Terribly Smart People

Here we go again. Here’s another Terribly Smart Person lecturing about how Obama should be careful how he spends his political capital--or if he even has any. Michael Gerson in the WashPost tells us:

“Obama's election was a tremendous, historic achievement, but it was not an ideological revolution.”

Oh, how badly these guys want things to stay the same. Despite Gerson’s acknowledgment that Obama put together an impressive coalition including independents, low-income people, the affluent, Catholics, and suburbanites--and, not incidentally, in the process won 54 percent of the popular vote--Gerson still thinks there is somehow NOT a tectonic shift happening around him. He goes on to cite the same statistics Bill Kristol used in the article I cited yesterday:

“In the 2004 election, according to the Associated Press, 21 percent of Americans called themselves liberal, 45 percent moderate and 34 percent conservative. In this election, 22 percent described themselves as liberal, 44 percent as moderate and 34 percent as conservative.”

But here’s the problem with the assessment. What it doesn’t take into account is the relentless demonization of the term ‘liberal’ over the past 20 years or so.

Now, personally, I am proud to be one of the filthy librul, hedonistic, elitist, godless, baby-killing horde. I think I may even control the media. I’ll have to check my mail and see if I paid my club dues last month.

There’s more honesty in that position -- that people should be able to do basically what they want as long as they don’t harm others, that the government isn’t some mythological beast looking to eat us and our income, but rather ‘We the People’ and that it should function as such -- than there is in the phony ‘libertarian’ canard you hear tossed about by conservatives. In fact, there’s more libertarianism in my stance, and that of most unwashed libruls I know than there is among alleged libertarians I speak with. (To wit: why is it so important to go-along/get-along Fox News acolytes disguised as libertarians to keep the big bad gubbmint out of our lives when it comes to taxes and guns, but not when it comes to the bedroom? Or reproductive choices? Food for thought...)

But to a lot of people, calling themselves a ‘liberal’ would be akin to publicly saying, ‘I worship Satan.’ It’s just not gonna happen.

The way people label themselves is really immaterial. Hell, even Bill O’Reilly makes a big stink about calling himself an ‘independent.’ Anyone buying that? From either side of the aisle?

But with the results of this election, it’s not plausible to say that the country hasn’t taken a mighty swing of the pendulum away from the so-called conservatism of lowering taxes for the new Gilded Class and dumping money into abstinence programs at the expense of actual, useful sex-ed, and sending our soldiers overseas on dubious if not downright false information. Even if you don’t want to call it by name, even if people don’t want to call themselves by that name, liberalism has spoken at the polls, and the results are in. That’s what the majority of people want.

Even if they’re not Terribly Smart People like Michael Gerson.

veteran's day

Here's a video of John Prine singing his song "Sam Stone."



To all those who have served in our armed forces, or are currently serving, thank you. You don't need to be told that you are brave, and honorable. But you need to know that we out here in the world know that you are, and that we appreciate your sacrifice.

This song can perhaps remind us that the wounds of war, that most terrible and uncivilized remnant of our tribal, caveman past, are not always injuries that can be seen or treated with bandages and surgery.

Perhaps also, this song can serve as a reminder that when we blithely send our countrymen out to kill or die in our name, we send actual people, with families, and lives, and pasts of their own.

And to those who would sacrifice the children of others for gold, or for power, or for politics, or for some bizarre understanding of God, and who would do so without stepping up to offer themselves in a similar sacrifice: fuck you. Your place in hell in assured.

truly insane

lifted, obviously, from agitprop. i just love the pic. :)

Well, it looks like losing this election after eight years of unbridled dominance has actually sent many wing-nuts spinning off their screws and hurtling into the depths of madness. The memory of owning a country and keeping a populace -- and the opposition in Congress -- quaking in fear, along with those promises of a Republican majority lasting for decades has seriously collided with reality, and the delicate mental states of some of these guys seems to be fraying. Examples:

1) John Hinderacker, an influential blogger at powerline had this to say, when comparing Obama's speaking abilities to George Bush's:

"Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated."

Erm, what? I mean...what? Let's look at that again: "In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed." My God. Delusional much?

