Once upon a time (OK, a little more than a year ago) there was a columnist who came to the defense of an embattled candidate for president who was being maligned for that most egregious of American political sins: he was kind of, maybe, sort of, appearing liberal.
Understand the candidate himself was not being accused of actually being a liberal, per se. It was the mere appearance of liberalism in his personal circle that was the damning mark. It seemed the candidate in question was, of all things, a Christian. Worse that that, the church where the candidate had genuflected for umpteen years was run by former American military hero-pastor, an exciting, altruistic, outspoken charismatic preacher who inspired millions the world over with his calls for humanism and justice.
Not surprisingly the candidate nearly lost his candidacy over such an outrage.
(The columnist, btw, nearly lost his 10 year job as a social studies teacher for writing such heresies as to defend a black man in print when townsfolk questioned whether he was dutifully attending to his day job as the village brainwasher of the future proletariat. The columnist however prevailed when the townsfolk came to realize that keeping up with the teacher’s supposed blasphemes might possibly require actual reading.)
What the mainstream media really wanted to say was that since Obama was a black man it was a guarantee that if he got to be president he would raid the chicken coop once the overseer took to wenching. But they couldn’t quite say that. So, they took to “God-damning” Obama’s far more phenomenal minister, the right Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a notable civil rights activist as if that were enough to darken Obama’s image. The suggestion was that since Obama had attended Wright’s sermons for twenty years he must’ve heard as least some of them.
The thinking went that if Obama had paid attention to Wright’s ideas about reshaping America so it actually was for-of-and-by the people, he then was now heir to the responsibility for pursuing the social justice ministry of the liberation theology so popular in certain Black churches—the types of churches that aim to free their parishioners from the earthly chains of oppression, rather than be the propagandists for those who sell such chains as “god’s will.”
So, that meant having a guy like that in charge would mean everything about the way America operated was bound get over-scrutinized then over-turned and generally and justly screwed over, because we all know America has been run for the elite oppressive few, not the huddled many. Any president who might actually work to improve the lives of his people and the world in general was obviously far too great a threat to go unchecked.
Immediately, throughout the blogosphere, all of America’s hard right pundit might was marshaled to do their combined best to lynch both men from the same tree in an effort to stop Obama from spreading Wright’s filth before it could infect the minds of young Americans.
Welcome to one year later.
Candidate Obama is now the current edition of the imperial president while Reverend Wright is nowhere to be found. And we discover, to little surprise, the poor old Right-wing got it wrong again. Obama wasn’t listening to those sermons.
For example, Wright wrote war was wrong. Having been there himself, he condemned the Bush violence and so must be cheering somewhere in absentia to see members of the Bush administration indicted in Spain thus launching an international investigation that will soon enough make their way to Obama’s front door though he has done all he could to ignore the pitter-patter of six billion little feat marching for justice. Meanwhile, in that same Democracy Now ebullient broadcast which brought the news of the Bush indictments in Spain, Obama admits to committing to an extra twenty thousand American invaders in Bushco’s War of Terror in Afghanistan and then re-brands Bush’s genocidal occupation in Iraq as “advisory and assistance brigades.”
Wright wrote repeatedly about poverty and racism while Obama allows Wall Street bed-partner Tim Geithner to tax the poor for the profit of the rich on the one hand, then closes his eyes to the apartheid in Israel and distances himself from his own Attorney General’s efforts to bring race into the spotlight in America in much the same way he once betrayed his once beloved minister.
Wright also wrote about the retribution America would face for our misdeeds if we will not change our ways, the karma we were creating. One wonders if Obama also missed the part of Rev. Wright’s sermons about chickens coming home to roost and unjust leaders meeting, not meting, justice someday.
This one certain columnist certainly is taking the audacity to hope that Obama wasn’t napping the time Wright wrote of the justice to come. That day might be coming his way sooner than Obama thinks.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Current Comedy, 3/25/09: Math for the Man in the Middle
It is an odd quirk of mathematics that the absolute center isn’t a part of any side. In either direction that the middle might turn it will find equal opposition. And, as he enters his third month atop the hottest seat in America, President Barack Obama is beginning to learn that in trying to reach out from the center, the support of either side may be beyond his grasp.
(Or so the story is being sold.)
To hear it told, as it is being told to us by the air quote “liberal” media, Obama is fast on his way to becoming the next Osama. Poor Barack, this may not have been what he had had in mind when, as candidate Obama, he claimed he aimed to bring both sides of the American political spectrum together. But here is his dream coming together in a way he probably had not expected. Yes, the Left has taken to joining the Right all right—in turning against him. At last a president that Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones can both froth at the mouth over. (Or so they say.)
While serious liberal commentators have consistently condemned aspects of the Obama agenda, more mainstream “liberals” have begun joining the fray of Right-wing radio jabber-jaws in seeking purchase to pull down the icon of the American people so their masters, the rich, can keep their eye on the American Dollar.
In the rarified air of the blogosphere, the tsunami on the Left has risen so fast over Obama’s handling of the AGI bonuses that AlterNet’s Don Hazen had to compile them to leave enough space for some news other than Obama bashing. In his rabidly reprinted New York Times thrashing, Frank Rich likened Obama the last Whitehouse resident by talking about him “squandering political capital” and quoting someone else’s reference to the AGI bonus fiasco as his “Katrina moment.” Fellow NYT columnist, Paul Krugman called the Obama economic team’s ideas “Zombies.” As you know, when a Noble Prize winning economist disses a president’s economic plan he better watch out. Look back at all the damage Joseph Stiglitz did to Bush’s plans. Oh yeah, none.
