Saturday Rock Show

R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, Duran Duran - the faces and voices of 80's rock. Yet none are more iconic of that strange decade that U2. Unlike Gabriel or Duran Duran, whose best work was done then, and R.E.M., who are like America's answer to the Rolling Stones, just a great rock and roll band that keeps getting better and better, U2 have their own unique vision, follow their own muse, and stand or fall on their own terms. Yet,The Joshua Tree is without a doubt their single best, most cohesive album, musically. They could still shock back then, such as with this very different (for them) bluesy, very LOUD song, "Bullet the Blues Sky".



I've been inspired to go back to the decade when I came of age because Lisa's on her way to her high school reunion, and I'm gonna miss mine.

Two Parts To The Health Care Reform Debate

In essence, any major public debate has two separate yet linked dimensions. Space is filled by considerations of legislative politicking; counting votes, in other words. Very often these votes hue to party lines, ideological preferences, and various coalitions of legislators, are formed in the committee stage (which is why floor debate is usually quite pointless; once a committee has done its work, the floor debates usually are nothing more than an exercise in ensuring either passage or defeat, trying to swing one or two members this way or that). The other dimension, the actual policy and its effectiveness (or lack thereof) is usually relegated to the staff of individual Senators or the committee responsible for various pieces of legislation. For this reason, unfortunately, the two parts of public debate are very often separate, going in their own directions without referencing one another all that much.

As we get the massive health care reform issue rolling (Sisyphus is no longer pleased, I think), we are witnessing the outlines of this very common occurrence. Matt Yglesias sums up this frustration very nicely.

The big problem, politically speaking, with health care is that you basically have people on the left arguing both sides of the question. On the one hand, insofar as your plan is “big government” that’s left-wing. But insofar as your plan is expensive, that’s also left-wing. Which is because people normally think of big government programs as expensive. But when it comes to health care, heavy-handed government intervention is actually way cheaper than private sector alternatives. Consequently, every time you try to make the plan more “moderate” by, for example, curbing the influence of a public option you actually wind up making the plan more “left wing” by needing to raise more taxes. And if you want to make the plan cheaper, while still actually achieving its goals, then you need to make it more left-wing not more moderate. But in the United States, ideological correctness and special interest politics prevents us from admitting this.

The chart accompanying this piece, as well as several other studies of health care expenditure per capita across the industrialized world, make a point that is worth pondering: It is far less expensive, over all, to have a single-payer, publicly-funded system than any alternatives being offered.

Another part of this whole politics-policy divide that is actually infuriating is this kind of thing, also reported by Yglesias:

After reading Volsky and Cohn on the Bipartisan Policy Council health reform plan put together by former Majority Leaders Howard Baker (R-TN), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Bob Dole (R-KS) and George Mitchell (D-ME) I feel, well, kind of “eh” about it. This is not a great plan, but it would be better than the status quo. It’s about what you’d be looking for from a bipartisan compromise, in other words. Personally, I’d like to think that overwhelming progressive electoral victories would result in some juicier fruit than this, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the Democrats in the Senate appear to not have particularly progressive convictions.

Which I think leads to the question, how bipartisan is this really? Howard Baker and Bob Dole are nice, but how about some Republicans currently serving in the United States Senate?

If you are too young to remember, Howard Baker was Senate Majority Leader during the 1980's. He retired from the Senate after not seeking re-election in 1984. Bob Dole, you may recall, is also no longer in the Senate. While George Mitchell and Tom Daschle are probably nice guys (for the most part), they were also pretty ineffective Majority Leaders when the Democrats held thin majorities in the upper house. Neither, of course, currently hold elective office (although Mitchell is a special envoy for Pres. Obama).

I think it is important to note, as Bob Cesca does, that many of the major players in this debate are major recipients of campaign donations from the health insurance industry. One of the biggest, Max Baucus of Montana, has received over $2,000,000. While political ideology may be an important factor in this debate, what is driving the Senate away from the overwhelmingly popular public option is filthy lucre, pure and simple.

While I understand Pres. Obama will be holding a live discussion this weekend on health care reform, my own wish is similar to that of many other supporters both of the President and serious health care reform - get out there, speak loudly, often, clearly, and in detail, on what kind of reform you want, and how quickly you want to get it done. The public is behind you, but the health insurance lobby has far more cash at its disposal, and therefore more influence.

While much of the immediate debate sounds eerily familiar to the 1990's attempt to address the issue, there are several things that give me at least a dim glimmer of hope. First and foremost is the simple reality that the Republicans are no longer ascendant in Congress. While they and more conservative voices certainly have the bully pulpits of traditional media, they are no longer the only, or even the biggest, game in town. David Broder may nourish a seriously stiff jones on the whole Baker/Dole/Daschle/Mitchell business, but they aren't in the Senate anymore. In other words, who cares what they think?

We also have a President who is still, despite all the grumbling of the press and conservative yakkers, wildly popular with the American people. While I believe the poll data that emerged yesterday pointing to "concern" over federal spending, once the point is driven home that a public plan would be far cheaper overall than any other option currently under consideration, I believe the debate will shift back toward a proposal the country supports.

