Accommodationists

The leaders of the Vichy government. Standing in the foreground, left to right, are Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, Admiral Jean Darlan, and Pierre Laval.



Akaka, Daniel K. (D-HI) Yes
Baucus, Max (D-MT) Yes
Bingaman, Jeff (D-NM) Yes
Byrd, Robert C. (D-WV) Yes
Cantwell, Maria (D-WA) Yes
Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE) Yes
Conrad, Kent (D-ND) Yes
Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND) Yes
Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI) Yes
Johnson, Tim (D-SD) Yes
Kohl, Herb (D-WI) Yes
Landrieu, Mary L. (D-LA) Yes
Lieberman, Joseph I. (D-CT) Yes
Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR) Yes
Nelson, Bill (D-FL) Yes
Nelson, E. Benjamin (D-NE) Yes
Pryor, Mark L. (D-AR) Yes
Rockefeller, John D., IV (D-WV) Yes
Salazar, Ken (D-CO) Yes

This may be imprudent of me, but this is my blog, and I am in a funk tonight on account of the Alito cloture vote and what it means for America. Bush is on the ropes, and the Democrats hand him a bounce, a rehabilitation just in time for the State of the Union where he will talk about terror and 9/11 and lie about 10,000 times.

This Alito vote is not about abortion. The right wing money maker will not go away because of Samuel Alito. He was playing the Bush “base” like a fiddle during the hearings. (a bass fiddle? I just thought of that.)

Alito’s cred with the Republicans, none of whom except Lincoln Chaffee can truly be called moderates any longer, is not his stance on abortion. It is his single minded, unwavering support of power against the little guy, of authority, particularly government authority against individual civil rights. He never as a practicing lawyer defended a business or an individual. His only client? The federal government. His only employer? The federal government.

The federal government has been acquired like a massive real estate parcel or collection of Ming Dynasty statuary. The Congress acts as a trustee of sorts for the profiteers, among whom today announced a record windfall - and not just any record windfall. It was the largest corporate profit ever recorded in the history of the United States. The company? ExxonMobil.

I have no patience or sympathy with people who will not get this through their heads. We argue about Merry Christmas. They walk off with another Rembrandt. You think that black people and teachers and firemen have picked your pocket? Just wait.

The females on this august list depress me because they are direct beneficiaries of the civil rights battles of the ‘60s. Any professional in subsequent years, particularly those whose jobs formerly were reserved for men, owes a little something to the bra burners and feminists. What year did the Ivy Leagues start accepting women? 1968? What about other male bastions? Ask the people who broke the barriers. No one was tossing posies in their path I can tell you, but they hung tough. So Maria Cantwell and Mary Landrieu could screw them in thanks.

My heroes were Bella Abzug and Barbara Jordan and Margaret Chase Smith. These women stood for something. When I was about 8 or 9 years old my mother bought me a book called Great American Heroines. I still have it. The people that built our great country and sustained it had grit and determination and a backbone, including, or perhaps, especially the women.

In an 1876 speech to the pioneers of the Michigan county some of my ancestors helped to settle, the governor of Michigan spoke at length about the sacrifices and contributions of the pioneer women. This was long before women had the right to vote, before the right of homestead was universal, before property ownership by women was universally legal. He wasn’t schmoozing the little ladies, either. Our country’s centennial was shadowed by an economic depression brought on by –who else? – speculators, and the pioneers, like my ancestors, who had been born at the turn of the century when the country was ebullient and hopeful, were rueful over the rise of the corporations. People who had been around near the beginning of the great American experiment were perplexed that the country they had done so much to build up was becoming unrecognizable.

We are faced with that same dilemma today. Same root causes. Same cast of characters. Some of the same families even.

I called Senator Robert Byrd’s office today, because I wanted to tell him that the people who have supported Samuel Alito throughout his career are not the people who have supported Senator Byrd. But even he has been bought off apparently. At 88 he ought to retire and let a young person who is going to have to live with the consequences of his actions take his seat.

All of the fake liberals who rode the crest of the wave, who benefited from the blood and sweat of others can go to hell. I’m sick to death of all of them. This includes you, Barak.

Economist Watch

Cover, January 28th - February 3rd issue

For those who don’t believe that there is an Anglo-American echo chamber in the upper reaches of journalism, as well as the low, look to the libertarian Economist for evidence. It prides itself on intellectual stamina and often deserves the props. It’s only a magazine – technically a newspaper, actually – so we shouldn’t levitate. There’ll be new outrages in only one week’s time. However, if I want to learn Karl Rove/Grover Norquist talking points, I would simply hang out at a local breakfast eatery, nursing a pot of what passes for coffee in such establishments and watch Fox “News” all day. (E.g.: “Is it their religion that makes them terrorists?”)

Lucky ducky me. No, wait. Lucky ducky was a Wall Street Journal coinage. Nevertheless, I received my subscription copy of the January 28th – February 3rd issue yesterday. Subscribers in the civilized part of the world expect their copy on Saturday, so they can plot overthrows and palace coups and portfolio tilts for the coming week. My issue may arrive on Tuesday, Thursday or as a one-two punch every other week. The mailmen around here clearly do not understand why the Northwest Territory is so barren. If the movers and shakers would receive their Economist on time, the place might start to rock and roll. But then they’d have to sell their Shaklee vitamins on their own time. Just an observation, mind you.