And, then there’s Arianna Huffington, who appears to have decided it is more fun to play a liberal on TV than to actually be one. She has joined the apparently endless roster of anti-Obama commentators CNN has floated to torpedo the current ship of state. Speaking if which, thanks to the current anti-Obama tone in the mainstream press, Anderson Cooper continues to visibly relish the chance to get to pretend he is a hard hitting journalist and presidents and kings are his routine punching bags. But if he had talked that way about Bush he might have run the risk of interviewing Guantanamo Bay guards from the wrong end of a waterboard.
Meanwhile the right wing onslaught has continued unabated. To hear the GOP tell it, Obama may have wanted to talk about education but he’s the one is getting schooled. As the projected cost of Mr. Obama’s proposed budget for his War on our Economy grew to equal the projected cost of Mr. Bush’s War on Terror, Republicans in lockstep cried impending doom, and have actually taken to using the word “Doomsday.” In all honesty, they may have their point. Surely Obama’s potential success would indeed lead to a doomsday … for the Republican Party.
And so to fight back, the ever-Wild-West rootin’ tootin’ radical Republican, Minnesota’s Michelle Bachman has taken to calling for her armed and dangerous followers to prepare for revolution. And the ever-dependable Mr. Limbaugh himself, whose volcanic temper can erupt so violently even Bobby Jindal would support monitoring it, Rush has begun working his way through the “Obama as a dictator” metaphors and risen to likening Obama to Robert Mugabe, at least according to Media Matters’ new Limbaugh log, “Limbaugh Wire.” Not to be outdone the New York Post likened him to Nero.
On Jay Leno one day, on “60 Minutes” the next, NCAA handicapping, primetime press conferences, to hear the GOP pundits call it, Obama’s biggest problem that he is on his way to becoming the most overexposed male celebrity this side of Ron Jeremy. But, there remains the possibility that what the phrase “Obama is overexposed” actually means in American English, as opposed to Newspeak, is that the GOP is simply sick of hearing about him.
That’s the way the story’s being sold, as I said, but the truth may be that they may be the only ones. A closer look at the American public’s reception of the latest developments, as dismal as they’ve been, and how they reflect on our president suggests that America’s supposedly mounting Anti-Obama movement may be mostly made up as the message is being framed so the supposed “mainstream” media can continue to sell Obama upriver. After all, framing is everything when you are trying to make someone suspect.
Take for example the way the Boston Herald used the latest Zogby Poll on Obama’s weekly approval rating. Under the title, “Poll of change: Obama’s job approval slipping to ‘50-50’,” columnist Joe Dwinell juxtaposes numbers to make it look like Obama’s popularity has taken a nose-dive. “The honeymoon is over,” Dwinell begins and loads his nutgraph with words like “stumbled” and “crippled.” As the article continues, Obama “backpedals,” he’s “punch-drunk,” his numbers “are going down.” Of course, all of that depends on which numbers one wishes to take out fo the Zogby Poll.
According to the poll released Mar. 24, entitled by the way, “Those Saying U.S. Headed in Right Direction Continue to Increase, Now 45%,” it does say that Obama’s job approval rating has slipped 3 points to 49%. In fact that is the subtitle. But in the opening paragraph, Zogby acknowledges that confidence in our country’s direction has increased from 14% to 45% (which translates to a 300% improvement) since Obama took office and that his favorability numbers are essentially unchanged at 55%.
Ah numbers. Let the American Left use them and the American Right abuse them, either way the American people are not as sick of Obama as we are being told.
At least not yet, anyway.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona.
(Or so the story is being sold.)
To hear it told, as it is being told to us by the air quote “liberal” media, Obama is fast on his way to becoming the next Osama. Poor Barack, this may not have been what he had had in mind when, as candidate Obama, he claimed he aimed to bring both sides of the American political spectrum together. But here is his dream coming together in a way he probably had not expected. Yes, the Left has taken to joining the Right all right—in turning against him. At last a president that Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones can both froth at the mouth over. (Or so they say.)
While serious liberal commentators have consistently condemned aspects of the Obama agenda, more mainstream “liberals” have begun joining the fray of Right-wing radio jabber-jaws in seeking purchase to pull down the icon of the American people so their masters, the rich, can keep their eye on the American Dollar.
In the rarified air of the blogosphere, the tsunami on the Left has risen so fast over Obama’s handling of the AGI bonuses that AlterNet’s Don Hazen had to compile them to leave enough space for some news other than Obama bashing. In his rabidly reprinted New York Times thrashing, Frank Rich likened Obama the last Whitehouse resident by talking about him “squandering political capital” and quoting someone else’s reference to the AGI bonus fiasco as his “Katrina moment.” Fellow NYT columnist, Paul Krugman called the Obama economic team’s ideas “Zombies.” As you know, when a Noble Prize winning economist disses a president’s economic plan he better watch out. Look back at all the damage Joseph Stiglitz did to Bush’s plans. Oh yeah, none.
And, then there’s Arianna Huffington, who appears to have decided it is more fun to play a liberal on TV than to actually be one. She has joined the apparently endless roster of anti-Obama commentators CNN has floated to torpedo the current ship of state. Speaking if which, thanks to the current anti-Obama tone in the mainstream press, Anderson Cooper continues to visibly relish the chance to get to pretend he is a hard hitting journalist and presidents and kings are his routine punching bags. But if he had talked that way about Bush he might have run the risk of interviewing Guantanamo Bay guards from the wrong end of a waterboard.
Meanwhile the right wing onslaught has continued unabated. To hear the GOP tell it, Obama may have wanted to talk about education but he’s the one is getting schooled. As the projected cost of Mr. Obama’s proposed budget for his War on our Economy grew to equal the projected cost of Mr. Bush’s War on Terror, Republicans in lockstep cried impending doom, and have actually taken to using the word “Doomsday.” In all honesty, they may have their point. Surely Obama’s potential success would indeed lead to a doomsday … for the Republican Party.
