Ten Little Indians UPDATE

Ok, so it wasn't ten Indian kids who were killed at the high school on the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota on Monday. It was six students (including the shooter), a security guard and a teacher, and the grandfather of the shooter as well as the grandfather's girlfriend. What can I say? I depend on the constant yammering of nattering nabobs to pound the details into my brain.

President Raised In A Barn finally offered his condolences today, five days after the fact. A White House spokesperson actually claimed Bush tried to get a hold of someone earlier in the week and got their voicemail.

I shit you not.

ADDED: Amanda over at Pandagon links to a Washington Post article detailing the dissatisfaction many Native Americans feel about Bush's lackluster response to the shootings.

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

Ten Little Indians

Is it just me or did 10 high school kids just meet their maker in the worst schoolyard murder/suicide since Columbine and it barely rated a blip on the collective radar of our Dear Leader and his poodle press? Where the hell is the wall-to-wall coverage we've come to know and love in our 24/7 news all day/every day?
...maybe if they were ten brain-dead white women on life support for 15 years and Michael Schiavo factored into each case somehow, instead of ten indian kids in an economically depressed community that the powers that be try very hard never to think about under any circumstances.

Republican Logic Condensed

Artificially terminating a pregnancy in its earliest stages: UNNATURAL AND AGAINST GOD'S WILL.

Artificially keeping a brain dead adult alive for over a decade: THE WILL OF GOD.

Culture of life my ass.

Um, Freud? A little help over here.

Via A Tiny Revolution, a look at the Rockwellian childhood of Jerry Falwell, from his autobiography:

There were times that Dad’s pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed “Crip” Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip’s co-workers got tired of the old man’s bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip’s old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad’s little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it “the toughest squirrel meat” he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

Interesting how that prank merely borders on cruelty. What would be downright cruel in this sick sad world?

This is what whup-ass looks like in HTML.

A lot of people wanted to buy into the bullshit that the GOP was beating us like a trailer park wife. Well that's horseshit. Our problems is that our coaches suck. They not only don't know how to win, they act like they don't want to win. Yeah, yeah, Clinton won, but this is a different team playing a different fucking game. The public likes clear choices. You may hate George Bush, but you know where he stands, and that's why John McCain will NEVER be president. He's too many things to too many fucking people. And Hillary is marching down that same fucking road.

A lot of you blame John Kerry for losing. Well, that's also horseshit. Even Tucker fucking Carlson thought Kerry had in the bag. We fucked up by discounting the church offensive of Rove. That's where those votes came from. It wasn't any fucking Swift Boat either. They fucked up, according to Zogby, and people didn't believe them. But that was one fine magic trick, taking out Rather and neutralizing the draft dodging issue against a bona fide war hero. They played a better ground game. Did Kerry fuck up? Sure, but it wasn't about any vote fraud shit. That battle was lost when Ken Blackwell decided to play for the home team. Once he decided to Tom his way to popularity, that was a done deal, Diebold or no, wacky Bev Harris or no. Part of the problem is that Kerry was saddled with the same losers everyone else had to deal with. Coaches who can't fucking coach and try to win using the old playbook. They KNOW that playbook and hand our asses to us when we use it. They didn't want to win bad enough. They thought there were rules. Our old friend Hunter Thompson knew that politics had one set of rules, do anything to win which you can get away with. The fact that Kerry got close is a miracle, given the team he had.

But the real blame belongs in Congress. Anyone want to tell me how that wacko Tom Coburn is a Senator? It's like Theodore fucking Bilbo rose from the dead and took back his seat. He should have been carted off to await the rapture in a mental hospital.

The DLC should be called the dumbass losing coaches. Al From couldn't coach his way out of a fucking paper bag. His day is done.

