Concluding remarks (hopefully) on the Birthers...

There are plenty of spaces from which to be VERY critical of Obama--from the left or the right, from anti-statism to anti-capitalism, etc. But the unique suspicion of Obama (no president having ever been accused of being an Islamic, Afrocentric "manchurian candidate" before, no president EVER being asked to verify his birth certificate before) proves the Birthers aren't using systemic critique as their starting point, but white populist suspicion of the dark Other. You find me a Birther who is also a left-wing internationalist anti-capitalist, or even an intelligent, articulate libertarian of the classical rather than the Lew Rockwell variety, and I'll change my theory. But if you are in any way concerned about charting a critical course that transcends Obama, Bush, and the two-party system, the Birther fantasy needs to be thrown into the trash. Factually, it is an absolutely fabricated and impossible allegation, and connotatively, it is fueled by racism.

Brechtian Naughtiness

Came across this bawdy little sonnett by Bertolt Brecht, sure to raise your eyebrows or pulse a bit...read it to the person you love.

IN FAVOUR OF A LONG, BROAD SKIRT

Your ample peasant skirt's the one to pick
Where cunningly I emphasise the length:
Lifting it off you to its full extent
Revealing thighs and bottom, gives a kick.
Then when you tuck your legs up on our sofa
Let it ride up, so that, hidden in its shadow
Through deep discussions clouded in tobacco
Your flesh may hint our night is not yet over.

It is more than a base and lustful feeling
That makes me want a skirt as wide as this:
Your lovely movements bring to mind Colchis
The day Medea strolled towards the sea. -
These aren't the grounds, though, on which I'm appealing
For such a skirt. Base ones will do for me.

Hey Shatner!

Most of the Priceline "pricebreaker" deals aren't really that good at all, unless you live in Burbank and want to go to Vegas for the weekend, or take that trip from Miami to Orlando. I want Salt Lake City to Paris for 99 dollars each way, chumps. Do it.

Cambridge Conundrum

The cops likely responded to Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s acerbic tone by throwing their proverbial balls around, like so many cops do. Professor Gates lost his temper and likely exacerbated the situation. Such a reaction is understandable, not at all warranting of _moral_ condemnation. Speaking with the pragmatism of an activist, however, it's an argument for tactical self-discipline. There is a bit of threatening abstractionism in Gates' victimage and post-incident rhetoric. More than a few people are watching, with more than one set of eyes, this incident involving a wealthy Harvard professor. Today's pseudonymous piece in Alternet is one good read. Irene Monroe's description of Black life in Cambridge is another.

...

Amis on Nukes

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves. ~ Martin Amis

two brief remarks about anti-obama loonies

Everyone knows I think Obama is a moderate apologist for (and servant to) a fundamentally corrupt system. But I simply cannot countenance conspiracy theories based on latent (and sometimes blatant) racism and inconsistent application of the standards of logic and politics. Plus they smell bad.

With that in mine, two things I want to mention this morning before I head to work: First, I briefly believed I had invented a new term: birth-baggers. Self-explanatory to political junkies. I googled it and found only one other reference--from some tweet a couple of days ago. Amazing how language develops, huh?

Second, am I the only person who thinks this woman demanding the birth certificate is, um, well...a wee bit tipsy? I mean, hey, if being drunk at town hall meetings were part of the deal, I'm sure more people would become wingnuts.

who's the tail and who's the dog?

I am tired of conservatives whining about how the mainstream media continues to cover Sarah Palin's awkward, at times painful fall from grace (a perpetual fall, really, since last summer...). The Palin anti-anti-apologists say "you lefties (by which they mean anyone to the left of Fox) sure care about Palin, you sure hate her, you talk about her all the time" as if that --by itself-- demonstrates anything beyond the propensity of the media to like train wrecks.

But in fact, Palin's humiliating political pants-pooping is news. Her inability to write, speak, or think is certainly news in the context of the millions of educated conservatives who support her. It demonstrates that she represents the unthinking, unreflective, theocratic leadership desired by the faintly burning embers of the GOP's right wing. All you conservatives shedding crocodile tears about the mainstream media covering Palin's embarassing idiocies should realize that if millions of wingnuts didn't support her, liberal news commentators wouldn't pay attention to her.