Like most cocooned Americans I generally start with its coverage of the United States. The Lexington column, as I’ve mentioned before, sets me on edge, and this week is no exception. Its title is, “The papal court.” It’s about a Supreme Court with five Catholics on the bench. Do you know any actual Catholics? I do. Lots of them. See how this fits your experience. “This is a remarkable historical turnaround. Arthur Schlesinger senior once remarked that prejudice against the Catholic church was “the deepest bias in the history of the American people”. The Protestant majority denounced Catholics as minions of the anti-Christ and servants of a foreign power, marginalized Catholic schools [true], demonized Catholic pastimes, particularly drinking, and tried to keep them out of high political offices. It is not so long since presidents observed an unwritten convention against having more than one papist on the court.” (Page 34.)

Uh, anyone at The Economist want to guess the year John Kennedy was elected President? When’s the last time you heard someone refer to a Catholic as a ‘papist’?

Here is a really great outcome of all that ‘60s peace, love and dope The Economist was dissing the last time I wrote about it. We stopped caring about stupid crap like which flavor of Christian (or not) our friends happened to be. As I’ve said before, I can’t decide if the Lexington columnist is 80 or 25, because no one my age would write about something so devoid of experience - - unless he’s David Brooks. Bobo can strangle history along with the best of them.

Time to do your homework, Lexington. Who was the chief conservative spokesman for the longest time, at least in the popular mind, the person dispatched to scuffle with Gore Vidal on all the late night talk shows? And what is his religion? Was he a pariah to the left on account of his religion or because his ideas are so antebellum? (and I’m not sure I’d stop with the Civil War on the bellum part.)

What you will not see The Economist write about is all the Israeli citizens peppered throughout our government or their alignment with fundie kooks and the right wing Catholic Justices Scalia, Thomas and soon-to-be Alito. They might have lived in New Jersey, but their money’s on Haifa and Tel Aviv. It’s OK to bash Catholics and the Protestant hegemony in The Economist, but do not talk about AIPAC or aforesaid unholy alliances.

The article also advises that “Above all, Catholics are becoming ever more mainstream.” (ibid) Gosh, that’s really swell of them. Considering that Alito and Scalia both are alleged to be members of Opus Dei, a most un-mainstream group, akin in extremism, if not substance, to the KKK and the Trotskyites, I’m not quite skipping to ma Lou over the prospect of those two narrow, pre-Enlightenment “thinkers” rearranging the Constitutional landscape for the next couple of generations. Catholicism is the least of their uniqueness. And, frankly, if they were Catholic in the sense of universal or Catholic in the style of the Saints, say Francis of Assisi, an Italian with a moral worldview and a huge heart, then I would be thrilled that they were on the Court. And don’t forget the me-too Catholic, Clarence Thomas. There’s a holy man for you. (“Is it their religion that makes them terrorists?”)

OK. On to another section. On Page 32 there’s a shaded box “On red alert”, subtitled, “How to prevent the warping of impressionable minds”. (Stop me before I kill. Is The Economist writing this tongue-in-cheek? Is my literal, steak and potatoes American mind too crass to absorb the subtle dig? Or are they serious?) This recounts an attempt by the UCLA College Republicans’ past president to harass and intimidate professors there. He was going to pay students to tape lectures so they could be vetted for wrong ideas. He was slapped down. Even some of the money bags conservatives he’d lined up withdrew, and they seldom back down. “The cash-for-tapes ploy may be un-subtle, but it reflects the keenness on the right to tackle what many see as the American left’s last redoubt. … Given Conservatives’ success in changing Congress, the judiciary and the press, pinkish academics have every reason to be scared.” Pinkish? Pinkish?

Ah, well, nothing succeeds like 20 bazillion dollars, I always say. Pink refers to Commies, like reds. As a left leaning person, I came across some far out leftists in undergraduate school in the early ‘70s. It was quite fashionable to be extreme – over nothing, in some cases. However, I likewise encountered whitey righties, a displaced Hungarian history professor, a full colonel Army reservist who happened to be the head of my department and, therefore, my advisor. Oh, and the men who took the professor’s salary but were only half-baked in their efforts to help females advance. I had to learn to deal with it. I shudder to think what one of these coddled, spoiled “conservatives” would do to beat his/her (if that’s not too radical) way out of a paper bag.

As to impressionable minds. This is quite disturbing, actually, as “impressionable” might be exchanged for “intelligent”, and, God knows, we don’t want intelligent young folk exposed to great ideas. Just issue them a pin striped suit or the office casual equivalent, their College Republicans button and a subscription to Humans Events, block all internet forums but Little Green Footballs and The Corner, and watch their “impressionable” minds shrivel. That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? The Ruling Class matriculates elsewhere. And UCLA is a state school.