And so to fight back, the ever-Wild-West rootin’ tootin’ radical Republican, Minnesota’s Michelle Bachman has taken to calling for her armed and dangerous followers to prepare for revolution. And the ever-dependable Mr. Limbaugh himself, whose volcanic temper can erupt so violently even Bobby Jindal would support monitoring it, Rush has begun working his way through the “Obama as a dictator” metaphors and risen to likening Obama to Robert Mugabe, at least according to Media Matters’ new Limbaugh log, “Limbaugh Wire.” Not to be outdone the New York Post likened him to Nero.
On Jay Leno one day, on “60 Minutes” the next, NCAA handicapping, primetime press conferences, to hear the GOP pundits call it, Obama’s biggest problem that he is on his way to becoming the most overexposed male celebrity this side of Ron Jeremy. But, there remains the possibility that what the phrase “Obama is overexposed” actually means in American English, as opposed to Newspeak, is that the GOP is simply sick of hearing about him.
That’s the way the story’s being sold, as I said, but the truth may be that they may be the only ones. A closer look at the American public’s reception of the latest developments, as dismal as they’ve been, and how they reflect on our president suggests that America’s supposedly mounting Anti-Obama movement may be mostly made up as the message is being framed so the supposed “mainstream” media can continue to sell Obama upriver. After all, framing is everything when you are trying to make someone suspect.
Take for example the way the Boston Herald used the latest Zogby Poll on Obama’s weekly approval rating. Under the title, “Poll of change: Obama’s job approval slipping to ‘50-50’,” columnist Joe Dwinell juxtaposes numbers to make it look like Obama’s popularity has taken a nose-dive. “The honeymoon is over,” Dwinell begins and loads his nutgraph with words like “stumbled” and “crippled.” As the article continues, Obama “backpedals,” he’s “punch-drunk,” his numbers “are going down.” Of course, all of that depends on which numbers one wishes to take out fo the Zogby Poll.
According to the poll released Mar. 24, entitled by the way, “Those Saying U.S. Headed in Right Direction Continue to Increase, Now 45%,” it does say that Obama’s job approval rating has slipped 3 points to 49%. In fact that is the subtitle. But in the opening paragraph, Zogby acknowledges that confidence in our country’s direction has increased from 14% to 45% (which translates to a 300% improvement) since Obama took office and that his favorability numbers are essentially unchanged at 55%.
Ah numbers. Let the American Left use them and the American Right abuse them, either way the American people are not as sick of Obama as we are being told.
At least not yet, anyway.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Current Comedy 3/17/09: Earplugs
Before we begin this week’s lesson, let’s have a brief review of the concept of numbers.
Look at your hands. That is the number 10. It takes but an instant to visualize the sight of them, just as it takes an instant to apprehend the concept of ten. Of course, in concept, it only takes seconds, fractions of seconds, to apprehend any number—seven point seven, four hundred and ten, eight thousand five hundred and seventy, a million, a billion, $10,997,999,164,142.97 (as of 17 Mar 2009 at 06:03:57 PM GMT ). See? They’re all just numbers.
Now if you are still looking at your ten digits (which means I suppose, you’re not reading these instructions, but anyway), imagine, briefly, that you have a terrible accident, an axe-related accident, Jerry Garcia-style, an errant swing, a simple instant, you look down and it’s gone. Your life is changed forever. Immediate agony, the spray of blood, the mad dash to find the finger, hopefully with access to modern medical facilities, the continuing sight of its absence, the ever expanding amount of blood; and if it can’t be reaffixed, your life and your entire conception of mathematics screwed for good. In your imagination, which digit did you choose to lose?
That is the power of one.
Now, let’s talk about scale. Scale is why little kids fall down and go boom all day long without so much as a scrape when we full size adults would break a hip. Scale is why a flea can jump 100 times his height; but it is also why we can still kick his ass with our mere fingernails. Remember the power of one? Now ten times that, all the fingers you have, both of your hands. OMG. That is ten; and it just gets bigger from there.
But for now let’s start back with one. If you took one second to count to one and kept counting at that pace, it would take, obviously, ten seconds to count to ten. That is about how long it takes to know if your car is going to start as you’re driving yourself to the ER with your severed appendage sloshing in a Ziploc baggie w/ ice cubes. It would take you just under two minutes to count to one hundred. In that length of time you could have called 911 and gotten the directions. That’s if you didn’t get the phone too bloody. That’s if you had a phone. One hundred seconds can be an incredibly long time indeed.
It will take about 17 minutes to count to one thousand. If it takes much longer than that to get to the hospital you are liable to lose quite a bit of pinkie mobility. It will take you just over eleven and a half days to count to one million and by that time you should be able to know if you will ever have use of that one finger again. It would take an entire generation, almost thirty-two years, to add up to a billion seconds. But even at that length of time, it might still be hard to reconcile one’s self if there had not had access to the best of modern medical care.
And a trillion? Well that number is so large as to dwarf our very conception of time--to consider a trillion seconds. It is a measure longer than history itself. A trillion seconds ago, some caveman was leaving his nine fingered paw print on a wall somewhere and wishing someone would invent fire so he could cauterize the wound. A Trillion? That’s thirty-one thousand years. A trillion seconds ago it would still be another 300 generations till humans would even invent agriculture, much less sutures. And another 595 or so generations after that before anyone would even have a chance of saving a lost digit. The loss of which, of course, could happen in a simple second.
