From the is-this-a-bad-joke department … The NYT mentions O.J. Simpson has written a book and will appear on the Fox television network describing "how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible." The book will be published on Nov. 30, and Fox will broadcast the interviews in two segments on Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, which is the final week of sweeps. The book is tentatively titled O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened.
-Slate
Both O.J.and whoever agreed to publish this book should become the newest participants in our extraordinary rendition program. This is the kind of thing that makes you want to move to Nunavut. And don't even get me started on FOX.
(post by Jessica)
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Lou Dobbs
OK, OK, I understand, Mr. Dobbs, that there are problems with our immigration policies. Frankly, I think the importation of Mexicans is not the most serious; as memorialized in the title of John Eisenhower's history, Mexico has the misfortune to be "so far from God, so close to the United States." If only they were Poland. Maybe they want us to invade them, so that a generation of "refugees" we will thereby create will have an easier time getting in. Remember the Vietnamese? What do you expect Iraq's biggest export to the U.S. will be, ten years from now? Oil? Or maybe people?
But, Mr. Dobbs, I think you're a little shrill. You've managed to make an "issue" no one ever thought about a few years ago into the crisis of the hour, with people who scarcely even come into contact with a Mexican itching to man the barricades. And you've not been entirely honest, either: why not acknowledge that the US farm policy of recent years has driven scores of thousands of Mexican small farmers off their land, impoverishing them and creating the very problem that concerns you so in the process.
Beyond all that, though, is the problem of your rhetoric. You talk constantly about "illegal aliens." Do you intend to offer a contrast with "legal alien?" Is the use of "alien" --a concept that would seem pretty anomalous in a "melting pot" society such as ours-- a conscious attempt to stigmatize, to dehumanize what are, after all, the people we've allowed and encouraged to come here for generations? Is your next step to join Pat Buchanan's xenophobic, racist campaign against everything not white bread? Or are you just careless with your language?
I think your critiques of American corporate greed and lawlessness, and governmental rapacity and corruption, are much more useful to us right now, thank you. When I voted last week, the ballot was in English, with smaller-type Spanish words beneath, and yet the English language seems fairly secure in Hyde Park; no tremors of incipient upheaval were noted. And we still managed to elect a County Board President who acts as if he can't read any language at all.
One of the great things about America is that anybody who wants to belong here, can do so. Are you arguing for changing that? I really have no patience with the people who want to deny emergency medical care, or education, to people who live here, and I don't really care how they got here. We already have a shockingly low high-school graduation rate (about 86%); we don't need to make it harder for those who wish to get an education. And I also don't think we want to have dying indigents littering our streets, do we? So unsightly!
While I admit that we probably cannot allow the admission of the (by one survey) one-third of Latin American people who would live here if they could, I don't think fences and vigilantes along the border are the answer. Why don't we try, for a change, to raise the quality of life in the home countries of these desperate people, instead of assassinating or otherwise overthrowing their leaders for the benefit of American Companies? Where do you think the phrase "banana republic" came from? Much of what is wrong south of our border has to do not so much with our neglect, as with our interference. It is emblematic of this that Vicente Fox is a former executive with an American company.
So, Mr. Dobbs, try to hit the demagogue button a little less often, can you? You've got much bigger fish to fry.
But, Mr. Dobbs, I think you're a little shrill. You've managed to make an "issue" no one ever thought about a few years ago into the crisis of the hour, with people who scarcely even come into contact with a Mexican itching to man the barricades. And you've not been entirely honest, either: why not acknowledge that the US farm policy of recent years has driven scores of thousands of Mexican small farmers off their land, impoverishing them and creating the very problem that concerns you so in the process.
Beyond all that, though, is the problem of your rhetoric. You talk constantly about "illegal aliens." Do you intend to offer a contrast with "legal alien?" Is the use of "alien" --a concept that would seem pretty anomalous in a "melting pot" society such as ours-- a conscious attempt to stigmatize, to dehumanize what are, after all, the people we've allowed and encouraged to come here for generations? Is your next step to join Pat Buchanan's xenophobic, racist campaign against everything not white bread? Or are you just careless with your language?
I think your critiques of American corporate greed and lawlessness, and governmental rapacity and corruption, are much more useful to us right now, thank you. When I voted last week, the ballot was in English, with smaller-type Spanish words beneath, and yet the English language seems fairly secure in Hyde Park; no tremors of incipient upheaval were noted. And we still managed to elect a County Board President who acts as if he can't read any language at all.
One of the great things about America is that anybody who wants to belong here, can do so. Are you arguing for changing that? I really have no patience with the people who want to deny emergency medical care, or education, to people who live here, and I don't really care how they got here. We already have a shockingly low high-school graduation rate (about 86%); we don't need to make it harder for those who wish to get an education. And I also don't think we want to have dying indigents littering our streets, do we? So unsightly!