In memory of Ross Smith

Tonight I am just one among thousands who can't imagine intercollegiate debate, or a significant portion of our lives, without Ross Smith of Wake Forest University, who passed away unexpectedly. He was the love of the game, the craziness, the seriousness, the friendships, the late-night conversations, the unreasonably hard work, the joy of the win and the shrug of the loss.

Ross is to contemporary academic debate what Richard Rorty was to academic philosophy: master of a technique not loved by all, but personally respected by all, and a champion of the whole enterprise, appreciative and honest and above all in love with the intellectual endeavor. I don't know a single person--not a single person--among the thousands of people in the college (and much of the high school) debate community who had anything more than a bad joke to tell about him; not a single detractor, not a single person who would deny the positive difference he made in the lives of everyone he met. Rare? One of a kind.

Forgive the brief array of debate geekery as I imitate Ross talking about critical theory: "So...um...yeah. An alternative would be nice."

Miss you, sir.

Sunday afternoon work music: Dresden Dolls, "Coin Operated Boy"

I was afraid this wouldn't sound all that good live--but the DDs are incredibly tight on this piece, Amanda's vocals are on, and there's the usual great interaction between Amanda and Brian--with little or no eye contact. Overall one of their best live performances. Warning: Amanda changes a lyric (hilariously in my opinion) in a way that might offend the fainthearted.

Mouthpiece for tobacco lobby circulates anti-health care reform petition

An organization cleverly calling itself Patients First is inviting people to sign a petition telling the government to keep its dirty hands off our health care.

Patients First, however, is controlled by Americans for Prosperity. AFP is a mouthpiece of, among others, the tobacco lobby. They have continued the old Phillip Morris strategy of portraying smoking as a property right. Not terribly concerned with placing health first, they are against clean indoor air laws, indoor workplace smoking bans, and cogent arguments.

Is there an equivalent petition demanding that insurance companies in the status quo keep their hands off health care? No? Why not? Is it because they have absolute power over health care policy and practice? Is absolute control categorically bad, or only bad if it's da guvmint?

the thankful for a little time to blog blog

Happy to feature the work of dear longtime friend Caitlin Myer in this week's "Best of Shared Sacrifice" edition.

Morton Montgomery gets my first annual, maybe only, award for being a Daily Kos diarist who actually pushes the Kossacks forward by explaining why it's unlikely Obama will fix the economy...

Writer Joe Gregorio expands on the popular Free Market Fairy concept:
There is nothing benevolent about free markets, they are a natural force, like gravity, and aren't magical, good, or evil. The free market will maximize efficiency and it will do so in a manner that is blind to externalities...

Maximizes efficiency and is blind to externalities. That's the market, not good or evil, simply a force, with a will to live and colonize. That's the "invisible hand." It's true that the Hand has fallen out of fashion, but give it time to recover. Already, libertarians insist that the current crisis is merely a natural fluctuation exacerbated by government intervention--this 20 years + into deregulation.

A much more depressing story, I suppose, because I recently had a falling out over this argument, and because there are so many human faces in Dion Nissenbaum's account of Israeli soldiers confessing to practices that range somewhere between illegal and legally-murkey-over-the-top-brutality:

Soldiers described incidents in which Israeli forces killed an unarmed Palestinian carrying a white cloth, an elderly woman carrying a sack, a Gazan riding a motorcycle, and an elderly man with a flashlight[...]The 110-pages of testimony — along with 16 video clips — of interviews with 26 unnamed Israeli soldiers offers the most comprehensive look inside a military campaign that's become the subject of an unfolding United Nations war crimes investigation.

No longer perceived as the cohesive, smart, morally pure army, the IDF response is clumsy and circular...

The Israel Defense Forces dismissed the report.
IDF spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said Tuesday that the IDF now is conducting dozens of investigations into troop conduct during the Gaza operation and that more than a dozen cases led to police investigations.
In April, the IDF announced it had concluded five high-level investigations, including one into the use of phosphorus to burn down buildings, and cleared itself.

So this week, instead of pointing out the misleadership of the Palestinian resistance and pissing off my progressive friends (I routinely do this and they accuse me of an irresponsible neutrality), I suppose I'll piss off ex-friends by pointing out that failure to condemn Israeli violence and seriously engage the issues separating the people of Israel from the people of Palestine is not only moral tunnell vision, but also pragmatic paralysis...and a death sentence for more Israeli and Palestinian children.