A trillion, a billion, a million, one--that is what we mean when we talk about scale. Scale is, when you look at it, such a major consideration that entire academic disciplines have sprung up to explain the concept and importance of scale to generations of cavemen, who still continue to swing their axes far too casually for safety sake. And still occasionally, the nine-fingered among us come to understand the power of one all too well.
Media, on the other hand, gain no benefit from conveying distinctions in scale. From their mediated distance numbers are forever mere concepts and not the fingers of the audience--unless of course you are the one doing the bleeding. It’s the media’s stock and trade to slosh around numbers like “billion” and “million” and ever more often lately, “trillion,” as if they would all fit somehow into the same Ziploc baggie along with a couple of ice cubes.
That in mind, thank god, or if not him then somebody, the media has stopped yapping about earmarks. In the absence of a Republican outrage, mainstream media recently acting as if pundits, pummeled Obama for not quashing the omnibus spending bill due to the wealth of pet projects. More than 8000, count ‘em earmarks. Wow. Almost eight billion dollars. Double Wow!
Seriously that is a great big number: that’s all sorts of projects in all sorts of places for all sorts of people everywhere. No wonder Repubs hate it. Besides it’s also a whole lot of fingers in a whole lot of pies. Imagine how many hands that number must tie to. That is the power of jobs, which ultimately are the currency of earmarks: somebody hired to do something. And earmarks are not some secretive private thing. It is a public project being started, a company put to work, a goal set and a landscape or a society, hopefully, being improved through judicious government spending.
An earmark is also your congressman doing precisely what he was elected for, which is to represent his part of the country and do his best to promote tranquility and prosperity for his constituents.
Republicans in general have traditionally railed against earmarks, all the while racking them up with the best of the Dems. Of course I live in a state where my iconic congressman is so proudly anti-earmark, he refuses to do a darn thing for the homefolk at all. Thanks again, John McCain.
Obama speaks the language of earmark, being a former master of them while in the Senate. Let the media chaff about earmarks all they want. Obama’s touch on the Omnibus Spending Bill buys hands full of good will. Further, unlike his vengeful predecessor, Obama allowed both sides of the aisle to stud the bill with earmarks. Repubs, besides McCain, aren’t whining this go-round because they too scored big time.
The Whitehouse has been careful to frame the argument on this one as “last year’s business” as Obama calls for the new standards he hopes to set. Perhaps, since Obama claims he wants to improve the education of the cavemen who still try to rule this country he could hire some teachers to remind them of the power of scale.
As in that even if eight thousand five hundred and seventy is a great big number (as in the number of earmarks in the bill), seven, as in seven point seven billion dollars of the total four hundred and ten billion for the Omnibus Spending Bill overall. It’s about two percent.
Yes, a billion is a very big number, but to spend a billion or even seven point seven of them spent for the good will and PR these 8000+ jobs projects around the country will generate is not a bad way to spend two percent of the overall budget on a government bill. Bush used to spend more than that on rendition.
--though on spring break, mikel weisser continues to write from the left coast of AZ.
Look at your hands. That is the number 10. It takes but an instant to visualize the sight of them, just as it takes an instant to apprehend the concept of ten. Of course, in concept, it only takes seconds, fractions of seconds, to apprehend any number—seven point seven, four hundred and ten, eight thousand five hundred and seventy, a million, a billion, $10,997,999,164,142.97 (as of 17 Mar 2009 at 06:03:57 PM GMT ). See? They’re all just numbers.
Now if you are still looking at your ten digits (which means I suppose, you’re not reading these instructions, but anyway), imagine, briefly, that you have a terrible accident, an axe-related accident, Jerry Garcia-style, an errant swing, a simple instant, you look down and it’s gone. Your life is changed forever. Immediate agony, the spray of blood, the mad dash to find the finger, hopefully with access to modern medical facilities, the continuing sight of its absence, the ever expanding amount of blood; and if it can’t be reaffixed, your life and your entire conception of mathematics screwed for good. In your imagination, which digit did you choose to lose?
That is the power of one.
Now, let’s talk about scale. Scale is why little kids fall down and go boom all day long without so much as a scrape when we full size adults would break a hip. Scale is why a flea can jump 100 times his height; but it is also why we can still kick his ass with our mere fingernails. Remember the power of one? Now ten times that, all the fingers you have, both of your hands. OMG. That is ten; and it just gets bigger from there.
But for now let’s start back with one. If you took one second to count to one and kept counting at that pace, it would take, obviously, ten seconds to count to ten. That is about how long it takes to know if your car is going to start as you’re driving yourself to the ER with your severed appendage sloshing in a Ziploc baggie w/ ice cubes. It would take you just under two minutes to count to one hundred. In that length of time you could have called 911 and gotten the directions. That’s if you didn’t get the phone too bloody. That’s if you had a phone. One hundred seconds can be an incredibly long time indeed.
It will take about 17 minutes to count to one thousand. If it takes much longer than that to get to the hospital you are liable to lose quite a bit of pinkie mobility. It will take you just over eleven and a half days to count to one million and by that time you should be able to know if you will ever have use of that one finger again. It would take an entire generation, almost thirty-two years, to add up to a billion seconds. But even at that length of time, it might still be hard to reconcile one’s self if there had not had access to the best of modern medical care.
And a trillion? Well that number is so large as to dwarf our very conception of time--to consider a trillion seconds. It is a measure longer than history itself. A trillion seconds ago, some caveman was leaving his nine fingered paw print on a wall somewhere and wishing someone would invent fire so he could cauterize the wound. A Trillion? That’s thirty-one thousand years. A trillion seconds ago it would still be another 300 generations till humans would even invent agriculture, much less sutures. And another 595 or so generations after that before anyone would even have a chance of saving a lost digit. The loss of which, of course, could happen in a simple second.