I don't even know what to say to that, except that Mr. Hinderacker needs to have his medical team run a series of tests, and re-check his meds. It's possible he had one of those mini-strokes you hear about on 'House.' Perhaps a tiny blood clot came loose when he was so apoplectic with rage over the drubbing McCain and conservatism in general took last week. Or maybe he's suffering under the delusion that the right-wing noise machine still has the power to repeat any and all ridiculous lies often enough that people will believe them, and trust them as Very Wise Men. (via TPM)

2) GA Representative Paul Broun thinks Obama may well be on the way to establishing a dictatorship:

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism." ... "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Oh my. Whatever would we do if a president appeared to be trying to establish a dictatorship? Like if he were to set up secret prisons without the approval of congress, declare himself able to determine whether or not someone was guilty of a crime and imprison them without benefit of a trial, declare war unilaterally without cause, set up a cadre of secret policemen in cable-guy drag to spy on citizens, illegally wiretap the phone calls and emails of citizens, announce that disagreeing with his views was un-American, salt the Justice Department with cronies on the lookout for any opportunity to sabotage the opposition party, pump billions of taxpayer dollars into a another crony's private security company to help run an illegal war without fear of legal consequences, or declare he is above answering to any of the other branches of government?

Thank goodness we have Rep. Broun to keep a watchful eye out for anything like that. (via kos)

3) The much-espoused notion that despite the fact that McCain lost the popular vote by a 52-46 margin, this is still a 'center-right' country, and that, daggum it, that Obama fella better govern that way. Good ol' Bill Kristol perhaps best sums up this delusional bit of nonsense:

"What’s more, this year’s exit polls suggested a partisan shift but no ideological realignment. In 2008, self-described Democrats made up 39 percent of the electorate and Republicans 32 percent, in contrast with a 37-37 split in 2004.

But there was virtually no change in the voters’ ideological self-identification: in 2008, 22 percent called themselves liberal, up only marginally from 21 percent in 2004; 34 percent were conservative, unchanged from the last election; and 44 percent called themselves moderate, compared with 45 percent in 2004.

In other words, this was a good Democratic year, but it is still a center-right country. " (boldface mine.)

Huh? Look at the first graf again: self-described Dems over four years gained seven percentage points on self-described Republicans and it's somehow still a 'center-right country'? Whatever that means. These guys are going to need some time to realize that their entire schtick has been called out for the bullshit that it is. For eight years, they have governed from a place of divisiveness, fear, ignorance, hatred, greed, and barely-sublimated racism -- they have conserved nothing, not the economy, not the good name of our country, not our troops, not our cities, not the land, not our natural resources, not the truth, not honor -- nothing. They have pissed away anything and everything they could get their hands on. Why do we still call them conservatives?

At any rate, look for this trope -- the squalling of those who lost, about how, despite the results right before their eyes, what we REALLY want is more of the same -- to be tossed about in coming weeks and years as Obama (hopefully) takes the mantle the American people voted for him and takes us in a new direction. A new direction we, the people, voted for: anywhere but where we've been.

###

p.s. For a touch of sanity from the right, read this article by Dov S. Zakheim, a policy advisor to Bush on his 2000 campaign.

fired!

this is great, a little old, but for those of you who haven't seen it, worth three minutes of your time. it's a clip of michael cera getting fired from the set of 'knocked up.'
:)

See more Judd Apatow videos at Funny or Die

finally!

the springton institute for douchebaggery is here, to rehabilitate all those damn douchebags. from funny or die.


via videosift.com

fear

this is hilarious. thanks to tomas for pointing it out. a short, funny vid about the fears of the republitards in the wake of the election. :)
from 236.com

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

geeks unite -- over breakfast!

just remember--once you've gone to the dark side of breakfast, you can't go back to the light.

hooray! now you can celebrate your geekdom from the first moment you get up in the morning! this toaster is available starting in january, for a reasonable (for geeks) price of $55.
now someone needs to invent an egg poacher in the shape of boba fett and a light saber bacon-cooking wand and i'll be all set. :)
forgot to credit: this came from neatorama, a truly neat site. :)

fox noise hate speech

Wow. Just when you think people can’t sink any lower. Here’s a comment from a fox news blog thread, via crooks and liars. (click for larger image)

And for what some would call a form of stomach-churning entertainment, scan some of the other 9,000 comments.

Talk about your hate speech--as they said on C&L, where’s O’Reilly when you need someone to call out the hate-mongers in that filthy blogosphere? I guess if it’s not on kos it’s all good…

As of 6:00 pm this comment was still up on the site, plus a lot of other ones equally foul.

end days for the republicans?

unemployed wingnut. dat's gotta suck.

THE END OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? (PART I)

There will be plenty of people over the next few weeks and years talking about what McCain did wrong in this election. And there is plenty to think about there.