Last, they do a little write up on Maria Cantwell, the Democrat Senator from Washington. She was a tech mogul from RealNetworks, and she made oodles on paper, so she ran for the Senate and won, barely. She halted slippery Ted Stevens’ insertion of Artic pillaging into a defense bill. Hee hee. She outed him and it, and now the state Republican chairman is calling her an obstructionist. They definitely are running out of ideas on the right, if they ever had one in the first place – except FOAD - for America, of course. (See Miss Neveda)

But then they let slip a clue that they must in fact be on Karl Rove’s speed dial, after all. “It does not help that she received $17,865 from organizations linked to Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist. She is now giving it to charity.”

An Indian Tribe does not a Jack Abramoff make. A glance at her campaign finance records at Open Secrets revels that lawyers contributed to Maria Cantwell by a margin greater than 2-to-1 over the next largest contributor. Micro$oft, Amazon, Comcast all contributed, as well.

As another famed College Republican president, Jack Abramoff was not directing money to Democrats. That’s the whole idea. A one-party state. The conservative revolution. Maria may come under the heading DINO. I don’t know enough about her. Kevin Phillips characterizes the national political scene as “different flavors of money”, and I think that’s a lot more interesting and enlightening than the chewed twice offerings in The Economist.

One last note. They are very bearish on Bush’s health care “initiatives” and predict a collapse of the system. Cheerio!

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang!

There is a God. For all the tragedy and senseless waste cluttering history, every so often beauty and genius are aligned. Mozart didn't have an easy life, but his short time here left us with evidence of the sublime, which lives beyond our quotidian understanding. What a magnificent gift.

It was 20 years ago today

Is this what it feels like to get old?

My heart is a baseball fan’s heart, but baseball, like everything else, has been ruined by money. Some of the most fun I have had as an adult has been at Wrigley Field. I went to 17 games in 1989, the year of the San Francisco earthquake and a division championship for the lamentable Cubs. Andre Dawson and Ryne Sandburg were my favorite players. Earlier, in ’87 I’d gone to a game in April, warm and springy, like April used to be before I don’t know what. Greg Maddox was pitching. It was his first full year as a Cub. Dawson hit for the cycle and from his right field domain threw out a runner going to first. I think Maddox hit a homerun. He was a very talented athlete, so, naturally the Cubs traded him, and we know the rest.

Nineteen-eighty-seven is the year the owners colluded by not hiring any free agents, and Dawson showed up at Spring Training in Mesa with a blank contract for Dallas Green. They paid him $500,000. He was tremendously popular with the fans, particularly the right field bleacher bums, who bowed to him each time he took the field or made a spectacular play. When he played his last game at Wrigley Field, as a Florida Marlin, he jogged around the outfield track, and the Cubs fans went wild.

Sandburg made it into the Hall of Fame last year, and gave an excellent speech. He praised Dawson thus: “"No player in baseball history worked harder, suffered more or did it better than Andre Dawson.” Sandburg was another restrained professional, and there was a certain security in knowing that even with a disabled pitching staff, and I’m being polite, Sandburg could save some runs with his outstanding glove. Of course, neither of them ever got to play in a World Series.

These days, I don’t even know the position players. I used to subscribe to The Sporting News and even kept track of players in the farm system. I loved talking baseball.

But our biggest sports moment, prior to the Michael Jordan era, came 20 years ago today in Super Bowl XX. Sundays during the football season were reserved for Bears games, unless, of course, they played in cursed Monday night contests. Yes. I actually arranged my life around the Bears. It was so much fun going to the neighborhood sports bars or a friend’s apartment or even staying at home cooking or ironing or whatever we so on Sundays and watching the games.

Walter Payton was nearing the end of his career, but he, too, was an athlete’s athlete. He never went on injured reserve I don’t believe in his entire career. He kept in shape, was very disciplined and focused, with great heart. He was never sleazy or crude. He and Jim McMahon, the hot dog quarterback, wore headbands that said ‘Pete Rozell’, because McMahon had done something naughty to arouse the commissioner’s ire. Was it when he mooned the media? How prescient. And he went to BYU of all places.

On the big day, I went to a Super Bowl party a few blocks away. A friend, a native Minnesotan, had brought deviled eggs with the number 10 in pimento strips on each one for Fran Tarkenton who wore that number on his Vikings uniform. Why do I remember that? It was a noisy bash. We all did the Super Bowl shuffle - after a few libations, that is. Dumb fun. We all need it once in a while. That night/morning after the party it sounded like Rush Street had crowded into my 14th floor apartment living room. Impossible to sleep.

The game was played in the now demolished New Orleans Super Dome. New England showed up, but that was about it. 46-10 was the final score. Richard Dent. Willie Gault. The Refrigerator, William Perry, Matt Suhey, Jim Covert and Da Coach, Mike Ditka. Each of them was a minor god. Empires do love their gladiators, and our empire was the Second City, bonded in my aging memory with the '85 Bears.

Popular culture and I don’t have too much in common. Years before, a friend and I went to the Art Institute for Super Sunday, and we imagined a campaign to extend the holiday season to include the Super Bowl. Your basic art and music types. We thought about greeting cards, decorations, everything. (We also hatched the promising idea to cast Elvis altars from plaster of Paris to sell on late night TV, pre-cable.) But Super Bowl XX is one of the few mass appeal events with which my life was aligned. It felt good to be in with the in crowd for a change.