The Decline And Collapse Of Newspapers

Yesterday, The Washington Post fired Dan Froomkin, more an online than in-print pundit, not only capable, but consistent enough to be a prod to both the Bush and Obama White House. Today, having discarded a source of information that was popular, the Post prints two op-ed pieces, one by Charles Krauthammer, the other by Paul Wolfowitz, that demonstrate (especially taken with yesterday's dismissal of Froomkin) the editors' commitment to a new direction - failure.

Please note that this is not just an ideological critique. Krauthammer and Wolfowitz are not only propagators of a particular political point of view; on the specifics of policy preference - pretty much everything they insist the United States either ought to do, or (in the case of Wolfowitz) actually implemented as national policy was not only a dismal failure, but counterproductive and rejected by the American people during the last two election cycles. I am not suggesting they should not have a voice; I am not saying they shouldn't have their views printed in an organ as important as the op-ed page of The Washington Post.

One of the jobs of an editor is to make decisions that will not only reflect a certain consistency of viewpoint - if, say, The Washington Times or The Wall Street Journal offered a spot to Froomkin it would certainly raise a hue-and-cry from the right - but that benefit the paper financially. In the midst of a recession and changing market structure that is undermining the newspaper business in a variety of ways, making personnel and editorial decisions that not only reduce the number of readers your newspaper gets (Froomkin was not only popular, but linked and crossed-referenced all the time), but also present your paper as the mouthpiece for an ideological stance that is both out of favor politically and a dismal failure practically pretty much indicates that, as a business leader, the front wheels are already over the edge of the abyss.

Way to go.

Stupid Funny

Via Bob Cesca comes this wonderful bit of really hilarious crap. I wondered if this kind of thing was still around, and lo and behold, we get to listen to how listening to Kenny Loggins leads to child sacrifice. Well, maybe that's true . . .

End Of An Era

I saw an obituary in my hometown newspaper and realized we have really come to the end of an era. The death of James Lantz, a retired engineer on the Lehigh Valley Railroad marks a very real end, not just for the railroad and its relationship to Sayre, PA, but on a personal level as well. My grandfather was also an engineer on the Lehigh Valley, starting off in the first decade of the 20th century shoveling coal. By the time the 1920's rolled around, he was sitting behind a desk. When the Depression hit, and many lost jobs, he kept his in part thanks to his on-going union membership. When engineers were being let go, he left his desk and got behind the wheel again. He continued to drive those trains - the Lehigh had been a Rockefeller railroad, connecting various NY and PA rail lines - and even finagled a job for my father in what was known as the Big Shop in 1940 or so.

James Lantz must have been one of the last engineers on the Lehigh. My grandfather retired in the 1950's, and even then the line was ailing. Were he, by some miracle, still alive, my grandfather would be 119 years old this year, twenty-four years older than the late Mr. Lantz.

At one time, the Big Shop in Sayre, PA was one of the largest enclosed spaces in the world, housing a couple rounds, and space enough for engines and other cars to be dismantled for a thorough cleaning. My father told me about an old man named Chacona (his son would go on to be a long-time mayor of Sayre) whose job was to guide wheels in to a vat of acid for a thorough cleaning. The wheels, having been removed from the car, were hoisted on to a conveyor that carried them along the line. It would stop above this vat and the winch would lower the wheels ever so slowly down. Mr. Chacona would stand on a plank set across the top of the vat - with the acid fumes rising, no rail, no breathing equipment, no safety suit - and use a long pole to make sure they entered the vat just so. That was his job, and he did it day in and day out for years without an accident. Such was some folk's work experience before OSHA, I guess . . .

While not born from the rails, Sayre benefited enormously from them - the Lehigh even subsidized housing on a street along the rail yard - named (what else?) Lehigh Avenue. There was a tunnel that was built below the yard, with an entrance smack dab in the middle of Lehigh Ave.. Men in overalls, carrying their lunches in pails, would pour in to that tunnel every morning, and out again in the afternoon. When I was a kid, we would drive by that old tunnel entrance, long since boarded up, and I always wanted to go through it, but my father told me how dangerous it had become. While I am quite sure he was right for any number of reasons, part of me wishes I had not heeded his warning and taken that walk before both ends of the tunnel were sealed permanently.

The above photo, showing the Big Shop and its massive smokestacks, is very personal for me. I remember well the last days of the Lehigh yards in Sayre, and the final images as the Shop was taken down and those stacks were dynamited, tumbling with a sad majesty to earth. While that was certainly one mark of the end of the era of the rails in small town America, the death of someone very likely one of the last engineers on the Lehigh Valley Railroad draws to a final close - a kind of sad, human coda - this once wonderful, vibrant chapter in our national life.

Funny Republican Public FAIL

This is so funny.

Earlier today, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) put up this astonishing post on Twitter, likening the oppression of the Iranian people to the plight of House Republicans

--snip--

In the hours since, the Twitter community has responded -- with massive heckling.

Here's the original tweet from Hoekstra:

Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.

Here are a couple sample responses:

ArjunJaikumar @petehoekstra i spilled some lukewarm coffee on myself just now, which is somewhat analogous to being boiled in oil

ceedub7 @petehoekstra I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross.