While I admit that we probably cannot allow the admission of the (by one survey) one-third of Latin American people who would live here if they could, I don't think fences and vigilantes along the border are the answer. Why don't we try, for a change, to raise the quality of life in the home countries of these desperate people, instead of assassinating or otherwise overthrowing their leaders for the benefit of American Companies? Where do you think the phrase "banana republic" came from? Much of what is wrong south of our border has to do not so much with our neglect, as with our interference. It is emblematic of this that Vicente Fox is a former executive with an American company.
So, Mr. Dobbs, try to hit the demagogue button a little less often, can you? You've got much bigger fish to fry.
Hey, wait a minute!
As I was rereading the deathless prose of my earlier piece on "Faith and Values" I noticed down at the bottom in really small print, it said, "1 comments" (sic). So I clicked on the "1 comments" and there was this, well, comment, about what time I get to work! And it doesn't even say who had the temerity to write that!
Isn't this my workspace? Does just anybody get to ... But this must have been Jessica, who put the rather irreverant initial notice up. That's it! She knows my password, and everything. Hey, wait a minute!
Isn't this my workspace? Does just anybody get to ... But this must have been Jessica, who put the rather irreverant initial notice up. That's it! She knows my password, and everything. Hey, wait a minute!
Monday, November 13, 2006
"As they stand up ..."
Post-election thought: For the past couple of years, we've been hearing from the Administration, in response to questions about when "the mission" in Iraq would be accomplished, that, "As the Iraqi army stands up, we'll stand down." Nice phrase, in this Tom-Friedman world when pretty much every public statement has to involve some sort of slogan-like utterance. And it sounds reasonable, in that we're supposedly just there to keep things together while the new government gets itself and its civil authority structure organized and in place.
I'll pass over these "buts" with just a mention of each:
1. There was a perfectly good Iraqi army there before we got there. At least, I never heard anything about Saddam Hussein needing to get tighter control of things.
2. The Iraqi government seems to have completely lost control. The entire society has pretty much fallen apart.
3. Our US forces don't seem to have much control over things. We read about our soldiers having to plan for hours to drive pretty much anywhere for some ordinary errand, and to have plenty of scouts, reinforcements, armor, etc. just to, in effect, go to the store.
4. Iraq's new US embassy will be the largest in the world; and our military bases there are numerous and increasingly permanent.
5. We've started to hear government spokesmen make comments, on the record, about having an unfriendly regime control all that oil ...
No, the most intriguing thing about this "We'll stand down" formulation as an explanation of what we are still doing in Iraq and how long we'll stay is this: We hear these past few months that the Iraqi army is coming along just fine, thank you, and will soon have 350,000 trained and functioning troops. Now think about that number. Why are we training 350,000 troops to "stand up" so that our 150,000 can "stand down?" Several comments are just begging to come out, so here they are:
1. General Shinseki said, before the war began, that it would take "several hundred thousand" US soldiers to control the country, and he was basically cashiered for saying so, because he was contradicting Mr. Rumsfeld.
2. Does the difference between our 150,000 troops and the 350,000 replacements mean that our 150,000 are, indeed, woefully inadequate to the task?
3. Is a "Coalition" soldier worth 2 1/3 Iraqi soldiers?
4. Why don't they "stand up?" What are they waiting for?
Iraq has two possible futures: collapse and ethnic warfare for five to fifteen years until the various regions are "cleansed" of infidel Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds; or the emergence of a "strongman" who will mobilize enough brute force to keep everything quiet. Although the second is what the country formerly had, of course, it is unlikely in my opinion that this can be re-established, although it would be much preferable from the point of view of saving human life and restoring some semblance of civil society. The segmenting of the country by regions will involve Iranian and Turkish, and possibly Saudi, intervention; and the US just won't be able to resist all those opportunities to sell arms and hire Halliburton and the rest of Corporate America --there will be just too much money to be made; so we will continue to be involved. Than means more dead Americans, and more billions. [Aside: it's funny that we don't heve the $40 billion per year it would cost to provide the same universal health care that every other Western country has; but the 3+ billion dollars we spend a week in Iraq is easy to find.
It's particularly sad that we have chosen to destroy our international standing, ruin our military, bankrupt our treasury, and kill so many scores of thousands of people in order to achieve this calamity. I think all we can do now, if we are very lucky, is try to restore our own republic, before Bush and "torture man" Gonzalez and the whole despicable crew finish it off.
I'll pass over these "buts" with just a mention of each:
1. There was a perfectly good Iraqi army there before we got there. At least, I never heard anything about Saddam Hussein needing to get tighter control of things.
2. The Iraqi government seems to have completely lost control. The entire society has pretty much fallen apart.
3. Our US forces don't seem to have much control over things. We read about our soldiers having to plan for hours to drive pretty much anywhere for some ordinary errand, and to have plenty of scouts, reinforcements, armor, etc. just to, in effect, go to the store.
4. Iraq's new US embassy will be the largest in the world; and our military bases there are numerous and increasingly permanent.
5. We've started to hear government spokesmen make comments, on the record, about having an unfriendly regime control all that oil ...