The next day, on a bitter cold, brilliantly sunny day, the Challenger blew up. I was in the Solomon Cooper drug store when I heard the news – was on my way to the Bear’s homecoming parade. I didn’t go. In and of itself it was a horrible tragedy, but 20 years later takes on a greater significance, perhaps: the bombastic party followed by the unspeakable explosion. Quite a metaphor for our times.

Love-40

The Opus Dei Supreme

When John Roberts was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia was absent. Emergency surgery? A death in the immediate family? A Traffic backup?

Actually, he was playing tennis in Colorado at a swanky resort paid for by the Federalist Society, which was sponsoring a Meet with Tony pow wow for wealthy Federalists. Screwed up priorities? A social faux pas? He says his commitment to the Federalists could not be broken. You have to understand. These are important rich people that go to these resort seminars. You have no idea how many disruptions it would have caused if Tony had cancelled. Pavarotti, a fellow Italian and one I happen to love, used to back out of openings at the Met, the Lyric, San Francisco - - - Have you any idea what a box on Opening Night with a Pavarotti in the lead costs? Eventually, the Lyric, at least, stopped hiring him. But Tony is a center of influence all to himself, unlike opera singers, who must be ensemble players, unless they’re Kathleen Battle.

My guess is that Tony has gotten off to a bad start with his new boss, but when you can go duck hunting with the Vice while hearing a case to which he is a party – and then get huffy if someone questions your legal ethics or the appearance of a conflict – one needs acknowledge no higher authority.

From ABC: Supreme Ethics Problem?

The Unitary Executive

From The Onion, November 2000.

For those of you who think I’m obsessed with Samuel Alito, you’d be right. He himself is not the issue, of course. In the America where I grew up, both Samuel Alito and I would have a place at the table, so to speak, along with the occasional Rockefeller, Eastern Bloc refugee, Asian store proprietor, Muslim student, Jewish grandmother still bearing a number on her arm. We might not see eye to eye on anything, but we would respect one another’s right to an opinion different than our own. On a good day, at least. That was the idea – never close to perfect, but it was, I’d say, the over-arching narrative, or one of them, of that era. I had no idea how pissed off the super rich were because of this notion of parity. What I thought was normal and right was anathema to most of them.

My formative years saw liberals, if one could rightly call JFK or LBJ liberals, or liberal policies, dominate public life. Let me decode that for you: black people and women got legal protection from the federal government. A liberal democracy America has always been at its core, but I am not referring to expansive social legislation, which is what the “conservatives” are upset about. Our democracy had three co-equal branches of the federal government which was mirrored in many states. The Congress theoretically was the equal of the President, a government of the people, not a Parliament or monarchy – or a dictatorship.

Money was always a factor, but today it is the only factor. It has ruined our system, shredded it, in fact. Here’s how the federal government works: special interest groups, most especially corporate conglomerates, professional associations and the super rich hire lobbyists who front for them in Congress and with the President. Want some legislation to favor your group? That’ll be $65,000,000., please. Want an exclusive provision inserted in to a completely unrelated 450 page bill that no one in Congress has time to read before voting on? Another $35,000,000., thanks. Money goes from the group to the lobbyist and from there to party with “your” representatives, especially the Leadership, which is why Tom DeLay is in deep do-do, to quote the current President's sire. The Abramoff blockbuster features Republican Allstars, and I hope they all get sent home in November or to jail. However, the Democrats, while not legatees of the Abramoff/Norquist/Rove money pot, are just as damned corruptible, because money is the fuel of our system, not justice, not the law, not government and certainly not the people. Money.

Now comes Samuel Alito at the nadir of our republic. He doesn’t like a lot of his fellow citizens. The kids on the playground used to beat him up a lot, perhaps. His mother was a teacher, a woman who told the press that she raised her children to be Number One at everything. This does not always bode well for warm interpersonal relationships or understanding people. The world, after all, is populated with human beings. Sam is a creature of the Law – and currying favor with the rich and powerful. His trajectory has been a long one. He has been planning for this moment since high school. His goal was to be a Supreme Court Justice, A Number One among Number Ones, not serve to the country that has employed him nearly his entire working career. As I’ve said before – not too many private sector judges out there.

The Keystone Cops’ performance by Senate Democrats at his confirmation hearings demonstrates the money/power problem perfectly. Politicians, Walter Mitty like, contemplate their ascendancy to Unitary Executive, the most troubling, anti-democratic, unconstitutional theory espoused by Samuel Alito. They all have a money spigot, or they wouldn’t be in the Senate. But the elusive power … So they thrashed around like beached whales, demanding records that the NY Times had acquired months before – like Ted Kennedy didn’t know that. Right. Ted has an excellent staff. They all read The New York Times. I liked that little tableau with Arlen Specter and Ted arguing about Ted’s letter and seeing each other in the Senate gym - just folks, not as mesmerizing as Mrs. Alito’s crying jag, but cheesy daytime drama to amuse the “people”.

If even one of the spineless Democrats has the nerve to filibuster, I’ll see a tiny glimmer of light. As well, Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, etc., here’s your chance.