A trillion, a billion, a million, one--that is what we mean when we talk about scale. Scale is, when you look at it, such a major consideration that entire academic disciplines have sprung up to explain the concept and importance of scale to generations of cavemen, who still continue to swing their axes far too casually for safety sake. And still occasionally, the nine-fingered among us come to understand the power of one all too well.
Media, on the other hand, gain no benefit from conveying distinctions in scale. From their mediated distance numbers are forever mere concepts and not the fingers of the audience--unless of course you are the one doing the bleeding. It’s the media’s stock and trade to slosh around numbers like “billion” and “million” and ever more often lately, “trillion,” as if they would all fit somehow into the same Ziploc baggie along with a couple of ice cubes.
That in mind, thank god, or if not him then somebody, the media has stopped yapping about earmarks. In the absence of a Republican outrage, mainstream media recently acting as if pundits, pummeled Obama for not quashing the omnibus spending bill due to the wealth of pet projects. More than 8000, count ‘em earmarks. Wow. Almost eight billion dollars. Double Wow!
Seriously that is a great big number: that’s all sorts of projects in all sorts of places for all sorts of people everywhere. No wonder Repubs hate it. Besides it’s also a whole lot of fingers in a whole lot of pies. Imagine how many hands that number must tie to. That is the power of jobs, which ultimately are the currency of earmarks: somebody hired to do something. And earmarks are not some secretive private thing. It is a public project being started, a company put to work, a goal set and a landscape or a society, hopefully, being improved through judicious government spending.
An earmark is also your congressman doing precisely what he was elected for, which is to represent his part of the country and do his best to promote tranquility and prosperity for his constituents.
Republicans in general have traditionally railed against earmarks, all the while racking them up with the best of the Dems. Of course I live in a state where my iconic congressman is so proudly anti-earmark, he refuses to do a darn thing for the homefolk at all. Thanks again, John McCain.
Obama speaks the language of earmark, being a former master of them while in the Senate. Let the media chaff about earmarks all they want. Obama’s touch on the Omnibus Spending Bill buys hands full of good will. Further, unlike his vengeful predecessor, Obama allowed both sides of the aisle to stud the bill with earmarks. Repubs, besides McCain, aren’t whining this go-round because they too scored big time.
The Whitehouse has been careful to frame the argument on this one as “last year’s business” as Obama calls for the new standards he hopes to set. Perhaps, since Obama claims he wants to improve the education of the cavemen who still try to rule this country he could hire some teachers to remind them of the power of scale.
As in that even if eight thousand five hundred and seventy is a great big number (as in the number of earmarks in the bill), seven, as in seven point seven billion dollars of the total four hundred and ten billion for the Omnibus Spending Bill overall. It’s about two percent.
Yes, a billion is a very big number, but to spend a billion or even seven point seven of them spent for the good will and PR these 8000+ jobs projects around the country will generate is not a bad way to spend two percent of the overall budget on a government bill. Bush used to spend more than that on rendition.
--though on spring break, mikel weisser continues to write from the left coast of AZ.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Current Comedy 3/9/09: The New Circumcision
As the GOP (and their mouthpiece media) drone on and on testing our short memory/attention span by continuously carping that Obama hasn’t fixed the crisis they made quickly enough, they have now reached the critical mass where it is no longer sufficiently comically productive to further belittle their efforts. Luckily, a new curious statistic has been released that gives good loyal Americans who are proud of their heritage some cause for faith in our country—the Christian population of America is in decline. There is hope for the rest of us after all.
That’s right, praise Jesus, this just in: being a Christian isn’t the given it once was in this land of freedom of religion, but not necessarily of freedom from religion. As a parent of one of my students once told me, she didn’t guess she “cared that much what religion a person might be … just as long as they wuz Christian.” And, until recently, that about summed it all up in the theocratic quasi-republic Christian oligarchy known as the United States of America.
As you may recall, though the official founding fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and that bunch were decidedly non-Christian, deists in fact, the marketers who have shaped our American religious traditions prefer to hearken back to an earlier, more devout time, the 1620 pilgrimage of the Puritans to the Americas. Stern, ascetic, vengeful, and industrious, the Puritans built their church on Plymouth Rock and raised the colony of Massachusetts, and thus the mythology of a Christian America.
Of course the idealized version bought and sold from pulpits and politicians is that these wonderful Christian forbears laid out an admirable and irrevocable tradition for us, a theological manifest destiny as it were. This version of the tale leaves out the fact that three separate colonies and thus states—Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire --were created by folk trying to flee the tyranny of those oppressive and rapacious religious fanatics. It fails as well to mention the dead Indians, and such, in their wake.
And so, America for the most part remained a Christian theocratic hegemony. Jefferson, et al, had to be specifically, legislatively, non-secular in their formation of the new America to overcome the rampant religious oaths and other sanctimonious oppressions of civil liberties common at the time and continuing right on up into the 20th century. Even so, religiously inflicted misery or no, Americans had remained steadfastly self-professed Christians in near unanimity.
However in 21st century pluralist America, one out of every four Americans now days no longer affiliate themselves with any Christian sect. According to the American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the last twenty years has seen a ten percent decline in Americans claiming Christianity as their religion of choice. Understand Jesus would still have a hard time walking across the parted waters without bumping into an American Christian. Even with that ten percent decline, as of 2008 a full 75% of those surveyed identified themselves as Christian.
And no, this decline does not mean that the Muslim terrorists have won just because you saw a lot of brown skinned people with Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards. Quite the contrary, though the American Muslim population has doubled since an earlier 1990 Trinity College survey, Muslims still only account for less than one percent of the population. Even Wiccans outnumber Muslims.
