1. "Moderate" congressional Democrats, out to kill health care reform because ... well, because it seems un-American, I guess (everyone in the world except Americans, by definition, are un-American; and everybody but Americans has access to reasonable government-provided health care, or to health insurance. Q.e.d: it's un-American!), seize now on abortion language, now on the public option, now on extending Medicare --which, of course, they are out to protect!--, now on the budget. Face it: Nelson, Lieberman, and their ilk are simply (1) stupid, if they believe what they say they believe (this apparently hits close to the mark in the case of Lieberman, who doesn't seem to know what he actually thinks), or (2) lying, like the guy who doesn't want to buy any magazine subscriptions but is too wimpy to just say so, and so hems and haws about details and so delays the kid, who really has no chance at all at this house, from going on to the next one.
The U.S. Congress is full of worthless hacks and should be done away with.
2. The President consulted a general, who (incredible surprise!) said he needed more troops. And as soon as a general says it, it is sacred writ. I'm trying to remember the last time a general (not Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, who never went near a war) said that fewer troops would be the way to go.
Now we have a strategy that cannot be explained without resort to metaphor.
3. Goldman Sachs needed not only lots of government money (briefly); it needed preferential access to H1N1 flu vaccine. It got both, and now it turns its very patrician nose up at the country and the government, plotting to make its next killing on carbon trading or new financial derivatives that shouldn't be regulated because that would interfere with the "market." This behavior is not exactly a surprise, as most of the government's financial regulators seem mysteriously to have come from Goldman Sachs and so the guys in the five thousand-dollar suits feel protected, with justification.
But while millions remain unemployed and Wall Street has enjoyed a huge year, what I want to know is, where are the mobs that should be tearing apart those marble columns in lower Manhattan and yanking these guys out of their limos for a little tarring and feathering? Americans like to complain. From the comfort of their recliners in front of wide-screen flat panel televisions. We may have screwed everything up; but at least, when our lives were threatened, the generation of the sixties raised a little hell in the streets. The kids today moan into their chai tea that there are no jobs; then they take their advanced degrees and sweep up before closing. They are willing to smoke grass, but not to cause trouble --looks bad on the resume.
At least we waited until our thirties and forties to sell out.
There is a lot more FOP out there, pretty much everywhere I look. Don't even get me started on Mayor Daley's cash cow (the public assets of the citizens of Chicago).
But I am dispirited, for now.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Race Justice
(written June 4, 2009)
Now we must listen to the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh telling us that Judge Sotomayor is disqualified for consideration for the Supreme Court because of her comment that a Latina judge might make a better decision than a white male judge, because of "the richness of her experience."
And it is from the font and bastion of racism in the society, these past two generations, viz. the "intellectual leaders" of the party that made racism its chief tool, that we must abide such nonsense.
Consider the probable career path of a female or minority person, now in his or her fifties, who has been successful in virtually any field in this country. Think of the professional environment in which such a person was nurtured, and the sea in which he or she swam, metaphorically speaking. Allow, even, the possibility that such a person has succeeded through only a modicum of merit and with a large serving of affirmative action.
Can you doubt that, in order to rise to whatever level such a person has achieved, that person would have experienced, every day of his life, the world of the majority white male culture? And would not such a person have learned the conventions, the rules, the behaviors, even the prejudices, of the majority?
Could one seriously argue that a white male in the same profession would have had a comparable exposure to the world of the minorities, and absorbed in a comparable fashion their worldview?
So, wasn't Judge Sotomayor simply stating a rather pedestrian truth, namely that a successful minority person, whatever other characteristics he or she had developed, would have perforce had a richer, in some ways broader, understanding than a member of the majority? Wouldn't this, most likely, be true in any environment?
Maybe she shouldn't have said it; maybe she said it poorly. But let's move on!
Now we must listen to the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh telling us that Judge Sotomayor is disqualified for consideration for the Supreme Court because of her comment that a Latina judge might make a better decision than a white male judge, because of "the richness of her experience."
And it is from the font and bastion of racism in the society, these past two generations, viz. the "intellectual leaders" of the party that made racism its chief tool, that we must abide such nonsense.
Consider the probable career path of a female or minority person, now in his or her fifties, who has been successful in virtually any field in this country. Think of the professional environment in which such a person was nurtured, and the sea in which he or she swam, metaphorically speaking. Allow, even, the possibility that such a person has succeeded through only a modicum of merit and with a large serving of affirmative action.
Can you doubt that, in order to rise to whatever level such a person has achieved, that person would have experienced, every day of his life, the world of the majority white male culture? And would not such a person have learned the conventions, the rules, the behaviors, even the prejudices, of the majority?
Could one seriously argue that a white male in the same profession would have had a comparable exposure to the world of the minorities, and absorbed in a comparable fashion their worldview?
So, wasn't Judge Sotomayor simply stating a rather pedestrian truth, namely that a successful minority person, whatever other characteristics he or she had developed, would have perforce had a richer, in some ways broader, understanding than a member of the majority? Wouldn't this, most likely, be true in any environment?
Maybe she shouldn't have said it; maybe she said it poorly. But let's move on!
Let them Go!
(originally written 4/9/09)
Texas Governor Rick Perry, supporting a "tea party" event for patriotic Americans this week, suggested that states may want to secede from the Union, because the federal government is "thumbing its nose" at the American people."
No specifics as to the nose-thumbing. Lots of possible examples come to mind, but they belong to the period beginning in December, 2000 and recently concluded with the thanks of a grateful nation to the departed President Bush. So Perry couldn't have been talking about any of that; no he and others similarly afflicted managed to contain their outrage until recently.
But let's all be reasonable, and let them do their jobs. If they continue to hold tea parties and in general to work themselves up, we may get lucky. These people are apparently so patriotic that they want to leave the Union. So let them go. Imagine a USA without the southern tier of states. Why, we wouldn't have ... uh, the southern tier of states.
Thanks for nothing, Abe Lincoln.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, supporting a "tea party" event for patriotic Americans this week, suggested that states may want to secede from the Union, because the federal government is "thumbing its nose" at the American people."
No specifics as to the nose-thumbing. Lots of possible examples come to mind, but they belong to the period beginning in December, 2000 and recently concluded with the thanks of a grateful nation to the departed President Bush. So Perry couldn't have been talking about any of that; no he and others similarly afflicted managed to contain their outrage until recently.
But let's all be reasonable, and let them do their jobs. If they continue to hold tea parties and in general to work themselves up, we may get lucky. These people are apparently so patriotic that they want to leave the Union. So let them go. Imagine a USA without the southern tier of states. Why, we wouldn't have ... uh, the southern tier of states.
Thanks for nothing, Abe Lincoln.
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