But what interests me at the moment is the idea that today, November 5, 2008, may not only be a watershed moment for the Democrats, but also one for the Republicans, in that while we may be witnessing the rise of a new movement on the Democrat side, we may also be witnessing the end of one on the Republican side.

Now, it is historically dangerous to extrapolate meta-movements from one election. That’s called bad polling--it’s not a big enough sample size. However, in this case, and using the decline of the hard right, power-hungry, uber-judgmental wing of the Republican party over the past few years, maybe it is possible to posit that the famous Big Tent of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich is no more.

Reagan brought them together -- war-hungry neocons, the extreme whack-jobs of the extreme religious right, and the anti-tax/pro-business radicals -- with a combination of charm and strength of leadership. But for Bush II, it was almost as if the disparate groups were grafted together -- barely. It was a Frankenstein’s monster held together by only the most tenuous of threads, surgery performed with duct tape and baling wire. At any moment the limbs threatened to splinter off and go flying into the horrified crowd gathered with its pitchforks and torches.

Look at the Florida debacle in 2000: Bush only ‘won’ the presidency with the help of a one-vote margin in the Supreme Court based on the flimsiest, most twisted legal logic. He didn’t even win a majority of the popular vote. Hell, we’ll never even know if he won Florida that year, or Ohio in 2004. There was no majority, there was no movement. There was no there, there.

The monster was artificially strengthened for a while after 9/11, which may have given some Republicans the sense that they were in a permanent majority that would last for decades, but again, the separate limbs that made up the coalition were individually too rabid, self-interested, and frankly had too many serious conflicting interests to last.

It’s possible to see the latest debacle -- let’s call her Sarah Palin -- as the moment the Republican Party jumped the shark with the culture wars hate rhetoric, the ‘I’m better than you, and you’re just dirty,’ wing of the wingnutosphere. It’s possible to envision the power of this wing declining in terms of its ability to dictate terms to the rest of the party -- and therefore to the nation.

Of course, these people aren’t going to go away quietly. Witness the sporadic boos and jeers at McCain’s rather poignant and humble concession speech last night. Still, it does bode well for those of us who prefer to just get into other people’s pants, rather than tell people what they’re allowed to do with the equipment they keep in there.

This may be the moment when we see the bifurcation of the Republican Party into two or three new entities. This bodes well in another sense, in that maybe, finally, at long last, the canard that the rich Wall Street fucks and the blue-bloods who are the true elite (i.e. those who attended Yale, and whose fathers were vice-president and president and head of the CIA, and whose grandfathers served in the Senate and founded multi-billion dollar corporations and sold materiel to the Nazis) are actually not on the side of the NASCAR/Wal-Mart/trailer park/guns & god crowd. Maybe those folks will finally start to see that, aw shucks, maybe that guy running Halliburton or AIG ain’t just like me after all.

The ‘fear card’ bugaboo, the tried and true Republican tactic of having very smart people say things they know aren’t true in order to scare the bejebus out of dumb people...well, maybe that isn’t going to work anymore. Maybe Rovian/Atwater tactics have jumped the shark also, in terms of their effectiveness. The outrageous, ugly, whack-job smears echoed throughout the right-wing nut-farms in the blogosphere and picked up dutifully by the corporate media and repeated have been mostly debunked. Or at least they haven’t been bought into on such a grand scale as they were with Kerry and Gore -- and not incidentally, with the run-up to the Iraq war. Maybe the people in the media are getting smarter along with rest of us--or if not getting smarter, at least getting wised up.

Fear. The proof is in the pudding when it comes to fear: the stock market had its biggest election day jump in 24 years. The nature of human beings is we would rather be looking forward, finding ways to improve our situation than cowering in darkness.

***

more to come. Thx for reading.
--kjb

pudding

i think in thee tumultuous times, we all need something to lighten up with.
what better than $240 worth of pudding?
enter levon and barry, Sagittarius.
happy election day, all. more later.

The State - MTV Shows

vote...

...because your neighbors do, and they're idiots. :)
here's a cool and clever video by the boys who are responsible for aqua teen hunger force, one of my favorite cartoons on adult swim.
vote, bitches!

fear

10.24.08 - FEAR

In reviewing Shadow Theatre’s recent production of ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,’ I was struck by how closely the current state of our country resembles in some ways the travails of African-American people in the years just after emancipation. The play is set in 1911, and centers on the lives of people at a boarding house in Pittsburgh. As the sons and daughters of former slaves stream northward, they are left with an interesting and not wholly unpleasant conundrum: where do I go from here?

