Kentucky Green Party Forms

(reposted from politicalcontext.org)

From Joseph Gerth at the Louisville Courier-Journal, interesting and encouraging news about the newest state Green Party:

Tired of Democrats and Republicans who don’t speak to the issues or solve the problems important to them, about 35 people gathered Saturday in Anderson County to form the Green Party of Kentucky...
Geoff Young, a retired state government worker, said he decided last fall that there needed to be a Green Party chapter in Kentucky. “People in Kentucky are becoming desperate for a real alternative to the two established parties,” he said. “Many people, including myself, feel that the two established parties don’t offer enough new ideas, enough ideas that work and do not propose solutions that will actually address Kentucky’s most serious problems.” The party supports policies that would improve the environment and is opposed to war, Young said.

The article also details the challenges faced by third parties in Kentucky, challenges we are familiar with here at politicalcontext.org as part of our context2012 effort to publicize and offer a voice to similar alternative political organizations. Ballot Access News reports that: "In Kentucky, if a group polls 2% of the vote for President, it is a qualified minor party for the next four years, and can nominate by convention, with no petitioning needed. The only parties that have attained that status, in the last 80 years, are the Reform Party 1996-2000, the Anderson Coalition 1980-1984, and the American Party 1968-1972." This statistic seems more reasonable than the apparently misreported 20% figure quoted by both the Courier-Journal article and Green Party Watch.

Kentucky is certainly a state needing some fresh political voices. The state's Democratic Governor, Steve Beshear, seems to be in bed with big coal. Like much of the rest of the country, unemployment in the state has increased not just dramatically, but critically. And, of course, Kentucky gave us Rand Paul. But oppressive conditions give rise to solidarity, and closed political doors in one house may well inspire hard-working activists to build a new and better house. Good luck, Kentucky Greens!

How bad is Tolkien, really?

I don't endorse this assessment, but I find it hilariously provocative:

Elf-besotted fans aside, why shouldn't Tolkien be granted admission to the literary pantheon? Well, for one thing, his detractors argue, his prose is unbearably archaic. "Sometimes, reading Tolkien, I am reminded of the Book of Mormon," writes [Harold] Bloom. Tolkien's verse--which litters the text of The Lord of the Rings--is generally accepted to be even worse.

--Chris Mooney, "Kicking the Hobbit."

The Residents - Perfect Love

"There's something I must tell you. There's something I must say. The only really perfect love. Is one that gets away."

cover lover: Jenny Owens Youngs & co. --> New Order

Fantastic interpretation of one of my favorite songs of all time.

cover lover: TMBG --> Chumbawamba

Two things about this cover: First, I wish TMBG had dug a little deeper and discovered some Chumba songs really worth disseminating into popular consciousness--like anything on Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records or even WYSIWYG

Second, though, even with their limited political consciousness, I think John and John get several things right in their "Tubthumping" cover even without overt awareness of it: the communal nature of the song, the distorted social values that accompany pub-hopping (Linnell distorts the audio during the drinking verses) and, musically speaking, a sense of the compartmentalized stories simultaneously playing out in the song. All in all, a decent cover.


They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

the story remains the same if you'd take a look

Spot on vocals, appreciative crowd, great song. Sigh.

Calling BS on Obama on Libya

I think Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi is a sick joke of a leader--or at least wasted potential; perhaps he had a streak of anti-imperialism in him at one time before he learned to be an opportunist, but no true progressive would ever do what he's done to his own people, no way and no how. Cindy Sheehan and I went back and forth on this in a rather intense moment during my last interview with her (my fault Cindy), and I've even been critical of what I see as Hugo Chavez's Gaddafi-esque posturing. Maybe I'm a purist, a kind of moral Trotskyist. Whatever, I have no sympathy for the besieged Libyan leader.

But I agree 100% with Cynthia McKinney's assessment of the U.S.-NATO mission in Libya. It's illegal, immoral, stupid, ill-timed, ill-planned, one-dimensional, ignorant, clumsy, undemocratic, terribly wasteful, brutal, dishonest, hypocritical, and imperialist. It's absurd.

From her speech:

At a time when the American people have been asked to tighten their belts, teachers are receiving pink slips, the vital statistics of the American people reveal a health care crisis in the making, and the U.S. government is in serious threat of default, our President and Congress have decided that a new war, this time against the people of Libya, is appropriate. This comes at a time when the U.S., by one estimate, spends approximately $3 billion per week for war against Iraq and Afghanistan.  The President and Congress continue to fund the war against Libya despite the fact that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the U.S. had no strategic interest in Libya; and despite the fact that the Senate Chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence admits that the U.S. really does not know who the "rebels" are; while the rebels themselves, according to a Telegraph report of 25 March 2011, admit that Al Qaeda elements are among their ranks.  So while the apparatus of our government has been used for over ten years to inform the American people and the global community that Al Qaeda is an enemy of freedom-loving people all over the world, our President chooses to ally our military with none other than Al Qaeda elements in Libya and other people whom U.S. intelligence say they do not know.
Additionally, U.S. Admiral Locklear admitted to a Member of Congress that one of NATO's missions was to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi.  And, indeed, NATO bombs have killed Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren, just as US bombs in 1986 killed his daughter.  NATO bombs just recently killed the grandchildren of one of Qaddafi's associates in a targeted assassination attempt. Targeted assassination is not within the scope of the United Nations Security Council Resolution and targeted assassination is against U.S. law, international law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law.  Targeted assassination is also a crime.  We certainly cannot encourage others to abide by the law when we so openly break it.
While in Libya, I witnessed NATO's targeting of civilians:  NATO bombs and missiles landed in residential neighborhoods, hit schools, exploded near hospitals, destroyed parts of the public broadcasting infrastructure, and narrowly missed killing students at Al Fateh University.  When civilians are targeted in war, or "low kinetic" activities, crimes are committed.
NATO practices in Libya are exactly like Israel's practices in Gaza:  fishermen are killed as they go about their fishing business, a naval blockade allows arms to flow to NATO's Libyan allies, but stops food, fuel, and medicine from entering non-NATO ally-held areas.  The entire population suffers as a result.  Collective punishment is illegal when Israel practices it against the people of Gaza and collective punishment is illegal when NATO practices it.
NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase.  Approximately 50% of Libya looks like me.  Innocent darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed, and killed.
The people of Libya have the right to self-determination.  They have a right to "resource nationalism."  They have a right to live in peace.  They have a right to determine their future and they need not exercise their rights underneath the shock and awe of NATO bombs and missiles.

The Politics of Genocide: Ann Garrison on the Shared Sacrifice podcast

Ann Garrison

Genocide--it's an especially powerful term, it's an unstable term, and what it stands for is relatively rare, but it's a terrifying rarity that implicates humanity, human nature if you will.  Not surprisingly, the meaning of the term, and particularly its application in policymaking, is a site of struggle among various sections of the ruling class--and among those who advocate on behalf of victims of mass murders and systemic elimination campaigns. The invocation of "genocide" as a political tool bears only a nominal relationship to what's actually happening, however awful that is.

Our guest tomorrow has been covering and is in constant correspondence with people "on the ground"--the working class and alternative political activists in Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, the Congo, in her work as a journalist. Ann Garrison has been focusing on war and resource struggles in Africa for several years, and her work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner and a slew of other digital and offline publications--and she's sat in plusher interview seats than we offer. But we're pleased to have her back for the third time on tomorrow's podcast.

Join us saturday for a discussion on Dukes v. Wal-Mart

The Shared Sacrifice podcast Saturday morning at 9AM (archived thereafter) will feature a discussion with Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project, concerning the setback to workers and women from the recent Supreme Court decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart. Don't miss it!

Clarence Thomas, meet Abe Fortas

Think Progress has this on lockdown. Justice Thomas, who has at least three ethically problematic issues weighing him down, brings to mind Abe Fortas, who resigned from the high court in disgrace in 1969 for actions at least comparable, and maybe less severe, than those of Thomas:

Fortas’ questionable gifts first came out when President Johnson nominated him for a promotion to Chief Justice of the United States in 1968. Fortas had accepted $15,000 to lead seminars at American University — far more than the university normally paid for such services — and the payments were bankrolled by the leaders of frequent corporate litigants including the vice president of Phillip Morris. Fortas survived this revelation, although his nomination for the Chief Justiceship was filibustered into oblivion.
Just a year later, the country learned that Fortas took another highly questionable gift. In 1966, one year after Fortas joined the Court, stock speculator Louis E. Wolfson’s foundation began paying Fortas an annual retainer of $20,000 per year for consulting services. Fortas’ actions were legal, and he eventually returned the money after Wolfson was convicted of securities violations and recused himself from Wolfson’s case, but the damage to Fortas — and the potential harm to the Supreme Court’s reputation — were too great. Fortas resigned in disgrace.
It is difficult to distinguish Fortas’ scandal from Thomas’. Like Fortas, Thomas accepted several very valuable gifts from parties who are frequently interested in the outcome of federal court cases. One of Thomas’ benefactors has even filed briefs in his Court since giving Thomas a $15,000 gift, and Thomas has not recused himself from each of these cases.

Today's generation of conservative Justices, however, play in an entirely different key.

Huntsman Can't Win, Here's Why

So Jon Huntsman is officially running. But there's a problem:

Presidential candidates need to be physically attractive in this day and age. Huntsman will never win because he has the face of a weasel. Or a ferret. People will call him "ol' ferret face."

I don't make the rules.

Peter Bach and Robert Kocher: make medical school free but charge specialists for their training

Peter B. Bach of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and former special assistant to President Obama on health care and economic policy Robert Kocher, both MDs, have laid out a cogent, persuasive case for government-paid general practitioner training, with specialties coming at a cost. Among the claimed benefits: more general practitioners, avoidance of personal debt as a driving force behind the excessive pursuit of specialties at the expense of the public good, and the program would pay for itself by charging doctors for specialty training. Incremental versions of some of this are already happening:

Many states have loan forgiveness programs for doctors entering primary care. The health care reform law contains incentive programs that will include bonuses for primary care doctors who treat Medicare patients, and help finance a small increase in primary care training positions.