It's obcenity-laced ambrosia and just what I needed to hear. This is the only language left to us, the language of rage. Reason doesn't work, nor does compassion. From 1820 to 1860 abolitionists saw their carefully crafted anti-slavery rhetoric shatter in the face of Southern intransience. You know why slavery ended in this country? It was because Sherman cut a bloody swathe so fucking wide through the South that they no choice. It's no longer about crafting the better argument. It's about dividing and conquering. There are many types of warfare, and we've suffered a massive defeat mostly because we've never behaved as though this is war.

Fighting to Care

Fighting to Care

I'm following Kate's instructions and reposting this story so it does NOT fall down the memory hole. And you haven't read this scary NYT piece on media manipulation, read it and weep. Weep for the millions of Americans who will never ever break away from complacency and indifference, and weep for the billions around the world who will be made to suffer from it.

I'm not immune to either complacency or indifference. Being in school makes is very easy to turn inward and shut out the rest of the world. In some ways it's been a blessing. After the election, the task of putting together seminar papers saved me from the deepest of funks. In some ways choosing the path of academia is the selfish thing to do. For me it was respite from the constant barrage of misinformation and outright lies. Away from it all I am free to follow an idea to its conclusion regardless of how meaningless it may be to the world at large.

But the world at large will not be ignored. So I must try harder not to be bitter and indifferent especially when friends are in pain.

She's Ba-a-ack!

Kate at Broken Windows has rejoined the land of the blogging. And about time, too.
As I was just commenting on her blog -- I wish I had gone to the Tuesday Democratic party meetup. I'm just so frustrated with the Democrats. I have to keep telling myself--"It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to."

I haven't seen Hotel Rwanda, yet, but it's truly frightening to learn how much Clinton DIDN'T do--and this is a guy who felt our pain. When I think about the complete obliviousness of President Raised-By-Poodles, who "lives about three feet up his own ass" (to borrow a phrase from Jon Stewart)--I cry myself to sleep.

Time to go off the grid. Welcome back, Kate.

Uh oh

In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

David Brooks sets out to prove that he is both literate and financially savvy and ends up as usual doing doing just the opposite.

Leo Tolstoy wrote a lovely novella called "Family Happiness," narrated by a young woman who goes out for a walk with a man she loves. They talk about nothing in particular - frogs, actually - but exchange looks and gestures. "He said goodbye as usual and made no special allusion; but I knew that from that day he was mine, and that I should never lose him now."

They are married but grow apart. She likes parties, while he doesn't. Then one day they are sitting at home and her heart suddenly grows light. She looks around and realizes that the courtship phase of their relationship has ended, but it has been replaced by something gentler and deeper:

Brooks could stop here, make some inane comments on the sanctity of marriage, and end up no worse for it. But in true Bobo-esque fashion he isn't content to simply be inane.

Tolstoy's novella came back to me while I was reading, of all things, The Wall Street Journal. The paper's Work and Family columnist, Sue Shellenbarger, had a piece last week reporting that the number of couples who now have separate checking accounts is rising rapidly. Roughly half of all married couples now keep multiple accounts, according to a Raddon Financial Group survey.

(snip)

I'm not saying that people with separate accounts have marriages that are less healthy than anybody else's. I'm saying we should pause before this becomes the social norm. Private property is the basis for our market democracy. But private property in the home is an altogether trickier proposition.

For one thing, separate accounts can easily turn into secret accounts. A person's status and resources inside the home shouldn't be based on how much he or she is making outside it. A union based on love can easily turn into a merger based on self-interest, where the main criterion for continuing becomes: Am I getting a good return on my investment, psychic or otherwise?

Isn't it just like Brooks to read about separate checking accounts and think about Tolstoy? Isn't it just like him to look for the most innocuous thing upon which to blame the collapse of the average American marriage? Incidentally the use of Tolstoy here is so painfully ham-handed that I can only assume that Brooks is trying to be all big and cool like his pin-up girl Condoleeza Rice. And if he's looking for a literary marriage guru, Tolstoy is probably not the best choice.