The world is suddenly opened up wide for them, in ways that were not possible before they escaped from the South. True, there are still huge barriers to overcome. There are white people who will never accept blacks as their equals, who will always carry fear and bitterness and hatred in their hearts toward what they view as ‘the other.’

Hell, a hundred years later, we are still seeing remnants of that in those adorable and delightful pockets of this country that certain Republicans have anointed ‘the REAL America.’

At the same time, I have been re-reading Phillip K. Dick’s ‘Valis,’ a sci-fi book that centers on the ideas of the early Gnostic Christians. The idea of gnosis, a Greek word for ‘knowledge,’ is that understanding of the divine is possible through oneself, that we don’t need the church or its teachings in order to find Him. In short, that we each individually have the power to access the divine, and that those who purport to tell others the way to God are charlatans.

Certain Gnostic sects took this view further, positing that, yes, there is a God running this world, but he is damaged. And there is another, larger God from which our God cleaved himself, and that this other God is trying to break through into our God’s world in order to save us. You can see why early church leaders sought to suppress these ideas.

(That’s an oversimplification, and probably not entirely correct in terms of theological study, but it is Dick’s usage of the word, and the one from which I will take my meanderings.)

Dick quotes the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus as saying: “Time is a child playing at draughts.”

I found the same quote translated a different way: “Time is a child moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child's.”

He is of course referring to the randomness of time, the random nature of the universe. But take away the word ‘time’ and substitute ‘God,’ and you get the idea of what Dick was going after. Our God is a twisted, stunted, deranged child, selfish in his greed for love, who becomes jealous and angry when he doesn’t receive it. He has stolen away from his brother, his twin who was nearly killed during their inception, and he forgets the good part of what he once was.

As do we. What Dick is trying to say is that we have forgotten that we ourselves are gods, and that we ceded our power millennia ago, and chose to play a game, to enter a maze. The maze was this world, this life, these flesh sacks which we occupy, and from which, with all of our former faculties we would have easily escaped. But in order to make it a challenge, we chose to hobble ourselves.

Only now we have forgotten. We no longer remember that we are truly powerful and have allowed the myth of the all-powerful, alleged God to supercede our own true nature.

And so we cower in fear of his power. We are fearful children, worried about going home late to a darkened cabin in a dark wood, where drunken daddy waits with his belt already off and half a pint of whiskey and a whole lot of resentment running through his system. We misunderstand that His power is only power that we have chosen to give him, and that at any moment, if we could only wake up, if we could only remember, we could take it back.

Dick points out that the word ‘idiot’ is derived from the Greek word idios, meaning ‘private,’ or ‘one’s own.’ In our isolation, that famous pain of being a human who will always be alone inside his personal meat-sack, inside the walls of his skull, we are indeed idiots. We have lost the true nature of our larger selves, which is as part of an interconnected, larger whole. Oh, we feel traces of it from time to time. We KNOW in our souls that there is more--that’s why we gave the name God to the being that runs this messed-up world. There is indeed something larger than ourselves. And we seek out that connection, but only blindly, only in stunted, and, well, idiotic ways.

And in our aloneness, in our weakness, we are afraid.

This fear of the mighty ‘other’ can be seen in our politics, in how we run our lives, and especially in those that cling to religion and the bible as the literal, unimpeachable word of God, the authority.

Now back to ‘Joe Turner.’ In the play there are those who are afraid, and those who are daring, who choose a path, a way to live their lives as they see fit, and who turn their backs on fear. There are those who step out blindly and hopefully into the bright, fearsome light of the future, and those who cower and cling to the past.

I think that’s the cusp upon which we sit in this country today. There is an opportunity here, in the glorious mess the fear-mongers have left for us to clean up. There is a moment here when we can finally banish fear, when we can finally seize our own power and remake the world the way we want it, the way it should have been all along--without fear of a dubious God who has mainly led us to hatred and fear and dissatisfaction.

It make sense, doesn’t it, that the God so worshipped by so many is a demonic child, as selfish and short-sighted as we are? They say he made us in his image, after all... And when you think about the hate spouted by those who purport to believe in him, and the misery they have caused themselves and everyone else over the centuries, how could it be anything but that?

Yes, the argument against this hypothesis is that, of course God and those who believe in him have done good, too. There are good Christians and Jews and Muslims out there who do good works and who are good people, no doubt.

But at what cost? The fear and weakness and capitulation that even the good religious people must by definition carry inside themselves in order to worship this creature completely subvert any chance that they might ever truly BE, that they might ever find out what they are, what they are capable of. They exist only through subservience.