Free education would also increase the quality of applicants, the doctors claim, and would reflect the already symbiotic relationship between medical training and taxpayer money.

Critics might object to providing free medical education when students have to pay for most other types of advanced training. But the process of training doctors is unlike any other, and much of the costs are already borne by others. Hospitals that house medical residents and specialist trainees receive payments from the taxpayer, through Medicare. Patients give of their time and of their bodies in our nation’s teaching hospitals so that doctors in training can become skilled practitioners.

Some letters to the editor expressed skepticism that this would encourage more medical students to become general practitioners when people could just borrow money to become specialists, but I can see how at least some low-to-medium income students would choose the general path and avoid the debt. It might also encourage people, say, in their 20s to pursue new careers in medicine after they see how bleak a lot of other options are right now.

truth can be tragic, but lies are dangerous

It may be too late to undo some of the damage created by this story, but it's definitely worth posting that it wasn't true.

The headlines were nothing short of chilling.

"Aspiring 'Miss Ukraine' Killed Under Shari'a Laws In Crimea" warned Ukrainian online newspaper "Gazeta Po-Kievski."
"Radical Islamists Murder Young Girl In Crimea," screamed Russia's "Svobodnaya Pressa."
"Muslim Girl,19, Stoned To Death After Taking Part In Beauty Contest," was the headline on Britain's "Mail Online," the "Daily Mail" website.
The circumstances around the death of Kateryna Korin, a 19-year-old Ukrainian student on the Crimean peninsula, appeared to point to a made-for-tabloid tragedy: a young beauty-pageant contestant brutally killed by her admirer, a radical Islamist who chose to stone her to death under an unforgiving interpretation of Islamic law.
There was just one small problem: They weren't true.

Instead, the suspect doesn't appear to be very religious at all, and the inferences of fundamentalism appear to be baseless according to the available evidence. Rather than "stoning" Kateryna, the suspect appears to have strangled her and struck her on the head--with a stone.

Fundamentalism is dangerous. So is ginning up stories designed to incite hatred.

Multilayered Resistance in Honduras

Over at politicalcontext.org I've posted More than Zelaya: Multilayered Resistance in Honduras, featuring analysis and interviews on Zelaya's return and the state of the resistance in Honduras. Enjoy.

a hoisted by their own petard kind of thing

Ol' Tim Pawlenty may be in a bit of a soup. A Daily Kos blogger passed along the news that

...then-Gov. Pawlenty granted to a sex offender in October 2008, a pardon that is certain to haunt Pawlenty throughout his campaign. Turns out the man Pawlenty pardoned was later arrested again for molesting his daughter more than 250 times in an eight-year span, including six years prior to his pardon.
Jeremy Giefer served 45 days in prison in 1994 after being convicted of statutory rape. However, because he married the then-14-year-old girl and stuck around to father the child they conceived together, he begged the state for an extraordinary pardon, which would no longer require Giefer to report himself as a sex offender.
The board — which included the Minnesota attorney general, the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and then-Governor Pawlenty — voted unanimously to pardon Giefer.

"Old Redneck" at Kos concludes that this proves Republicans fire teachers and pardon child molesters. Yeah, anyway...

This isn't Pawlenty's first pardon problem. He and Michele Bachmann sought a pardon for a character

...indicted on fraud and money-laundering charges in a U.S. District Court in Minnesota. A former North Dakota pawnshop owner who ostensibly found Jesus while serving a prison sentence in the 1980s, Vennes emerged as a pillar of Minnesota’s conservative Christian community. Then, according to the indictment, he channeled millions into a Ponzi scheme run by the businessman Thomas J. Petters, who is now serving 50 years in federal prison. Much of the money Vennes raised seems to have come from faith-based charities, pastors, and ministers, some of who have lost their life savings.
...Vennes was a major donor to both politicians, and both politicians sought pardons for him in order to wipe away the taint of the crimes that first landed him in prison. Vennes’s respectability in conservative Minnesota circles seems to have enabled his crimes.
... He donated several thousand dollars to Tim Pawlenty’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and sat on the board of Teen Challenge, a faith-based drug rehab program, with Pawlenty’s wife, Mary. In 2006, according to the Star Tribune, he was the top donor to Michele Bachmann’s congressional campaign.

(Which leads me to sidebar: Is there a bigger piece of opportunistic trash in congress than Michele Bachmann?)

It's certainly not true that only Republicans abuse the pardon process. Bourgeois politicians, products of the marketplace themselves, have trouble drawing their wheeling and dealing lines. But in this election cycle, it's the GOP that seems tainted by what Politico called "Horton's Ghost."

Sometimes these pardon scandals are a bit unfair, a bit of a stretch to the limits of configural causality and foreseeability. Mittens, for example, appointed people to a parole board who made a pretty egregious error (see the Politico link above). Even Pawlenty can't be faulted for what a shrink should have caught--that the dude that married the 14 year old was also prone to go after younger kids--including immediate family members.

One unanswered question, though, is why Pawlenty would be stupid enough to pardon ANY sex offender. Was he trying to appeal to the self-perceived wrongfully convicted sex offender constituency?