Catholics and Baptists remain the #1 and #2 most popular religious choices, coming in at 25% and 15.8% respectively; but, wait a minute, who is that dark horse coming up on the outside lane at 15%? That’s right, the number 3 choice in America these days is … “no religion at all.” As the report explains, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion."
So is Athiesm the new black? The USA Today coverage of the survey shows a stylishly dour dredlocked Bostonian ex-Catholic moping that he doesn't “know anyone religious and hardly anyone 'spiritual.'" Of course since few can trust being alone in the confessional booth with a Catholic priest anymore, it is small surprise traditional papist population centers in the northeast are being bled dry.
Also as “Evangelicals” have devoured other more mainstream Christian sects, such as Lutherans or Methodists, old line mainline religions in America are seeing declines by as much as 50%, with the fastest growing religious preference being “none of the above.” The survey asserts further that it is exactly this expansion of the “born-again evangelicals” that are the GOP hard core conservative breeding ground that have pushed many Americans away from religions entirely.
Evangelicals form the business end of a spectrum of “Christians” that ranges from the Mother Teresas of the world to Vinnie the kid who just jacked your car to buy some meth but wears the prominent solid gold crucifix bling along with his 50 Cent piece, so don’t you dare say he’s not a Christian, goddammit.
In other words, lots of people claim to be Christians though not all of them hold themselves to the same standards. The evangelicals are the wonderful folks who bring you mega-churches, abortion clinic bombings, Gay-baiting, tent revivals, speaking in tongues, televangelists, and those dopey little pamphlets that litter street corners occasionally. They do these things, of course, so they can share god’s love and fund and thus dominate the Republican Party. Somehow, some people seem to think this sort of thing works and so traditional variations of Republicanist philosophies have lost their role in shaping party ideology. At the same time on at the expense of Christian variants and traditions hundreds of years old, the evangelicals have risen as their brethen fall.
Quoting from CNN’s online coverage of the release of the report, Trinity College’s Mark Silk claimed the rise in evangelical Christianity is contributing to the rejection of religion altogether by some Americans. "There [is] a long-lasting 'religious right' connected to a political party, and that turned a lot of people the other way," Silk said linking the Republican Party to such groups as the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family.
Currently, about one third of American are claiming to be evangelicals. As the success of the evangelical Christian conservatives doom their Christian alternatives, it is small wonder more and more Americans are choosing to follow in our other American Religious Tradition of fleeing the zealots.
If this trend were to continue, with decidedly non-religious Americans and evangelicals sorting out the wheat from the chaff among the non-committed semi-religious Christians, one could imagine that, politically, the rabid born-again right-wing GOP cult that has so shaped America for the last 30 years could theoretically occupy as little as a third of the political spectrum by 2030. That is if the rest of America could endure another 20 years of keeping up with the Swaggarts and Haggards and Baakers and Jim Joneses.
One hopes that the now-fading Christian majority will not react the same way the White male and later Republican majorities have when challenged and then turned to shrill doctrinaire posturing. Not that Christians have ever been known for that.
--mikel weisser, a pantheist, writes from the left coast of AZ.
That’s right, praise Jesus, this just in: being a Christian isn’t the given it once was in this land of freedom of religion, but not necessarily of freedom from religion. As a parent of one of my students once told me, she didn’t guess she “cared that much what religion a person might be … just as long as they wuz Christian.” And, until recently, that about summed it all up in the theocratic quasi-republic Christian oligarchy known as the United States of America.
As you may recall, though the official founding fathers, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and that bunch were decidedly non-Christian, deists in fact, the marketers who have shaped our American religious traditions prefer to hearken back to an earlier, more devout time, the 1620 pilgrimage of the Puritans to the Americas. Stern, ascetic, vengeful, and industrious, the Puritans built their church on Plymouth Rock and raised the colony of Massachusetts, and thus the mythology of a Christian America.
Of course the idealized version bought and sold from pulpits and politicians is that these wonderful Christian forbears laid out an admirable and irrevocable tradition for us, a theological manifest destiny as it were. This version of the tale leaves out the fact that three separate colonies and thus states—Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire --were created by folk trying to flee the tyranny of those oppressive and rapacious religious fanatics. It fails as well to mention the dead Indians, and such, in their wake.
And so, America for the most part remained a Christian theocratic hegemony. Jefferson, et al, had to be specifically, legislatively, non-secular in their formation of the new America to overcome the rampant religious oaths and other sanctimonious oppressions of civil liberties common at the time and continuing right on up into the 20th century. Even so, religiously inflicted misery or no, Americans had remained steadfastly self-professed Christians in near unanimity.
However in 21st century pluralist America, one out of every four Americans now days no longer affiliate themselves with any Christian sect. According to the American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the last twenty years has seen a ten percent decline in Americans claiming Christianity as their religion of choice. Understand Jesus would still have a hard time walking across the parted waters without bumping into an American Christian. Even with that ten percent decline, as of 2008 a full 75% of those surveyed identified themselves as Christian.
And no, this decline does not mean that the Muslim terrorists have won just because you saw a lot of brown skinned people with Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards. Quite the contrary, though the American Muslim population has doubled since an earlier 1990 Trinity College survey, Muslims still only account for less than one percent of the population. Even Wiccans outnumber Muslims.
Catholics and Baptists remain the #1 and #2 most popular religious choices, coming in at 25% and 15.8% respectively; but, wait a minute, who is that dark horse coming up on the outside lane at 15%? That’s right, the number 3 choice in America these days is … “no religion at all.” As the report explains, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion."