Alito is not a creature of the AIPAC crowd, I do not believe, and Scalia, his role model, has lectured Jews that Nazi Germany’s problem was the separation of church and state. I guess they read different history books in Catholic school than we did in mine. “Gott mit Uns” and all that. Given that Alito would support Bush’s invasion of anywhere on account of the Unitary Executive theory, the AIPACers should be comfortable with him, since our foreign policy has to pass muster with the Likud Party. Maybe that’s why all the silence and ineptitude on the part of the Senate.

Apologetic make-up bird blog

Illustrations, Louis Aggasiz Fuertes

Mrs. Snowy Owl is diurnal which means she hunts during the daylight hours. She doesn’t say much from her winter perch which will be found close to the ground where the mice are. The snowy owl saves its talk for its breeding grounds in the Artic tundra. Every year a few dip down into the Great Lakes and Cape Cod.

They have the longest wing span of any North American owl and tip the scales at 3.5 pounds on average. Mouse must be fattening, because Charles the cat’s vet observed that he hadn’t missed many meals, and he has an outside gig featuring frequent mouse dinners.

The Michigan statewide bird report for the last three weeks has chronicled snowy owls all over the state. I haven’t heard of the Willet again, but there’s a varied thrush (the robin’s family) in Manistee County, which is in the northern half of the lower peninsula, and male and female Harlequin ducks near me, so I’d better get over there to see if I can’t spot them.

Who needs a job when life is so cheap?

Still from the movie, I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932

My thinking has changed over the years about the idea of unions. Back a few years – I’d say it was about 1993 – I was finishing a project for a small accounting firm. It was Labor Day. Carol Kleinman, a Chicago Tribune columnist, and a couple of others were on John Callaway’s TV news show, Chicago Tonight, and they were discussing labor issues. Fair enough. I remember Kleinman advocating for white collar unions.

“Not gonna please John Madigan,” I thought to myself. Madigan was the Editor of the Tribune and naturally pro-corporation. The panelists sounded hopeful that American workers would get a clue, but I have to admit, I still was thinking that the recession begun in 1990 was the main factor in my wandering from temporary contract job to part-time retail job to another temporary or as-needed position. I was interested in hearing what the panelists had to say, but a bit removed from the fray.

Or so I thought.

When I lost an – by today’s standards – outstanding job, the company I worked for offered me an outplacement package worth about $8000.00 with a firm called Right Associates, which was a reconstituted contingency fee head hunter all dressed up for the great corporate purge of people like me, the tasty carrion of American industry. The outplacement was in lieu of my employer following its own rules regarding axing employees and a be nice gesture, so I’d be less inclined to sue them.

The formula was to network one’s way into another job. Networking was the answer to everything. Thing is, I’d already networked my way into two interviews, courtesy of, well, my network, but the outplacement shill, for that’s all he was – get the lady to sign the contract – was dismissive of my efforts, “If they find out about you, they’ll drop you like a hot potato,” like I had a disease, or I’d been stealing from the company, because my only hope was their program. He reminded me that my employer had included a private office in the package. All I had to do was inform Right Associates of every contact I had or would make in the course of networking my way to my dream job.

Suspicious person that I am, I decided that my paranoid former employer would use my contacts list to issue denials of my undoubtedly negative reaction to their shitty treatment of me. But I am a pro, unlike my former employer. I don’t discuss personal problems with clients. I will cry on my own time. I told the outplacement jerk to take a hike. Patronizing the little lady will not seal the deal, jackass. The personality test they gave me showed I was an ENTJ anyway, which means, roughly, I don’t take a lot of shit.

One is extremely vulnerable in such situations, and I had no one who was on my side. People who haven’t worked for behemoth corporations or in politics-driven endeavors have trouble relating to the pettiness, stupidity and bald faced greed which power such enterprises.

Corporate America pays PR flacks and ad people and image consultants to make the obscene look attractive. But even that is becoming less necessary. The poster girl for the Screw Off, America campaign might be Miss Nevada, who says that dead Nevadans will be taking one for the team, if and when the spent rods of Yucca Mountain leech into the environment. These are some tough Americans. Someone call Bill Bennett. Her brother has cancer? No problem. The better to cull the gene pool.

The old boys with whom I shared an employer were entitled to their perquisites, benefits and extra nuggies because, a.) they got there first; b.) they were men or should have been; and, c.) they weren’t baby boomers, all of whom, as we know, are the worst people to ever walk the planet. All of these old boys, gender notwithstanding, today enjoy generous retirement pensions in addition to Social Security, which they’re more than willing to vote to kill for their younger fellow citizens. The company subsidizes supplemental health insurance for them and their better half. However, the company is the defendant in a major class action law suit regarding its pension and 401 (k) plans, and I would love to divulge what I know, but I can’t.

They are the last generation of Americans to be treated well by the system. Bitch though they do about “welfare” and “tax and spend”, bla, bla, bla , their benefits today are viewed as welfare by the mighty corporatocracy, which would gladly cut them all off without a farthing, except that the older folk VOTE and who, because of their sense of entitlement, would rise up. Their benefits, it should be noted well, are protected to an extent by federal law. There are lots of regulations governing the termination of pension plans. And most of the fatso corporations are curtailing corporate pensions by freezing out new entrants, so you won’t hear a peep out of the entitlement crowd, I don’t imagine.