TahirDuckett @petehoekstra ran through the sprinklers this morning, claimed solidarity with victims of Hurricane Katrina

Republicans always claim that it is liberals and Democrats who relish their victimization, yet they are always the first to claim they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

What a bunch of stupid schmucks.

Donna Joan Johnston Konicki, April 1, 1928 - December 17, 2008

While I say it with trepidation - who wants to pick out a "favorite" relative? - I am honest enough to admit that my Aunt Joan, my mother's only sister, was my favorite Aunt. Why do I say that? Three reasons - Uno, hosting, Good 'N' Plenty.

When you played Uno with Aunt Joan, it was brutal. Once, my brother managed to sneak a wrong card on the discard pile, and the whole game went around a couple times before he admitted it. I thought Aunt Joan was going to blow a gasket, even though she, and the rest of us, were laughing so hard we were crying. Of course, when we played, we always laughed like that.

I spent many eventful and fun days and nights with Aunt Joan, fewer moreso than the summer after Lisa and I were married. We were on our way to Illinois, and made a pitstop for a couple days to visit my mother's family and my relatives in Dayton, and stayed with Aunt Joan. She let us sleep in her bedroom, and the morning we were preparing to leave, we were making her bed, and I am sad to admit that I passed gas so loud it actually rattled the windows. Lisa insists that fart is still rattling around the Universe, and will be picked up by some advanced civilization a couple million years from now. Of course, she heard it in the other room (I think she would have heard it in Cincinnati), and started laughing, and we started laughing, and we left the house laughing. My guess is, however, that she cried when she went in to her bedroom later.

The summer after I was in kindergarten, my mother had gall bladder surgery. My father being helpless in the face of taking care of five children from 16 to age 5, my Aunt and my cousins Claudia and Leah came out to make sure we were fed and watered and that nothing horrible happened to us (you can read my cousin's recollection of one part of that trip here; sad to say, reading it forced me to recall my sisters and her singing "I'm the happiest girl in the whole USA"). In an effort to keep me occupied, Aunt Joan either bought or brought along a board game based on the candy Good 'N' Plenty. Part of playing with Aunt Joan was that she would give me some of the candy while we played. Never a huge fan of licorice, I nevertheless ate those candies eagerly, and forever after would associate the taste with that visit. She also bought me an orange stuffed bear that was almost as big as I was; said bear, named Theodore Edward (what else?) currently resides in my younger daughter's bedroom.

Now, if this seems like slim pickin's as to why my Aunt Joan was my favorite Aunt, let me elaborate a bit. She and my mother were the only girls in a large family full of boys, making their relationship far closer than it might otherwise have been. When she visited, both my mother and father were different. Mom always seem to laugh more, and Dad seemed so relaxed and open (I heard my first ever dirty joke, I must have been about 11 or so, from my father when he and Joan were sharing them back and forth). One summer about fifteen or so years ago - maybe more but no less - Aunt Joan came in early July and ended up staying almost the entire summer. It was an endless summer of enjoyment for my parents, and Joan, too. Once, my mother returned from somewhere, and walked through the house looking for Dad and Joan, finding them sitting together on a side porch. Joan laughed and said, "Virginia, why didn't you look in the bedroom?"

She had a difficult life in many ways, a sad life. In her last years, though, she was reconciled with her son and older daughter (her younger daughter, the cousin who writes about her family experiences, is by far my favorite non-immediate family member) and no one was happier than I when these things happened. Because, you see, beneath the gruff and very loud Johnston exterior lurked a warm, loving heart (the same, I think, is true for all of the members of my mother's family). I loved her because she took care of me and my whole family, provided a little light and light-heartedness to all of us with her visits. I would rather not dwell too long on those parts of her life, because, like Johnstons do, why talk about them?

She fell ill very suddenly last fall, and within a very few weeks was gone. For a variety of reasons, a memorial service was postponed until this coming weekend. Sadly, I cannot make it, but Lisa and the girls will be going in my stead.

I'm fighting tears as I write this, because saying goodbye is always hard, and knowing I cannot do so properly hurts. I love you, Aunt Joan, and will eat a whole box of Good 'N' Plenty on Friday, and think of you, and laugh because I know in my heart that you loved being with us for the same reason - we laughed so hard it would hurt.

Watching Iran

Like most Americans, I am watching events unfold in Iran with a mixture of hope and a sense that the inevitable crackdown will be ugly. It certainly doesn't help matters that there are confusing reports on the legitimacy of the election, on the way Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khameini is handling it, and the obvious question of which way the military and Revolutionary Guards will turn once a final decision is made.

Twenty years ago we had the weird and wonderful spectacle of the snowballing revolutions in Central and Southern Europe even as China landed with both tank-covered feet on pro-democracy rallies in and around the capital city. It was easy enough both to cheer and mourn the events of that fateful year - from the erection of the statue of liberty in Tianenmen Square to the people tearing down the Berlin Wall to the snow-covered corpses of the Ceaucescu's on Christmas Day - because everyone knew the horrible nature of the regimes involved, and celebrated the possibilities presented by the utter collapse of totalitarianism, as well as mourned the death of any possibility for change in China.