No, the most intriguing thing about this "We'll stand down" formulation as an explanation of what we are still doing in Iraq and how long we'll stay is this: We hear these past few months that the Iraqi army is coming along just fine, thank you, and will soon have 350,000 trained and functioning troops. Now think about that number. Why are we training 350,000 troops to "stand up" so that our 150,000 can "stand down?" Several comments are just begging to come out, so here they are:
1. General Shinseki said, before the war began, that it would take "several hundred thousand" US soldiers to control the country, and he was basically cashiered for saying so, because he was contradicting Mr. Rumsfeld.
2. Does the difference between our 150,000 troops and the 350,000 replacements mean that our 150,000 are, indeed, woefully inadequate to the task?
3. Is a "Coalition" soldier worth 2 1/3 Iraqi soldiers?
4. Why don't they "stand up?" What are they waiting for?
Iraq has two possible futures: collapse and ethnic warfare for five to fifteen years until the various regions are "cleansed" of infidel Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds; or the emergence of a "strongman" who will mobilize enough brute force to keep everything quiet. Although the second is what the country formerly had, of course, it is unlikely in my opinion that this can be re-established, although it would be much preferable from the point of view of saving human life and restoring some semblance of civil society. The segmenting of the country by regions will involve Iranian and Turkish, and possibly Saudi, intervention; and the US just won't be able to resist all those opportunities to sell arms and hire Halliburton and the rest of Corporate America --there will be just too much money to be made; so we will continue to be involved. Than means more dead Americans, and more billions. [Aside: it's funny that we don't heve the $40 billion per year it would cost to provide the same universal health care that every other Western country has; but the 3+ billion dollars we spend a week in Iraq is easy to find.
It's particularly sad that we have chosen to destroy our international standing, ruin our military, bankrupt our treasury, and kill so many scores of thousands of people in order to achieve this calamity. I think all we can do now, if we are very lucky, is try to restore our own republic, before Bush and "torture man" Gonzalez and the whole despicable crew finish it off.
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Breaking News on the Science Front
TOKYO - Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of hind legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared. - news item
Of course, residents of Kansas and certain other areas know that this is impossible, because these animals, along with the rest of the universe, were created from nothing during a very busy week approximately 6,000 years ago. The "fossils" so naively regarded by scientists as being 50 million years old, were themselves intelligently designed to appear older than they actually are; they were actually created as fossils, and never were components of living beings.
The only animal with verifiable "vestigal" hind legs is the serpent, which, condemned after a certain transgression in the Middle East to slither on its belly, gradually wore off its legs as they scraped uselessly along the ground.
--Our scientific values reporter
Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared. - news item
Of course, residents of Kansas and certain other areas know that this is impossible, because these animals, along with the rest of the universe, were created from nothing during a very busy week approximately 6,000 years ago. The "fossils" so naively regarded by scientists as being 50 million years old, were themselves intelligently designed to appear older than they actually are; they were actually created as fossils, and never were components of living beings.
The only animal with verifiable "vestigal" hind legs is the serpent, which, condemned after a certain transgression in the Middle East to slither on its belly, gradually wore off its legs as they scraped uselessly along the ground.
--Our scientific values reporter
Monday, November 6, 2006
Faith and Values
I cannot let the 2006 elections, due to take place tomorrow, arrive without registering my dismay at the latest indicator of cultural decline. Last week, listening to CNN in the car on my way home, I heard yet another story about an evangelist, a fierce opponent of gay marriage, having been exposed as a participant in a homosexual relationship. But, except for its tawdry nature, the story was unremarkable. Certainly, it's not news that CNN, like the rest of the media, considers this B-list sensationalism to be prime time "news." Or that hypocrisy lives and breathes in the land that gave birth to Advertising.
No, what has me exercised is the fact that this critical piece of "breaking news" was turned over, for further explication, to CNN's "faith and values correspondent," a breathless, young, surely attractive (remember, I was listening on the radio) woman who has learned to speak without inflection, accent, color, or identifiable characteristic of any kind, and to get rid of her gum before the cameras roll.
Leaving aside the question of why this story had anything to do with "faith" or "values," the fact that CNN has such a correspondent heralds, I am sure, the advent of a "faith and values" curriculum in, oh, I don't know, high schools? Journalism programs? Can faith and values police be far behind? Will Wolf Blitzer and other guardians of high seriousness in our media world soon be asking presidential candidates where they stand on faith? How long before the answer, "my personal values are none of your business; I'm running for political office" be sufficient to disqualify someone? I'm afraid that time has already arrived.
We've come full circle: when Kennedy was elected in 1960 the possibilty of one's faith intruding into decisions taken in high office was considered by the know-nothings to be a disqualification for office. Now, less than 50 years later, that same intrusion has come to be a requirement for high office. It is by such steps, with all their sanctimonious accompaniement, that we measure the decline of a republic. We are rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the backward theocracies against which we rail in the corridors of politically correct public discourse: not to parade our religion as an emblem of the justice of our cause is to devalue that cause. Or is the shortstop who crosses himself before hitting into a double play different in kind, rather than only in degree, from the young man half a world away who calls upon Allah to bless his AK-47?
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