These are not the WWII cohort, mind you, nor are they the baby boom. They are the cohort that comes in between those two groups, riding the coattails of the Greatest Generation and having their government health care and social security essentially paid for to a large extent by those dastardly baby boomers who are at peak earning and tax-paying years or soon to be.

Today’s Chicago Tribune carries the story, ‘Will Work for Less’. It’s about blue collar people. As long as we pretend that the problems with employment in this country are mainly blue collar issues, we will not make one inch of progress. Their plight is my plight.

By the way. I did end up suing. When all was said and done, the attorney for the opposition asked my attorney why I hadn’t pursued the Title VII (sex discrimination) action, because, in his words, “She had one hell of a case.” Why? Corporate lawyers. A topic for another day.

See as well related article about Unions' Hari Kari by Elaine Meinel Supkis.

And the moral to this story is?

"President George W Bush, who offered his sympathies to her parents Bob and Mary Schindler, said he was attached to a "culture of life".
Mr Bush urged those who backed the Schindlers to "continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others".
"The essence of civilisation is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favour of life." [BBC]

The little girl is Haleigh Poutre who is on life support which is being paid for by the State of Massachusetts. Welfare in other words. The state supreme court said that support could be removed as Haleigh is brain dead in a coma. Sound familiar?

Terri Schiavo still had some money left, and the private system health care monster hadn't eaten all the assets yet. Therefore, she had more rights than a welfare recipient, despite the fact that expert neurologists asserted that Terri would never regain consciousness or any semblance of sentient life. In the case of Haleigh it's clear that she was abused. Jeb Bush had to drop his slanderous lawsuit against Terri Schiavo's husband when even the arrogant, above-the-law Bushes had to concede that there was no evidence to support their slander. But there was, of course, a right wing base to keep stirred up.

Where is Jesse Jackson? Santorum? The Eagle Forum? in Haleigh Poutre's case?

The birth of an American genius

A lie stands on one leg, the truth on two. ~Benjamin Franklin~

Yesterday was Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthday. He was born in Boston, made his way to Philadelphia, the city associated with his name, in 1723.

I bought a short biography written by Edmund S. Morgan, the noted historian, last summer for my birthday. American history has always been dear to my heart. Trips to the book store can be exhausting, but when Franklin was my age I don’t think he’d lost much joie de vivre. He found wonder in people great and small and in the natural world. Barnes and Noble would not best him.

When Franklin was my age he was living in London as the agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly. The Penns were pretty full of themselves by 1758, Proprietors that they were. Many in this country today, which Franklin would not recognize, seek a return to the days of distant Proprietors or landlords owning massive acreage parceled out to the rest of us for rent. Not much farm land left here, of course, so sharing the choicest pig or fruit or grain with our lord amd master would be out of the question.

When I have more time I shall return to this subject. Even though it has worn a little thin, I suppose, I still pause with a bit of awe when I consider the collective genius of the Founding Fathers (or Founding Brothers, as Joseph Ellis called them in his book), and how they managed to sustain one of history’s and human kind’s most remarkable events.

A little Victoriana

My father acquired this book at an auction about 40 years ago. He was a restaurateur and then ran the dietary department for the local hospital. In the Army he was a medic in a collecting company and doubled as the field chow chief. He knew just about everything about food, not haute cuisine exactly, but I never ate anything he made that wasn’t great.

He loved this book all to pieces. Its shrill admonitions and bald opinions were fodder for lots of laughs. This was one of his favorite parts:

”But in most American families, the largest amount of waste, probably, takes place in the use of fuel. Heretofore, fuel of all kinds has been comparatively cheap, and very little supervision has been exercised over its use. At present rates however, it is an item of considerable importance, and it is quite time that servants were taught how to employ it to the best advantage.
…
The general principle of construction upon which American kitchen stoves and ranges is based, renders them either very economical, or very much otherwise, according to the way they are managed. After the fire is first built in an ordinary stove, or range, the dampers ought all to be closed up and not opened again during the day, except while broiling, or something of that sort. If the grate is kept clear, and the fire replenished with a small quantity of coal, before it begins to get low, both the oven and the top of the range will be kept sufficiently hot for any kind of cooking, and it will be done all the better for being done somewhat more slowly, than is customary with the well meaning, but terribly blundering and irresponsible race of wild Irish girls, who officiate as the high priestesses of our domestic altars.”

My father’s mother was Katie O’Connell, 100% Irish and not the least bit wild. I can still hear him laughing at the Victorian presumption of superiority of the Mrs. J. C. Crolys of the world. Anglo racism is nothing new. That’s why Catholic universities were/are considered inferior and the story of the Irish monks in the Dark Ages, keeping learning alive, was suppressed for so long. I keep hoping to find a tie to Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator, as my grandmother’s father departed County Kerry, near Castle Island, and the Liberator was a Kerry man.

Here’s another suggestion from the quill of Jennie June:
“Good brooms and brushes will last a long time if care is taken of them. When first bought they should be allowed to stand in cold water for twelve hours, and then thoroughly dried before use. When not in use they should be hung up on a loop of twine or cord so that the weight may not rest on the edge of the splinters and break them. Four large brooms should be provided, one for the kitchen, one for the parlor, one for the sleeping rooms, and one for the family, or “living” room. A whisk will be required for every room in the house, besides one for the hall.