Now, however, the situation is different. First of all, far too many in influential circles in the United States government hold a thirty-year grudge for the storming of the US embassy and subsequent hostage-taking following the Islamic revolution in Iran. Most of our policy toward Iran in the intervening decades has been premised upon payback, pure and simple.

Because of the myopia brought on by a natural desire to punish a country that managed to humiliate the United States and bring down a President, it is often difficult to decipher the reality in Iran from our own wishes. It is true the final legal authority in Iran is the Supreme Council, a group of religious leaders devoted to a particular interpretation of Islamic law. This, however, doesn't make it much different from Saudi Arabia. Unlike the Saudi kingdom, however, within the parameters of theocratic absolutism - the supreme law of the land exists under the umbrella of Islamic law - Iran has had a lively, even vigorous democratic history in the thirty years since the revolution. Its parliament is multi-religious. Women have been a vital part of Iranian politics and civil life (one could hardly say the same for Saudi Arabia). While the first decade to decade and a half of its life were caught up in the twin predicaments of vilifying the United States and conducting a very long war of attrition with Iraq, national leadership has swung back and forth between various adherents to principles of the original revolution and those who wished to see the national constitutional framework of Iran - an Islamic nation - as contiguous with modern, western ideas of the Open Society. While not holding the reins of power, such a view is still powerful enough to make for lively debate within Iran, and drove much of the (foreign) news coverage of the recent elections there.

I will not pretend I do not wish to see Iran emerge from its current crisis as a secular state (one of the perils of being an American is seeing the advantage of dismantling any relationship between the state and religious practice). I will not pretend I do not desire sitting Pres. Ahmedinejad (sp?) to step aside. My hope is that the military and security apparatus will stand to one side and allow the legal system to disentangle the mess Iran currently has.

I fear, however, this will not be the case. Blood has already been spilled. The government is cracking down on foreign journalists reporting events. It has blocked various internet applications that would provide information to the outside world - a vital necessity.

So I watch and wait. I hope, but I also fear.

Hitler Was A Vegan, So von Brunn Was A Leftist

One of the most horrid, awful results of the recent spate of right-wing violence has been the sudden reappearance of Jonah Goldberg and his idiotic thesis that fascism is actually a phenomenon of political liberalism and the left. Dave Niewert does the world a service of calling out Goldberg's nonsensical thesis. I can only imagine how painful it was first to read Goldberg's thick pile of crap, then actually treat it with enough respect to call it crap in detail. For all that such a thesis is easily dismissed by a welter of historical evidence, Goldberg is out there, in print and TV, trying to get the message out.

Not just Goldberg, though. It's all over the place. Andrew Breitbart, who runs a right-wing blog, says the von Brunn is closer to a multiculturalist - and most would agree that adherents of the multicultural thesis are of the left - than to any figure on the right. I think the only way to square this particular circle is to construct an argument something like this:

- Multiculturalists stress the continuity of cultural identity over individuality.

- von Brunn stressed the continuity of the white race over the individuality of persons of different races

- von Brunn is a multiculturalist.

Now, the major premise is deeply flawed, a caricature of what multicultural theory is and how it operates. While the minor premise may be true to the extent that a racist sees race as the single determining factor in an individual's life, to equate multicultural theory with racism is not only deeply flawed, but highly offensive. As John Cook writes, "James von Brunn is exactly like a lesbian studies major."

One of the more stupid aspects of the whole "fascists are liberals" nonsense is the conflation of the personal quirks of this or that historical or contemporary political figure and modern political alignments. For example, Goldberg points out, quite correctly, that Woodrow Wilson was a racist. The roots of the party's power lay in the racist south at the time. In many ways, however, Wilson was also a Progressive. To argue, however, that because Wilson was both an adherent to many of the principles of classic Progressive politics and was also a racist that racism is, therefore, an inherent part of Progressive politics, then or now, is ridiculous.

The same applies to other figures. As the title of this post notes, Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, indeed a missionary of the superiority of a vegan diet over meat. Many contemporary vegans tend to drift leftward in their politics - mostly - so, apparently to Goldberg, Hitler was actually a liberal-lefty.

Treating this nonsense as anything other than nonsense is almost impossible. I have made the decision that anyone who comes around here and attempts to make this argument will not be engaged directly. I consider this argument on a part with creationism, another notion I refuse to engage directly. Part of keeping one's sanity in times such as ours is the necessity of drawing lines and creating boundaries. So, if someone reads this and starts typing, "But, but . . . Mussolini liked sprouts! Stalin was gay! They're all lefties!!!" and expect a response, forget about it. I may laugh and call you an idiot. I won't delete your comment. It will just convince me that you are as big a doofus as the people who promote this nonsense.

Prayer For Enemies

One of the most difficult aspects of the recent spate of right-wing murderous violence has been my own anger. Jesus insists we are to pray for those who hate us; I have no desire to do so. We are to love our enemies; I despise them. Yet, I want to do these things, because I have been admonished to do so. These are some of the hallmarks of the Christian life. Anger, disgust, disdain - these are not helpful in one's walk in faith.