Finally, the Pentagon and others apparently want to expand the size of the U.S. Army. Part of me actually thinks this is a good idea. Get more people over to Iraq and Afghanistan so that they can see what a folly of a mess U.S. imperialism has created. Sure, most will come back with the same uncritical love for U.S.-imp they had before, but more and more will come back critical thinkers and progressives, while zero will experience a net increase in blind patriotism. As predicted by all sorts of radical commentators, war is revolutionary. But on the other hand, I don't want more of my brothers and sisters in uniform to experience danger in a world they never made.

Al Jazeera: Honduras may grant Zelaya amnesty

But more importantly: "Honduran police on Saturday night detained for several hours members of television crews of the Venezuelan state channel VTV and Telesur, which have extensively covered pro-Zelaya protests."

Wonderful to see the new Honduran regime behaving so lawfully and democratically, after having painted Zelaya as a thug and a threat to democracy.

Al Jazeera English - Americas - Honduras may grant Zelaya amnesty

Shared via AddThis

The lie on which all the other lies are based?

If this is true, then yes, this is the lie which gives putative justification for all the other lies being told by the spin-in-overdrive Honduran media and coup apologists in the rest of the world.

In fact, there was no way for Zelaya to "extend his rule" even if the referendum had been held and passed, and even if he had then gone on to win a binding referendum on the November ballot. The June 28 referendum was nothing more than a non-binding poll of the electorate, asking whether the voters wanted to place a binding referendum on the November ballot to approve a redrafting of the country's constitution. If it had passed, and if the November referendum had been held (which was not very likely) and also passed, the same ballot would have elected a new president and Zelaya would have stepped down in January. So, the belief that Zelaya was fighting to extend his term in office has no factual basis -- although most people who follow this story in the press seem to believe it. The most that could be said is that if a new constitution were eventually approved, Zelaya might have been able to run for a second term at some future date

I've seen this clarification a few times now. It seems almost understated. But if it's true, then Zelaya could not have run for a successive term regardless of the outcome of the nonbinding referendum. You could argue that he would have done other things, but assumes facts not in evidence.

racism as drug-resistant pathogen?

Think racism is a thing of the past? Go to the comments section of any race-related news story in the media-and-blogosphere, and you'll not only see it's still around, but you'll see the degree of rage --pure, unfiltered rage-- that some whites have towards nonwhites.

This was a post in response to a story about a Huntingdon Valley, PA swim club that allegedly cancelled a contract because its members were allegedly upset about an influx of minorities in the club's pool. It's merely the longest and most articulate of several more like it. This one's going to be very difficult to read, and that's why I want you to read it. Just read it, and know that there are people who believe this, feel this, and want to act on this:

I have seen Philadelphia collapse under the infestation of black and hispanic people. Beautiful neighborhoods, local churches and shopping streets have become downright horrible and dangerous due to the influx of these new parasitic residents. People moved to the suburbs to get away from this scene and now the scene is following them. If a private club wants to put up a sign "no blacks need apply" that is their right to do so. We have freedom of association and if I were a member of that swim club and it became overun with 50 pickaninnies, I would reflect on the days of shopping on Kensington Avenue as a child and then going back 50 years later to see what God hath wrought. Stay in your own neighborhood and if you don't like it and are so proud of being an African-American, then you should return to the land of your roots and leave us alone.

Sometimes people ask me why I "give a platform" to extremists on my blog and when I share news stories with the thousands of people I'm connected to out there. It's not about giving a platform. It's about placing this shit under a microscope, and then projecting the images like a scientist, in a lecture hall full of scientists, might project the images of the newest strain of a drug-resistant pathogen. We are the scientists. The epidemiologists.

And civil society is still quite ill.

no longer available, chumps

AP pulled its piece suggeting that the Iraqi peace that followed U.S. pullback was due to "fear" rather than genuine stability. The reasons for pulling a piece are many and most of them perfectly innocent. But citizen blogging can, at least presently, patch over the memory hole. So we'll see if they put it back. The teaser was still up on Yahoo, and it said:

"AP IMPACT: It's fear that keeps Baghdad's peace (AP)
AP - The streets are calmer now. The fighting between Shiites and Sunnis has largely ceased. But this is not a sign of normalcy in the Iraqi capital. It's fear that keeps the peace."