As soon as the kitchen broom is worn down so as to render it unfit to sweep the floor with ease and comfort, take it for the cellar, door steps and back yard; take the one from the sitting room for the kitchen, the one from the parlor to the sitting room, and get a new one for the parlor.”

Whew.

“Susan B. Anthony’s Apple Tapioca Pudding

Susan B. Anthony is an excellent cook and housekeeper, and it was a proverb at home that when Susan did the housekeeping, the meals were always punctual and well served. She believes in a plain simple diet and the following is her favorite pudding:

Peel and core eight apples, fill them with sugar in which a little nutmeg has been grated. Take a cupful of tapioca, which has been all night soaking in water, Add to it a little milk or water if needed, and pour it around the apples, which have been laid in a buttered dish. Bake slowly one hour, and serve with cream and powdered sugar. It is good hot or cold, the tapioca forming a jelly around the apples”

Jennie June’s Cookbook was published in 1878.

Alito exposed: Few care or wish to be bothered

This just in

From Eschaton this morning:

"My husband is a Princeton grad and remembers getting stuff from Concerned Alumni of Princeton. He said the material was outrageously rascist and sexist and you'd have to be an idiot not to know what the group was all about. ROTC was the least of its concerns.Cookie Guggleman 01.12.06 - 9:33 am"

The Senate is doing its ritual performance for the other 299,999,900 Americans who aren't Senators. The sycophantic Mr. Alito will get confirmed. The "opposition" party, useless, as always, save for a momentary flash of inspiration here and there, will roll over. The idiots in the interior will feel safer now that our country is being destroyed. See how easy it was? I guess as long as the dumplings in their size 22 stretch pants and "real" men who refuse to face any danger feel safe - to stuff themselves with McDonald's fries and Super Size Cokes and own guns that never will be pointed at a real enemy - all will be right in TV land.

That's entertainment

And the winner is …

Photo: AP

Joe Biden-my-time… and your time… and everyone else’s time. How is it that the citizens of the great state of Delaware can keep voting for this windbag? His performance was a monologue about how he was a Catholic kid who resented Princeton. Boo hoo, Joe. Aren’t these hearings supposed to be stately and serious? And who gives a rat’s rear end what you thought about Princeton (or anything else, for that matter)? What would you do for a living if MBNA stopped the cash IV?

Photo: AP

But then there’s the sweet, sensitive, sheltered wife. Mrs. Alito. The plastic Senator Graham, (R., Confederacy) apologized to Judge Alito and his “famluh” for all that they’d been put through by those doggoned Democrats who had the nerve – the nerve! – to ask him questions. Mrs. A. was overtaken with emotion while her man was being lauded as a non-racist by a Senator from one of the most racist places on earth, but OK. I guess he ought to know. Apparently the networks are worked up over poor Mrs. Alito, the pampered wife of a rich man, poised to be confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.

Lady, you ought to live my life for a few weeks, for starters, if you want something to cry about. Then we’ll have you experience working two or three jobs to pay the bills, taking care of a sick, elderly parent, putting a kid or two through college, etc. Then maybe you’d like to experience joblessness or homelessness. My tear ducts are curiously empty.

I guess it's not fittin' for rich white folks to endure a job interview. "Jes not fittin'!" Isn't that what Mammy said about Scarlet's carrying on? You gotta admit, Gone With the Wind won a lot of Oscars.

Draft # 32: Can you spell 'Danang'?

Reuters photo

Those of us who remember the Vietnam era, those who were in high school and college during those years, will recall that a male’s draft number was about the most significant factor in his life. Being the all-ears, all-eyes person that I was, I seem to remember dads cozying up to their pals on the local draft board. In my memory there are at least five or six males with high enough draft numbers and properly arched feet to have been dispatched to Southeast Asia, but for some reason, never departed the states, or if they did, it was to Greece or Germany or Trinidad. Others, barely competent in high school studies, suddenly found a passion for higher education, and somehow dad found a school to take them in.

Sam Alito’s problem was not one of poor scholarship. Nope. He was number one all the way, I would almost bet. Being a kid from the ranks of “the people”, though, his dad wouldn’t have had connections enough to arrange for Sam to be sent on a detour tour of the world outside US borders.

Number 32. Whoa. Smart guys like Sam Alito, calculating guys like Sam Alito, for he is calculating in the extreme, do not make emotional or sentimental decisions. The man is a level, rational, judge, for crying out loud. His explanation for his affiliation with the Concerned Alumni of Princeton is lame, dishonest and tortured. (Sorry. That’s a Gonzalez thing.) A substitute for ROTC on campus? He was pissed because all the rich brats at Princeton were playing activist, skipping class, screwing around (on daddy’s dollar), so he joined up with a group founded by the fathers of the very kids he disliked?

I knew my share of spoiled rich brats in those years. Most of them drank a lot, took light weight classes and bitched because people like me were getting financial aid (and working our little butts off). If Sam’s statement were an approximation of the truth, even, I might be able to trust him sort of. But everything he has done in his career – and he is a careerist par excellence – has been kissing just the right asses, sucking up to people in power, carrying their goddamned water, NOT fighting to make a little more headway for other Sam Alitos who might be coming down the pike.