I turned to a friend on Facebook for guidance, and I received the following prayer. It originated with St. Nicolai of Zica:

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have. Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world.

Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself. They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself. They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish. Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a fly.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of Your garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

So that my fleeing will have no return; So that all my hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; So that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

I must admit I have said this prayer through gritted teeth, mouthing the words without necessarily feeling the emotion. Yet, continuing to say this prayer may lead to an honest expression of thankfulness and loving kindness toward those whom I currently despise.

Lord, make it so.

That Kind Of Church

I saw this post at FireDogLake, and thought, "Wow. Someone is answering this question with both sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Amen."

When I read the stories from Tiller's patients (and there are more here), or stories like Christy's, the notion of Tiller being a church usher makes sense. The bottom line of being an usher is to care about others, whoever they may be and whatever the circumstances of their lives. Tiller cared so much for his patients that he endured years of protests, vandalism, threats of violence, and actual violence. In the end, his compassion cost him his life.

I was away last Sunday, and so tomorrow is the first Sunday I'll be in my parish since Tiller was murdered. I won't be looking at my ushers in the same way ever again.

There is a counter-question. What kind of church would refuse Dr. Tiller as a member? Of course, we all know the answer to that question, but doesn't that automatically beg a further question, to whit, "Is such a grouping of individuals worthy of the name 'church'?"

My patience, my sense of openness, of family, with those who call themselves Christian yet hate; who call themselves Christian yet divide; who call themselves Christian yet kill - is almost, but not quite, broken. The deafening silence of so many on the right in the wake of the murderous rampage of white supremacist James von Brunn at the Holocaust Memorial Museum is enough to convince me that the rising tide of right-wing violence is starting to penetrate their ignorance-inspired bubble of unreality. The screams of the victims, the tears of their survivors are like acid on the denial of this central reality of our time - the environment created by the acceptance of all sorts of false claims about our President is poisonous, and some are more susceptible to these toxins than are others.

As to my main point - I would hope that any church worthy of the name would not only accept the George Tiller's of the world. Any group of persons who call themselves "church" yet would deny him a place at the table is unworthy of the name.

Nobody Could Have Imagined . . . Clear & Present Danger II

I'm shocked.

An outspoken anti-immigration activist from Everett has been arrested in Arizona in connection to a deadly home invasion robbery.

Shawna Forde, the executive director of the Minutemen American Defense, is one of three accused in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Raul Flores and his daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, at their home in Arivaca, Ariz., a town 10 miles north of the Mexican border.

The story gets even more interesting.

The man killed in the home invasion was a suspected drug dealer. And police say the invaders' plan was to kill the entire family and steal money and drugs which would later be sold for cash.

In light of an Arizona Republic report, this is . . . I'm not even sure what word I'm looking for.

Forde is executive director of Minutemen American Defense, a border watch group that claims to secure the U.S. Border from human and drug trafficking, according to its Web site.(emphasis added)

Secure it by . . . killing people and stealing their drugs?

More right-wing vigilantism. And the DHS report is still being vilified. And there is mostly silence on the racist attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

How many people have to die?

Saturday Summer Rock Show

Why not? If your old enough, you gotta just love this song. Yeah, it's hokey, dated, but so what?

Clear And Present Danger

In 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Charles Schenk for speaking out against the draft during the First World War. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote the following:

The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Let's review some recent history.

1993 - during the service of a federal firearms warrant against the Branch Davidians, BATF agents were fired upon by members locked inside. The resulting seige ended on April 19, when the main building was destroyed in a fire.

1995 - The Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, OK was firebombed by a rented moving truck filled with a homemade explosive, killing 168 persons inside, including many children in the office's daycare center. The culprits were apprehended, and Timothy McVeigh was executed by a federal writ in 2001.

1996 - One person was killed and several wounded in a bombing in the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, GA. The bombing was later found to be the work of pro-life terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph, who was also linked to several abortion clinic bombings across the deep south. Rudolph was apprehended after it was discovered he had been living in the mountains of western North Carolina.

1998 - On October 23, 1998, Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered in his home. Dr. Slepian was an administrator at a women's clinic that provided, among other services, abortions. A long-time target of the pro-life crowd, he was shot while working on dinner in his home after having returned from Friday night services at his synagogue.

2008 - A gunman entered Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universality Church during Children's Day services, and opened fire, killing two and wounding several more. The suspect, Jim Adkisson, gave a sworn statement which records the following:

During the interview Adkisson stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets. Adkisson made statements that because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them into office. Adkisson stated that he had held these beliefs for about the last ten years.

In a letter Adkisson left believing he would die in his murder rampage, he stated that among other unreachable targets was the entire list of names in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.

2009 - On April 4, Richard Popalawski murdered three Pittsburgh police officers, fearing their part in a national conspiracy to enter his home and take his guns. Since the Presidential campaign the previous autumn, the National Rifle Association had been advertising that the election of Barack Obama would signal an increase in the regulation of firearms, including the eventual removal of personal firearms from people's homes.