And it is interesting to me that the so-called Christians in this country are also the ones who are so beholden to the notions of earthly authority and power and control. They have given themselves over to the authority and control of this God, and so they seek to exert the same authority and control over their fellow humans, and in turn, they capitulate to those on this plane who have more perceived power than themselves. After all, it’s very comforting to think that someone else is in charge--whether it’s in this world or a higher one. It absolves us of any mistakes.

Maybe it’s time for us to take back control. Maybe it’s time for us to let go of fear, despite our idiocy, despite our uncertainty.

Maybe it’s time to leave Daddy to brood alone in his dark and dreary house and strike out on our own and see what’s out there.

Maybe we don’t really need him after all.

Maybe it’s time we fucking grow up.

ha!

snl's unwanted gw bush endorsement of mccain. :)

hope

10.22.08 - HOPE

There is a part of me that is very cynical. Having lived the life I have lived, and having seen the things I have seen, I cannot help but be sardonic and judgmental about the supposed ‘better angels’ of human nature. I bear too many scars acquired at the hands of the ‘worse demons,’ my own included.

Especially when it comes to politics.

I have watched over and over again as politicians have turned their tricks, as they have pimped out the tiny hopes and dreams of tiny people and twisted them in order to benefit themselves. I have watched our supposed leaders in their unmatched cynicism, their staggering greed and selfishness, as they have shamelessly used the rest of us as tools to get the power they crave.

And I have watched as we have played along.

I have watched in stunned disbelief as the lies and scorn and malice, and the ever-more dubious means with which politicians employ them have grown to staggering proportions. I have watched as they have played us for suckers over and over again. And, like rubes at a state fair, we have stepped up to that wheel, one more time--one more time, sweetheart, really, I can win this time, I can feel it!--but, no. The sucker always walks away, empty pockets hanging out, vaguely dissatisfied with himself, vaguely feeling that he has failed somehow. But no, the game was rigged all along.

And it makes me angry to think about how stupid they must think we are, to trot out the same old tropes, the same old lies of divisiveness, the same old fear, to the point where it makes me want to stand up and scream, ‘Don’t you know they think you’re idiots?’

But of course, we are. We, too, are greedy and small-minded and short-sighted and needy and easily flattered. And so we go along, just one more time, just one more roll of the dice, one more spin of the wheel. Maybe this time I’ll win that stuffed pink elephant. Or a $300 tax ‘rebate’...

But I feel something different stirring. I feel...hope. Dare I say it? I feel as if a perfect storm has finally, finally, at long last circled up and spun away the black clouds, driven off the blinding rains and the dust that have occluded our eyes for so long. I feel like there is a chance that the politics of hate and greed and divisiveness--and most importantly, the politics of treating the American people like we’re those rubes at a state fair who will believe anything--may soon be over. Or at least radically altered.

Cynics are just idealists who have been disappointed once too often. We are the true romantics, the ones who think things should be better than they are, who can visualize an ideal that remains out of reach. And when a cynic finds hope again, he has to ease into it slowly.

With plenty of lubrication.

It takes a while to believe again, but when a cynic does believe...hoo boy. The potential for disappointment reaches a scale never achieved by the non-cynic.

But. But but but. There are signs we are at the clear eye of a storm that will change the political landscape of this country for a long time. That the ignorance and fear that have been allowed to run rampant for so long may be swept away, like a bad dream. Signs that people are waking up to the fact that they have been treated like rubes, that they are finally seeing the truth. Perhaps people aren’t buying into the hucksters’ shtick any longer. Perhaps they’ve grown tired of fear. Perhaps we can emerge from our boarded-up basements, step out blinking like newborns into the sunlight and see that our neighbors really aren’t that dangerous after all. That in fact they are just like us--red state, blue state, Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist--we’re all struggling. We all love our country, we all love our children and want the best for them. We’re all doing the best we can.

Perhaps the thin veil of ‘us versus them,’ used like a fan dance to barely disguise the greed and hunger for more and more and more that the rich have used for so long to hoodwink the poor into thinking they were on the same team is finally crumbling into tatters. Perhaps we can see a moment when we can get past the ugliness and the lies and come together without hidden agendas, without preconceived notions, and without preconditions and truly make an effort to do what’s best for all of us--and in the process help ourselves.

Perhaps, finally, finally it’s time we can make this country into what it was supposed to be all along.

Perhaps.

wow...

...sorta fell off the map there. here's a link to a review i just did on 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' at Shadow Theatre. Cool show, about the African American experience in the early part of the 20th century, with many, many parallels to today's moment in history.