His conception of America with the President as King, and he as - what? the Royal Solicitor? - does not jive with any idea of America I ever learned about. In order to make their mark, people like Alito had to attach themselves to the power and the money. He undoubtedly would have had a fine career as a judge or partner in a white shoes law firm, maybe not as a guy out front, because those roles are usually reserved for the socially elite, but a diligent, smart cog. To get to the top, however, requires energetic maneuvering, a record as a friend to beleaguered billionaires, harried corporations and the very people, “the very smart people and very privileged people”, (to quote his opening statement from Monday) he claims to have disdained while at Princeton. Not buyin’ it.

And to all the "anti-government" promoters - How many private sector judges do you know?

Miracle on the New Jersey Turnpike

There was another cat in the news this week. Another stowaway. Why do I feel like I am in an echo chamber? Hello? Hello? Hello?

This time the cat was in New Jersey where they have an Animal Welfare League. America, haven’t you had enough of the government stealing your money to give away to lazy fools? They toil not, neither do they spin. An Animal Welfare League? It strains my brain.

They named the sponge Miracle. There’s no miracle here, Folks. There’s been a robbery, though.

My new blog is open and ready for business. I have to share a computer, though. Supposedly management is working on something “serious”. Huh. Every time I look up she’s playing Free Cell or checking her eBay auctions. Don’t hold your breath.

A Poem for Epiphany

The Camel

Lord,
do not be displeased.
There is something to be said for pride
against thirst, mirages,
and sandstorms;
and I must say
that, to face and rise above
these arid desert dramas,
two humps
are not too many,
nor an arrogant lip.
Some people criticize
my four flat feet,
the base of my pile of joints,
but what should I do
with high heels
crossing so much country,
such shifting dreams,
while upholding my dignity?
My heart wrung
by the cries of jackals and hyenas,
by the burning silence,
the magnitude of Your cold stars,
I give You thanks, Lord,
for this my realm,
wide as my longings
and the passage of my steps.
Carrying my royalty
in the aristocratic curve of my neck
from oasis to oasis,
one day shall I find again
the caravan of the magi?
And the gates of Your paradise?
Amen.

~ Carmen Bernos de Gasztold ~
from The Creatures’ Choir

Elwood Blues He Ain't

Photo Gerald Herbert/ AP
Dear God. Did his attorney tell him to dress like a gangster? Don't these guys usually show up in a tan Burberry accompanied by a sedate but smiling wife? All he needs here is a violin case and a getaway car. It's a Burberry coat, I'm pretty sure. Just not the right kind. No fashion sensitivity, Jack. How much of your dough is tucked away in St. Vincent and the Grenadines? (very major off shore repository) Nassau? Zurich?

Creature Feature: a better kind of survival

AP photo (Canadian Press)
Everyone has seen this by now, I bet, but it makes me happy to think about it. This was taken on their one-year anniversary.

A year ago I made donations to Doctors without Borders and Oxfam. Both wrote and asked if the contributions, made for tsunami victims, might be directed to another of their programs, because the response for tsunami relief efforts was off the charts. As we all know, Billy Bob Clinton and Poppy went gadding about the planet, top hats in hand. Television and radio stations devoted a whole day's broadcasting to fund raisers. Americans donated $1.5 billion. The world's response was unprecedented.

The billions in relief dollars, though, cannot blot out the anguish survivors will feel for the rest of their lives. How do humans deal with the loss of everyone they hold closest to their hearts? How do they "rebuild" their lives, their very identities?

This excerpt from an Outlook India.com article entitled "Tsunami relief: the darker side" shows once again how human nature constrains us, but unites us, as well: "Liquor shops and business establishments in Karaikal are witnessing a boom after the tsunami. Many people from Nagapattinam come here to shop for liquor, electronic goods, two wheelers and dress materials," says Kumaraswamy, a textile shop owner in Karaikal."In recent months, there has been a sharp increase of customers from Nagapattinam and Cuddalore, especially the fishermen, with many of them making purchases worth thousands of rupees," Kumaraswamy says. Karaikal is the preferred destination for such tsunami survivors because of two reasons - reduced prices at the Union Territory and anonymity from the prying eyes of local residents in Nagapattinam.

"We have been monitoring such cases and have advised such people to desist from these practices. Though the trend of spending money recklessly is prevalent among our community, we are convincing them to invest it in fixed deposit and in co-operative welfare schemes," says Mathiyazhakan, head of the fishermen's village panchayat in Akkarapettai - one of the worst-hit hamlets in this district. "

Modern culture can pretty much be defined by the number and variety of diversions from reality it provides. Escapism. Denial. Are the fishermen of Akkarapettai finding a place at the flat earth table on account of their unspeakable losses? Would David Brooks or Thomas Friedman find a serendipitous angle to the story? Probably.

You note that the spokesman for the fishing village isn't talking interms of cowboy "freedom" and go-it-alone survival. He speaks of a co-operative venture. There is no other way they can hope to rise above the tragedy and try to find any peace at all within themselves. It can come only as a mutual effort and shared recovery.


See related story by Elaine Meinel about fiscal matters in 2006. She knows much about the Asian equation.