2009 - Dr. George Tiller is murdered while serving as an usher at his Lutheran Church. Dr. Tiller operated a women's clinic in Wichita, KS, and was a long-time target of the pro-life movement, and the subject of many exposes by national media figures including FOXNews' Bill O'Reilly.

2009 - 88-year-old James von Brunn, a long-time figure of the anti-Semitic fringe, entered the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and opened fire with a rifle. He shot one security guard, who, along with another, opened fire, wounding von Brunn.

OK, that's a partial list. On the left we have . . . The Unabomber who had not actually killed anyone in years, but was wanted probably more out of frustration at his ability to elude federal authorities for so long.

In the midst of all this violence, we have the ongoing assault of talk-radio and right-wing print media. During the 1990's, there were many staunch and ardent defenders of various semi-legal "militia" movements. After the initial confrontation at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, TX, talk-radio host and Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy offered advice to listeners on how to murder federal law enforcement authorities, insisting that it is necessary to shoot them in the head because of body armor.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, many on the right indulged in a variety of fantasies, from then-Sen. Obama's supposed hidden devotion to the faith of Islam and his attendance at a "madrassa" while a child living in Indonesia, to the on-going insistence that he is not, in fact, eligible to run for or serve in the office of President because he was actually born in Kenya, not in Hawaii. His political views have been variously labeled "socialist", "communist", "fascist", and an entire on-going dialogue has ensued pointing out the various ways policies enacted by the Obama Administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress are leading the United States toward some kind of authoritarianism. Infamously, talk-radio host is continuous in his expressed desire for the Obama Administration to "fail" in its goal of directing a national economic recovery and restoring respect for the law.

We have the Rev. Wiley Drake praying for the death of the President. We have the on-going insistence that the marriage equality movement will destroy the fabric of American society. What was once considered "fringe" beliefs on the far right are now mainstream topics of discussion on nationally syndicated radio programs, on nationally televised "opinion" programs on cable news networks, and on thousands of website and blogs on the internet. This festering sewer, it seems to me, is a breeding ground for people to act out defending their values from the alleged threat the current Administration poses not just to certain policy preferences but to the very heart of the American ideal.

I'm not saying this constitutes a "clear and present danger". I am asking whether or not we are willing to start drawing some conclusions as to the correlation between the swamp of disgusting, blood-lust and hate-filled right-wing screeching and the on-going, and increasing, violence of many on the right.

Even FOXNews Is Getting Skittish

The following video of FOXNews anchor Shepard Smith reading a representative sample of the kind of crazy-talk he receives via email - and we see on a daily basis - makes me wonder what might become of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity in the wake of today's shooting at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.



Hannity pumps the socialism/birther crap; Beck adds just a hint of nonsensical crazy to the mix. One wonders if a kind of network self-awareness might coalesce as the violence increases.

On a personal note, I have to add that James von Brunn is a year older than my father, which I hate to admit actually kind of impresses me. A guy his age should be dottering around an old-folks home somewhere, or perhaps working in his garden chasing kids off his lawn and complaining about the neighbor's dog pissing on his peony bush. Instead, he's wounded in a firefight with police. Hate certainly seems enough to have kept him going.

R.I.P. Culture Wars

Duncan wonders about the "culture wars". Here's my take, for what it's worth.

If you go back in American history, the dominance of European culture over our art, our story-telling, our music, our drama is astounding. In the 1920's, academic musicologists wondered if America would produce a vital, native music, even as various strands of folk musics were even then creating blues, jazz, country, and gospel. As recently as the 1990's, in reading an academic overview of British progressive rock, there is still a consensus among academics that, despite both its popularity and sophistication, contemporary popular musics are still "inferior" to the European art music tradition on any number of levels. This point-of-view, steeped in a blind cultural supremacy that is laughable in its smallness, can be extended to treatments of African-American literature, various strands of southern and eastern European culture (song, drama, literature), and the Scots-Irish folk music tradition that, along with the African-American folk music tradition, is the rich vein for so much of our popular culture today.

The kind of cultural hegemony that could sneer at jazz in the 1920's and 1930's, turn a blind eye to Jackson Pollack in the 1940's, and dismiss the writings of Richard Wright and Countee Cullen became less and less tenable after the Second World War. The onrush of various popular art forms rooted more in folk traditions than "high art" traditions was only controversial precisely because of a combination of racism and an elitist disdain for the common experience of the working class (consider the hubbub over A Streetcar Named Desire as archetypal). Yet, for all the chest-thumping and head-shaking, it was precisely the visceral connection popular art made with its audience that made up its appeal.

This same combination of racism and elitist disdain for the folk tradition created, by the mid-1960's, what was known as "the generation gap". It wasn't really a gap created by age; it was one created by various conceits and prejudices brought on by a kind of cultural supremacy that was blind to its own racism and classism. That the same generation that learned to dance to Little Richard and Elvis would, in their young adulthood, burn the US flag and demand an end to an illegal and unjust war, proved for the elder generation that the mores and sensibilities of the children of the post-war era were corrupt by exposure to "base" art forms. The reaction of the right, which continues to this day, to so much of our popular (and increasingly "high" - consider the outrage that toni morrison received a Nobel Prize) art, is rooted in racist disdain for African-American musics, poetry, and literature, and Scots-Irish musics, story telling, and folkways.