So is Athiesm the new black? The USA Today coverage of the survey shows a stylishly dour dredlocked Bostonian ex-Catholic moping that he doesn't “know anyone religious and hardly anyone 'spiritual.'" Of course since few can trust being alone in the confessional booth with a Catholic priest anymore, it is small surprise traditional papist population centers in the northeast are being bled dry.
Also as “Evangelicals” have devoured other more mainstream Christian sects, such as Lutherans or Methodists, old line mainline religions in America are seeing declines by as much as 50%, with the fastest growing religious preference being “none of the above.” The survey asserts further that it is exactly this expansion of the “born-again evangelicals” that are the GOP hard core conservative breeding ground that have pushed many Americans away from religions entirely.
Evangelicals form the business end of a spectrum of “Christians” that ranges from the Mother Teresas of the world to Vinnie the kid who just jacked your car to buy some meth but wears the prominent solid gold crucifix bling along with his 50 Cent piece, so don’t you dare say he’s not a Christian, goddammit.
In other words, lots of people claim to be Christians though not all of them hold themselves to the same standards. The evangelicals are the wonderful folks who bring you mega-churches, abortion clinic bombings, Gay-baiting, tent revivals, speaking in tongues, televangelists, and those dopey little pamphlets that litter street corners occasionally. They do these things, of course, so they can share god’s love and fund and thus dominate the Republican Party. Somehow, some people seem to think this sort of thing works and so traditional variations of Republicanist philosophies have lost their role in shaping party ideology. At the same time on at the expense of Christian variants and traditions hundreds of years old, the evangelicals have risen as their brethen fall.
Quoting from CNN’s online coverage of the release of the report, Trinity College’s Mark Silk claimed the rise in evangelical Christianity is contributing to the rejection of religion altogether by some Americans. "There [is] a long-lasting 'religious right' connected to a political party, and that turned a lot of people the other way," Silk said linking the Republican Party to such groups as the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family.
Currently, about one third of American are claiming to be evangelicals. As the success of the evangelical Christian conservatives doom their Christian alternatives, it is small wonder more and more Americans are choosing to follow in our other American Religious Tradition of fleeing the zealots.
If this trend were to continue, with decidedly non-religious Americans and evangelicals sorting out the wheat from the chaff among the non-committed semi-religious Christians, one could imagine that, politically, the rabid born-again right-wing GOP cult that has so shaped America for the last 30 years could theoretically occupy as little as a third of the political spectrum by 2030. That is if the rest of America could endure another 20 years of keeping up with the Swaggarts and Haggards and Baakers and Jim Joneses.
One hopes that the now-fading Christian majority will not react the same way the White male and later Republican majorities have when challenged and then turned to shrill doctrinaire posturing. Not that Christians have ever been known for that.
--mikel weisser, a pantheist, writes from the left coast of AZ.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Current Comedy 3/2/09: Fools’ Rushin’
I have been asked to say a few words about Rush Limbaugh. OK, here’s two: not interested. Before I explain myself, I could/should admit that part of the reason I pick on CNN’s coverage so often, is that it is the only mainstream media news channel I get via my cable service that doesn’t make me want to jump up and attack the TV every night.
Only most nights.
Monday March 2, 2009 was one of those nights. Let’s admit it: not many of us have ever doubted that the supposed “Most Trusted Name in News” was part of the propaganda machine, but the channel was easier to watch when it was the presidential ignorance channel as configured during the Bush years. With Fox’s “F & B” BS blatantly beating the war drums and even getting their scripts from Oval Office talking points, it didn’t take much for CNN to appear objective-ish in comparison.
Back in the day, it was all about Paris Hilton and her love tryst with the “Runaway Bride” and Lacey Peterson; and the way Michael Jackson and JonBenet, and whatever and ever amen, meanwhile our Constitution burned and the US went from appearing to be the great force for good in the world to a squanderer of trillions, murderer of millions and gleeful despoiler of the entire planet.
However for the last few years CNN’s sister station Headline News’ Nancy Grace has sucked up all the celebrity crime time-wasters leaving Anderson Cooper and even poor old Larry King himself to resort to at least the appearance of actual reporters and pretending to focus on actual news. Of course even a casual survey of the rhetoric of CNN (which appears to at some point been re-initialed to stand for Conservative Nightly Nudge) leaves little doubt as to which side of the butter is breaded.
As the old phrase goes, the liberal media is only as liberal as their conservative owners allow them to be. Take CNN’s March 2nd Monday night “Welcome Back to the Weekly Dread” evening lineup for example. As somehow happens so many times in the course of so many evenings, the panelists again found themselves asking what can the GOP do to win in 2012? What are Republican strengths? How can they challenge the president? What are Obama’s weaknesses? You know, the basic non-partisan questions all Americans are always asking themselves.
That Monday, Obama’s greatest weakness, according to David Gergen anyway, was he is trying to do too much. Not doing enough, trying to do too much, not taking it seriously enough, being too serious, spending too little, spending too much, with that Obama there’s always something to blame. But that was just the appetizer.
All the attention, as it had been for the previous two nights, was on how gargantuan Rush has become lately and the ever important blow by blow from his CPAC speech, February 28th.
Two days earlier Rush’s CPAC speech was so not-news and so annoying that my teenage daughter almost actually came to the point of legitimate housecleaning when she more or less dusted the furniture as her frustration level maxed out to the point she jumped up to the TV and started trying to smack some of the silly off of the boob on the tube.
Once upon a time CNN would have led with the story of the NFL footballers lost at sea and been done with it. But that night it was Rush, the Lord of Limbaugh keeping us from looking at the real 500 pound elephant that just entered the room. He gave it his best shot anyway.