Tolstoy himself tried to abide by his new beliefs, simplifying his life, living on his own labor, and giving up material possessions. His wife, however, did not share all of his beliefs, and their marriage suffered under severe strain during their last years together. In November 1910 relations between them had grown so tense that Tolstoy decided to leave home for good. He contracted pneumonia while traveling and died at the small railway station of Astapovo.

Herbert today

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."

In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."

(snip)

Mr. Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.

"Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say," Ms. Mayer wrote.

The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.

I don't have the words.

I meant to have some post-SOTU thoughts up this evening, but find that having unexpectedly run into Dave Chappelle this afternoon in Greenwich Village has reduced me into a Beavis and Butthead-type (Heh heh, that was cool). And really what can one say? I find that I have finally reached the point of being used to the fact that everything Bush says is pretty much a lie. And ultimately that's all I'm left with. This was probably the best thing I saw regarding last night.

And yes, you didn't misread back there. I ran into Dave Chappelle this afternoon. New York is so effing cool.

SOTU Lands on Groundhog Day
George Bush pulls his head out of his ass to speak to a joint session of Congress. This explains the excrement-filled speech. (do you kiss Joe Lieberman with that mouth, sir?)

I'm not sure what happens if he sees his shadow.

SOTU: Some Initial Thoughts


I don't what was worse. The actual SOTU or the limp Democratic Response. Reid and Pelosi inspire no confidence. Their quite disapproval does nothing to drown out the screams of "We're fucked!" in my head. Let me brood this for an evening. I'll get back to you later.

Did he just invoke Roosevelt? FDR should haunt him till he goes mad.

It's over thank God. Recap to come.

Oh man he's sending Condi to Middle East.

"We must confront nations who support terra." If he says Saudi Arabia, I'll name my firstborn George Walker.

"..fighting terrorists in Iraq so we do not have to face them at home." Flypaper theory, that's an oldie. New ideas people. I'm tired of recycling my outrage.

And now we reach the "terra" portion of the evening. Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction but other countries may, and I'm gonna route out all the evil do-ers except for Osama Bin Laden, because he is like Voldemort and saying his name will make me wet my pants.

We are going to build a NEW coalition, because the OLD one won't return our phone calls.

I can't follow this so-called Social Security reform idea. Somebody explain it to me later.

"Gay Marriage" and the heartland goes wild.

Wow! Christopher Reeve's wife it there. And there he goes stepping all over stem cell research.

Ugh! He winked. Make it stop.

Ashcroft looks pained. Must be the cumulative effect of all of those voodoo dolls.

Laura has some massive helmet hair going on.

A whole 15 seconds devoted to AIDS. Compassionate.

There are a lot of empty seats on the Dems side.

"Social Security WAS a great moral success in the 20th Century." Ah yes excellent rhetorical method. Talk of it as if it is already a relic. Soften up the public before you kick them to the curb. Kudos to the Dems for refusing to clap.

I am still struck by how frightening Cheney's face looks hovering over Bush's shoulder.

Did the Dems's just boo? Rock! Shout"liar", shout "liar"!

SOTU

I know, why bother? We all know how empty and soul-crushing the next hour or so, but one must do it, because--well--because one is a masochist at home this evening. One would rather watch Law and Order but one can't. So as our National Embarrassment walks down the aisle I ready my keyboard, take a swig of Beajoulais and wonder why in the hell am still here doing this.

I'm not holding out a whole lotta hope that we can avoid four years of Condo as Secretary of State, but I signed this anyway, and you should too.

I intend to stand up and ask Condoleezza Rice the tough questions that Americans deserve to have answered. Questions like:

Why did the United States go to war in Iraq based on misleading -- if not false and fraudulent -- evidence?

Why did we divert valuable resources and intelligence personnel to Iraq, taking them away from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Osama bin Laden?

Why did you mislead the American people into thinking there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida before September 11th?

I'd add one more question: Just what is going on between you and the president?