Of course, one issue I have left out is the sexism that boils over to pure misogyny on the issue of abortion. With the introduction of a safe, effective contraceptive pill in the mid-1960's, the final barrier to women enjoying the kind of sexual freedom and license previously considered solely a male prerogative became a focal point of controversy. One wonders at times where all these folks fuming over the pill thought all the men who were free to have sex at will were getting it, to be honest. Yet, by the early 1970's, as the feminist movement found its legs, its voice, various images (burned bra, anyone?), the kind of visceral fear many men direct at independent, sexually powerful women became a shrill cry of outrage with the Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade. Rather than consider the issue of abortion as an issue of women's health and independence, the right continues to focus on the fetus.

With the rise of Republican political dominance, first with Nixon's "silent majority" and the hard hats beating up anti-war protesters, then the victory of Ronald Reagan in 1980 right on through the 2006 mid-term elections, issues of culture became a focus of political debate and conflict even though most people understand that these are, in reality, separate spheres. Politics deals with power; culture is nothing more than the way a society expresses itself. No exercise of political power absent wholly illegal statutory restrictions can effect a change in American culture; thus the on-going nonsense about Hollywood liberals, country-music conservatives, the attempt by many Republicans to hijack NASCAR as some kind of right-wing cultural symbol, and on and on.

Few folks outside die-hard racists and cultural imperialists (Pat Buchanan representing the former; Victor Davis Hanson and the late Alan Bloom representing the latter) really pay much attention to these issues anymore, with the one exception being abortion. Even here, however, the rough and uneasy consensus we have reached nationally, while hardly popular with extremists on either side, has stabilized that issue. That's why the anti-abortion folks are resorting to violence, intimidation, and (of course) murder.

In general, people argue over all sorts of things. The mistake right-wing culture warriors made - and continue to make - is to believe that the realm of political power is either an effective or even legitimate forum for deciding issues of culture. My guess is they will continue to make that mistake, even as our culture, both popular and high, develops naturally.

The Full Monty Right-Wing

I have come to the conclusion, after seeing that Newt Gingrich called the Obama Administration a "failure", that the Republicans are no longer pretending to offer anything substantive to our public discourse. While the hard-core right, Bush Administration dead-enders, fans of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the talk-radio crazies, and the rest continue to pretend they will be vindicated by events - most of which involve our national collapse - the reality is somewhat different.

When a member of Congress can say the following, we have reached then end of the line as far as taking these jokers seriously is concerned.

The right wing, however, has seized the opportunity to launch baseless, fearmongering attacks, with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) leading the way:

This is the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America.

There's not even the pretense of saying anything serious. This isn't even fear-mongering because no one except the pissy-pants crowd cowers in fear of TERORRISTS!!!!

Of course, we also have the meaningless SOCIALISM nonsense on everything from the GM bankruptcy to health care reform to Frank Gaffney's oft-cited op-ed in the Washington Times calling Obama a Muslim, and it just proves that, however much they are assisted by the national media, the right and the Republicans are now just nakedly empty of anything to offer. Since the harshest substantive critics of the Obama Administration are on the left, and this seems to be the ones to whom they react far more than the right, I think it is driving the remnants of serious loyal opposition into silence.

We are left the John Boehners and the Michael Steeles of this world (who called members of the Obama Administration "numbnuts" last week) and, of course, the king and queen of the Republican Party, Newt and Sarah Palin. If any two individuals represented what is wrong with the Republican Party at this point in time more than they, I don't know who they are. The tongue bath Palin received from Sean Hannity earlier this week is just an example of how devoid of any substance the right is. One idiot asking another idiot her opinion on socialism adds absolutely nothing to our national discourse.

In the near future, I am quite sure we will have to put up with these folks giving us their meaningless, fact-free opinions on all sorts of matters. The nice thing is they have neither power nor constituency any more, so they are just a whole lot of hot air.

Music For Your Monday

Our theme today is - murder! It has always been a part of the folk/ballad tradition to tell stories of murder. Sometimes, like "Hey, Joe", they are declarations of intent (there are a lot of those in the blues). Telling stories of murder in song is old, old. Here's an early Bob Dylan tune, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", the story of a travesty of justice in a racist murder.



From his second solo album, About Face, here's David Gilmour's "Murder", a somewhat detached, one almost could call it British, approach to the subject.



The provenance of the final song could not be made up.

The message posted in an Internet chat room read, "Seeking well-built man, 18-30 years old for slaughter." A few months later, a user responded: "I offer myself to you and will let you dine from my live body. Not butchery, dining!!"

It wasn't a joke, and what followed was far more gruesome and bizarre than the plot of nearly any horror film. In March 2001, Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer technician in Hesse, Germany, killed, dismembered and ate 43-year-old microchip engineer Bernd Juergen Brandes. While Brandes was still alive, the two dined on parts of his flesh together, then Meiwes stabbed him to death.

The incident captivated the European media, and provided East German industrial metal band Rammstein with some ripe new material with which to return from a three-year self-imposed exile.