CNN probably used up all the talking heads they could round up to drive us away from the actual news of the evening, this Yahoo News item: “Obama Releases Secret Bush Anti-Terror Memos.” Those of us craving indictments had our hearts skip a beat with the immensity of this news when the little email link lodged in our inboxes. Seriously, it’s beginning to smell a bit indictment.
Releasing nine legal opinions, the Justice Dept. made public thousands of Bush era emails and other documents that trace his administration’s determined assault on the American people. In a speech a few hours before the documents were released, Attorney General Eric Holder, our go-to quote from last week as well said it best: “Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties.”
All the stuff we’d been dreading they’d been hiding was there all along: torture, wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, John Yoo in a supporting role as Torquemadas. Even more chilling, comes verification of that supposed urban legend: the tale that videos were made of torture sessions, excuse me, interrogation sessions, and that they now were missing. Turns out it wasn’t just a few videos of fun-loving folk getting a little too splishy-splashy in a friendly game of waterboard that got out of hand. We’re talking 92 tapes and the suggestion of possible secret deaths.
ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said, "The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order."
If that doesn’t smell like indictments to you, you better stop sniffing the paint thinner. Yet somehow, CNN failed to even mention the news of the Holder speech or the files. No, instead the viewers of the supposed most trusted name in news got to watch day three of Lord Limbaugh bloviating about Obama’s “bastardization of the Constitution.” Some great words from a man who knows more than a little bit about bastardizing the Constitution himself.
Here is some of his own handiwork from earlier in the same speech: “We believe that the Preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.” And among those rights I guess is the right to act like you know what you’re talking about when you haven’t got a clue.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Only most nights.
Monday March 2, 2009 was one of those nights. Let’s admit it: not many of us have ever doubted that the supposed “Most Trusted Name in News” was part of the propaganda machine, but the channel was easier to watch when it was the presidential ignorance channel as configured during the Bush years. With Fox’s “F & B” BS blatantly beating the war drums and even getting their scripts from Oval Office talking points, it didn’t take much for CNN to appear objective-ish in comparison.
Back in the day, it was all about Paris Hilton and her love tryst with the “Runaway Bride” and Lacey Peterson; and the way Michael Jackson and JonBenet, and whatever and ever amen, meanwhile our Constitution burned and the US went from appearing to be the great force for good in the world to a squanderer of trillions, murderer of millions and gleeful despoiler of the entire planet.
However for the last few years CNN’s sister station Headline News’ Nancy Grace has sucked up all the celebrity crime time-wasters leaving Anderson Cooper and even poor old Larry King himself to resort to at least the appearance of actual reporters and pretending to focus on actual news. Of course even a casual survey of the rhetoric of CNN (which appears to at some point been re-initialed to stand for Conservative Nightly Nudge) leaves little doubt as to which side of the butter is breaded.
As the old phrase goes, the liberal media is only as liberal as their conservative owners allow them to be. Take CNN’s March 2nd Monday night “Welcome Back to the Weekly Dread” evening lineup for example. As somehow happens so many times in the course of so many evenings, the panelists again found themselves asking what can the GOP do to win in 2012? What are Republican strengths? How can they challenge the president? What are Obama’s weaknesses? You know, the basic non-partisan questions all Americans are always asking themselves.
That Monday, Obama’s greatest weakness, according to David Gergen anyway, was he is trying to do too much. Not doing enough, trying to do too much, not taking it seriously enough, being too serious, spending too little, spending too much, with that Obama there’s always something to blame. But that was just the appetizer.
All the attention, as it had been for the previous two nights, was on how gargantuan Rush has become lately and the ever important blow by blow from his CPAC speech, February 28th.
Two days earlier Rush’s CPAC speech was so not-news and so annoying that my teenage daughter almost actually came to the point of legitimate housecleaning when she more or less dusted the furniture as her frustration level maxed out to the point she jumped up to the TV and started trying to smack some of the silly off of the boob on the tube.
Once upon a time CNN would have led with the story of the NFL footballers lost at sea and been done with it. But that night it was Rush, the Lord of Limbaugh keeping us from looking at the real 500 pound elephant that just entered the room. He gave it his best shot anyway.
CNN probably used up all the talking heads they could round up to drive us away from the actual news of the evening, this Yahoo News item: “Obama Releases Secret Bush Anti-Terror Memos.” Those of us craving indictments had our hearts skip a beat with the immensity of this news when the little email link lodged in our inboxes. Seriously, it’s beginning to smell a bit indictment.
Releasing nine legal opinions, the Justice Dept. made public thousands of Bush era emails and other documents that trace his administration’s determined assault on the American people. In a speech a few hours before the documents were released, Attorney General Eric Holder, our go-to quote from last week as well said it best: “Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties.”
All the stuff we’d been dreading they’d been hiding was there all along: torture, wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, John Yoo in a supporting role as Torquemadas. Even more chilling, comes verification of that supposed urban legend: the tale that videos were made of torture sessions, excuse me, interrogation sessions, and that they now were missing. Turns out it wasn’t just a few videos of fun-loving folk getting a little too splishy-splashy in a friendly game of waterboard that got out of hand. We’re talking 92 tapes and the suggestion of possible secret deaths.
ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said, "The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order."
If that doesn’t smell like indictments to you, you better stop sniffing the paint thinner. Yet somehow, CNN failed to even mention the news of the Holder speech or the files. No, instead the viewers of the supposed most trusted name in news got to watch day three of Lord Limbaugh bloviating about Obama’s “bastardization of the Constitution.” Some great words from a man who knows more than a little bit about bastardizing the Constitution himself.
Here is some of his own handiwork from earlier in the same speech: “We believe that the Preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.” And among those rights I guess is the right to act like you know what you’re talking about when you haven’t got a clue.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
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