being pressured by countless groups to not respond to the indentured educated class who are (a) older and (b) drowning in private student loan debt."

Read more here.

And the wheels in the heads of the Platte County School District trustees turn ever so slowly...

Last week, Platte County School District 1 trustees voted 4-3 against restoring Anti-Defamation League "No Place for Hate" banners in two Wheatland schools--West Elementary and, more disconcertingly I suppose, Wheatland High. District administrators, without any due process, had removed the posters solely because a few parents had complained about them (this is, at least, what the Board members claim; we're not sure who exactly complained), and the alleged complaints had come from parents who objected to the posters solely because of one of the groups listed on the poster as affiliated with the ADL's campaign: the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado.

Before I go on, I do think we have overlooked the fact that three members of the trustees voted to allow  the posters.

The whole episode actually makes anti-bias activists giddy, because it's such a blatant example of unwarranted, process-free administrative bias. Some parents complained about the posters, and the trustees had them taken down. Other people, students, and presumably not the children of the alleged complainers, asked that the posters be restored. The trustees refused. Get it? One set of people's desires are more important than another set of people's desires, and the trustees will even tell you why: Trustee Lee Dunham defended the decision by saying Wheatland is an "ultraconservative community," where a pro-gay agenda is unwelcome.

This admission by Mr. Dunham may well serve a similar function, eventually, as the blundering admission by one member of the old Dover School Board--remember the Board who overplayed their hand in 2005, losing their attempt to teach creationism-in-drag, costing the Dover district a lot of money that could have been used to educate children in sciences and other productive disciplines. After the Dover Board as a whole repeatedly promised the court and the press that they had no intention of teaching religion, and that intelligent design was merely a scientific, or scientific-philosophical theory, Dover Board member William Buckingham was found to have publicly said that his reason for supporting I.D. was that "[t]his country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such.”

Lee Dunham is making a similar admission--that this really is about enforcing a majority's ideology on a minority, an admission that is particularly damning because it is at odds not only with the democratic process, but also with the district's purported reasons for removing the signs!

Another trustee, Joe Fabian, took the boot from Dunham's mouth and placed it into his own, first slamming school administrators (AKA pointing finger at popular scapegoats) for allowing the "No Hate" banners in the first place, then reiterating that the community of Wheatland is extremely conservative and is not "pro-gay marriage" (nobody ever brought up gay marriage, not on the posters, not in the anti-hate campaign, etc., but whatever, I am losing the will to continue pointing out these trustees' inconsistencies). Fabian went on to say he believed the Anti-Defamation League--arguably the oldest, most across-the-board anti-hate organization in the world--is pushing an "agenda that is pro-gay marriage."

Actually, Fabian may be going for the hit parade of conservative stereotypery. Amanda Fry of the Platte County Record Times reported that Fabian answered an argument from students concerning tolerance for other points of view with this piece of logic:

What if someone is of the persuasion that they are an Evangelical, who believes very strongly in witnessing? And that’s a part of their being? You’re saying that they can’t do that. That’s why I have problems with it, because you’re restricting what somebody’s beliefs may be...

Does Fabian understand that he is, with this rhetorical move, justifying the actual restriction of one form of expression by appealing to the hypothetical, and highly unlikely restriction of another form of expression? (Not to mention the fact that nobody is "restricting what somebody's beliefs may be" but rather their expression...sigh, it sucks that one of my pet peeves is conflation).

Even though anti-bias activists are encouraged by the crass stupidity of the Wheatland trustees' behavior, and even though a protracted legal battle, should it happen, will ultimately vindicate the ADL and supporters of the anti-hate movement (at least one commentator has pointed out that the Equal Access Act requires schools to permit student-led organizations to express themselves in schools), watching this episode is painful. I am disappointed as a Wyomingite for two reasons: First, as unoriginal as this sounds, some people in our state haven't, and didn't ever, learn the real lesson of the Matthew Shepard murder: that although violence is a diffusive, constant storm that may fall on anyone at anytime, the presence of hate speech, and attitudes which metaphysically subordinate some groups underneath others, and dehumanization, all channel that constant storm of violence into specific sectors and niches. Moreover, the Wheatland trustees can't even seem to fathom that a visual marker of the mere existence of an organization whose worldview is opposed to your own does not weaken, compel, coerce or cajule you in any way. 

Second, I am disappointed because as someone who for the past decade has been involved in recruiting bright, creative, critical-minded students to come to college in Wyoming, I can say with absolute certainty that episodes like this make the University's and community colleges' jobs harder. Not only do we lose potential students and faculty who may be in LGBT categories, but we also lose non-LGBT people who simply don't want to live in what they fear will be a climate of intolerance. And when you're trying to sell someone on Wyoming, the oft-repeated phrase "Well, Laramie isn't like the rest of Wyoming" can only go so far.

I used to really believe that Wyoming's brand of conservatism was actually different than the conservatism found in other states. Although I am not a libertarian, I respect libertarians. But libertarians don't rule the various fiefdoms of Wyoming, nor the state as a whole. More and more, we see the creeping influence of the kind of especially objectionable Colorado, Idaho and Utah conservatives: Not so much "do whatever you want but leave me alone" as "do what we want...be what we want...or we will punish you." The problem is, this creeping moral fascism retains the Wyoming stubbornness that was at least comparatively harmless when it came from cowboy libertarians. Now, instead of having to negotiate with leave-us-alone conservatives, we have to fend off the attacks of cultural conservatives who can neither formulate an accessible argument, nor respect the democratic imperative to hear and extend to all sides equal argumentative consideration.

Lame.

Update #1: I am hearing the stirrings of a few folks here in the state who want to attend the next Platte County School Board meeting.  That sounds like a good idea for those who can make it.  This is not just a Wheatland matter.  Already, the issue is being covered nationally and internationally in the LGBT press.  Hopefully, other progressive outlets will continue to take up the cause as well.  We have to understand that we are fighting for the image of our state, as well as the human rights of students here, and everywhere.

And something else came to my mind as I was preparing for tonight's podcast: Diversity in educational contexts is good.  The Supreme Court has recognized this, and any good teacher, from K-postgrad, knows it too.  The example being set by the majority on the Platte County board undermines all the students in their jurisdiction.  It makes it less likely that they will be accepted in positions or admissions processes favoring an understanding of diversity.  It makes it less likely that they will understand how to interact in diverse environments once they get out of Wheatland.  So in that sense, too, this decision is lame.

Wheatland school board's anti-anti-hate position

Wheatland school board bans anti-hate banners - KJCT8.com

This is the story I've been following for the past two days with my commentary and analysis on KOCA 93.5 in Laramie, but tonight I'll be taking the issue global on the Monday evening podcast of Shared Sacrifice Nightly.

Trying to get a representative from the Wyoming ACLU on the show. Alternatively, or additionally, I hope to talk to a representative from the ADL. Anyone from the Platte County School District 1 trustees is also welcome to be on the show.

Board members have advanced two main arguments in support of their decision: (1) Since Wheatland is conservative, affiliation with GLBT groups goes against community norms (yeah, Board member Lee Dunham actually speaks for the entire community and invokes "community norms" with confidence in his authority to do so), and (2), conservatives and evangelicals will be bullied harassed for their anti-gay beliefs and receive no protection from the anti-hate campaign.

Queerty has already taken the issue national.