"I was really interested to find out about why he would want to kill a man and eat [him]," guitarist Richard Kruspe said in a strong German accent. "What I figured out from some research was that Meiwes' mother totally destroyed all kinds of relationships he had in his childhood. So, he felt that if he did this, his victim would stay with him forever. It was just a really interesting story, so we decided to make a song about it."

The Newt Gingrich Phenomenon

With this latest bit of information - Sarah Palin has been disinvited (again) to a big Republican fundraiser out of deference to Newt Gingrich - we see another plot point in the on-going story of Newt Gingrich's sudden appearance as Republican spokesman. He was on one of the Sunday Chat-fests yesterday. Again. He seems to be all over the place, really, calling Judge Sotomayor first a racist, then a racialist (not quite sure what that second construction means), Twittering from a Nazi Death Camp, and praising Catholic doctrine on marriage, without any sense of irony at all.

I have to wonder what the producers who book him on television are thinking. Institutional memory in Washington is indeed quite short, but it should be long enough to remember that Gingrich quit the Speakership after the public turned against Congressional Republicans for pursuing impeachment against Pres. Clinton (in a huff, he also quit the House as well). It became public knowledge that even as he pursued Pres. Clinton without any remorse for the President's lie about receiving oral gratification from Monica Lewinsky, Gingrich was involved in an extra-marital affair (hardly his first). He managed to turn public opinion against Congressional Republicans with his childish hissy-fit over seating arrangements on a flight with the President, which led to his shutting down the federal government in a contrived budget battle in the fall of 1995.

Gingrich's entire career is a case study in hubris, overreach, and the public display of seriously poor judgment and its results. I find it hysterically funny that he is offered to the public as a serious alternative voice to President Obama's when he really has nothing to say. If he becomes de facto leader of the Republican Party, my guess is he will become their Presidential nominee in 2012. My fervent hope is this occurs, because Newt's long history of making crap up, calling the Susan Smith murder case in South Carolina and the Columbine HS shootings in Colorado examples of Democratic policy in action would be funny if the situations weren't so horrific. While I doubt anyone will ever bring those statements up, at least as Newt continues his romance with a swooning Washington press corps, they are out there, and there is enough of a memory outside the hallowed halls to keep those quotes alive.

In all, while I consider him completely irrelevant to our current situation, and wonder what, exactly, the people who book him think he has to offer, for the most part I am quite happy that he keeps his face and voice out there. He has a tendency to insert his loafers deep in his mouth - calling Sotomayor a racist is hardly the worse - and much worse, precisely because he has such an elevated sense of his own genius and role. He thinks no one is laughing at him, when in fact while most people are ignoring him, those who are paying attention are providing a laugh track for a future Newt run for President.

Making Bill O'Reilly A Martyr

When Dr. George Tiller was murdered last Sunday, many left wing websites and blogs started putting up video of FOXNews personality Bill O'Reilly's multiple statements calling Dr. Tiller a murderer, a Nazi, and so forth. Pressure mounted for O'Reilly to make some kind of statement, which he - characteristically enough - botched. The campaign continued, and it seemed the idea of putting a certain amount of responsibility squarely on O'Reilly's shoulder was gaining some traction.

I was wary, for a variety of reasons. After some time spent perusing the fever swamps of the right, specifically those places that address the Tiller murder directly, make it pretty clear that O'Reilly's rhetoric was hardly unique. Indeed, the idea that, rather than a doctor running a clinic providing legal, safe health services to women, fully compliant with the law, he was some psycho, piling up the bodies of babies for his own glee and, of course, profit. The words "murderer", "murder", "dead babies", and much, much worse are pretty routine, not just in addressing Dr. Tiller specifically, but the entire issue. Abortion is considered not a safe, legal medical procedure fraught with all sorts of moral and emotional baggage and consequences, but rather murder, pure and simple. A fetus isn't a fetus, but a "pre-born baby", which is why "infanticide" is tossed around so glibly.

We don't need to go to the big right-wing websites to discover this. Consider Neil, and Eric, Mark. There really is no difference between these hate-filled, ill-informed, blood-lusting posts in which they don't so much dance with glee on Tiller's grave as actually spit on it.

Making a martyr and symbol of Bill O'Reilly serves no purpose. The entire right-to-life movement bears responsibility for Tiller's murder; by creating an atmosphere which (a) views a medical procedure as part of a project of mass murder; and (b) those who commit these acts "monsters" in the wonderfully dehumanizing phrase of one of the linked posts, murder becomes not only a live option, but the only truly moral act left. Politics has failed. Judicial action has failed. The abortion mills continue to churn out millions of dead babies a year. Stopping just one abortionist (in Neil's nomenclature) by any means necessary becomes a bad means justifying a moral end. Tiller's murderer is the only truly moral actor. All those "denunciations" ring hollow, drowned out by the clamor of those calling him a Nazi, comparing him to Josef Mengele, and on and on.

While many big-name liberals and progressives might get a certain sense of satisfaction out of some kind of action taken against Bill O'Reilly, I won't.

All those bastards have blood on their hands. I hope the tears of Dr. Tiller's family keep them up nights.